Or, His Gifts and Going Are Good (for Him!)
Scripture: John 14:25-31
Date: September 29, 2013
Speaker: Sean Higgins
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Our consciousness of the Lord’s lordship ebbs and flows day by day. Some moments we ride confidently on surges of faith and other times we sink, or even face-plant, into reefs of doubt. Even we Calvinists act like practical Arminians when we question if God really controls all things. Or maybe we question why He does things the way He does, or we try to distract ourselves with something more comfortable.
Any comfort we seek apart from His sovereignty will fade. And any time when we look to be benefited by His sovereignty we need to make sure that we know who His sovereignty is for. Peace comes when we know that He works for Him for us, not for us first. We can’t help but be reduced to uncertainty when we cannot remember who He is. He is the Lord and He is the Lord of peace.
Peace is His. He defines peace, He emanates peace, and He gives peace. We cannot obtain it but we can receive it. We cannot buy it but He purchased it. In Jesus’ first coming He did things differently than we would have written, certainly different than most Jews expected, and even different than His disciples desired. Yet, from the day of His birth to the day of His death, every part of His mission was entirely under His control. Now He gives great gifts to His disciples as He prepares to go back to His Father.
He’s spent this final evening before His crucifixion encouraging them. He’ll do more of it in verses 25-31. We’ll see three things that He gifts to them to help them. But if they loved Him fully, with a full appreciation of who He was, they would have been glad more glad for Him than they were. They’re still thinking about themselves but Jesus will help them with that, too. In the process there are three gifts: perspicuity, peace, and perspective.
In verses 15-24 Jesus emphatically repeated keeping His commandments, having and keeping His commandments, and keeping His Word. He taught and commanded many things to them. How would they remember it all?
”These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. (John 14:25–26, ESV)
These things probably refers to everything they had discussed that night, recorded for us from the beginning of John 13. But when Jesus spoke about keeping His commandments, He refers back to the entire course of His teaching, to the entire time He was with them. But things were about to change and they wouldn’t have Jesus with them to ask questions. “What was it You said that one time…?”
Jesus refers to the Helper again. The Helper (Paraclete), the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you . A few veins of observation are vital.
Now the Helper is named: the Holy Spirit . The Spirit isn’t Holy in a way that the Father and Son are not. He is holy because His distinctive role is to holy-fy sinners. In verse 16 He is called “the Spirit of truth.” It’s intriguing that Jesus didn’t emphasize the Holy Spirit with obedience and the Spirit of truth with teaching. Of course all of who the Spirit is belongs together anyway.
Now the Father will send the Spirit in [Jesus’] name , not unlike Jesus asking the Father to do it (verse 16). In 15:26 Jesus Himself sends the Spirit. The Father sends both the Son and the Spirit. Jesus is both sent and He sends the Spirit. The Father is never sent and the Spirit never sends. They are all working together and in my name refers to all that Jesus represents.
The Spirit will teach and remind , two separate verbs, each with an all as direct object. It is too simple to say that both of these refer to the same thing. So then what is Jesus promising?
He’s promising that they will have Spirit-enabled prompting to perspicuity, supernatural clarity and comprehension. Even though they travelled with Jesus and had front-row seats to hear Him teach they didn’t grasp a lot of what He said. Jesus promised them that the Spirit…will teach you all things . The Spirit will help the disciples to recall what Jesus said and to understand what Jesus meant. They won’t have to rely on ignorance and forgetfulness. Neither do we.
The gift of understanding and illumination comes to us by the same Spirit but is of a different style. We did not hear Jesus teach so we cannot remember it, nor are we receiving new revelation. However, the Spirit helped the apostles to remember and to write Jesus’ teaching and commands down, and we depend on it. The same Spirit does teach us, but He uses the material the apostles recorded. The Spirit isn’t revealing new stuff, a regular claim of the cults. We are “built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets” (Ephesians 2:20) and the apostles were guided by the Spirit.
Here is the central gift, the central encouragement of this section.
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. (John 14:27, ESV)
Peace was a frequent greeting and farewell, a version of the Hebrew shalom. But this was no ordinary good-bye.
Nothing about this night breathed peace, not with His announcement of a betrayer and a denier or His announcement about leaving. If the disciples had known about the details of the crucifixion their hearts would have been pounding and their legs would have been bouncing. Still Jesus says, Peace I leave with you . Even more, my peace I give to you . He’s calm, composed, resolved in choppy waters. He passed on His trust in the Father to them.
I don’t think this is the peace made between us and God, though we have that too, because the satisfaction of God’s wrath against sinners is not Jesus’ peace. The contrast also stands out. Not as the world gives do I give to you . Some take this as a generic comment about His giving, whatever He might give, but the preceding and following statements deal with His giving of peace particularly.
The world gives peace in a variety of useless ways. By redefinition; peace means an absence of conflict. Or by distraction; take your mind off of the problems. Or by circumstance; a change of scenery will change your trouble. The real reason the world can’t give peace is that it doesn’t have peace. Insurance policies and steady paychecks and funded retirement accounts cannot bring this peace. Jesus gives immanence to transcendent peace. He doesn’t take us “out of the world” of tribulation (see John 17:15) but gives us peace inside it.
We are so fretful, so knocked around. We do not really believe that God is in control. But He made heaven and earth. He is in charge. That’s why Jesus can say, Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid , a bookend to verse 1. Don’t be stirred up and anxious. God’s peace is yours.
What’s His peace like? Undisturbed, seeing the end from the beginning, certain of His path to glory.
There are three changes to our perspective prescription.
Here was a good opportunity for them to stop thinking about themselves.
You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. (John 14:28, ESV)
They had heard Him say numerous times by now that He was going away. They also had heard Him say that He had come, and then in verse 3 that He would come again. What they hadn’t really considered is where Jesus belonged. He belonged with His Father in the glory He had before the incarnation, before His humiliation, before the crucifixion (see John 17:5). It was Jesus’ glory to take on flesh and serve and sacrifice but He deserved esteem that He never got the first time He came to earth. The disciples were so busy worrying about themselves and their problems that they didn’t realize what was appropriate.
If you loved me is constructed in Greek to say that they didn’t love the way they should have (εἰ ἠγαπᾶτέ, imperfect describing present unreality). It isn’t only that they had trouble trusting Him, they didn’t have full affection for Him (visible in the aorist past unreality of not having rejoiced, ἐχάρητε ἂν). But Jesus isn’t mad, He’s helping their perspective.
They would have rejoiced at Jesus going home, not just because of what that meant for them (as Jesus has gladly told them), but also because of what it meant for Jesus. D.A. Carson put it, “Their grief is an index of their self-centeredness” (508).
By the way, when Jesus says, for the Father is greater than I , He isn’t saying that the Father is worth more in being. Keep to context. He’s saying who He belongs with: His great Father.
How different would our rejoicing be if we considered the kinds of things that make God happy? Do we love the story He is telling? Are we grieved about His griefs or are our griefs an index of our self-sovereignty? He is Lord and He is controlling all things for His good for us. That’s the perspective He wants us to have.
Jesus did what no mere man could do.
And now I have told you before it takes place, so that when it does take place you may believe. (John 14:29–30, ESV)
He knew that they didn’t understand now, but that by the Spirit’s help they would understand later. He’s laying a foundation for their confidence and believing. Nothing will happen to Him that He doesn’t know. How much must they have been humbled after seeing what He went through, remembering that He knew it beforehand.
A similar thing happened to me this past week rereading the beginning of book one after having finished the series of three books.
Time was short.
I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me, but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Rise, let us go from here. (John 14:30–31, ESV)
The ruler of this world is the dragon, the serpent, Satan. He is called the ruler because he has been given authority by God, but he is a lame duck devil. His reign is not absolute nor is it permanent. He was coming though.
Jesus said, He has no claim on me . There is no sin that Satan could hook and hold onto Jesus. Even more, Satan had no power over Jesus in any way. Jesus knew Satan’s movements (that he was coming). Jesus tells His disciples that He’s not going because Satan is too powerful. He goes for another reason.
He goes to obey the Father so that the world may know that I love the Father . Yes, God loves the world. Yes, Jesus loves His own. But the driving motivation behind all that happens in the world is eternal, Trinitarian love. The Father loves the Son and gives Him all things. The Son loves the Father and willingly lays down His life.
”Father” is found 23 times in this chapter. The Son is talking. And the Spirit is promised. Jesus wanted the disciples to be encouraged and confident that Triune love wrote the story and controls the scene. That love spills over onto us. It is good for Jesus for Him for us. We benefit from His going and His gifts and His own love for the Father.
Rise, let us go from here . This doesn’t mean that they left the upper room just yet, but that they were preparing to go.
There is much more to the discourse, and it is good (chapters 15-17). Yet this section includes some amazing promises of union with God, help from the Spirit, the peace of the Son Himself, and a clarity of revelation that we can depend on.
Are we attentive to these gifts? Are we sensitive to see God’s hand in the blessings of the Bible, or in our ability to understand it by the Spirit? Do we grasp that He has not removed us from tribulation on purpose but that He enables us to endure and overcome them in peace? Can we see the glory that God is getting as He works out His plan when and where and how He wants? Or are we stuck on what’s in it for us?
We are environmentalists. Our environmentalism lets us blame something outside of us. The environment is the problem, not that the environment reveals something about the problem in our heart, the lack of perspective, the lack of believing, the lack of submitting. We say, “I would have peace if …” But peace or trouble is more what we bring to the moment, not what we take from the moment. We want the circumstances to change and miss the necessary change in our hearts.
If we really trust Christ then we shouldn’t be upset that things are out of our control. We should be upset when we think we are in control. We are disturbed by our lack of control because we aren’t dependent on Christ who controls it all.
Our wishes of peace for others may be sincere but are also feeble compared to Christ’s certain, effectual gift of peace to His own. In the lyrics of Martin Luther: “The Spirit and the gifts are ours through Him Who with us sideth.”