Bible Commentaries
John 14

Verses 1-26

XXIV

THE NEW TESTAMENT BOOK OF COMFORT, INCLUDING THE GREAT INTERCESSORY PRAYER

Harmony, pages 179-183 and John 14-17.

We now take up the great subject presented commencing on page 179 and found in John 14-17. These chapters have two great divisions. First division is Christ comforting his disciples, and that is set forth in John 14-16. And the other division is Christ’s great intercessory prayer for his people, and that is in John 17.

The comforts that are set forth in John 14-16 are six in number: (1) He comforts them concerning the place that he goes to prepare for them. (2) His promise to come and take them to that place. (3) That they shall perform greater works than he did. (4) His promise of another Paraclete when he is gone, or an Advocate, or Comforter, as he is called here. (5) Intimate and indissoluble union between Christ and his disciples, like that between Christ and God. (6) The marvelous access in prayer through Christ’s name. That is an outline of what appears in these three chapters.

The occasion which called forth these great comforting words from Christ was the sorrow of the disciples at his prediction of his speedy death and long separation from them, and also his prediction that every one of them would be offended at him; that Peter would deny him three times. They were in great heaviness of heart. He had been with them for three and a half years. When they were perplexed they came to him and he relieved their perplexity of mind. When they were in trouble he delivered them; when they were in danger he guarded them. He was everything to them. When they were ignorant he taught them. They left all the world to follow him. Now in a day he is to die, and a memorial ordinance concerning that death has just been established, therefore their sorrow.

The object of these three chapters is to comfort his disciples in view of his pending separation. He says, "Let not your hearts be troubled. You are greatly cast down. But your sorrow is unreasonable. It is true I go away, but first, I go to prepare a place for you. 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 that where I am there you may be also."

Imagine a family in the old country, unable to buy a little spot of ground, unable to have a home, living in a tenant house, ground to powder under the heel of the oppressor, and groaning under the harsh stroke of the pitiless lash, hungry all the time, half clad, and the father tells them all good-by. He is going across the sea. And the wife begins to weep and the children begin to cry, and he says, "Why, it is true that I am going away; I will be gone a long time, but I am going to prepare a place for you where you can have a home of your own; where you will be relieved from all the burdens of this life here." We can see the comforting power of that thought, and above all things we must remember this, that as our conception of heaven is vague, so will our comfort on earth be unsubstantial. When our conception of heaven is clear and When I can read my title clear To mansions in the skies, I’ll bid farewell to every fear And wipe my weeping eyes.

The miserable life that most Christians live, their guilty distance from God, arises in a great measure from the fact that hazy and indistinct are all of their ideas of the world to come, and the powers of the world to come do not get hold of them.

Dr. Chalmers, the great Presbyterian preacher, in the greatest sermon that he ever preached, on "The Expulsive Power of a New Affection," used somewhat this language, "Oh, if some island of the blessed could be loosed from its heavenly moorings and float down on the stream of time and pass just once before our view, that we might see the serenity of its skies and inhale the fragrance of its flowers, and catch the sheen of the apparel of its inhabitants, and be enchanted by the inexpressibly sweet melodies and songs of that glorious country, then never again would we be satisfied with this world."

In other scriptures the thought that heaven is a place is clearly presented. That is what upheld Abraham: "He sought a city which hath foundations whose builder and maker is God." And all of the Old Testament saints by faith declared that they sought a country, that is, a heavenly country. That they were only pilgrims and sojourners here, and so we must fix this thought in our minds, that every finite being must have a locality. Only the infinite is omnipresent, can be everywhere. An angel is finite. An angel must have a place. The soul is finite; it must have a locality. When it leaves the body it must have another locality. Notice how Paul speaks about that thought, and what a great comfort it has always been: "We know that if the earthly house of our tabernacle be dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens." Notice how sweet that thought was, as Christ presented it to the dying thief: "Today shalt thou be with me in paradise." A place prepared – prepared for a prepared people.

As Jesus goes to fix up a grand room to be our own in the mansions of his Father above, and then promises to come back after us and take us where he is and give us our place up there, doesn’t that help to soften the sorrow of the temporary separation, that being the object of his going? When he says again, "I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also," it is a great mistake to attribute that exclusively to the final advent of our Lord, for at the final advent of our Lord he doesn’t come for the souls of any of us who die; he brings them with him. He comes indeed for our bodies and for Christians living at the time. We shall have already been up there; he comes bringing the spirits of the prepared saints with him at his final advent. His coming is when the Christian dies. At the station of death Jesus meets us and takes us to his place in the Father’s house. He said to the thief, "To-day," not at the final advent, "shalt thou be with me in paradise." Stephen dying, said, "Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God. Lord Jesus, receive my spirit," and he fell asleep.

Paul says, "To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord." We see the thought here of his coming. "I will come," says Jesus. "When death summons you I will be there." Just as the poor man, Lazarus, that died starving at the rich man’s gate, was instantly carried into Abraham’s bosom and Abraham is in the kingdom of heaven. So these are two of the comforts: the preparing of the place, and the coming again.

In Hebrews 12:22 Paul says, "You are coming unto Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to God the Father, to an innumerable number of angels, to the church of the first-born, which are in heaven, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant, and you will see that glorious place where the blood of sprinkling of our Lord Jesus Christ was sprinkled in the holy of holies, in heaven." It is said that the tide rises very high in the Bay of Fundy on the Atlantic coast of the western continent; that it rises seventy feet high there, and the theory is that the moon’s attraction, incalculable moonbeams, lift the mighty waves with an incalculable weight, seventy feet high.

In my own experience the brightest hour was when I got my first glorious conception of heaven, and it has been the power of my Christianity ever since. I had always said that if I ever was converted, the first book I would read would be Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, and the day I was converted, I sat down by my mother’s bed while she slept, and read that book clear through that night, and when I got to the place where Christian comes to the Delectable Mountains, from whose summit he can see the Holy City and the shining ones, and the joyous ones of the eternal world across the river, and they meet him, I could have shouted. That is why those hymns that touch the subject, the heavenly inheritance, thrill our hearts so.

I gathered a crowd around a poor, wronged, maltreated Christian woman when she was dying. She said, "I don’t ask you to come, my old friend, to show me how to die. I know; but I just want you to gather the brethren and sisters together and have them sing." We asked, "What do you want us to sing?" "Sing that song: "Oh, sing to me of heaven When I am called to die."

We sang that hymn, and when we got through, with faltering tongue she took up the last stanza and sang it herself; and as her voice sank into a whisper at the last word her soul took its exit to heaven.

I oftentimes condemn my Methodist brethren for taking out of their song book that grand old hymn, which, when I hear two thousand people sing, I can hear the rustling of the wings of angels: Have you heard, have you heard of that sunbright clime, Undimmed by sorrow and unhurt by time, Where age hath no power over the taintless frame, Where the heart is a fire and the tongue is a flame, Have you heard of that sunbright clime?

That is the way our Lord comforts. When we see by faith -the invisible things of heaven, it has an uplifting power, it has an attracting power, higher above the earth, nearer to God all the time. That is what made Jacob so happy when in his dream he saw a stairway that reached from earth to heaven, one part touching the earth and one part touching the throne of God.

At this point one of the brethren came to Jesus with a question. Jesus had just said, "Now that is the place to which I am going, and the way you know – whither I go ye know and the way ye know." He had made it all very plain in his teaching. But Thomas says, "We don’t know the way, and we don’t know where you are going." Jesus replied, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life." An old-time father, Thomas a Kempis, who wrote in Latin a great book called the Imitation of Christ, paraphrases this language of Christ, and I will give it to you in Latin and in English:

Sine via non itur: Sine veritale non cognoscitw; Sine vita non vivitur. Ego via quam sequi debes Veritas cui credere debes: Vita quam sperare debes. – IMITATIO.

Without the way, we cannot go; Without the truth, we cannot know; Without the life, we cannot live. I am the way which you ought to follow; The truth which you ought to believe; The life which you ought to hope for.

Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. And he said to Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life." Turn to Acts 4:12: "And in none other is there salvation; for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved." "I am the way and the only way." Because men are sinners, the only way to the eternal life is through Christ; because men are sinners, they are ignorant, and Christ is the only knowledge, the only revelation of the way of life, and he is the source of that life. Christ is the way to God; Christ is the revelation of God; Christ is the source of life with God. "None cometh unto the Father except by me." Philip says, "Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us." Jesus says, "Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know me, Philip? He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father." Christ is the revelation of the Father. He is the express image of his person. Christ is the visible of the invisible God.

The next comfort was in this: What had attracted these masses to Christ was his tremendous power. The elements obeyed him; fire, sea, air, earth, disease obeyed him. They saw his marvelous works, and on account of that they hated to be separated from him. Now he wants to comfort them on that ground: He says, "I go away, but you shall do greater works than I have done."

I come now to the cream of his comfort: "Ye have had me with you all along and you are just heartbroken because I am going away." Now he says, "I will not leave you orphans. I will pray the Father and he will send you another Paraclete" (which is the Greek word). Christ is one Paraclete, and he goes away, and they are sorry about his going away, and he says, "I will pray the Father that he will send you another Paraclete, and that one will stay with you: he will stay with you all the time." Now, what does the word "paraclete" mean? "Comforter" is an unfortunate translation. "Advocate" is a better rendering. Christ is our Advocate now with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous up in heaven. Now here, it is Christ: "It is expedient that I go away. You need an Advocate up yonder. You Christian people will go on sinning and struggling, and you will need an Advocate up yonder to plead for you, to deliver, to pray for you, and then I will pray the Father and he will send another Advocate, to stay with you down at this end of the line."

There was a very dear friend of mine when I was a young man, a Methodist preacher, and it is perfectly delightful to be on such spiritual terms with a man of another denomination that you can discuss the matters at issue between the two denominations with satisfaction. We had up the question, "Final perseverance, versus falling from grace," and I was digging him up on that, and he said, "Look here, I will admit that if there was any way to keep a Christian’s faith from failing he could not be lost." Well, I brought in Christ’s intercession in heaven: "I have prayed that thy faith fail not." "He ever liveth to make intercession for us." "But," he said, "here is the trouble: when a Christian goes wrong he does not feel like praying or confessing his sins, or going to church, or seeing the preacher. He is a perfect dodger, and I know if he would confess his sins and put his sins in the hands of that Advocate, he would be all right." I said, "Do you think that the Lord Jesus Christ, when he went to heaven to be our Advocate up there, left this end of the line vacant? He sent an Advocate to represent this end of the line. ’The Holy Spirit helpeth our infirmities,’ because we don’t know what to pray for, nor how to pray for it, and he takes charge of prayer in the Christian’s heart at this end of the line, and the Lord Jesus Christ takes charge of the prayer when it gets up yonder. The Spirit approves it down here, and Christ approves it in lines written in his own blood, and the Father accepts what the Spirit and Christ approve." "Well," he says, "I never had thought of it that way before. I never thought of that intercession down here on the earth before in my life." I said, "Look here; you are an old-time Texas man; did you ever in the drouthy times, when the heavens seemed like brass, and the earth like iron, and the dust choked you, and your throat swelled because you were so thirsty, riding along in the dust, see a well by the roadside with an old-fashioned pump?" "Yes." "What did you do?" "Why, I leaped down from my horse and went to the pump and commenced working the pump handle as hard as I could." "But," I said, "sometimes that would not do. It would just rattle. Why?" I asked. "Because the valves in it had become so dry and shrunken that they would not make any suction, and hence they wouldn’t pull up any water." "How did you cure that defect?" "I poured water in from above until those valves swelled out, then it brought the water." I applied: "Where do we get that water poured into the drouthy soul and backslidden Christian? He can’t get it out of the well. That is his trouble. Here is the scriptural answer: ’Thorns and briars shall come upon my people until the Spirit shall be poured out from on high, and it shall come to pass in the last days, saith the Lord, that I will pour out upon the people my Spirit.’ What is it that brings that backslider back home? He may work that pump until he gives out. He may kneel down and pray and his prayers seem not to rise above his head. He finds another Advocate down here who comes to the help of the saints on earth, and when the old pump gets dry that way it doesn’t work any until the Spirit revives it, then it sends forth refreshing streams." "Well," said he, "that is the strongest argument for the final perseverance of the saints I ever heard."

Christ says here, "I promise to send you another Advocate. What is he to do besides help you to pray? He is to teach you all things and guide you into all truth." Well, hadn’t Christ taught all things? No, many things he wanted to teach but they were not prepared. "But when the Spirit shall come, he will continue the teaching work, and every truth you need he will guide you to. You don’t understand about what has been previously taught; he will expound to you by illumination. He will open your heart to understand ; he will illumine your mind that you may see the wonderful things that are in the law of God. Not only that, but he will act on your memory. He will bring all things to your remembrance." How do you suppose the apostle John could report, over sixty years after the event, Christ’s speeches as he does, giving the very words? Why, "the Holy Spirit will bring all things to your remembrance. He will just put you right back there as if listening to Christ, right at the time, and you will catch every word." One of the powers of the Spirit is to enable the mind to remember.

What else will he do? He will be a witness of Jesus as Jesus was of the Father. Jesus never bears testimony to himself, but he bears testimony to the Father, and he tells of the Father, tears the dark veil off the Father’s loving heart, and enters into the very soul of the Father, and how much he loves you! "Now," says Christ, "I am going away. You did not understand the things I said to you awhile ago, while I was here. But when the Comforter is come, he will take the things of mine, and he will not speak of himself. He will present the things of mine to your soul in a more powerful way than I myself present them. You want me here, and you are weeping because I am going away. Now look at my three and a half years, and the comparatively small results of my preaching. But I tell you when the Spirit is come, he will convict the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment." And to show just what occurred after the Spirit did come) on the day of Pentecost, three thousand souls were converted under one sermon, because the Spirit had come. He will make the words that you preach more powerful than the words of Christ himself, when he preached, because he will touch the heart of the hearer.

Notice the next comfort. He says, "Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name. You prayed directly to the Father. Now I finish the work on earth and go up to heaven. Hereafter you shall ask whatsoever you will in my name and I will do it." What a broad statement! It has only one limitation, and that limit is safe-guarded: "If," says John, "we ask anything according to his will he heareth us." "Anything in the world according to the will of God you will get if you ask in Christ’s name. Well, how do I know what is according to the will of God? The Holy Spirit knows what is the will of God, prompts your prayers, leads you to pray for things that are according to the will of God, and therefore whatever you ask in my name under the guidance of the Spirit, receives its answer."

We now come to Christ’s great prayer (John 17). It is divided into three parts: First, what he asks for himself. Second, what he asks for his immediate disciples. Third, what he asks for those that should hereafter believe on him.

Let us see what the things are he asks for himself: "Glorify thy Son, that the Son may glorify thee." A little farther down, "Glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." He asks for himself, glorification. Glorification consists of the following things: (1) That the dead body should be made alive. (2) That it should be raised from the grave. (3) That it should be reunited to the spirit. (4) That it should be taken into the final glorious home. (5) That it should there be in possession of all the promises made concerning it. This is glorification.

When the body dies, it dies in weakness. But it is raised in strength. It dies in dishonor; it is raised in honor. It dies in corruption; it is raised in incorruption. (But Christ’s body never did see corruption.) It dies a mortal body, is raised an immortal body. It dies a natural body, and is raised a spiritual body. All this is involved in the resurrection of the dead; and the resurrection is a part of glorification – not all, but part of it.

Christ’s prayer was that he might be glorified with the glory that he had with the Father before the world was made. What a remarkable proof of the divinity of Christ; to his antecedent deity! "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." God Elohim subsisted eternally as Father Elohim, Son Elohim, and Holy Spirit Elohim. "Now, glorify me with the glory that I had with thee before the world was." He prayed that this might take place, and the reason that he prayed it is explained in Philippians: that when salvation was undertaken he could not remain on an equality with God, but laid aside his heavenly glory, stooping to take the form of a servant in the fashion of a man; that in the fashion of a man he might work out redemption, and then carry that raised and glorified man up to the throne of the universe, up to the right hand of the Father.

He prayed for them, but not for the world. I stop to ask a question: Did not Christ pray for sinners? He is not talking to them here; he is talking to Christians. "I pray for them, my disciples, whom God gave to me." My question is, Does it mean that Christ never did pray for sinners? Did Christ ever pray for sinners? On the cross Christ said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." And in Isaiah 53 it is said, "He made intercession for the transgressors." Some hyper-Calvinists claim that praying for sinners is foolish. It once went sweeping over Texas and came nigh capturing it. In sweeping away the mourners’ bench and some of the hurtful methods used in carrying on protracted meetings, it swept away the mourner himself. These heretics taught that the sinner had no right to pray for himself, and that Christians had no right to pray for him, and that Christ did not pray for them. Praying for sinners is not in print here, because this is an intercessory prayer for his people. But it does not contradict other passages, which show that he prayed for his persecutors, and all transgressors. Samuel prayed, "God -forbid that I should so sin as not to pray for them." Here he says, "Holy Father, keep in thy name them whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, etc."; that is, "Keep now the gift." When he was in the world, he kept them. He is now going out of the world. Christians are those who are kept (See 1 Peter 1:5). Then he prays, "Keep them, that they may be one, even as we are one." Here he prays for their unity. Next in order, he prays that his joy may be fulfilled in them (John 17:13). He will be satisfied when he shall see the travail of his soul. He who had been the saddest man in the world is anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows, the Good Shepherd that rejoiced over the lost sheep found. That was his joy, his express joy, and the Father’s joy. "Now, Father, I pray that they may have my joy fulfilled in them."

Notice again in John 17:15 a negative form of prayer: "I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world." He was unlike Elijah, who, getting whipped so bad he ran off into Arabia, and never stopped until he reached Mount Sinai. He thought it was better for him to die, when battle came on, better to get out of the world. "Father, I do not pray that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil one," that devil, who goes about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Keep them from him. Just like that other prayer of his, "deliver us from the evil one."

The next thought is in John 17:17: "Sanctify them through thy truth." Here we come to the doctrine of sanctification. The instrument of sanctification is the word of God, the medium is faith, "sanctified by faith that is in me," and the purpose of sanctification is to take the regenerate soul and make it more and more like God until it is perfectly like God. He prays for their sanctification, but he did not pray that they should be sanctified before the time.

The next element of the prayer is in John 17:20: "Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe on me through their word." "Whatever I have prayed for the apostles, I have prayed for everybody who through their preaching may be converted, and everybody who may believe on me through any preaching: I pray for them." This is where we come in. We may rest assured that if God numbers the hairs of our heads, he numbers the heads; and if he numbers the heads, he knows one head from another, and as he brought salvation, he prays for us. Not like the boy who said, "God bless papa, mama, little brother and sister, Aunt Jane, etc.," calling the names of the immediate friends and relatives. Not so with God; Jesus prayed for us before we were born.

I will now call attention to the last element of this prayer, John 17:24: "I will that where I am they also may be with me, that they may behold my glory." Jesus wants us to know what he prays for concerning us. He does not pray for us to be taken out of the difficulties and the battle of life, but that in these trials we may be kept from the devil, and that our sanctification may be progressing, and that we may be glorified, that we may be with him and share his inheritance. But a brother asks, "Why do certain scriptures represent the Christian as already sanctified if our sanctification is not yet complete?" This is a pertinent question. The answer is,

The word "sanctify" has several meanings: "One of them, to set apart, to consecrate, and in this sense a Christian is already sanctified.

God sees us as complete in Christ, and so beholds us as if all the blessings in Christ were already fulfilled in us: "Ye are complete in him." In this sense a Christian is reckoned already sanctified.

But in fact the full salvation secured for us by Christ is not yet fulfilled in us. We have not yet laid hold of all the things for which Christ laid hold of us (see Philippians 3:12-14). Everybody ought to read that old Puritan book by Flavel on The Methods of Grace. Sanctification is not applied like justification. Considered legally in Christ we are complete now, but in us the work commenced in regeneration must be carried on until the day of Jesus Christ.

QUESTIONS
1. What is the section, John 14-16, called, and of what does John 17 consist?

2. How many and what are the comforts set forth in these chapters?

3. What was the occasion which called forth these comforting words of Christ?

4. What is the object of these three chapters of comfort and what is the unreasonableness of their sorrow? Illustrate.

5. What is the cause of the miserable life most Christiana live and what is Dr. Chalmers’ illustration of this thought?

6. What scriptural proof that heaven is a place?

7. What coming of Jesus is referred to in John 14:1-3 and what is the comforting power of this thought?

8. What does Paul say that the Christian is coming to, what the influence of this vision on the life as illustrated by the great tides in the Bay of Fundy, what English allegory most beautifully illustrated it, and what illustration of the comfort to a dying saint?

9. What hymn mentioned in this connection and what is the first stanza?

10. What question did Thomas ask here, what was Christ’s answer and what is Kempis’ paraphrase of this language of Christ?

11. What is the meaning of "I am the way, the truth and the life," and "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father"?

12. What comfort in the "greater works" which they should do?

13. What is the greatest comfort and what the application?

14. What point illustrated by the author’s controversy with the Methodist preacher, what, in detail, the argument and illustration?

15. What great work of the Holy Spirit besides that of comforting, and what was the special application to the apostles?

16. What is the Spirit’s witnessing work, and what is the great result?

17. What is direction for prayer in this connection, what is the comfort of it, what is the limitation, and how may we know it?

18. What the three parts of Christ’s prayer in John 17?

19. What does he ask for himself, and of what does it consist?

20. What proof, in this connection, of the divinity of Christ and why did Christ thus pray?

21. Did Christ ever pray for sinners, what proof, what hurtful teaching on this question, and why is not the statement of Christ here applicable?

22. What does he ask for his immediate disciples, both negatively and positively?

23. What instrument, medium, and purpose of sanctification?

24. What does he ask for them who should believe on him afterward?

25. If our sanctification is not yet complete why do certain, ecripturci represent us as already sanctified?