I've got to say, this is one of the harder passages I've had to preach on. Finding a serious and rock-hard application for it, and getting to the bottom of some of the issues (I still don't delve deeply into some!) was a real challenge. Interestingly, when my minister heard I was preaching on this, and I said it was hard, he thought I was joking! So perhaps I'm the only one.
John 14 –
True Indwelling
Part of the Family
God in Trinity
Jesus is the fullness of revelation of the Father – the Spirit is not revelatory, but explanatory
* The world we live in is post-Jesus – sort of
* We have to understand where we fit in the trinity
* We need to accept the responsibility that we actually reflect God, not just reflect Christianity or Christianness
15-21: Those who follow God's commands will receive the Spirit of Truth to live in them – and will realise that Jesus is in the Father, they are in Jesus, and Jesus is in them. Jesus will reveal himself to those people who love him (love = obey commands).
22: Judas's question – why reveal yourself to us, but not the world?
23-24: Jesus repeats 15-21 (love=obey; relatedness of Father, Christ and people; authoritative words from the Father)
25-27: The role of the spirit (explainer, not revealer). Jesus is going, but don't be troubled or afraid.
28-31: Love again is selfless (we want Jesus to go back to the Father). The father is greater (Father is God as commander and sender, Son is God as sent and obedient). He reveals the truth about his going back so when it is seen, it can be believed. Yes, Jesus is about to be crucified, but they should know that this is not a victory for the devil – it is a revelation of Jesus' position as sent and obedient.
We are looking at the latter half of John 14, which puts us partway through Jesus saying farewell to his disciples before he is betrayed, crucified, and buried. There is a lot Jesus wants to tell his closest followers, things he wants them to know, things he wants them to remember. In many translations, this section has a title like 'Role of the Holy Spirit' or 'Jesus promises the Holy Spirit'. It is true that if you were to look at chapters 14, 15 and 16 together, there are several statements about the Holy Spirit, and putting them all together you could likely have a very informative talk on that subject. But where we are focused here, on this latter half of chapter 14, the mention of the Holy Spirit is subsumed into a bigger theme – the nature of God as a relational God.
What I mean by that is God, by his very nature, is a god who builds relationships. And as we look at this passage, it is my hope that we will be able to deepen our understanding of God. We will start in these verses as observers, looking at the nature of God in relationship with himself. Then, we will see what the different persons of God do in their roles for us in the trinity. Finally, we will see that God's relationship in the trinity is not shut off, but in fact it is open to us to join in relationship with him. With them.
Interestingly, this is very similar to my interactions with my wife's family. I've never really been close to my family. I'm the youngest child, and there are big gaps between us kids – my closest sibling is my brother, who is nine years older than me. So by the time I had left home, my other siblings had long gone their separate ways, my mother was off living her own life of freedom (my father had left years before), and we now only stay in contact via emergencies. We don't do birthdays, we don't do Christmas or Easter, family gatherings or get-togethers of any kind. Years go past without us hearing from each other.
So when I first met my wife, Penny, I observed her family interactions with some interest. She is also the youngest sibling, and her brothers had both left home when we met. But there is only two years separating each of her siblings. They had all gone to the same high school. They get together for Christmas, they meet up and have a meal for each other's birthdays. If Penny's parents are in town, they want to drop in and visit, she has lunch with her brothers from time to time, they have semi-regular phone conversations, and they organise occasional activities together. Her parents aren't divorced, so that is a big difference to my experience, and they even have extended family gatherings occasionally – absolutely unheard of in my family. All this I observed like a bit of an outsider whilst Penny and I were dating.
There are lots of different ways that theologians try and explain the the three in one nature of our God in the Father, the Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. But to describe it at least partly as a family is not a bad way to start. Jesus calls God his Father, and God the Father calls Jesus his Son. In one way, those titles are useful to us, to show us the unfathomable relationship between God and Jesus in a way we can understand, that we can see in our own lives – fathers and sons. But more truthfully, it is the relationship between God and Jesus that informs the relationship between fathers and sons, imperfectly, here on earth. God and Jesus are the original Father and Son.
What does that Father and Son relationship look like between God and Jesus here in John 14? It is mentioned several times in this passage. Firstly we see that God the Father is the provider. Verse 16, Jesus requests from the Father, and the Father gives (this is repeated in verse 26). In verse 20, Jesus tells us he is in the Father, not the other way around. In verse 24, Jesus makes it clear that his words have authority because they belong to the Father. Jesus states plainly in verse 28 that the Father is greater than himself (in position, of course, not godhood – as it has been said, I might say the queen is greater than I am, but it does not make her more human, or me less human. In the same way, the Father is greater than the Son, but that does not make one more god, or one less god). Finally, in verse 31 it is clear that Jesus loves the Father, and does whatever he commands. The Father gives commands, the Son is obedient to them. Where does the Spirit fit into this relationship? Well, the Holy Spirit is only mentioned twice in this passage, and both times in terms of being sent by the Father. We can't extrapolate too much from those small mentions, but it is clear both that the Spirit is sent by the Father, and is requested by the Son.
When I look at Penny's family, I see similar relationships. There is a mother and father, two sons and a daughter. More than those simple family relationships, though – the mother is the communications person keeping people up to date about family matters, the father is a voice of reason, the oldest brother finds the best restaurants, the middle brother is the cook, and so on. What does this picture in John show us, from the ways that the Father, Son and Spirit interact in these verses? God is a god of relationship. He exists in a relationship with himself, a relationship of order and structure.
Each member of the trinity has a role to play, and those roles become all the more visible when we look in these verses at how God relates to us. God the Father is obviously interested in revealing himself to us. He is the authority, the commander and sender. The Father sends Jesus to us. Jesus asks the Father to send the Holy Spirit to us, rather than Jesus sending him directly. Jesus speaks, but affirms that his words are not just his, but the Father's. God has a message he wishes to share with us, with humanity.
How does he choose to share it? Hebrews chapter 1 verse 1 tells us clearly, “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.” And this is what we see here in John 14. Jesus is the Son, he is sent from God with God's message. He teaches God's commands, and expects those who love God will obey them. Jesus is the revealer. His role, as he makes clear, is to reveal the true nature of God to people, to show God in his own life and teaching, in ways that have not been done before. When I talk about revealing, I mean as in revealing the nature of a mystery. If I perform a magic trick, and then tell you how I did it, then I am revealing the trick's mystery. If I open and close my Bible, I can describe how I do it, but there is not really any mystery I am revealing, because it is obvious.
Jesus gives us commands to reveal God and himself to the world, as we can see in in verse 22, where the other Judas asks the question, “But, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?” and his response is, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching.” Jesus' teaching is one of the ways he shows, or reveals, God. We should remember revelation is not simply through miracles. God's commands and Jesus' teaching reveal God to us.
Even when Jesus speaks of his death, he shows that it is an act done to reveal God, saying that we may “learn that I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me” in verse 31, so that we know that this is not an act merely that Jesus seeks to do, but he is going to his death because God the Father has commanded it. Our salvation by Christ's sacrifice on the cross is a command of God, to which Jesus submits. Those people who think that Jesus is loving, and God is a vengeful lightning thrower in the sky, need to read this verse. God commanded Jesus to take away our sin.
The Holy Spirit's role is also revealed by Jesus. The Son is not to remain on earth forever, and his ministry of revealing God's mysteries to us is therefore finite. However, while those revealed truths may not change, the world does change, humanity changes, culture changes, and from generation to generation, there are always going to be questions that need an answer about those revelations. So it is that the Spirit of Truth, as it is named in verse 17, is sent to us, to live in us, and to teach us about and remind us of the truths Jesus has revealed, as we learn in verse 26. The Holy Spirit is not primarily a revealer of truth, as Jesus is. Revelations such as those Jesus made really only need to be made once – we do not seek to crucify Christ every time we wish to explain God's love for us. But we do need to be reminded, we do need to have spiritual truth explained. This is the role of the Holy Spirit.
In outlining all of these roles, we can begin to capture an appreciation for the lengths to which God has gone to reach out to us. God the Father has given a command, and sent his Son. The Son has come to reveal God's mysteries to us, in obedience to the Father. The Son has then petitioned the Father to give to us the Holy Spirit, who explains those revelations to us, and reminds us of them.
This all makes a fantastic theology lesson, as we consider the roles and interactions of the three members of the godhead, and no doubt Jesus wished to reveal an element of this mystery to us in John 14. But the real question we should be asking, the real point Jesus is making in all this, is why God seeks to reveal this message to us at all!
Turning to Jesus' words, the answer cannot be clearer – if we love God, and obey his commands as set out to us by Jesus, we are welcomed into a close, personal relationship with God. In verse 17, the Holy Spirit will live in us, in verse 20 Jesus says, “You will realise that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. Anyone who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.” He repeats it in verse 23 in response to other Judas's question, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.”
The truth of these statements can sometimes pass us by. The Holy Spirit resides within us, reminding us and teaching us of the mysteries of God. Jesus, the obedient Son of God, and divine revealer of God's mysteries, who is in the Father, is also in us, and we are also in him – a profound mystery that could in fact stand more explaining. What's more, Jesus says that the Father himself will come to us and make a home with us! The creator, sustainer, commander of the whole universe, the Lord almighty, would come to live with us! That is how closely accepted into God's family we become – we live with the triune God: every part of the trinity lives with us.
When Penny and I got married, I was accepted as more than just an observer of the family relationships – I was brought into the family, became one of the family. It took time, but over the years I too have come to play a role in the celebrations, and to be included in the little rituals that take place from year to year. God holds open to us a similar invitation. Not to become a god like him – but to join with him in his family. As the author Robert Webber writes in his book, The Divine Embrace, the trinity is like a big, warm embrace, a group hug between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit – but it is not closed off from others joining in the embrace. Through a love of God shown by obeying his commands, we can not just come to understand God better, but become wrapped up in the relationship he has with himself, and expands to include us.
That is the mystery of Christ in God, God in us, and us in God – we become included in not just any relationship with God, but the same kind of relationship shared within the trinity. As Paul tells us in Romans, we all become adopted as sons, heirs, inheritors. If we think of the divine godhead not as a misty being somewhere up there, separate from us, doing things at us or toward us, but instead think of God in three persons who are all intimately relating to us, seeking relationship with us, open to taking us into them, just as they are willing to abide in us, then we will surely be driven to consider how we live our lives in two important ways, and both are to do with love.
The first is how we are obeying God, and thus fitting into this embrace. Jesus makes it clear that it is those who obey his commands that are accepted. Well, that might be how we first read it. But in fact, what Jesus says is that anyone who loves him will obey his commands. The relationship is not one of simple obedience like a dog to a master. It is loving obedience, far more like that between a husband and wife, or a son and father. We do what God wishes because it is right, but also because we love him, and we want to serve him willingly. Obedience is something with which we will always struggle – but Jesus has taken care of that for us. If we are struggling to live our lives as we ought, we should not feel as though we are going to be kicked out of God's family. We should go back to the source of our desire for obedience – our love for God - and remember that our obedience will flow out of our understanding of who God is, and in response to our love for what he has done for us.
If you are struggling with sin, if you find that you feel like you are distant from God because of things in your life that are holding you back, turn your eyes to the cross, and realise that your sin has been done away with, and that because of Jesus, there is nothing keeping you from God, from being embraced by the trinity, from having the Holy Spirit and Christ and God dwell within you. And be thankful. From that thanks springs the well of love that will guide you to obedience.
The second consideration, perhaps most important, when we are considering the open nature of the divine embrace, is to realise that if it is open to us, it is open to others, and we should want them to join in too. Once again, I think it is important for us to realise that love is the key – simple obedience is not enough. For a long time, many in the church have been focused on changing people's actions – saving them from their own lives, as it were – rather than saving them from their separation from God. In a way, there is a lot of good that can come from this – helping someone to stop smoking, or limit their drinking, or to stop beating their spouse, to overcome drug addiction, or to properly manage their money, is a way of showing a real, genuine love for that person. Their actions are doing them damage, and because we love them, we seek to minimise the harm they do to themselves. But sometimes we focus so much on the negative behaviour that we forget it is not the root of the problem, only a symptom.
When we start attacking people's lifestyles because they are ungodly, it stops being about helping them to love God, and starts being about forcing them to obey his commands, like we might seek to train a dog. But Jesus says that love comes first, “If you love me, you will obey my commands.” The church has some sins it likes to turn into punching bags. One that continues to make headlines today is homosexuality, because many homosexuals in our society today are pushing for marriage equality. I will make it clear that the Bible tells us that homosexuality is a sin – it is disobedience to God. But forcing someone into following God's commands does not make them more godly. It does not bring them into the divine embrace. It does not make them more willing to listen to you about God's love for them, and does not open their heart to God in return.
What does open their hearts to God? The gospel of Christ crucified, an acceptance of salvation, an indwelling of the Holy Spirit. God does not wait for someone to become perfect before he lives within them! Instead, he makes them perfect by atoning for their sin, and transforming them by the power of his Spirit. We can introduce people to God, because we are already in the divine embrace, the group hug of the trinity, the family of God. Let them observe us and see how God works, let's include them so they can see how God responds to them, and let's accept them to show that God is in fact inviting them to join with him, and Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, and us, in loving relationship.
Let's pray.
