John 14 - Introduction

Jesus Continues His Final Words to His Disciples in the Upper Room (John 13-16).

Having warned Peter of what was to come in his immediate future Jesus now turns to all the disciples in order to encourage them, and this did of course include Peter. He wanted them all to have assurance for the future. In this chapter Jesus confirms their assurance about their own eternal future (John 14:1), reveals His uniqueness as the outshining of the Father (John 14:4), promises great power in the task ahead (John 14:15), draws their attention to the need for obedience (John 14:21), and guarantees the coming of the One Who will bring home to them the truth (John 14:25).

Here then Jesus makes a fuller revelation about Himself. The disciples have been growing in understanding, but now He makes clear to them that He is the One Who can provide a place for His followers in His heavenly resting place, and can bring them there because it is His Father's house (John 14:1; compare John 17:24). Indeed He stresses that He is the only One Who can do this. For He is the One Who, as the truth and the life, is the only way to the Father (John 14:4). By this He is making clear His uniqueness, and that truth is no longer to be sought in the Law of Moses, but in the living Word (John 1:17), and He will go on to point out that this truth will come from the work of ‘the Spirit of truth' within them (John 14:17; John 15:26; John 16:13). This will be because Jesus is Himself the Way into God's presence, being both the Truth and the Life (John 14:6). By receiving from Him the truth and the life as it is found in Him they come to the Father. Thus full truth now resides in Jesus, and will be made clear to the disciples by the Spirit of truth as He reveals Jesus to them, while true life, life which comes from the Spirit and illuminates men, must also come from Him.

And this is because Jesus is in Himself a complete revelation and manifestation of the Father (compare John 1:18). That is why He can now say to His disciples, ‘If you had known Me you would have known My Father also, from now on you know Him and have seen Him' (John 14:7). In other words, to know and to have seen Jesus in His fullness is to know and have seen the Father, and from now on they will recognise that they have both known and seen the Father, as the Spirit of truth gives them illumination. Note the advancement from ‘knowing the Father' to ‘knowing and seeing' Him.

Had it been left there we might have seen this as simply saying that through His own life and teaching they had received a glimpse of what the Father was like. But that is ruled out by what follows. For Philip seizes on Jesus' words and cries out, ‘Lord, show us the Father and it will suffice for us.' He wants to see God as men had in ancient times. Outwardly Philip might have appeared to be pedantic, but the conversation that follows specifically brings out that Jesus saw Philip's cry as reasonable, and that He was in fact intending His disciples to see His words as signifying far more than that. For He stresses to Philip that if only he had  truly known  Him for what He is, he would have recognised that  all  that the Father is has been portrayed in Him, and this could only be as a result of His sharing His Father's Being and Essence. His insistence on this fact goes far beyond the idea that somehow men could see something of God as they looked at the life of Jesus. It is rather indicating that in seeing Him in action they have ACTUALLY SEEN the Father operating on earth. He is not here, of course, speaking of His bodily form, but of His and His Father's essential Being.

That Jesus intended Philip and the other disciples to take His words literally and not ‘spiritually' is brought out by His next statement. He does not rebuke Philip for taking Him too literally. Rather He gently rebukes Him for not having recognised the truth about Him. ‘Have I been with you such a long time, and yet you have not known Me Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father, how then can you say show us the Father'. The final phrase ‘how can you say show us the Father' can only signify that He considers Philip's objection to be invalid,  because he has already seen the Father in His fullness. But He could not have said that if He had not literally meant ‘seen', for on any other interpretation of ‘seen' Philip's objection would have been reasonable, and have been a cry for a literal sight of the Father. In other words he was wanting himself and the other disciples to see the Father with their own eyes, in the same way as the leaders of Israel had seen Him at Sinai (Exodus 24:10). Had Jesus simply been speaking ‘spiritually' or ‘parabolically' He would then have explained to Philip that no man can see the Father (John 1:18), but that they should be satisfied that they had seen a reflection of the Father in Him. But that was not what He said or meant as His comment makes clear. What He meant was that in seeing Jesus they had  actually seen the Father before their very eyes, because Jesus and the Father were one in essential being. He is saying that while His bodily form might be that of a man, they need to recognise that in His essential Being He is God. He  'as He is in Himself in His inner being'  is to be seen as a full portrayal of the Father. That this is an indication of Jesus' own unique Godhood is certain, for no one could claim to fully reveal God in this way Who was not Himself God. And there is nothing more important than for us to see this. Jesus was now demonstrating that the time for ambiguity and slow unveiling had passed. Now His disciples needed to recognise more than ever Who He essentially was. Here we have an amplification of His earlier claim that ‘I and My Father are one' (John 10:30), making clear that it did not just mean one in purpose and intention, but one in essential nature and being such that to see one was to see the other.

Note that He feels a little concerned that Philip and the other disciples have not gathered this from what He had said earlier, e.g. in John 5:17, for He says, ‘Have I been with you so long and yet you have not known Me?' (John 14:9). In other words while they had recognised Him as the Holy One of God (John 6:69) and as God's Messiah (Matthew 16:16 and parallels), what they had failed to recognise was His true Godhood.

He then confirms this position by saying, ‘Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak from Myself, but the Father abiding in Me does His works'. Here He makes clear that He and His Father are in such close union (‘the Word was face to face with God' - John 1:2) that what His mouth speaks are not His own words but the words of His Father, and that His works are also in fact done by the Father Who is abiding in Him. Then He adds, ‘Believe Me that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the very works sake.' In other words they should recognise that He could not have performed the things that He had, unless it was the Father doing it through Him because they were in such close union.

Those who refuse to recognise the truth of what Jesus is saying here, that Jesus is truly God, seize on this verse with glee (ignoring what has just been said). They point out that elsewhere Jesus says that He and the Father dwell in true believers (John 14:23), and that ‘in that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you' (John 14:20; compare also John 17:21). That, they say, is what Jesus meant here. But that is simply not correct. It is to take the words out of context. For had Jesus meant that He would not have asked Philip how he could possibly have said what he did, He would rather have said to Philip that He had not intended him to take His words so literally. Had Jesus simply meant what these people say, Philip's plea would have been justified. The only reason why it was not justified was because Jesus considered that they should have recognised that in seeing Him in action they had actually and literally seen His Father in action in all that He did. That is far from true of believers.

Jesus then goes on to promise that He will pray the Father to give them another Helper to take His place when He is gone. The word ‘another' indicates ‘another of the same kind'. And that other is to be the Spirit of truth Whom they know because He dwells with them and will be in them (John 14:17). And He then immediately adds, ‘I will not leave you without help, I will come to you' (John 14:18). Once again we are faced with the fact that Jesus not only aligns Himself with the Father in close union, but also with the Spirit. For the Spirit Whom ‘they know because He dwells with them' can only refer to Jesus, something confirmed by the fact that the coming of the Spirit of truth will be the same as Jesus coming to them again. It is a reminder that all the members of the triune God (Matthew 28:19) work as One, and that where One is all are.

From this point on Jesus then moves on to deal with the relationship that the disciples (and subsequent believers - John 17:20) will enjoy with Himself and the Father. In a lesser way than that between Him and His Father they will enjoy a union in the Spirit with the Father and with Him. They will even be able to do the works that Jesus had done. But their experience will not be the same as that of Jesus with the Father, for they will reveal the Father inadequately. While someone might see a hint of what the Father is like from the finest of believers, no such believer could truly and humbly say, ‘he who has seen me has adequately seen the Father'. But the important lesson from this for our theme is that the believer's relationship with God is now defined in terms of the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit all working equally together. Jesus and the Father will come to them and dwell in them (John 14:23). The coming of the Spirit of truth to them will be the coming of Jesus (John 14:16). This implies Jesus' omnipresence, and equality with the Father and the Spirit (compare the same implication in Matthew 28:19). They are One.

Initially this may appear to be contradicted by John 14:28 where Jesus says to His disciples, ‘if you loved Me you would rejoice because I said that I go to the Father, for my Father is greater than I'. But there is no real contradiction. Jesus' point in these words is that while He is living on earth He has taken a subsidiary position. He has been made lower than the angels and has become man (Hebrews 2:7). At this stage, while He walks and suffers as a man, His status, and enjoyment of the glory that was intrinsically His, is below that of His Father (see John 17:5). He has taken a humble place as the Servant in order to give His life a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). Thus at this point in time He is of a lower status than His Father Who rules in the heavens and is subject to no such limitations. And that is the reason why the disciples should rejoice for Him at His going to the Father, because then He would be restored to His former status (see Philippians 2:5). He would be glorified with the glory which He had had with the Father before the world was (John 17:5). The Father being ‘greater than He' was thus a temporary phenomenon.

1). Jesus Reveals Himself As Uniquely One with the Father, and as the Way to the Father (John 14:1).

As Jesus spoke in the Upper Room He was very much aware of the way that lay ahead both for Himself and for His disciples. The way of trial by His fellow-countrymen followed by the cross lay heavily on His mind, as Gethsemane will reveal, but what His disciples would have to face in the future was also prominent in His thinking. He was aware that His disciples, who had faithfully followed Him and trusted Him, now fully relied on Him. He was their world. Yet, partly because of what had just occurred in respect of the possibility of betrayal, He knew that they were puzzled and bewildered, and He knew that they would soon be even more puzzled and bewildered in the face of what was to come. They had just learned that one from among themselves would betray Him and that even Peter would deny Him. And He was aware that shortly they were suddenly to be left on their own in the most trying of circumstances.

We must never underestimate the trauma that they would have to face. For three or more years they had followed Jesus and had learned from Him, and they had trusted Him fully and had been confident of His success as the One Who had come from God. They had been sure that through Him God was working out His purpose. Their whole certainty lay in His presence, and in an earthly future that they saw lying before them. Thus when He was arrested and led off to what they knew was almost certain death it was inevitable that all their hopes and expectations would collapse. What had to them seemed a total impossibility would have taken place. It would seem to them that even God had been thwarted. No wonder their faith would collapse. And yet it was these very men who were soon to find themselves responsible for going out and presenting God's truth to the world, and laying the foundation for the new Israel.

So Jesus knew at this moment that it was important that their confidence was fixed in the right place, and that they should recognise the great power that was at their disposal. Indeed that they should recognise that they would have as their helper and guide the God of all truth. Thus even while He was facing His own torment of soul (John 13:21) He did not think of Himself. His thoughts were for them, and He now set out to lay the foundation for their future.

Whilst certainly much of what is said here can be applied in a general sense to all Christians, we should recognise that in their essential detail what is said applied strictly to the Apostles. It was they who were to lay down the foundation of truth on which coming believers would be established. It was they alone who would be reminded of all that He had said to them and who would be led into all truth.