The Promised Holy Spirit
On the heels of telling His disciples that He was going away to where they could not yet follow, a betrayer was in their midst, and Peter was going to disown Him three times, Jesus extended words of hope. The total weight of all these coming burdens was leaving the disciples a touch overwhelmed.
Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled (1-14)
Jesus commissioned His disciples not to allow their hearts to be troubled or confused. Allegiance to the Father and the One He sent was the eternal remedy for keeping one's heart from breaking in times of stress.
Jesus' departure did not mean, in any way, that He would not be taking care of those who followed Him. His Father's house or Temple, the place where Heaven met Earth, had many rooms, thus much space. His departure was to prepare a place for each of them, where they would experience this Temple. Before the new heavens and earth, Jesus was preparing a house. The building of the house was going to begin just as He revealed to Jacob and Nathanael (Genesis 28:12; John 1:51). His departure was first going to tear open a hole in Heaven, and the Son of Man, Jesus, was going to connect His followers to a Heaven-and-Earth union.
Eventually, all of creation will experience such a union where Heaven and Earth will be put back together again—what Jesus called a New Heaven and Earth. Then all of creation will be the Father's house, a place for Him to live with His family. Thus, Jesus went to prepare the now-house of the Father, which will become the ultimate house of the Father. He promised that on the day when the whole earth became the Father's house, all of Heaven and Earth would be joined together again. He would come again and take them to Himself (1-3).
Jesus then left them with this remark: “They now knew the way to where He was going” (4).
Thomas immediately jumped up into Jesus' face refuting the claim, “We do not know where You are going, so how in the world could we know the way?” (5)
Jesus had been teaching them in detail about the way and yet they remained confused, so Jesus made His claim clear: He Himself was “the Way, Truth, and Life.” He was going to the Father. His whole mission was to bring them to the Father. The Way to the Father was not by path but by Person, Jesus. Jesus' mission had never changed. He was out to get the whole world into a relationship with the Father, all living in His home (6).
Jesus is the embodiment of Truth and Life, so to know Him is to know the Father. Salvation is not a way of rules or ethics; it is a way of relationship. They had known Jesus, and in knowing Him they would, from that night on, also know the Father. The way had and always would be through Jesus. Jesus had never taught anything else; His teaching had been clear and consistent (7).
This is all deep and philosophical with a bunch of apparent metaphors, and the disciples were annoyed by Jesus' words just like a congregation listening to a thoughtful sermon on how life works under King Jesus.
Philip piped up, missing the entire point, and asked Jesus to show them the Father, and then their understanding would be cleared up and their religious appetite satisfied.
All of religion says the same thing: God, the divine, is too remote, far away, a sort of non-personal power, from what any human can discern. Buddha, Krishna, Mohammad, Moses, and the list goes on—all provide a way in the right direction. Even Jesus provides a way in the right direction. Everyone gets you to the foothills, but none should alone say they can take you to the summit. For some, the summit doesn't even exist—God being a power, energy, or force, but not personal.
Yes, Jesus did the unthinkable. He declared that He was the only Way, the only relationship to bring us face-to-face with the Father. Jesus’ words to Philip were saying, “When you see Me, when by the Spirit you behold Me, then you are looking at the Father.” Jesus had already been showing them the Father, and they had been missing the show.
Jesus did sound a touch exasperated when He asked them if He had been saying the same thing over and over again, and they were still mentally too numb to grasp the point.
Jesus said, “If you see Me, you see the Father. How can you ask Me to show you the Father when I have spent months showing you the Father?” (8-9)
They had sworn their faith allegiance to Jesus' claim that He and the Father were One. This entire truth was built on the evidence that Jesus was not speaking by His own authority and the works He was doing but by the Father dwelling in Him. Jesus had been clear about all of this.
Jesus then told His disciples that if they could not put their allegiant faith in Him and the Father being One, they should at least put their allegiant faith in the works He had done, as those works had to have been done by the Father dwelling in Him (10-11). Jesus was not seeking to make allegiance a difficult spiritual act. The very works of God were Father-works—the Father had to be in Him. Jesus' whole goal was to connect the disciples with the Father. All they needed to do was put their allegiant trust in what the Father had done in Jesus, and in that way put their allegiance in Jesus. It was not complicated then, just like it is not complicated today. If you cannot give your allegiance to God because you just can't buy Jesus, then buy what God did through Jesus. It gets the heart to the same place of seeing the Father. Once the Father is seen in the grace-and-truth life of Jesus, then a relationship can form.
Jesus went one step further and told His disciples that if they did give their allegiant trust to Him, they would discover the Father working through their lives in the same way He had worked through Jesus' life. Then He amended the statement and said that, actually, the Father would do greater works through them, for they would finish what the Father had begun in the single physical body of Jesus (12).
Jesus had been given all authority in Heaven and Earth, so He told them that whatever they were to ask in His name, in Jesus' name, the Father would do. The Father would do those things to keep on revealing Himself to the earth through the Person of Jesus.
Jesus then promised that if they asked anything in His name, He would do it (13-14).
[Please allow me a short excursion for those wishing to read this concerning the name. The English name of Jesus originates from the Latin form of the Greek name Ἰησοῦς.
English: Jesus
Latin: Iēsūs
Greek: Ἰησοῦς
Yes, Jesus is a Latin and Greek corruption of His name. Imagine if you were introduced to a Korean man by the name of “Dongwoo,” and for your convenience, you corrupted his name and called him “Donald.” Would Donald be the name his parents gave him? Would the name you call him have the same meaning? Donald is a Scottish name meaning “great chief.” “Dongwoo” is a Korean name carrying the idea that those who possess it will have a communication gift. The name, depending on spelling, can have different meanings.
Assigning Jesus a corrupted name is no big deal because we all know whom we are talking about, right? It does beg the question, however, as to why we would change His name in the first place.
If you want to know the name God used in naming Him (Matthew 1:21), the sound Jesus would have heard growing up and throughout His life, then you would hear this name, "Yahusha," which means “Yahuah (Yahweh) is Salvation.” The very name of the Father was in Jesus' name. This is not apparent in our corrupted form of the name. It is apparent in the Hebrew and Aramaic form of the name.
I’m not wanting to make a huge deal of this, but Jesus did say, “Ask Me anything in My name (and His name possessed the very name of Yahweh) and I will do it.” Saying Jesus' name without the Father's name as a huge glaring part of the first syllable is a sad loss to all who pray in His name. In the very name given to Jesus we see a declared unity with the Father. This is the very point Jesus was seeking to make in this section.
“Yahusha, name above all names.”]
The Promise of the Holy Spirit (15-26)
Jesus made a sturdy and timeless point: love of Jesus as King will lead to listening, then to observing the commands of the King one loves (15).
Jesus was going to replace His presence with another “Helper.” This means Jesus had been a “Helper” and He was going to send another, of the same kind of “Helper,” to His disciples; He would be with them forever. Jesus identified the Helper to come as the Spirit of truth. He would continue to lead them into the truth personally, through His Spirit, just as Jesus had.
He, the Spirit, could not be seen or known by those who did not put their allegiant faith in Christ. Those who put their allegiant faith in Christ would come to have the Spirit dwell “with” them and “in” them. This whole “in” thing was new; the Old Testament emphasized the Holy Spirit coming “upon” (16-17).
Not only had Jesus been a “Helper” to the disciples, but He had also been the “Father” to them. He was not going to let them feel orphaned and fatherless for a moment. He was personally going to come to them in the Person of the Holy Spirit (18).
The Holy Spirit would be so real, so completely alive, so completely revealed that, while the world would no longer see Jesus’ body, those who put their allegiant faith in Jesus would continue to see Jesus. They would be made alive and be guided to truth by Jesus through His Holy Spirit.
Jesus then made a veiled comment about His Resurrection. The world would see Jesus just a few more hours, but then no more; those of allegiant faith, however, would go on seeing Jesus and live because He would be alive (19). They would understand post-Resurrection that Jesus was in the Father, and they would be in Him and He would be in them. Because the Holy Spirit would be with Jesus on the cross, to the grave, and into the Resurrection, they would be with Him on the cross, to the grave, and into resurrection life. The Holy Spirit was a game-changer; He would be in them eternally, and by the Holy Spirit, they would be more than just time-dwellers on Earth (20). Paul picked up on all of this in his books with one of his favorite phrases: “in Christ.”
Love and allegiance for the King was demonstrated in keeping the King's commands. Those in allegiant love with Jesus and His Father would discover the special allegiant love the Father and Son had toward them, the kind of love that revealed Him personally to them (21).
The other Judas interrupted right here with a question, wondering how the Father and Jesus could pour this special revelation-love on His followers and the rest of the world not see it (22).
Jesus, for a third time, repeated an important point. Those in allegiance, who had sworn their devotion to Jesus as King, would do what anyone would do who had sworn their allegiance to a king—they would keep His commands. Those of allegiant faith would be loved in a specific way; the Father and Son would make their home in such a person. This home would bring them into a personal relationship with Father and Son beyond their imagination (23). Anyone not in allegiant faith would not listen to Jesus as King and not experience the Father and Son revealing themselves.
Jesus then reminded them that the words He was speaking had been told to Him by His Father (24).
Jesus rehearsed the material again and again. He was telling them now, while He was still with them, that when He was gone, the Father was going to send the “Helper” or “Comforter,” as the Greek word implies. The Helper would be the Holy Spirit. He would keep on teaching them by reminding them of everything Jesus had taught. They would forget nothing, for they were not dependent on human memory or mere human teaching. The Holy Spirit was going to come and be their Teacher (25-26).
Jesus' Parting Gift (27-31)
Jesus left a parting gift: “peace” or the Hebrew shalom. They were, from that moment on, going to be full of knowing—their sins were forgiven, the Father and Son were going to live in them, and they would never be alone, abandoned, or face judgment; their deaths would be a birth into a whole new creation. Most of all, Jesus was giving them the “Comforter,” who would turn their grief into joy so their hearts would not need to experience trouble, nor would they need to entertain fear (27). This was the kind of peace that would attend them the rest of their lives.
Jesus once again reminded them that He was going away. If they were in loving allegiance to Him, they would rejoice because He was going to the Father. Jesus told them the Father was the greater One in the sense that He was the One Jesus was pointing to, the One Jesus was seeking for everyone to have a relationship with. Jesus was in no way saying He Himself was a lesser God—that would be polytheism; God is One. Jesus had come to glorify the Father, and because they had come to know the Father through Jesus, they should be rejoicing because the Father was building His home and, at long last, was getting His family back (28).
Jesus then reminded His disciples that He was telling them all this in advance so they could put their full faith-allegiance in the Father, even when the Son of Man would give His life to death (29).
He was going to cut His teaching short, for the ruler of the world, satan, who could make no claim on Him, was on the move at that very moment. Through Judas, satan was working toward the arrest and execution of Jesus, thinking if he were to kill Jesus, then it would show Jesus to be just another sinner rightly judged worthy of death by the Father (30).
Little did satan know what God was up to. Satan was not about to take Jesus’ life; Jesus was about to lay it down (John 10:17). Satan had no power over Jesus because Jesus was in perfect allegiance to the Father, doing exactly what He commanded. No accusation existed against Jesus that could stand in the presence of the Father. His faith-allegiance was perfect. He lived in such a way that the whole world could see, for all of time, that Jesus loved the Father like no one had ever loved God.
After Jesus spoke these words, He asked His disciples to arise and go to another place (31).
A Psalm for Help
Psalm 70 is a “Lament Psalm,” seeking for deliverance, and an “Imprecatory Psalm” asking for justice from enemies. This Psalm was believed to have been written during David's flight from Absalom. Psalm 70 is a close copy of Psalm 40:13-17.
This Psalm can be divided into four sections:
A call for rescue (1-2)
A call for retribution (3)
A cause to rejoice (4)
A cause to rescue (5)
Purpose: To show us how to pray when we need justice from those who are mistreating us.