The Power of Prayer - Communion (part twelve) ...

 [continued from part 11] - - - Jesus then explains a concept about God and unity that many seem to struggle with as in verse 11 of John’s gospel chapter 17 He prays … “And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.”  First Christ prays that we be preserved unto God through the power of the name of God and love of God.  In essence He prays that we do not turn away from God or His love.  He prays that the tempter is unable to distract us, and lure us away from the love of God.  But beyond just remaining nestled in the love of God, He prays that we remain “one” as He and His Father are “one”.  Christ is obviously not praying that our molecules bind and we lose our identity, and become a massive blob of combined human parts and brains.  This is not about physical “one-ness”.  This is about the more important spiritual “one-ness” that the Holy Spirit is able to bring to us, as we let go of self.  Christ and His Father were one, in the sense that both were united in goals, in mission, in approach, and in love to effect our redemption.  If only every Christian were also so focused on that single important goal.  If only we would leave judgment to God, and place redemptive love at the top of our list in dealing with each other and the world.  We would then identify ourselves uniquely as followers of Christ and the “one” true God.

Unity does not have to deny individuality.  We do not have to become part of the Borg Collective, to be effective Christians.  Our uniqueness rather allows us to love in a unique way.  In this each of us uniquely identifies another aspect of the love of God.  When we combine all those versions of love, we get a better picture of the love of God, than we look at any one of us individually.  But this is the point, the love must be to others, not to self.  It is our embrace of self-love, that asks all the wrong questions – like … what is in it for me; why aren’t you living up to your half of the 50:50 thing? etc.   “Self” introduces conditions to love, whereas God does not love that way at all.  He loves us WHILE we are yet sinners bound in pain, disease, ignorance, and hate.  His love looks to free us from those things.  His love is the power by which we are freed.  He does not approach us with a righteous assessment of just how bad we are, and rightly condemn us for the bad choices and habits we have formed.  Instead he patiently and carefully extracts us from those bad decisions, and bad habits, and in their place, He offers us a whole new way to live, without the pain of our former selves.  His love does this.  If we are to change the world, it must be done in love, not in condemnation.  Love redeems us from the pain of sin, condemnation only deepens the pain of sin.

Jesus continues to identify His disciples as he says in verse 12 … “While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.”  The loss of Judas is painful to Christ, but it was foretold in scripture, and despite every effort to redeem him, Judas refused and looked to his own wisdom.  The wisdom of Judas led him to betray His Lord, unto torture and death.  This is what happens when we take it on ourselves to “help” God with our ideas of what He should be doing.  It is not unique to Judas.  Abraham took a handmaid of Sarah to “help” God out with His promise, and much pain was the result, and none of his efforts made the promise occur.  Moses decided to “help” bring water out of the rock by striking it rather than speaking to it as God asked, and he was forbidden entry to the promised land as a result.  David decided to “help” bring the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem and without following the proper methods, a life was lost in his efforts.  God does not need our “help” to accomplish His goals.  And often the “help” we offer is more about doing what we want to do, than truly what God wants to do, in His time or His manner.  We rush God, and try to make God do what we ultimately want, and in so doing our “help” bears the fruit of Judas, our forefather in this regard.

Jesus continues to pray for His disciples in verse 13 saying … “And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves. [verse 14] I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. [verse 15] I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.”  Christ prays that we might have His “joy”, not our own, fulfilled in ourselves.  Our own ideas about joy and fulfillment are almost always the wrong ones.  But when we allow Christ to alter our desires, we are able to want different things, and find joy in things that have real meaning.  Next He outlines that the word we have received through Christ, does not make us natural friends with a self-centered, self-focused world.  It rubs those notions the wrong way, and puts us at odds with conventional wisdom.  Think for a minute about the notion of the American dream for instance … if you work hard, you can succeed by the power of your determination and hard work.  Whereas our philosophy is … we will be given everything we need from a benevolent God who saves us from ourselves despite our past and present, we can depend 100% on something outside of ourselves, and learn not to ever trust in us, but only in Him.   Those ideas are completely at odds with each other.  The American dream sounds good, and makes you believe in yourself, and what you can accomplish.  This Christian ideal sounds too good to be true, and requires trust that it is possible, and will occur, but in it, your only role is to give up control, not take more of it.  This is why the world does not like what Christ teaches.

For those who believe in isolationism to avoid sin and “contamination” of the pure church … pay closer attention to the prayer of Christ Himself.  He asks NOT that we be taken out of the world, but instead that we be kept from evil.  We are not to withdraw from others who are still suffering from the disease of sin which we have found a Doctor for.  Instead we are to remain in the hospital and share the good news of our Physician with them.  We do not become more holy by removing ourselves from the influence of the evil around us.  Our problem is not with the evil around us, it is with the evil within us.  Our submission is to have Christ remove the evil from within, it is difficult to be tempted by something you do not want, or find yourself despising, or come to see with only pity.  When that occurs, what was formerly temptation carries no more weight.  When that occurs, the evil around you has no more power over you, and instead the love of Christ you reflect changes evil.  This is how His power works.  The goal is not for us to run off to the woods and preserve only our own souls for His Kingdom.  In so doing we lose out on the most valued treasure in heaven – other people, the objects of the love we are learning to reflect.  Isolation is no more the answer for righteousness, and any other self-focused method of curing sin.  Focus on Christ alone kills temptation.  We are to stay in the world, and reflect that light and love, not just squander it on ourselves.

Jesus continues in verse 16 … “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. [verse 17] Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.”  Christ makes the distinction for those who follow Him, that they are no longer of the world.  Instead we belong to God.  We present ourselves to Him as a gift, and He gives us more than we could possibly receive.  But perhaps more worthy of note, is the continuation of His prayer where He asks God the Father to “sanctify” us through His truth, His word.  Notice we do NOT sanctify ourselves.  There is no time limit on this activity, He does not ask that we receive this gift over the course of a lifetime, nor does He remind us that sanctification is a process we are supposed to do for ourselves.  Instead He asks His Father to do the work of Sanctification.  It is done through His truth … Jesus said of Himself that He was the Truth.  It is done through His word … John opens His gospel by saying Jesus was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God.  We are sanctified through our acceptance and submission to Jesus Christ, a work that is performed for us, by His Father, at the request of Christ.

Jesus continues the mission of our redemption as He continues in verse 18 … “As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. [verse 19] And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.”  As Christ was sent by God to us, so He sends His disciples to the world.  Our sanctification must also come from Christ.  If we are to be effective, if we are to be remade, it must come alone from the power of Christ.  Jesus goes on in verse 20 … “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; [verse 21] That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.”  Our unity in a mission of love is a witness to the world that Christ is real, and our God is real.  As Christ and His Father united in a mission of love in action for us, for others, for His creation – with no thought to Himself; so we can be united with Christ and His Father in a mission of love to others that will change our world.  Families can be healed.  Communities can be changed irrevocably for the better.  Peace that follows love can result.  And all of it can point back to Christ and His Father, a perpetual witness to the unity that is only possible when founded in a mission of love to others based in Christ.

Then Christ does something very powerful and meaningful to us, He extends His familial relationship to us as He prays further in verse 22 … “And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: [verse 23] I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.”  We are to be bound in love to Christ, nestled in His love, and in the love of His Father.  We are to be made one with God, unified with God, participants in His mission of redemptive love.  In this, we are to be “made perfect”.  Perfection is attainable, it is more than that, it is a guarantee.  But only as we are “made” one with God, one with Christ.  There is no room for self in that equation.  It is the absolute absence of self and self-interest that characterizes the love of God.  It is how Christ lived.  And it is possible for us to live this way as well, as we recognize we do not “make” it happen, we “permit” it to happen.  We submit to Christ, and He “makes” us perfect, makes us one with Him and His Father.  This is a perfect unity we have so longed to see and experience.  It is the heart of the good news of the gospel.

Jesus concludes His prayer with a profound request in verse 24 saying … “Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. [verse 25] O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me. [verse 26] And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.”  No longer are heaven and earth to be separated by any distance.  Christ tells His Father He wills that we be with Him, where He is, that we may see Him with our own eyes.  We can then behold the great love that the Father has for His Son, and for us.  Christ declares the nature of His Father to us, and in His life of selfless love, He reveals the Father to us in fullness, that we might begin to know Him, and to know His Son.  This is the eternal life, and eternal gift that is given to us.  A gift offered before our perfection was achieved, a redemptive gift that would see us freed from the power and temptation of sin and self; this is what He puts on the table for us to take. 

There has never been so powerful a prayer uttered in the Bible.  We are offered here a private first-hand audience in the prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ to His perfect Father God.  And all throughout this prayer is every imaginable gift He asks for us, and for those few who were still with Him.  Imagine how selfless this prayer was, as it was uttered only moments before He would be tortured to death.  Despite knowing what is about to happen, He focuses the entire prayer on us, and our needs, not asking anything for Himself, except as it benefits us.  This is the power of prayer that cannot be denied.  This was a fitting end to the communion He had with us just before the end arrived …

 

What Do You Want? - Communion (part ten) ...

What is it that you want?  Depending on your circumstances your first thought might be financial means, or restored health or just enough food to make it through the day.  When things are “good” you might then respond with items that are not critical to survive, but things you may have always dreamed about owning but were never able to find time to enjoy, or means to acquire.  If things for you are “really good” you might then think about those you love and being able to offer them things they have been unable to enjoy.  So what is it that YOU want?  Does where you find yourself influence your answer?  Can you imagine an answer that does not involve a single “thing”?  Just removing all the “things” we can imagine changes the nature of the question, what is it that we want.  Our health might still be in our answer, as we may not consider health a thing.  Our happiness may still remain in our answer, as it is hard to define happiness in a tangible way.  But what about spiritual “things”?  Are they first in our list, or somewhere down the line, or perhaps absent altogether?

The most radical answer, I can imagine to the question, what is that you want … is … nothing, or at least; nothing at all for me.  What if everything you wanted, you wanted for someone else, and not yourself, not even health.  It is hard to imagine only wanting something for another, not even to be shared, but instead wholly offered to another and only for them.  When our health is crumbling, we want our own health addressed.  We may pray for the health of others who are in need, but we also pray for our own health as well.  It is natural.  It is only human to do so.  The same is true for those in financial need, we will gladly pray for God to meet their needs.  But if we too are in financial need, we pray for ourselves as well.  In short, we ask God for the things we “believe” we “need”.  Very often our prayers BEGIN with asking for the things “we” need.  Eventually we get around to asking for others, but our first thoughts tend to be about our most immediate needs, our own needs.  But what if what we needed was truly nothing?  Can you imagine needing nothing?

Our prayers often reveal our thinking.  When the focus of our prayers is staring back at us in the mirror, the disease of “self” has crept into our prayer life.  “Me first” thinking, is not uncommon in the requests we take to God.  This is because, the most pressing concern in our lives, is our own lives.  The lives of others are not truly thought of ahead of our own.  And how we live in general reflects this reality.  We provide for ourselves, and those we love first, then, if there is time and enough left over, we think about the needs of others in the world.  When those we love are in jeopardy we pray to spare them as it is “we” who would miss them so, if they were no longer around.  We want them to be happy and healthy and doing well, for their own benefit, but also because we love them and “we” want them to be here with “us”.  This too is human.  This too is natural.  And this too is reflected in our prayer lives.

But Jesus, was and is a radical example, of the absence of self, in His thinking, and in His prayer life.  We assume the health of Christ to be good.  We assume He had no pressing needs for healing, or comfort where it comes to His health.  We assume other than at the end of His life, He had no bumps or bruises, or physical pain He endured.  In essence He goes through His life without incident, and therefore without complaint, or prayer to address His own needs.  But life, history, and scripture do not offer us quite as idealistic a view into His time here on earth.  As an infant, He was born into this world in a manger, decidedly NOT the cleanest, or sterile conditions in which to enter the world.  The temperature was not controlled, the air not the purest of smells, the environment not the cleanest to avoid germs.  Not long after His birth, His parents must flee into Egypt.  Not only is this a long hard journey, but Egypt itself is a hot dry desert region.  Growing through your early childhood years there would not have been an “easy” life.

When He returns after His first 7 years, He helps His father with carpentry work for the next 26 years.  I do not imagine his aim was always perfect with a hammer and nails.  I do not imagine He was born with perfect carpentry skills and did not, like we do, learn those skills from hard work, and making mistakes and adjustments over time.  He had no great wealth, so He would not have been raised with the finest of diets, and the widest variety of things to eat.  But as healthy as He may have ever been, the outset of His ministry begins with 40 days in the wilderness, without food.  This length of time would not just have made Him skinny.  It would have brought Him near death from starvation.  This does not make the body healthy, it nearly kills it.  He might have sustained health problems from this time forward.  He was difficult to recognize when He returned from this encounter because He was so emaciated from it.  And walking down dusty, rocky roads; sleeping outdoors in cold air nights, and in the rain (when it comes); does not tend to present opportunities for perfection, rather for periodic aches and pains, and circumstances we all tend to avoid.

Now, here facing the end of His life, He will be betrayed, abandoned, and tortured until He is dead.  So for us, the most pressing concern would be to pray for our “needs” given that situation.  But for Christ, who is continuing His communion with His disciples, He continues to think first of their needs.  Now to continue to offer them renewed hope in His mission, and in His divinity, He intends to change the nature of their prayers.  John records in his gospel in the 16^th chapter beginning in verse 23 … “And in that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you. [verse 24] Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.”  Up until now, prayers were offered to the God of Abraham, of Moses, of David, of Daniel.  God was a somewhat mysterious entity, whose personality or motives we could hardly fathom.  But now, there was the ability to connect a face with a name.  Now, we would ask God the Father, our requests.  We were asking a specific entity with a specific personality, who had demonstrated His interests in our healing, and in meeting our needs, both physical and spiritual since the beginning of the ministry of Christ, where ALWAYS, Christ worked the “will” of the Father.

Our prayers would now be directed specifically to the Father, who had demonstrated His love for us over and over and over again in the deeds of Christ.  But more than that, we would ask the Father in the name of Jesus Christ.  God was more than just a mysterious entity who we did not really know, He was also known to us in the person of the Son, Jesus Christ.  Our requests would now go to the Father in the NAME of the Son, Jesus the Christ.  When our prayers would be answered, it would be another living example of the true divinity of Jesus and His mission and His work here on earth.  If Jesus were just another false Messiah, or just another prophet, or just another “good man”, then asking God the Father to grant requests in the name of just another guy would have no effect.  If however, we asked God for something in the name of Jesus Christ, and our prayer was heard, the Jesus must be real, and divine, and worthy of our prayers.  If miracles were to happen in the name of Jesus Christ, then He too must actually be God.  After all praying in the name of Diana, or Baal, or Ashkod, or any other false deity yields no tangible result; if Christ were false, the prayers in His name, would do no better.  But as Jesus proclaims, when we ask in His name, and our prayers are heard – our Joy is full.  Our Joy is full because we can know His promises to save us are real.  Our prayers reveal tangible proof that He does live, and will save us.  Our answered prayers prove that He is God.

The question then, is not whether Jesus Christ is God, it is instead, what do we want?  For if our prayers are first and foremost intended to meet the needs we believe “we” have.  Then are we not following the urging of the tempter when he asked Christ who had not eaten in 40 days to turn these rocks into bread, in order to meet the very real physical health needs He had at that moment in time?  To which His response was that we live not by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.  Why not simply pray to meet His own needs?  Why was this a temptation at all?   Was it not more of a simple logical request – I am hungry – my health is failing – there is no food around – God please meet “my” need.  Even when the conditions were very likely a choice between life and death, even then “self” would not be present in the prayers of Christ.  Even then, He would not ask to have His own “needs” met, instead trusting to the word of God.  Instead He trusted that any real “needs” he had were already known of God, and would be met by God in God’s way of choosing, and His timing, and would need no expediting by Himself.  In the face of starvation itself, Christ deferred praying for His own needs.

Often we read the scriptural text “ask and ye shall receive” as if it were an offer to open the proverbial candy store of heaven to us.  We treat this promise as if it were intended for “us” to ask for things for “us” and that Christ is putting His own name on the guarantee of delivery to us.  But when we look at the example of Christ, we find He only ever asked for things for others, completely ignoring what we would naturally think are His own needs.  His prayers were always done for the benefit of someone else.  His joy was derived in seeing the joy in another.  His “needs” were simply left up to God to meet, and so He just did not seem to ever have to address them specifically.  He did pray that God would be glorified, as the definition of glorified was defined in the actions of love He would perform.  But each request of Christ to the Father, always had a target other than Himself as its object.  Our human eyes, our untransformed vision, reads this snippet of scripture as a child would when creating a list for the mythical Santa Clause.  But what was intended was so much more than what we find in a mirror.

The first part of verse 23 is also worthy of a second look, it says,  … “And in that day ye shall ask me nothing”.  Is it possible, that Jesus is referring to what happens to our prayers, AFTER we have submitted to Christ and are transformed by the power of His love?  When we fully trust Christ, we trust our perceived “needs” to His love, and have the assurance like He did in the desert with His own Father, that our needs will be met by God, in God’s way, in God’s time.  Therefore we ask “nothing” of Christ for ourselves, because He knows our need, and is already in progress of meeting it.  But this is not an edict for the elimination of prayer, as the remaining text continues with “how” we ask.  Instead it is about answering the question … what do we want … in a completely transformed way.  After our encounter with Christ we begin to want only blessings for others and not for ourselves.  Our prayers do continue, but the subject changes from us, to those who we now love as Christ loved.  We do not constrict our requests only for those we personally know and love, but instead we are keenly interested in the needs of all men, even those who would declare themselves our enemies.  We begin to know what it means to love our enemies, like we would love our disobedient children who declare they hate us, and yet we love them.  We start seeing our enemies through the eyes of Christ, who loves the drunk driver just as much as the victims whose lives he cuts short.  That kind of love changes what we pray for.  We do not cease our prayers, but rather begin to pray for only others, just like Christ did.

When what we want changes, what we pray for changes, and our interests are transformed from the life of the person in the mirror, to the lives of those we encounter.  When we pray for others it is not about how our own lives are impacted by their suffering or loss, but instead how their lives are impacted by the pain of evil and loss.  We begin to value the eternal and spiritual lives of others, more than we value what human eyes are constricted to see.  And this kind of selflessness in our thinking, our desires, and our prayers does not happen because we work at it, or choose it.  But instead because we submit our thinking to the will and transformation of Christ, allowing Christ to alter what it is we want, and how it is we think.  His transformation of us becomes real and tangible, and is reflected in what we ask for when we pray, and why we ask it.

But the disciples were not quite ready to hear this kind of news.  They were facing the crumbling of everything they had ever hoped for.  Jesus was plainly telling them He was not going to be the earthly king they had hoped He would become.  Instead He was leaving them.  This was news that turned their entire spiritual scriptural understanding on its head.  It was akin to telling Noah to build an ark for a flood no one had ever seen, let alone rain that did not exist.  It was akin to telling Abraham to ignore everything He knew about the love of God, and instead kill His own son in the name of love itself.  It was akin to telling Moses to march His people down to the Red Sea where they would have no escape from the pursuing chariots and armies of Egypt bent on killing them all.  All through our world’s history, God often turns our understanding on its head, and asks us to do things that do not make logical sense.  Yet when we trust His wisdom and not our own, things work out in spite of our logic and ideas about what are the facts.

But sensitive even then to the needs of His disciples, Jesus speaks to them in proverbial form, in order to give them the news they need to hear, but in a form they are able to hear it.  John continues in verse 25 recording these events as Christ says … “These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall shew you plainly of the Father. [verse 26] At that day ye shall ask in my name: and I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you: [verse 27] For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God. [verse 28] I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.”  We no longer need Christ to pray to the Father on our behalf, because the Father loves us, because we have loved the Son.  Our belief in the truth of the divinity of the Son, endears us to the Father in a way we cannot understand.  And at the same time, insures our salvation, as it is only through the transformation of our hearts by Jesus Christ, that we will ever see the perfection in us that He is able to achieve.  Trusting to the love of the Son, only makes the Father love us even more.  This should have been words to comfort us like none other.  But the disciples were still focused only on the aspect of loss they would feel from their separation from Christ.

They respond to Jesus in verse 29 … “His disciples said unto him, Lo, now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb. [verse 30] Now are we sure that thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask thee: by this we believe that thou camest forth from God.”  They did not grasp the full weight of what Jesus was telling them, yet they declare that the words of Christ were plain enough.  And if there is any lingering doubt in Jesus that they may not yet believe He is divine, they are going to plainly state that this is what they all believe.  Jesus answers in verse 31 … “Jesus answered them, Do ye now believe? [verse 32] Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: …”  Jesus is trying to gently point out to them, that they are trusting to their own strength again, instead of His.  They have just declared their faith in His divinity, yet they are all about to run in terror from the company of soldiers who are heading their way to kill their Lord.  It is this trust in self that must be overcome through submission to Christ.  “Who” we focus on must change.  What we want, must change. 

But still concerned with their fragile state Jesus continues in verse 32 … “and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me. [verse 33] These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”  Christ would trust His own needs to His God, who we KNEW would be with Him as He faced the end of His earthly life.  In Christ we would find peace; in the world only tribulation.  But our hope emerges not because “we” have overcome the world, but because Christ has overcome the world.  We are not saved because we are conquerors, but because He is.  Our salvation then transforms us, from the creatures of sin and self-service and self-focus that we are; into the creations of self-less-service to others that He intended and that He is our perfect example of.  We begin to want different things.  We begin to pray for different things.  And our prayers, like the prayers of Christ, are answered as we are fully submitted to the will of the Father, and not of our own.  The simple question remains … what do you want? …

But communion was not over yet …

Beauty of Obedience - Communion (part five) ...

What do you do when you love?  What actions follow the feeling, the commitment, the decision?  When actions follow motivation, the motivation is revealed.  Christ loved his disciples and us.  His actions were a revelation of that love.  What He did for them and for us was telling of how He felt about us, how He valued us, how He was willing to make any personal sacrifice for our well-being, in order to benefit us.  The only thing Christ had to gain from what He did, was us.  We would be His reward.  He would risk all, give all, and do all, in order to redeem back to Himself the creation who had broken trust with Him, turned away from Him, and embraced a path of pain and death from which there would be no other hope found.  Here in the quiet of communion, with his faithful few followers, in the last few hours He would have with them.  Christ discusses the universal truth of how actions follow motive.  His own actions would reveal His love for us.  He now prompted His disciples to examine what it is they do, and why.

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 …

 

Communion (part three) ...

An ultimate act of humility and service, as Christ washes the filthy feet of his disciples.  A last attempt to warn and reclaim a traitor that preserves his anonymity but tires desperately to let him know his plans and intentions are revealed before he can carry them out.  Now, communion must take a different turn, what will be needed now more than anything else is comfort.  With the weight of mankind’s sins beginning to bear down on Him, with His own torture and death imminent, His first thoughts are STILL for the objects of His love and not Himself.   Everything John would record in his gospel in chapter 13 starting in verse 31 and going forward would be designed to sooth the fears, boost the faith, and give comfort to those who would feel His loss so keenly.  Even here at the end of His ministry, when He is still to go through so much personal pain, so much personal trial, He is still steadfastly focused on those He loves and not Himself.  This is the incredible example of love and the nature of love that our God exemplifies.  Not only in word, but in action, in action despite all the personal trials and pain He must endure.  He will die soon.  But His larger concern is with those He will leave behind while He rests for the Sabbath in the grave.

His ultimate sacrifice for those He loves represents the pinnacle of the measurement of love in the kingdom of Heaven.  And so Jesus begins by stating this to His disciples, to teach them where true glory lies, not in the battlefield against other men, but in the battlefield against self.  In verse 31 John records … “Therefore, when he was gone out, Jesus said, Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him. [verse 32] If God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify him.”  Judas had just left the communion into the darkness.  Jesus then tells his faithful few, that it will be His own death and sacrifice for those He loves that will glorify Him before the universe.  The glory of love will be seen within Him as He pays for our crimes, and provides for our restoration.  This glory is shared by the Father who sent Him in to this world and shares His mission in every act of love and sacrifice.  Both Father and Son will share in the glory, for the glory they measure is defined in the actions of love to their creations.

Jesus continues in verse 33 … “Little children, yet a little while I am with you. Ye shall seek me: and as I said unto the Jews, Whither I go, ye cannot come; …”  How appropriate that despite all the time they had spent with Him, they were barely toddlers in the faith.  How appropriate the reference to little children who do nothing for themselves and gladly rely upon their parents for everything they need.  So it is with us.  Our salvation is not a work we perform upon ourselves.  It is a work our Father performs for us, within us, and sometimes in spite of us.  We need only look to Him, like a loving toddler looks to His parents.  Our Father longs to provide for us, carry our worries, give us rest and peace and comfort and provide for our needs.  But so many of us struggle to take those burdens upon ourselves, and then fail so miserably at them.  How much better to be free not to worry, to be free to love, to be free to play with our Father who longs to just play and be with us.  That close communion and fellowship with His disciples was about to come to a close.  He was going to miss them.  They were going to miss Him.  Jesus tenderly tells them it is now time for their physical companionship and communion to come to its close.  But this is not all bad news.

Jesus continues in verse 33 “…so now I say to you. [verse 34] A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. [verse 35] By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”  The MOST important thing in all of existence is love.  Here is Jesus about to die on a cross and the ONE thing He commands of His disciples is that they LOVE one another as HE has loved them.  Christ loved in actions.  He healed the sick, thus meeting every physical need He could, without demanding payment, or service, or even faith.  He was careful never to condemn the guilty but instead to focus on their redemption.  Only moments before He could have out-ed Judas as the traitor in their midst but He would not.  Mary Magdeline had been guilty.  But He refused to condemn her.  His constant focus on all He encountered was only to show them love, and effectively love them back to redemption, without judgment or condemnation.  Christ served those He loved in absolute humility.  Christ took ownership of nothing, but gave everything.  To love each other as Christ loved us is to abandon caution and restraint and apprehension and love with the fullness of our lives.  He would die for us.  We should be willing to go that far for each other.  But Christ did more than die for us; He had the courage to live for us.  He lived a life of exemplary love and it is to this kind of life we should aspire.

Next Christ tells us, that by this kind of love for each other – to be a family by choice and not by blood – the world will know we are His.  This is HOW Christians were supposed to be known, for our unabashed love and acceptance.  Those men in that room were NOT perfect yet.  They were ALL still sinners, not just Judas who left into the night.  Their understanding of doctrines related to the mission of the Messiah Himself was STILL incorrect at that moment.  They were STILL greedy and seeking position in the anti-Roman kingdom they hoped He would rule.  They STILL valued their own safety above the loyalty they felt for their Lord.  In short, nothing about them was in the condition to deserve love, and avoid judgment or condemnation that would be well earned.  This should a model for us.  We do not need to expect perfection from the pathetic sinners we encounter before we decide we are “able” to love them.  For in truth, we are just like them.  One does not need to be doctrinally perfect to be loved.  One does not need to be completely transformed to be loved.  The character of these men would STILL lead them to do wrong.  BUT that did NOTHING to deter Christ from loving them in spite of their condition.  For only through the power of His transformational love would they ever be free from the pain of sin they embraced.  The same is true of us.  The same is true of those whose behavior and beliefs we do not agree with.  Only love can bring us, and them, to a reformation.  Condemnation does nothing to reform anyone, it only deepens the sadness.  But love can lift a person from the depths of depravity to the heights of selfless service, and give them a motive to never want to live another way. 

This was His last commandment to us.  He did not say … be sure to teach the world the proper doctrines in order that they might be saved.  For in truth, none of them were even aware what those doctrines might be; whereas the doctrine of love is the ONLY one that leads to the freedom from ALL sins, and the road to His perfection, in His time, in His methods for each of us, suited to each of us.  He did not offer this idea that we should love each other with conditions or as an optional idea.  This was a commandment, of the same variety written on tables of stone by the finger of God.  It is a reflection of how like Him we have become.  When we love without reservation, we reflect the character of Christ.  When we love like this, we do not even consider taking what is not ours, lieing, cheating, lusting, and putting our own desires ahead of others.  To love like Christ loved is to do exactly the opposite.  Instead of taking, we think of nothing but giving, for in giving we find our own joy.  It is in the making of another’s happiness that we finally find our own.  This was the model with which He was establishing the Christian church.  It was after all a “new” commandment, as we had not properly discerned it from the last ten He had written.  How different our world will be, when we finally submit ourselves to Him, and begin to see this commandment fulfilled in our characters from the inside out.

But like all great truths, we sometimes miss them entirely because we focus on the things that are important to us, instead of things that are important to God.  Christ was keenly interested in focusing His disciples on continuing to love each other.  That was what was most important in His words.  But Simon Peter was still hung up on the words that preceded them.  He was still pondering the ominous ideas of Christ leaving and him being unable to follow.  To this idea Peter responds in verse 36 … “Simon Peter said unto him, Lord, whither goest thou? Jesus answered him, Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards. [verse 37] Peter said unto him, Lord, why cannot I follow thee now? I will lay down my life for thy sake.”  For Peter, even the grave was not something he would allow to separate him from Christ.  But unfortunately, this boast was based in the strength of his humanity, not in the humility of his submission.  Therefore it was subject to error, and a revelation of pride, even if the pride was of a spiritual nature.

Christ responded in verse 38 … “Jesus answered him, Wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The cock shall not crow, till thou hast denied me thrice.”  Christ reveals the future to Peter here and predicts where his human strength will lead him.  We can do nothing without Christ.  We can do nothing, even of a spiritual nature.  We will achieve no conversions in our missions, nor transformations in the mirror, without Christ.  Peter made his boast believing it to be true.  But it was not true, for it was founded in his own ideas, thinking, and will.  None of these would prove adequate when the testing time began.  Only through the power of Christ can we withstand the testing that will surely find us all.  In those times we must throw ourselves upon Christ and seek for Him to fight our battles.  Or we will find ourselves like Peter and Judas, defeated by our own ideas, and faith in ourselves, our own wisdom, our own strength.

But the focus of the communion was not intended to depress Peter or the others with the reality of their human weaknesses.  It was to focus them on the beauty of what He would accomplish on their behalf.  While chapter 13 ends with these prophetic words to Peter, chapter 14 immediately refocuses their minds back to the truth of the rewards of His mission.  Jesus continues in verse 1 of chapter 14 … “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.”  Perhaps one of the most quoted scriptures in all the Bible.  Do not be worried or dismayed at your own human weakness.  You believe in God.  You can believe that Christ can overcome the weakness inherent in you.  This is the most precious text in scripture and perhaps so often quoted not for what follows but for what has already been said.  It is not the mansions we need.  It is the redemption we need.  It is the recreation from the sin-sick-slaves to the freedom to love without restraint or limit.  We do not need a license to continue in our depravity, but instead a surety that He will free us from it.  We believe in God.  We can also believe in the salvation Christ offers us, in His promises to change us, to redeem us, to forgive us, and to re-create us so that even forgiveness will become a thing of the past.

Jesus continues in verse 2 … “In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. [verse 3] And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. [verse 4] And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.”  Heaven is NOT about the beauty of architecture and precious gems.  It is about COMMUNION.  It is about fellowship.  It is about being WITH God full time forever and ever, never to be parted again.  The mission of Christ was not to be accomplished only to keep us distant from Himself on some remote planet at the far end of the universe.  We are going home.  To our real home.  To the place where we belong.  To the side of our God.  We will know where He goes, because we will be able to see it with our own eyes.  We will live with Him where He lives.  To accomplish this, He leaves this world to prepare homes for us in His.  He is making His city ready for humans to live in.  We need things like water, air, food, gravity.  But our greater need is to be loved, and to love.  We get that from Him.  And He intends to share that with us for all eternity by building us a home right where He lives.  Heaven, where gold is nothing more than concrete, and companionship is worth more than all of it combined.   This is the beauty of the reward of His mission.  It is not about making us wealthy in His eternal city.  It is about bringing us home to be with Him forever.  We could live in mud huts if we were close to Him.  But love is not satisfied with providing us with such meager accommodations; instead He finds His joy in making our homes special for each of us.

And communion was not over yet …