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Picking up in chapter 14, verse 15 of John’s gospel account, Jesus tells them … “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” What you do reveals how you feel, what you want, and how you think. Only moments before Christ had issues to his disciples a “new” commandment, that they love each other as He loved them. In effect Christ was saying to His followers, that to love Him, is to love each other. To love others was the life example of Christ, and what He wished His followers to emulate and become. Again, Christ stood to gain nothing for Himself in what He did, but we stood to gain everything. He would pay any price to free us from the slavery we had chosen, not even His own life was as important to Him as was our well-being and redemption from the slavery of self. Doctrine would not equal love. Doctrine without love could not equal truth. The Pharisees had the scriptures, they had spent years in study and debate over their meaning. They had carefully crafted doctrines based on a wealth of accumulated knowledge, but they did not see love when it was staring them in the face. Truth without love, could not be truth at all. Truth could only be found in Christ, and Christ was love itself. Therefore Jesus reminds His followers, that when they love others, they love Christ.
Jesus continues in verse 16 … “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever;”. Christ came in the flesh. But God is not bound by the limitations of the flesh. The Holy Spirit would be sent to be with the disciples, and with each of us. The Holy Spirit would not be bound by the limitations of our human containers, and would be the part of the God-Head that can be in all places at one time. This would continue our personal relationship building with God on a one-to-one basis. Jesus continues in verse 17 … “Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. [verse 18] I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.” As Christ is “the truth”, so the Spirit of God is also the Spirit of Truth. The world does not discern it, because the world does not accept the divinity of Christ, or the truth of Christ. But the Spirit would dwell with us, and within us. He would bring us our comfort when Christ could no longer be physically present with us. The Spirit would bridge the gap between the time of His ascension, and the time of His returning.
Jesus continued in verse 19 … “Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also.” Soon the world would think that Christ had died. But His followers would see Him again before His triumphant return. And in addition because Christ was alive after death, His followers would receive the Holy Spirit and the self-less miracle working power of Christ would bring them to life as well. This would be the definitive truth of Jesus Christ, for the disciples were merely men, flawed, human, and not extraordinary. But through the transforming power of the love of Christ, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, real change, and real miracles would occur. Jesus continues in verse 20 … “At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.” The presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives would be yet another proof, a certainty, a knowledge that Jesus was alive, and united with the Father, and united through His Spirit with us. This linkage would help give the disciples the certainty that Jesus was indeed the Son of God. The same evidence would be true for us as well.
Jesus further states in verse 21 … “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.”. The Ten Commandments, and the recent summary of them in the “new” commandment, were ALL commandments of Christ. They were designed to show us, the basics of what it means to love each other. When we love, we do not steal from those we love. When we love, we do not think to lie to those we love. When we love, it never even crosses our minds to kill the things we love, rather to watch over them, and bring happiness to their lives. When we love, we prioritize, we put the objects of our love ahead of ourselves. This was the example Christ was setting with them in those very hours. He was about to be tortured and killed, yet still He is offering words of comfort to US. Even with everything He is about to face, His thoughts and words are directed to bring us comfort, bring us hope, bring us relief. That is the power of love to forget self, and focus on the object of love. It did not matter to Christ that His followers were still imperfect. It did not diminish the love of Christ for those men, even though they still did not fully understand the true mission of the Messiah, and therefore were missing the entire point of the Jewish faith. He loved them despite their imperfections, and their willful ignorance. He sought to bring perfection to them, not require it of them.
When we love others we reveal the love of Christ within us. When we love others, we find ourselves in harmony with Christ and His Father. When we love others, we become living examples and beacons to point to our Lord who is the author of all love. Christ is “manifested” in us, when we love others. Not just those who already claim to love us, but like our Lord, we are to love those who are bent on our destruction. We are to love those who would do us real harm. For love is the only way to reach those with hearts of stone, the only power that can turn them from stone to flesh again. Love is the only motive and reason to want to be something else, and something better. It was love that redeemed us, from the slavery of serving only ourselves at the expense of others. It will be love that will see an end to evil throughout the universe. It is as we allow the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that our human limitations, our human frailty is obliterated, and instead of us, the strength and depth of the love of God is manifested through us. We are not the source of the love of God, we are vessels through which it is dimly reflected. But His light burns brightly. It can overcome our tired frailty. It can overcome our decisions of apathy, our indifference, and our reluctance. It can create in us a burning fire to see love manifested in the world around us. We cannot change the world, but we can love it through the power of the Holy Spirit and in so doing point it to Christ, who can change anything.
Judas (not the betrayer but a different disciple, likely his brother Jude) ponders this idea of Christ manifesting Himself to them, but not to the world. He likely ponders if Christ would be invisible to everyone else, or just how that would happen, so he asks Christ about it in verse 22 … “Judas saith unto him, not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world?” Jude is still thinking literally and has not understood the concepts of reflecting Christ through the manifestation of love to others. But Jesus stays on topic and repeats again to Jude his answer in verse 23 … “Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. [verse 24] He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent me.” Loving others remains the hallmark of being a follower of Christ, and of His Father, and a testament that the Holy Spirit is abiding in us. By contrast, when we do not choose to love, or choose to accept the Holy Spirit’s influence over us, we are not just rejecting Christ, but rejecting God entirely. For the words Christ was speaking were still not His own, but the will of His Father in heaven.
This is where so many Christian faiths have gone sideways on the topic of obedience. True obedience cannot be achieved in human effort or strength. It can only come AFTER the Holy Spirit is allowed control over our lives by our decision to submit the whole of who we are to Christ. Only then, can the errors we embrace, the selfishness we are slave to, be corrected within us. Creating lists of rules, or tenets of doctrine we must profess, does nothing to capture what it means to love others. Love is a living thing, it cannot possible be contained in a piece of paper. There are no laws of God that limit how much we can love another. There are only laws that restrict us from hurting another, thus revealing our lack of love in the actions we would desire to take. The beauty of obedience is revealed in the freedom from our slavery to self that it brings. Obedience too, is another gift of Christ to us. It is the end-result of the transformation His Holy Spirit works within us to bring us in harmony with The Father. The “laws” of God become a part of who we are. They define us, but then become so small, so quickly, when it comes to the measure of how much we can love another. Christ kept His own laws while living life on planet earth; but He did SO MUCH more than just keeping those tenets. His life showed us a love that is way larger than what we do not do to hurt people; His love was defined by how much He did to help people and lift them up. He held nothing back when it came to how much He would give for another; even His own life was not as precious to Him as we are. There is no commandment that could define the depths of His love. But when we are brought in harmony with Him, our obedience becomes natural, not an effort.
Our actions follow our motives. So to love would be revealed in what we do. Then came one of the most powerful promises Christ ever made to His followers, both the disciples in that room, and to us down through the ages. He states in verse 25 … “These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you. [verse 26] But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” Wow!! He will teach you “all things”. Understand the sequence of events here. The Holy Spirit must come to you FIRST … before your understanding of scripture and doctrine can even be called complete. To bring “all things” to our remembrance is NOT something we achieve by the power of our failing memories and human skills. It is another gift of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. We remember the scriptures, and understand the love revealed in them, only AFTER the Holy Spirit is given control. What is more, the Holy Spirit is sent, not as a general rule, but in the Name of Christ. When the supernatural is manifested in our world, we can challenge its source in the name of Christ, and it must reveal itself in truth. Satan is not allowed to lie about who he is, if he is challenged in the name of Christ. And the Spirit of God is not offended to answer a similar challenge in that precious name.
It is important to God the Father, that we understand our salvation was enabled alone through the actions of His son. We do not randomly find God, or randomly find perfection. We find it ONLY through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and our willingness to submit to this truth. Being a “good person” is not the goal of our God. “Good”, simply is not good enough. Our God wants more for us. He wants us to live in perfect freedom, where “great” would hardly be adequate to describe it. There are those other religions and ideologies that teach self-abasement and doing for others as a way to achieve inner peace. It is true that in doing for others we begin to share in the contentment that God offers. But doing for others does not change “who” we are, absent our submission to Christ. We may have the willpower to resist doing actions that would harm ourselves or others. Perhaps because we fear the consequences of our actions, or the discovery of our evil intent, but the struggle against these inherent desires is the very thing that Christ longs to free us from. It is not the actions alone He wishes to alter in us, but the motives and desires behind them. Religions powered by self, are doomed to miss this mark entirely. History demonstrates this. But our God, Jesus Christ, offers to perform the work of transformation to perfection within us by His power, not our own. He changes us from inside out, and in this is the true power of the gospel. It is why the Holy Spirit is only associated with the name of Jesus Christ, and not with any other random ideas of deity.
We do not choose to love others, in order to secure the love of Christ. Rather, it is because of the love of Christ reflected through us, that we are able to truly love others. The beauty of obedience when it is natural, shows a manifestation of Christ alive in our lives, and in the lives of those we can affect with our love in action for them. Our circumstance become irrelevant when we love like Christ loved. He was facing torture and death, and yet spending his final hours caring for us, giving us hope, and offering us something more.
And communion was not over yet …
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