John Chapter 14

John chapter 14

(NIV Application Bible)

On three previous occasions, John wrote of Jesus’s deeply troubled feelings. Here the disciples face the same feelings. Jesus is telling his disciples to hold fast, considering the upcoming crisis. 

(Tony Evans Commentary)

Don’t let your heart be troubled. Jesus compassionately sought to calm his disciples fear over his impending departure. What words of comfort did he offer to give them confidence? First, he said, Believe in God; believe also in me. In other words, place your full trust in me, just as you trust in the father. We are unified, sharing the same divine nature and the same divine purpose. Second, he told them that they had heavenly real estate waiting on them: (in my father's house are many rooms I am going away to prepare a place for you). According to Jewish wedding custom, the father would add rooms onto his house for his newly married son. Jesus wasn't abandoning them but heading out to get their eternal home ready. When your time comes, have No Fear. Heaven has been prepared for you.

(Life Application Bible)

The disciples we're obviously worried about death and what happens afterward. Jesus's words still comfort us today. We know from what Jesus said that the way to eternal life, though unseen, is secure for us if we trust him with the future. He has already prepared the way to eternal life. The only issue that may still be unsettled is our willingness to believe him.

(Tony Evans)

Jesus promised them, I will come again and take you to myself. This return of which Jesus prophesied is what we call the rapture, the time when he will return to receive his Saints and take them to heaven. This will happen prior to his return to earth to establish his millennial Kingdom.

(1Thes:4v16-17) says For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, for with the voice of the Archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so, we will be with the Lord forever.

Jesus promised his disciples that they knew the way to where he was going. However, Thomas wasn't so sure: how can we know the way? It was as if he said, you haven't given us a map, Lord! But Thomas had misunderstood. The way isn't a path; it's a person: I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the father except through me. The Lord Jesus Christ is the universal point of access to God. There is no other entrance into heaven. If you want to know the father, you must come to him through his son. Jesus assured Thomas that if he knew the son, he knew the father.

(Jeremiah Bible Study)

Jesus’s claim was bold. Only someone who really is God could utter such words, knowing that his works would reinforce his oneness with the father.

Scripture gives us at least five reasons why Jesus became a man: (1) to satisfy the Old Testament prophecies.

(Matt:1v22-23) Says all this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel (which means “God with us”)

Luk:24v44) says He said to them, this is what I told you while I was still with you: everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets and the psalms.

(2) To show us the father. John (14v8-9)

(3) To save people from their sin. 

(Luk:19v10) says for the son of man came to seek and to save the lost.

(4) To sympathize with human weakness.

(Heb:4v15-16) says for we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are---yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

(5) to secure the hope of heaven for his own.

(col:1v27) says to them God has chosen to make known among the gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you the hope of glory.

Jesus was not saying that whatever Christians ask for, they will get. Believers must ask in Jesus’s name. The purpose of prayer is that the father may be glorified-these are the prayers that get answered. As James says, Christians must learn to say, if it is the Lord's will.

(James:4v15) says Instead, you want to say, if it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that.

Jesus promised to not leave his disciples as orphans; he would send another advocate (one who comes alongside). In the Holy Spirit, Jesus would permanently be present with his followers.

(NIV APP)

Philip does not understand that no one has ever seen God. It is beyond human capacity. But in Christ, Philip seized the full embodiment of God. Jesus is not simply a religious teacher or guide. He is the one in whom God can be found. Jesus is God's messenger. Jesus is authorized both to work for and to speak for his sender. The father is in Jesus, and he is in the father. This is the unity of the Trinity. Father, son, and Holy Spirit.

(LIFE APP)

Raising the dead is about as amazing as anyone can get; how could the disciples do anything greater than that? The “even greater things” would come because the disciples, working in the power of the Holy Spirit, would carry the gospel of God's Kingdom out of Palestine and into the whole world. When Jesus says we can ask for anything, we must remember that our asking must be in his name-that is, according to God's character and will. God will not grant request contrary to his nature or his will, and we cannot use his name as a magic formula to fulfill our selfish desires. If we are sincerely following God and seeking to do his will, then our request will be in line with what he wants, and he will grant them.

(Life App)

When we are rightly connected to the father through the son, more prayer in (Jesus )name gets answered. How do we ensure that we are rightly connected to the trinitarian God? Jesus provided the answer. If you love me, you will keep my commands. You can talk all day about your love for God. But, according to Jesus, obedience is the proof of love. If we truly love him, we will seek to obey him. Why? Because love is first and foremost a decision, not an emotion. Our relationship with him drives our desire to please him. God wants your obedience, but he wants it to be motivated by love-not law.

(Tony Evans)

Where would the disciples look for help when Jesus was gone? Jesus told them: I will ask the father, and he will give you another counselor to be with you forever. He is the spirit of truth. In Greek there are two words that could be used to mean another. “One means” another of a different kind; the other means” another of the same kind. The latter is used here. The Holy Spirit is another counselor, but one who shares in the divine nature. Therefore, God would still be with them in the person of God the Holy Spirit. The same sovereign love and power they enjoyed in Jesus, then, would be present in their lives.

(Tony Evans)

In a little while the world will no longer see me, But you will. Though he would be executed on a Roman cross, Jesus would rise bodily from the grave and show himself to his disciples. Because I live, you will live too. Jesus shares his resurrection life with his followers through the Holy Spirit, who connects us to the trinitarian God: (I am in my father, you are in me, and I am in you.)

(Life App)

Sometimes people wish they knew the future so they could prepare for it. God has chosen not to give us this knowledge. He alone knows what will happen, but he tells us all we need to know to prepare for the future. When we obey his words and live by his standards, we show that we are his true followers. For his followers, he promises he will not leave us; he will come to us, he will be in us, and he will show himself to us. God knows what will happen, and because he will be with us through it all, we need not fear. We don't have to know the future to have faith in God; we must have faith in God to be secure about the future. If you have not yet become a follower of Jesus, or still have real questions about him, ask God to reveal Jesus to you. He could come to you through a friend, an insight from the Bible, and enter prompting in your spirit, or some other way. But he will come and reveal himself to you if you ask.

(Life App)

Jesus said that his followers show their love for him by obeying him, love is more than lovely words; it is commitment and conduct. If you love Jesus, then prove it by obeying what he says in his word.

Because the disciples were still expecting Jesus to establish an earthly Kingdom and overthrow Rome, they found it difficult to understand why he did not tell the world at large that he was the Messiah. Jesus confronted Judas by saying that those who truly loved him would know who he was. Not everyone, however, could or was willing to understand Jesus’s message. Ever since Pentecost, the gospel of the Kingdom has been proclaimed in the whole world, and yet not everyone is receptive to it. Jesus saves the deepest revelations of himself for those who want to truly know him, love him, and obey him.

Jesus promised the disciples that the Holy Spirit would help them remember what he had been teaching them. This promise ensures the validity of the New Testament. The disciples were eyewitnesses of Jesus’s life and teachings, and the holy spirit helped them remember without taking away their individual perspectives. Therefore, we can be confident that the Gospels are accurate records of what Jesus taught and did.

(1Cor:2v10-14) says These are the things God has revealed to us by the spirit. The spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows the person's thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the spirit of God. What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the spirit, explaining spiritual realities with spirit taught words. The person without the spirit does not accept the things that come from the spirit of God but consider them foolishness and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the spirit.

Also, the Holy Spirit can help us in the same way he helped the disciples. As we study the Bible, we can trust him to plant truth in our minds, convince us of God's will, and remind us of when we stray from it.

(Tony Evans)

Jesus promised,peace I leave you. My peace I give to you. Please understand what Jesus is and is not promising here. He is not promising the absence of a storm. Anyone can be at peace when nothing is wrong. Rather, he promises peace in the midst of a storm. He's talking about peace in the midst of tribulation--at a time when you shouldn't have any peace. This, of course, doesn't come from the world. It's the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, ? (And guards) your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

(Phil:4v7) says and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Next Jesus said, don't let your heart be troubled or fearful. In the coming hours, the disciples would have good reason to be troubled. Likewise, you will have experiences that prompt you to fear. But with a sovereign God ruling the world and “the peace of Christ” ruling in your heart you can overcome trouble and fear.

(Col:3v15) Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.

(Tony Evens)

Rather than being fearful, the disciples should have been filled with joy over the fact that Jesus was going to the father. For Jesus loves the father, and his imminent departure to be with him meant that his mission—the reason for which he’d come into the world—was Almost complete. Jesus was explaining all these things to them in advance so that when the time of suffering arrived, they would believe that he was truly the Messiah, the son of God.

(Tony Evans)

The ruler of the world is coming. When Adam and Eve sinned, they gave up their role as king and queen, ruling creation on God's behalf, and turned it over to Satan. Therefore, the devil is appropriately called “the ruler of this world” “the God of this age” and “the ruler of the power of the air”.

(2Cor:4v4) says the god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

(Eph:2v2) says in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the Kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work and those who are disobedient.

He holds “the power of death” and keeps people in slavery by “the fear of death”.

(Heb:2v14-15) says Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death--that is, the devil--and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

But Satan had no power over Jesus because Jesus is without sin. The son of God Became a man so that he might defeat the devil as a man and restore God's Kingdom rule. And this he would do through his love for the father and his obedience to what the father commanded.

(Jeremiah Study)

The prince of this world is Satan. The expression he has no hold over me means that there was no handle by which Satan could get a hold on Jesus or induce him to sin. Satan needs fertile territory in which to do his greatest damage. And whenever Christians have an area of themselves that they have not given to God, they give Satan a handle by which he can do his work.

(Eph:4v26-27) says in your anger do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.

(NIV App)

Looking forward to heaven helps us keep our focus on what truly matters. The world encourages us to think only about today and often ignore that our lives on earth are temporary. But Jesus gives us a better hope. He has already prepared our real home in heaven, where we will be safe with him forever. When we truly understand this, we begin to see this world differently. We care more about eternal things than temporary things, and our priorities start to change.