John 14:1-27: The Comfort Of God’s Presence

By J. Lanier Burns

[J. Lanier Burns is Senior Professor of Systematic Theology and Research Professor of Theological Studies, Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas.]

Abstract

Believers may easily become distracted by empty definitions of success or feel abandoned to the harsh realities of life. These same emotions confronted the disciples as they struggled with the announcement of Jesus’s departure. Jesus reassured his disciples in John 14 that their greatest comfort in the world would be the presence of God. Through rabbinic-style dialogues, Jesus promised that God’s presence through the indwelling Spirit carries obedient believers through trying circumstances with a gifted love, joy, and peace.

* * *

Jesus’s farewell to his disciples included an intriguing promise, “I will not leave you as orphans.” What did this mean for them, and what does it mean for us? One of the most difficult problems for most people has been loneliness that is hard to define and therefore hard to deal with. In Frederick Buechner’s words, “Loneliness is awareness of an emptiness which takes more than people to fill.”[1] In general it can come from a situation as trivial as being ignored in a store where we intend to spend our hard-earned money. We want eye contact, a smile, and the assurance that we will be helped as quickly as possible. In the rush or boredom of today’s world, we want some indication of our significance, even if most of our “friends” will not bother to read our obituary. The feelings of anxiety and fear become more intense with severe illness, imminent danger, or a feeling of abandonment in difficult circumstances. An acquaintance wrote to me in appreciation for a kind word, “When I needed love the most, I felt that no one was there to provide it. It fostered a sense of not being valued, worthlessness, depression, neglect, and bitterness.” The problem can cause poor choices in relationships and daily decisions. It is universal, and, in its extreme form, becomes athazagoraphobia. When we feel abandoned, we crave supportive companionship or the familiar surroundings of “home.”

Loneliness frequently surfaces in the Bible, and lack of attention to its characters’ needs leads to shallow interpretations of narratives. Causes and characteristics of loneliness emerge in John 14: abandonment (or being orphaned), fear, anxiety, a desire for wisdom in inexplicable circumstances, the comforts of home, and, supremely, a sense of the presence of God. The chapter presents an approach to this need in a way that bypasses pious platitudes; it mandates brotherly love “with skin on it,” where hearts can rest in God’s presence (1 John 3:16-19). Buechner counsels biblical love as an antidote to the fear that is associated with a sense of abandonment: “Jesus tells us to love our neighbors in the sense of working for their well-being even if it means sacrificing our own well-being to that end.”[2]

According to the church fathers, John wrote during the last decade of the first century, when Domitian sought worship and persecuted the church.[3] John was the last of the generation that personally experienced the earthly ministry of the Lord. John 14 promises a Trinitarian presence, through the indwelling Spirit, that carries obedient believers through trying circumstances with a gifted love, joy, and peace. This article expounds a portion of the chapter, where Jesus’s announcement of his departure had prompted in his disciples fear that they would be abandoned. Its governing theme is that believers’ greatest comfort in the world is the presence of God. Also it seeks to clarify the chapter’s dialogical structure that is marked by Jesus’s response to his disciples’ inquiries about his identity, the Godhead’s presence, and the looming hostility of the world. The aim is to more fully understand conceptual and theological issues from John’s perspective: agapeic love, the Way-Truth-Life, Trinitarian relationships, the role of the Paraclete, and the gift of peace. A result should be a gain of insight about how to enjoy a greater measure of comfort in God’s indwelling Spirit, so often taken for granted.

The Background Of The Discourse

The turning point in John’s Gospel occurs after chapter 12, when Jesus turned from his public appeal for faith in the Son to his private preparation of his followers for his departure. “It was just before the Passover Feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. . . . He now showed them the full extent of his love” (13:1). He prepared them for his atonement with his characteristic emphasis on humility. He rose from the evening meal and washed his disciples’ feet, which vividly illustrated servant leadership (cf. Matt. 20:20, 18; Mark 7:33-10:35). “ ‘Do you understand what I have done for you?’ he asked them . . . ‘Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you’ ” (John 13:12-15). He then gave them “a new command” that was based on the great commands to love God and neighbors: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (vv. 34-35).[4] The distinctive newness of the command is in the example of Jesus (cf. 1 John 3:16-24; 4:7-12).

John 14:1-27 then concerns the comfort of God’s abiding presence after the glorification of the Son. Obviously, the disciples were troubled by the thought of Jesus’s departure, and the passage is bracketed by an emphasis on their anxiety: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. . . . Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not be afraid.”[5] Their fear is identified in verse 18 as abandonment in a hostile world: “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”[6] They certainly knew about the growing hostility of his enemies, for in 11:8 they responded to his resolve to return to Judea by saying, “A short while ago the Jews were trying to stone you, and yet you are going back there?” They knew that the miracle of Lazarus’s resurrection was followed by the Sanhedrin’s plots to kill both Jesus and Lazarus (11:53; 12:10). The disciples were aware of the rejection of the Jews, even if they did not fully comprehend it (12:37-43). And Jesus acknowledged that they were “full of grief” when he promised persecution, a message that he had delayed because “I was with you” (16:1-6). In brief, they did not expect a comforting presence, because he was “with them” and yet would somehow leave. In the anxieties of the moment, Jesus promised to give them his peace: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives” (14:27). The promised peace was a personal contentment in the presence of the indwelling Spirit. His departure would be “for their good” (16:7), because the Spirit would “indwell” them to enable their abiding in him (15:1-17) in view of the persistent hatred of the world for him and his followers (15:18-16:33).[7] In accord with the new covenantal promise in Ezekiel 36:26-27, “You know him for he lives with you and will be in you” (John 14:17), on the last and climactic day of the Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus had promised that streams of living water would flow from within believers. “By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified” (7:37-39). The world could only wish for even the faintest facsimile of the blessing of God’s gift (Gal. 5:20 versus v. 22).

Jesus’s departure to be with the Father and the procession of the Spirit (cf. John 15:26) form one of the most complete biblical descriptions of the Trinity, and the expositor is the Son of God himself! John 14-16 is usually titled “The Upper Room Discourse” or Jesus’s “Farewell Discourse,” which is followed by the Son’s lengthy prayer to the Father in chapter 17. Chapter 1414 may be described more precisely as a rabbinic dialogue, with Jesus responding to questions by Thomas (v. 5), Philip (v. 8), and Judas (not Iscariot) (v. 22). There is ample precedent for this dialogical style in the Gospel: the discussion of rebirth with Nicodemus in chapter 3, an explanation of the bread and water of life in 6-7, the debate about family and fatherhood in 8, the narrative on faith and sight in 9, and the demonstration of resurrection and life in 11. Each stage of the dialogue in John 14 is themed by terms that are explained in the passages that follow: way (v. 4), Father (v. 7), and family versus world (v. 17).[8]

The initial verses of John 14 keynote the need for the disciples’ faith—an abiding faith in the Father and the Son—to experience comfort in trials before their future inheritance in Jesus’s presence.[9] His emphatic claim was “I and the Father are one,” a statement of deity that solidified the Jews’ charge of “blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God” (10:30-33; cf. him to receive his peace in the world (14:1). He was going to the Father’s house to prepare dwelling places for believers.[10]

The Dialogue About The Way, The Truth, And The Life

The Lord provoked the initial exchange by saying, “You know the way to the place where I am going” (14:4), a topographical reference to which he had already alluded as their later destination (13:36).[11] Thomas responded, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way” (14:5), underscoring their curiosity about a spacial destination.[12] In light of the Gospel as a whole, Jesus’s “departure” is a “return” from a mission; he was on a journey as a divine emissary who came into the world with full awareness that he would be returning to his Father (cf. 1:18; 17:5).[13]Jesus answered with a characteristic identifier in John, an “I am” claim, personalizing the question, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (14:6). “Trusting in Christ” through the Spirit meant following him according to his time and calling, a “way” that became synonymous with followers of Christ in the early church (cf. Acts 9:2; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14, 22).[14] Hence, “way” does not refer to directions for a journey, but rather a commitment to follow Jesus in the Spirit as in John 12:26.[15] As chapter 15 will make abundantly clear, “abiding in the vine” is the way to experience the presence of God until he returns.[16] He added “the truth and the life” to his identifier, meaning that as God he is life.[17] Stevick writes, “Jesus is not saying that he knows and points others to the way; he is the way. . . . The johannine sense of ‘truth’ derives from the Hebraic sense of truth as characteristic of persons and of relationships . . . In the johannine view, humanity only truly lives in relation to God” (cf. 1:4; 1 John 5:20).[18] The claims would have been stunning in their juxtaposition at this stage of Jesus’s earthly ministry: “the Way” was about to be glorified through the despised cross; “the Truth” was about to be condemned by his own people and family; and “the Life” was about to be a battered corpse in a dark tomb. In the “Way” of Christ, the “way” of the church will follow with persecution, hostility, martyrdom, and complete victory in him.[19]

The Dialogue About Trinitarian Presence

“From now on, you do know him and have seen him,” Jesus continued and so provoked a second part of the dialogue, because the disciples would behold the Father’s glory through the indwelling Spirit (cf. John 1:14).[20] Philip initiated the second exchange with a request “to show us the Father and that will be enough” (14:8). Jesus’s response extends to verse 22 and contains some of our most profound revelation about the Trinity. In a wounded way Jesus observed that Philip had not really come to know his oneness with the Father, even though the Son had been among them for a long time. In so far as the disciples had not recognized the Father in him, they still had not truly known him. “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me?” He added that they should “believe on the evidence of the works themselves” (v. 11).[21]

The church has traditionally explained the Trinity with the categories of essence (ontology), persons, and roles. The meaning of Jesus’s explanation hinged on his use of “in.” When he affirmed that “I and the Father are one,” he was saying that they are fully God in essence, which the Jews understood, as evidenced by their charge of blasphemy. However, “I and the Father” and “I and the Father are mutually ‘in’ one another” indicate a personal distinction at the same time. Jesus never said, “I am the Father.” When he stated that the Father speaks and works through him (14:10-11), distinctive roles were affirmed as well. Jesus attributed his roles as Savior and Judge as gifts from the Father (3:22, 26), and he asserted that “the Father is greater than I” (14:28; cf. 10:29). Biblical doctrine will not permit a confusion of essence and person with the clear, voluntary subordination of roles, which Jesus revealed as our model for ministry.[22] Thus, we accomplish the will and work of God without being divine; our good works are the result of our obedience to the indwelling Spirit. John 17, Jesus’s lengthy prayer to the Father, states that his filial obedience to the Father serves as the supreme example for our submission to God as we continue his ministry in (yet not of) the world (17:18-23).[23]

The same emphasis on believers’ continuation of his ministry until Jesus returns is evident in 14:12-21. The incarnate ministry of his followers will conform to the pattern of the Son under the Father as in chapters 1-121-12, involving faith (14:1) so that they can preach the Word and do the works of God (vv. 10-12; cf. 17:18). They will be able to do even more than this, because Jesus will go to the Father and pray for the indwelling presence of the Spirit in their lives. We must realize that the discourse is for people who are serious about their beliefs and their relationships with their fellow believers. This is not material for superficial faith or shallow commitment, even if we find ourselves among Jesus’s questioning disciples. Jesus stated, “The person who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (12:25). The intimacy of the Spirit will align the obedient believer with the character and will of the Son under the Father with global outreach (14:13-14). All of this will bring glory to the Father by contributing to his creational will on earth (cf. 17:1-5). “In my name” means “ask as if I were asking,” an expression that undergirds believers’ intimate access to the Trinity’s ministry on earth. The blind man expressed the theological point in 9:31: “If any man is a worshipper of God, and does his will, God hears him.” Ministry in this perspective will prioritize prayer, because the believer must love God in ministry in order to obey the definitive mandate to love other believers in this hostile world (14:15; cf. 15:9-17). Service is to be in the strength of the Lord in light of his presence, and this requires constant communication, as the Son exemplified in communion with his Father.[24] It is to be a ministry of joyous fellowship with the Father and the Son in spite of encounters with enemies along the way (cf. 1 John 1:3-4).

In his glorification Jesus will pray to the Father for the Spirit, surely one of the greatest prayer requests in all of history (John 14:16).

Prayers in his name are to be motivated by the Son’s example of seeking the glory of the Father. These prayers will assuredly be answered. This is not a “grocery list of needs” that the name of Christ will magically meet; however, it may be a list that expresses dependence on the Trinity for the needs in his family. It also requires a life of prayer in the Spirit as we serve by “washing feet” until he returns. Life in the flesh is filled with daily pressures and temptations in a self-centered culture. Life in the Spirit is humble, long-suffering involvement among believers, even while pressured by the ceaseless clamor of a sinful world all around.

The Son would pray for the procession of “another Paraclete” like himself who will be with the family of believers “unto the age,”[25] when Jesus will personally rule over the world that he has overcome (16:33; cf. Matt. 28:20). The notion of παράκλητος is central to the John 14 discourse, with nuances of one called alongside to help, an advocate, a comforter, and an encourager among other nuances.[26] It has a forensic implication in 1 John 2:1, but scholars agree that it is much broader in the discourse. Brown concluded, “By way of summary we find that no one translation of παράκλητος captures the complexity of the functions, forensic and otherwise, that this figure has. . . . We would probably be wise also in modern times to settle for ‘Paraclete,’ a near-transliteration that preserves the uniqueness of the title and does not emphasize one of the functions to the detriment of others.”[27] John clearly presents the paraclete Spirit as the personal representative of the paraclete Son after Jesus’s departure to be with the Father. This has two important implications for the Trinity and biblical interpretation.

First, it means that the Spirit is a Person in the Godhead who is equivalent to the Father and the Son. His role parallels the early ministry of Jesus, so they are “equally personal.” Brown noted, “John’s interest is not that of later Trinitarian theology where the main problem will be to show the distinction between Jesus and the Spirit; John is interested in the similarity between the two.”[28]

Second, the Son and the Spirit become another example of tandem relationships in which one biblical figure died and left another to continue his ministry: Moses/Joshua, Elijah/Elisha, and the Baptist/Jesus. The second figure is closely patterned on the first. Joshua and Elisha received a full enablement of God’s gift of the Spirit, and the Baptist inaugurated the coming of the Spirit upon Messiah. Now, God himself will indwell his people until the Lord’s return. John identified his “proxy” presence as “the Spirit of the Truth” (14:17).[29] The Spirit will not only be with them, as Christ had been, but he will be “in them” according to the new covenantal promise noted above (v. 17; cf. 7:37-39).

This kind of ministry by believers will be incomprehensible to the world: “The world cannot accept the Spirit, because it neither sees him nor knows him. . . . Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me” (vv. 17, 19). In the same sense that the Father can be seen in the words and works of the Son, so believers will be able to see the abiding presence of the Son in the Spirit who indwells them. Jesus characterized the world as hating the family of God, even as it hated him (15:18), persecuting the servants of the Savior because their continuation of his ministry will expose its willful unbelief (cf. 15:18-25; 17:14). In John’s characteristic antitheses, “earth below” stands in contrast to “heaven above.” Carson explains, “The ‘world’ in John is a symbol for all that is in rebellion against God, all that is loveless and disobedient, all that is selfish and sinful. . . . This ugly, sinful, rebellious world, this sewer of infidelity, this glut of endless selfishness, this habitation of cruelty, this lover of violence, this promoter of greed, this maker of idols—this world God loved, and loved so much that he sent his Son.”[30] Indeed the Spirit will convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, and ungodly enemies will respond by killing believers as a “service to God” (16:1-11; cf. Acts 12). “In the world,” Jesus concluded, “you will have trouble” (John 16:33), and he later prayed for believers’ protection, since they are not to be of the world (17:14-18).

Jesus will give believers his life in this world of death, life flowing from his resurrected presence in their lives: “because I live, you will live also” (14:19). “Before long . . . On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you (vv. 21-22; 17:21).[31] The resurrection would radically affect the disciples’ thinking, as Acts displays. In a word, it was better for Jesus to depart, so that believers could enter into Trinitarian life and ministry. The present tense communicates that “in a little while” they would know him in a way that they had not known him before. They will “see” the resurrected Lord and will possess the promise of his life for their future (cf. John 11:25-26). These verses are unmistakably Christological in emphasis. Jesus will depart from the world, but he departs to be with the Father—and with them as Life. For then his going will also be his coming, for now his disciples are included in the indwelling that existed between the Son and the Father. As noted earlier, this is not a oneness of essence or personhood, for only the Trinity is God. It is a Spirit-enabled oneness of mission that will continue Christ’s exemplary earthly sojourn.

One must add, because of modern individualism, that the “in” terminology applies to the fellowship of the church as well (cf. 1 John 1:3-4).[32] This means that we, as individuals, are called to sacrificially serve the “indwelt” believers around us, simply because we are all in him. John thought of the church as the family of God, beginning in 1:12, where “to all who received him . . . he gave the right to become children of God.” His language for salvation was “rebirth” into the family of God in John 3. In 1 John he usually identifies believers as “children,” with τεκνιον referring to a child in the family of God (1 John 3:1-2), while παιδεια (2:14) refers to infancy in the faith in need of training for maturity. Köstenberger states, “Thus ‘in’ terminology culminates in Jesus’s prayer for his disciples’ unity, not as an end in itself, but for the sake of his followers’ mission to the world. . . . The Father, Jesus, and the Spirit are said to indwell the disciples, and the result is to be the disciples’ unity (and love) among each other, in keeping with the unity (and love) characteristic of the persons of the Godhead.”[33]

The ones who abide in Trinitarian life are believers “who have my commands and obey them” (John 14:21).[34] Love in the family expresses obedience and is rewarded by the love of the Father—“and I too will love such a person and manifest (ἐμφανίσω) myself to him.” Christianity was designed by God to be a covenantal family—an interpersonal, reciprocal bonding of Jesus, the Father, and their people.

The Dialogue About Revelation In The Family

In the third part of the dialogue, Judas (not Iscariot) asks, “But, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?” (v. 22). The disciples had not comprehended the blindness of the world, and they were apparently confused by the Lord’s departure, the world being the only conceivable place for his kingdom. Ἐμφανíζω was used in Exodus 33:13-18 (LXX) when Moses prayed, “Show yourself to me,” and Yahweh granted his request. The verb and its cognates were used later in conjunction with Jesus’s resurrection appearances. Beasley-Murray proposed that Judas expected a startling theophany akin to Moses at Sinai. In his words, “The theophany that Judas expects, however, is that of the greater Exodus of the Messiah when he manifests his power in the judgment of the nations and the glory of his kingdom.”[35] Jesus answered with a repetition of the obedience-as-love guideline of verse 21. Here, however, the Father is the focus. He will love “obedient lovers,” and he and the Son will make their “home” (cf. μονήν and in 14:2) with the believer (v. 23). According to Stevick, “The Father will come and dwell where he is loved and his word is kept.”[36] The negative corollary was true as well, “He who does not love me will not obey my teaching” (v. 24). In other words, the world will not receive revelation because its unbelief blinds it to knowing God. These seemingly harsh judgments “belong to the Father who sent me,” reflecting the point of verse 10. Jesus grounded his authority in his faithfulness to Trinitarian relationships, even as believers’ authority should be based on their fidelity to God’s Word.

Jesus had faithfully “exegeted” God (1:18) and had spoken about the Truth “while still with you” (14:25). He would continue to “show himself” through “the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name.” As before, Jesus is the model for the coming Paraclete. This second reference to the Paraclete/Spirit contains the only reference to the “Holy Spirit” in the Gospel. The continuities between the Son and Spirit are reaffirmed; he will be sent from the Father in Jesus’s name to remind them of everything Jesus had taught them (v. 26). Both the procession and the teaching depend on proper Trinitarian roles. Yet he is not Jesus. He is a distinct Person like the Son, and his ministry will maintain the memory of the unique Son and Savior of the world for future generations. Ramsey Michaels describes this pivotally important relationship as follows:

What Jesus does for them now, ‘another advocate’ will continue to do after his departure, for in spite of all he has said about mutual indwelling, his departure is real. With this, the ‘other advocate’ takes on a definite identity, and with it a title, along with a job description . . . The effect of the ‘he’ is to highlight the personality of ‘the Advocate,’ corresponding to the personal ‘I’ who speaks. The Advocate, moreover, will do things only a person can do, the very things Jesus has done from the start.[37]

The culmination of the passage is a benediction of peace, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you” (v. 27). The promise of peace is stunning and must be analyzed carefully, since it answers the need of the disciples who were troubled and fearful. First, this is the first use of peace in the Gospel and is a blessing rather than a greeting, the latter being apropos in 20:19, 21, and 26. In 20:21, however, “peace with you” is coupled with “as the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (cf. 17:18), which is a part of John’s argument in John 14.

Second, it is “my peace,” which is not mere absence of conflict or trials for Jesus and his followers. Peace for Christ meant his oneness with the Father in bringing eternal life to the family of God in this world of death.

Third, it is a gift of God (“I give you”) rather than a quest for one of the deepest human ideals. The promise is made immediately after the promise of the Paraclete, who will bestow his “fruit” of peace (Gal. 5:22) on those who “serve one another in love” (v. 13). Similarly, 2 Corinthians begins with “praise to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ . . . the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God” (1:3-4). Paul highlights the gifting of peace in Philippians 4:6-7, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer . . . and the peace of God which transcends all understanding will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” We have “seen” believers who have endured difficult relationships at home and work, have suffered severe illnesses, or have experienced incredible losses peacefully in the Lord. We have “seen” believers enjoy amazing blessing and success without self-congratulatory displays. This is the extraordinary testimony of the apostolic church in Acts 9:31, “Then the church throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace and was strengthened. Living in the fear of the Lord and encouraged (παρακλήσει) by the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers.”

Fourth, God’s peace is associated with a right relationship with God and his people, a way of trust that carries us through circumstances without loss of commitment to the Way.

Negatively regarding peace, Isaiah 59:8 includes among consequences of unbelief that “the way of peace they do not know; there is no justice in their paths. They have turned them into crooked roads; no one who walks in them will know peace.” Paul quotes this in Romans 3:27 as part of a catena about the human condition. He answered the need for salvation with “the righteousness from God that comes through faith in Jesus Christ.” Peace, therefore, is a gift of the Paraclete, who promotes loving obedience to “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” The Spirit, the presence of God in the believer, constantly reminds us that our glorification in Christ is the answer to our deepest need regardless of temporal circumstances. God’s presence in the believer overcomes fear (16:33).

On the other hand, “I do not give to you as the world gives.” The world promotes the comforts of might and power but not God’s Spirit (Zech. 4:6); they are transitory mirages that amount to mere wishes rather than trustworthy promises. We have “seen” rebellion in a loveless world with its infidelities, self-promotions, cruelties, violence, and idolatries. We have “seen” its denial of evil and blindness to its own judgments under God. Augustus erected an altar of peace (the Ara Pacis) in Rome to himself to celebrate his establishment of an “age of peace.” It became a monument to the skill of its artisans rather than to the “messianic” pretensions of its imperial sponsor.[38] There has been no respite from war from pre-Roman times to modernity. “While people are saying, ‘Peace and safety,’ destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape” (1 Thess. 5:3).

Conclusion

The primary question that confronts us in John 14 is Where do we find God’s peace in the anxieties of life? These anxieties can breed loneliness that leads to feelings of abandonment. Most of us in the modern world confuse the encouragement of our successes and accomplishments with “God’s peace.” We enjoy our culture’s excitement over competition and victories more than “godliness with contentment.” We celebrate large meetings and conferences, the esteem of our peers, or the advantages of a prosperous lifestyle. Such celebrations flow from our awareness that God wants us to serve well. He wants us to live significantly. But John 14 clearly teaches that God’s best for us is his presence in our lives. Quests for prestige and pleasure, a desire for fortune, and a drive for worldly power will ultimately leave life empty. John was emphatic, “God is love!” as exemplified by the incarnation and glorification of the Son. He used a small band of well-intentioned followers to spread a message of the sufficiency of God’s presence through Christ’s accomplishment and the Spirit’s constant encouragement. In the upper room in a rabbinical-dialogue format, Jesus riveted the disciples’ attention on his identity as he left the world to prepare a home for his followers before returning triumphantly, a way that all believers share. The foundation of God’s peace is the Trinitarian presence in believer’s lives. Throughout the Gospel the Son and the Father are “in” one another, and upon Jesus’s departure the Paraclete/Spirit will bring believers into the Trinity’s mission on earth. This ministry is to be a continuation of the Son’s earthly sojourn and should be characterized by love and prayer as his was. Such devotion to the ministry of the Word gives life its purpose, even if we have to die for it. We should not be surprised by the hostility of the world, because it has hated Christ and his family for their exposure of its sin. God will love believers who lovingly “wash feet,” and he will show his peace to them in spite of circumstances. The world has tried to offer its answers in behalf of peaceful ideals, but throughout history it has only manifested war—and will do so until the return of the Lord. We must constantly ask ourselves if we are living prayerfully with a profound awareness of his loving presence. This is the biblical antidote for the inevitable trials of this life. We have not been “orphaned,” and we have been invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

Notes

1. Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark: ABC Theologized (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), 75-76.
2. Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life (San Francisco: Harper, 1992), 242. This emphasis on agapeic love in God’s family parallels Paul’s argument in Philippians 2:1-5.
3. The Roman background accounts in part for John’s view of “the world.” See Henry Bettenson, ed., Documents of the Christian Church, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), 27. He records that Papias (ca. 130, from Eusebius according to Irenaeus) was a student (“hearer”) of John (=apostle, elder). The Muratorian Canon (second century) stated, “The fourth gospel is that of John, one of the disciples. . . . When his fellow disciples and bishops exhorted him, he said, ‘Fast with me for three days, and then let us relate to each other whatever may be revealed to each of us.’ On the same night it was revealed to Andrew, one of the Apostles, that John should narrate all things in his own name as they remembered them . . .,” ibid., 28. One can note the martyrdom of Antipas in Pergamum, a center of imperial worship in Asia, in this regard (Rev 2:13).
4. The word group for “love” occurs twelve times in John 1-12 and forty-five times in John 13-21, underscoring the transition in the Gospel at this juncture. Daniel Stevick captures the distinctive emphasis on agapeic love: “The convincing sign of love is crucial. Love among believers constitutes Jesus’s credentials before the world” (Jesus and His Own: A Commentary on John 13-17 [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011], 105). Agapeic love is not only John’s clarion call (cf. 15:9-10), but it is also “the greatest of abiding values” in Paul’s priorities (1 Cor. 13:13).
5. The verb ταράσσω (“trouble”) was used earlier to describe his response to the grief of Mary and others at the tomb of Lazarus and is used synonymously with “groaned” and “deeply moved.” The verb is used in 12:27, “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour.” In 13:21 Jesus uses the verb in connection with the declaration of his betrayal. In Ezekiel 32:2 (LXX) the word is used metaphorically of a stormy sea (cf. John 6:19-20).
6. The metaphor of “orphans” was not unusual in John’s setting; the disciples of the rabbis were said to be orphaned at their mentor’s death (H. L. Strack and P. Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch, 6 vols. [Munich: Beck, 1922-1961], 2:562). Ὀρφανός is one of two terms that John uses in contrast to ἀγάπη. It refers to the loneliness of abandonment or loss (that is, a feeling of being “unloved”). The other term is μισέω (“to hate, regard with ill-will, or detest”), which is used of the world’s view of Jesus and his followers (15:18-25) and even of intra-family conflict (1 John 2:9, 11; 3:13-15; 4:20). Hatred within the family seems to have been illustrated by Diotrephes in 3 John 9. In a similar vein, Paul stringently warned against ἐριθεíα in Galatians 5:20 and Philippians 2:3.
7. Barnabas Lindars arranges the chapters of the discourse according to 13:31-38 in reverse order. Chapter 1414, in his view, answers the question of Peter, “Where are you going?” (13:16). Jesus goes to the Father, and his departure entails a new relationship between him and the disciples. His earthly mission will be continued through them with the aid of the Spirit. Chapter 1515 expounds the command to love one another (13:34-35), followed by a warning about martyrdom (). Chapter 1616 expounds the “little while” mentioned in 13:33 (The Gospel of John, New Century Bible Commentaries [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972], 466-67).
8. Jesus had been primarily revealed as Son of God and Son of Man, but his contemporaries seem to have thought of him as a rabbi/teacher. Nicodemus, for example, addressed him as “Israel’s teacher” (John 3:10). On occasion, like the foot washing (ch. 13) and his preparation of breakfast.
9. Trusting the Father and the Son in 14:1 involves an exegetical problem as to whether one or both of the verbs should be understood as indicative or imperative. In view of the oneness of Father and Son in John, it seems best to understand both verbs as imperatives, demonstrating the importance of faith in days to come. The imperatives cohere with the Gospel’s purpose, “That you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name”.
10. The term sometimes translated “rooms” is μοναί (a single dwelling). The only other use of this word in the New Testament is in verse 23, where Jesus tells the disciples that he and the Father will make their “home” (μονήν) with obedient believers.
11. Jesus initiates the first two parts of the dialogue with an assurance of knowledge that the disciples did not possess at this point: “you know the way” (v. 4) and “you know the Father” (v. 7). The third part, initiated by Judas (not Iscariot), clarifies a misunderstanding; namely, you will know what the world does not know (v. 22).
12. Thomas’s question may be paired with Peter’s in 13:36, “Lord, where are you going?”
13. Cf. John Ashton, Understanding the Fourth Gospel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 451. Additionally, “Jesus Christ is the ‘place’ where men of any time or place can at last be free of ‘place’ in true worship of God” (John Marsh, Saint John [Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1968], 501).
14. Raymond Brown suggests that “the Way” reflects a “chain of usage” originating in the Old Testament and continuing through the Baptist’s “way of the Lord” to its focus on the Lord Jesus in Johannine Christology (The Gospel according to John, XIII—XXI, Anchor Bible [Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970], 628-30). For levels of understanding in “the way” of temple imagery from Jerusalem through discipleship to the eternal temple, the reader may consult James McCaffrey, The House with Many Rooms: The Temple Theme of John 14, 2-3, Analecta Biblica (Rome: Pontificio Instituto, 1988).
15. John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress illustrates 14:6. Christian encounters Formalist and Hypocrisy who join him by jumping over a wall rather than coming in by the Gate. Christian calls them thieves for not following the way of the Master. They responded that the Gate was too far and that their custom was to find a shortcut to go from the Land of Boasting to Mount Zion for their praise (The Pilgrim’s Progress, ed. Roger Sharrock [London: Penguin, 1987], 83-84).
16. Jesus had taught that he would be the “resurrected temple,” a person instead of a place, where the presence of God was to be experienced. Insightfully, John had noted, “His disciples recalled what he had said” after he was resurrected, meaning that they were still confused in the upper room (2:18-22). B. F. Westcott added to the notion of destination, “The pronoun is emphatic, and at once turned the thoughts of the apostles from a method to a Person” (The Gospel according to St. John, reprint ed. [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967], 202).
17. Some scholars have argued that way, truth, and life should be merged as “the true way of life” or its equivalent. However, a comparison with other uses of three terms linked by “and” in the Gospel indicates that John meant for them to be distinct. For example, in 16:8, “righteousness and judgment” should not be viewed as blended expansions of “sin.”
18. Stevick, Jesus and His Own, 126-28.
19. Carson states, “It is first and foremost an exposition of Jesus’s ‘going away’ to his Father via the cross. It is elemental theology; and only as such does it offer encouragement and consolation” (Farewell Discourse, 19).
20. There are two verbs for knowing in John 14. Οἶδα seems to suggest an expected comprehension of information, while γινώσκω points to an interpersonal knowing of another person (14:7, 9; 17:3). Scholars have cautioned that the verbs can be virtually interchangeable. The profoundest knowing in this context, however, is revelational rather than intellectual. For John a “believer” is an indwelt “knower.”
21. Jesus’s reference here is probably to the seven signs with which he authenticated his earthly ministry: the changing of water into wine; the healings of the nobleman’s son, the lame man, and the blind man; the feeding of the multitude, the walking on water, and the raising of Lazarus from death. The emphasis on sight in the Gospel continues in chapter 1414: “we have seen his glory” (1:14), “you have seen him” (14:8-9), “you will see me” (vv. 17-18). This language points to the preservation of eyewitness testimony as the apostolic generation passed away. The imminent death of the “beloved disciple” around the end of the first century would have been traumatic for the nascent church. The juxtaposition of “know” and “seen” is noteworthy in this regard. John was the eyewitness par excellence and the last living link to the earthly ministry of Jesus. John seems to have written for later generations of the church as well, who would “see” the living Father and Spirit through biblical truths as illumined by the Spirit.
22. “We are now very close to the sublime mystery of the Trinity. That the word Trinity is not found in the Scripture should occasion no alarm. The word itself is nothing more than a convenient way of referring to God as he has revealed himself: as one, unique, yet eternally existing in three persons all equally God, of one substance yet distinct in role” (Carson, The Farewell Discourse, 49).
23. For an extended treatment of John’s “Trinitarian community,” see Royce Gordon Gruenler, The Trinity in the Gospel of John: A Thematic Commentary on the Fourth Gospel (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1986).
24. Jesus was so utterly dependent on his Father’s direction that whatever he said or did was nothing less than what his Father said or did. “This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did” (1 John 2:5-6).
25. In English we have one word for “another.” Greek has at least two common terms. Ἓτερος refers to another of a different kind; ἄλλος, which is used here, means another of the same kind.
26. J. N. Sanders even translated Paraclete as “Champion” (The Gospel according to St. John, ed. B. A. Mastin, Harper Commentaries [New York: Harper & Son, 1968], 325-26).
27. Brown, John, 1137; and Raymond Brown, “The Paraclete in the Fourth Gospel,” New Testament Studies 13 (1966-67): 113-32. Hans Windisch referred to the Spirit as Jesus’s “Doppelgänger,” or alter ego (“Die fünf johanneische Parakletsprüche,” in Festgabe für Adolf Jülicher zum 70. Geburtstag [Tübingen: Mohr, 1927], 129).
28. Brown, John, 1141.
29. “Truth” is unexplained in this context along with other concepts that beg for full explanation. It may refer to the deity of the third person of the Trinity, who will reveal truths of the Word of God after the Son’s glorification, as in 16:13-15. Or, it may serve as a marker of true worship, as in 4:24, “Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks.” In John 14, where the issue is the comfort of God’s abiding presence, the best translation may be “the Spirit of the Truth” (14:17; cf. 14:6), understanding a multi-nuanced richness of meaning to include finality and fullness of revelation along with a continuity between Christ and the Spirit. That is, he will be one “like” Christ. Köstenberger presents a helpful summary: “While the term ‘Trinity’ is not yet used, the Trinitarian framework is firmly in place: the Father, Jesus, and the Spirit are said to indwell the disciples, and the result is to be the disciples’ unity (and love) among each other characteristic of the persons of the Godhead. . . . In a very real sense, the covenant phrase ‘I will be their God and they will be my people’ has now been expanded to the formulation ‘I in them and you in me’ (17:23)” (Encountering John, 155). Paul makes this connection with the theme of Trinitarian presence in Romans 8:9-11: “You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.
30. Carson, Farewell Discourse, 58.
31. The Fourth Gospel contains at least fifty-three theologically significant “in” phrases describing the mutual “in” dwelling of the Father, Son, Spirit, and believers. This characteristic of Johannine thought becomes even more pronounced in 1 John, where persons are described as being “in” one another almost fifty times in five chapters. John 14:20-23 led the church fathers to interpret these promises as the indwelling of the Trinity in the believer.
32. Fellowship with God and other believers, Brodie reminds, is both individual and communitarian. The impulse of the Spirit brings “the individual further and further into community. . . . An orientation to other people is basic to the text” (Thomas Brodie, The Gospel according to John [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993], 431). This application to corporate realities is indicated by the fact that Jesus was addressing the disciples with the credential of agapeic love, which is an important theme in the epistles.
33. Köstenberger, Encountering John, 155.
34. “The plural commandments refers to the manifold application of the one command to love one another” (Ashton, Understanding the Fourth Gospel, 458).
35. George R. Beasley-Murray, John, 2nd ed., Word Biblical Commentaries, vol. 36 (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1999), 259.
36. Stevick, Jesus and His Own, 161.
37. J. Ramsey Michaels, The Gospel of John, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 791.
38. An inscription from Asia (9 BC), where John served, celebrated Augustus on his birthday: “Whereas the providence which divinely ordered our lives created with zeal and munificence the most perfect good for our lives by producing Augustus and filling him with virtue for the benefaction of mankind, sending us and those after us a savior who put an end to war and established all things” (cited in S. R. F. Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984], 54).