Bible Commentaries
John 14

Verses 1-27

34 As our Lord is about to leave His beloved disciples, He compresses His ministry into one new precept-love. That was to be their law and their life and make them a light in the world. This should characterize His saints in this gracious economy in an even greater degree, for we have quaffed far deeper draughts of grace than His disciples ever tasted.

36-38 Compare Mat_26:33-35 ; Mar_14:29-31 ; Luk_22:31-34 .

36 Impetuous Peter's heart was in the right place, but it took many bitter trials to teach him the truth concerning Christ and His sufferings and his own cowardice. How graciously the Lord overlooks his failures by immediately following his present inability by a prophecy of his future martyrdom! It is probably true, as tradition reports, that Peter was crucified, like his Lord. Typically, he represents those in Israel who suffer and die before the kingdom comes, while John stands for those who live through until the kingdom is established.

2 The temple in Jerusalem was the Father's house. In the walls were many abodes for the priests and Levites who officiated in its precincts. There is no hint anywhere in the Scriptures that the disciples go to heaven. A celestial destiny was not revealed until the apostle Paul was in his Roman prison. Then he first made it known in his Ephesian epistle. But it is not for the saints of the Circumcision. All their blessings are heavenly in character and, like the new Jerusalem, come down out of heaven, but they are all enjoyed on earth. Only those in the present secret economy of God's grace are blessed with all spiritual blessings among the celestials. The Circumcision enjoy the days of heaven on earth. Hence Christ comes again and is with them in the kingdom.

7 Christ's usual character in this evangel is the Word of God. Here, however, He gives us a glimpse of Himself as the Image of the Father. No man can see the invisible God. But surely the disciples had seen all the attributes of the Father manifested in Him, as He loved them and led them, taught them and fed them, giving them all the care and keeping of little children. He was not the Father, but the Father was in Him, and could be seen nowhere else. But this glimpse of the Father is (as is fitting in this account) most evident in His words and works. These were not His own, but the Father's.

12 We have here an intimation of the marvelous miracles accomplished by the apostles and others in the Pentecostal period, following His ascension, and also of the still greater marvels which will inaugurate the kingdom in the future. The spiritual blessings of the present are in reality far greater than any of these, but they were not in view at this time, for they were a secret, hidden in God, and could not be even hinted at until Israel's final failure was assured.

14 These words have proved a snare to many. They have requested much in His name which has not come to pass. This seems to reflect on His faithfulness. The difficulty vanishes when we see that this is not for the Uncircumcision ( Rom_15:8 ). Far higher truth is ours. It is set forth in Php_4:6 . We make our requests known to God with thanksgiving, and leave them with Him to act upon as His love determines, not as we dictate.

16 The Lord Himself was the Consoler of the apostles while He was with them. Now that He was about to leave they would not only need the consolation He had given them, but a special measure to make up for His absence as well. It is most touching to see, as the dark shadows of the cross are crowding His soul, that He is not concerned for His own relief, but for the sorrows of His beloved disciples. The spirit He had promised after His glorification ( Joh_7:39 ) was to be a living spring, but, in view of the sorrow so soon to engulf them, it is now called a consoler, for this would be its first function. It is called "the spirit of truth" in contrast to "the spirit of deception" ( 1Jn_4:6 ). The world seeks comfort in its false philosophy but God's saints find consolation in the truth. The spirit of deception is that false flood of spirit force which is sweeping the world on to the worship of the antichrist. The spirit of truth is its opposite. He told them that the declarations which He spoke are spirit and are life. It is the spirit that vivifies ( Joh_6:63 ). Hence we may take it that the impartation of the spirit, after His vivification, when He inflated and said "get holy Spirit! "( Joh_20:22 ), corresponds to the impartation of the breath of the living to Adam ( Gen_2:7 ), so that he became a living soul. In this way the last Adam showed Himself a life imparting Spirit ( 1Co_15:45 ). Pentecost was not the reception of holy Spirit to give life, but its baptism for cleansing, its filling for utterance, and its coming on for power. The reception of holy Spirit was dependent on repentance and baptism in the evangel of the kingdom ( Act_2:38 ). In Samaria, the gift waited on the prayer and imposition of the hands of the apostles ( Act_8:15-17 ) according to the authority which the Lord conferred on them when it was first given ( Joh_20:23 ). In the present economy of transcendent grace it is the portion of all who believe ( Eph_1:13 ). It is an earnest of all the spiritual possessions which are ours in Christ Jesus, among the celestials.

Verses 28-31

28 In the East they do not say, as we do, "I am going", but rather "I am going and returning" when spealctng of an ordinary journey. So the Lord assures them that He was not about to leave them permanently, but only for awhile.

30 When our Lord spoke of Himself in relation to the world He often used the third person. Witness the Son of Man ( Joh_9:37 ).

See also Joh_7:18 , Joh_9:37 .

He is the Coming One, for Whom all creation waits. Yet, when He came, the world had nothing at all in Him. It rejected His chieftainship just as Israel also rejected His messiahship and "there is nothing for Him" ( Dan_9:26 ). None of the glories pertaining to Him were allowed by Israel and He will not assume them until He comes again in power and glory as revealed in the Unveiling, when He appears as the White Horse Rider, crowned with many diadems, the King of kings and Lord of lords ( Rev_19:11-16 ). He, and not Satan, is the Chief of the world. This title occurs only in this account.

See Joh_12:31 and Joh_16:11 .

31 What grace is there here! The world judges Him and casts Him out, so He immediately uses their hatred to reveal the love of God to Him and to them. Indeed, here we have love's greatest triumph. Men could not do worse or God better. His love needed their hatred for a foil and makes good use of it to emerge into the open where all the world can see.

1 The fig, the olive, and the vine are used by God to picture the political, the spiritual, and the social blessedness of Israel as a nation. He brought a vine out of Egypt, cast out the nations, and planted it. It filled the land, but was destroyed ( Psa_80:8-16 ). The vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the house of Israel ( Isa_5:7 ). Jeremiah laments that Jehovah had planted them an excellent local variety, yet they had turned into a foreign vine by their unfaithfulness and their joylessness ( Jer_2:21 ). Jotham, in his parable of the trees, tells us that grape juice gladdens both God and mortals ( Jud_9:13 ). But Hosea cries "Israel is a vacant vine. The fruit is equivalent to it" ( Hos_10:1 ). Israel failed to gladden either God or mortals. Christ came and did both. He is the true Vine. The fruitless branches, those who remained not in Him, are taken away. His own are cleansed by the belief of the truth. All gladness for God or mortals must now come through the Messiah.

5 He now restates the truth as to the vine. Only those with Him are the branches. Israel as a nation has no part in Him.

6 The salvation proclaimed by our Lord and the twelve apostles was probational. There was always the danger of "drifting by" ( Heb_2:1 ). They were His house if they retained the boldness and glorying of the expectation confirmed unto the consummation ( Heb_3:6 ). They could withdraw from the living God ( Heb_3:12 ). Many of those once enlightened fell aside ( Heb_6:4-6 ). Such are those who did not remain in the vine, but withered and were destroyed. We, however, are not in the vine, but members of the body of Christ. And the members of a body cannot be lopped off like the branches of a vine. We are saved by grace, and do not depend on our own abiding, but non His power and love. We are vitally and organically a part of Christ Himself. He would be maimed by the excision of members of His body. How thankful we should be that we are not branches in that vine!