1Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. 2In 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. 3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. 4And where I go you know, and the way you know. 5Thomas said to Him, Lord, we do not know where You go, and how can we know the way? 6Jesus said to him, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. 7If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him. 8Philip said to Him, Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us. 9Jesus said to him, Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how do you say, Show us the Father? 10Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak from Myself; but the Father who abides in Me does the works. 11Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me; or if not, believe Me on account of the works themselves. 12Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes into Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father. 13And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14If you ask anything in My name, I will do it. 15If you love Me, keep My commandments. 16And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may remain with you forever; 17the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He abides with you and will be in you. 18I will not leave you orphans; I am coming to you. 19Yet a little while and the world sees Me no more, but you see Me. Because I live, you will live also. 20In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. 21He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and make Myself known to him. 22Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, Lord, how is it that You will make Yourself known to us, and not at all to the world? 23Jesus answered and said to him, If anyone loves Me, he will keep My Word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him. 24He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the Word which you hear is not Mine but the Father's who sent Me. 25These things I have spoken to you while yet being present with you. 26But 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 things that I said to you. 27Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. 28You have heard Me say to you, I am going away and coming back to you. If you loved Me, you would rejoice because I said, I am going to the Father, for My Father is greater than I. 29And now I have told you before it happens, that when it does come to pass, you may believe. 30I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me. 31But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father commanded Me, thus I do. Arise, let us go from here.
Jamieson Fausset Brown Bible Commentary 1 DISCOURSE AT THE TABLE, AFTER SUPPER. (John 14:1-31)
Let not your heart be troubled, &c.--What myriads of souls have not these opening words cheered, in deepest gloom, since first they were uttered!
ye believe in God--absolutely.
believe also in me--that is, Have the same trust in Me. What less, and what else, can these words mean? And if so, what a demand to make by one sitting familiarly with them at the supper table! Compare the saying in
Jn 5:17, for which the Jews took up stones to stone Him, as "making himself equal with God" (
Jn 14:18). But it is no transfer of our trust from its proper Object; it is but the concentration of our trust in the Unseen and Impalpable One upon His Own Incarnate Son, by which that trust, instead of the distant, unsteady, and too often cold and scarce real thing it otherwise is, acquires a conscious reality, warmth, and power, which makes all things new. This is Christianity in brief.
2 In my Father's house are many mansions--and so room for all, and a place for each.
if not, I would have told you--that is, I would tell you so at once; I would not deceive you.
I go to prepare a place for you--to obtain for you a right to be there, and to possess your "place."
3 I will come again and receive you unto myself--strictly, at His Personal appearing; but in a secondary and comforting sense, to each individually. Mark again the claim made:--to come again to receive His people to Himself, that where He is there they may be also. He thinks it ought to be enough to be assured that they shall be where He is and in His keeping.
4 whither I go ye know . . . Thomas saith, Lord, we know not whither thou guest . . . Jesus saith, I am the way, &c.--By saying this, He meant rather to draw out their inquiries and reply to them. Christ is "THE WAY" to the Father--"no man cometh unto the Father but by Me"; He is "THE TRUTH" of all we find in the Father when we get to Him, "For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily" (
Col 2:9), and He is all "THE LIFE" that shall ever flow to us and bless us from the Godhead thus approached and thus manifested in Him--"this is the true God and eternal life" (
1Jn 5:20).
7 from henceforth--now, or from this time, understand.
8 The substance of this passage is that the Son is the ordained and perfect manifestation of the Father, that His own word for this ought to His disciples to be enough; that if any doubts remained His works ought to remove them (see on
Jn 10:37); but yet that these works of His were designed merely to aid weak faith, and would be repeated, nay exceeded, by His disciples, in virtue of the power He would confer on them after His departure. His miracles the apostles wrought, though wholly in His name and by His power, and the "greater" works--not in degree but in kind--were the conversion of thousands in a day, by His Spirit accompanying them.
13 whatsoever ye . . . ask in my name--as Mediator.
that will I do--as Head and Lord of the kingdom of God. This comprehensive promise is emphatically repeated in
Jn 14:14.
15 If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, &c.--This connection seems designed to teach that the proper temple for the indwelling Spirit of Jesus is a heart filled with that love to Him which lives actively for Him, and so this was the fitting preparation for the promised gift.
he shall give you another Comforter--a word used only by John; in his Gospel with reference to the Holy Spirit, in his First Epistle (
1Jn 2:1), with reference to Christ Himself. Its proper sense is an "advocate," "patron," "helper." In this sense it is plainly meant of Christ (
1Jn 2:1), and in this sense it comprehends all the comfort as well as aid of the Spirit's work. The Spirit is here promised as One who would supply Christ's own place in His absence.
that he may abide with you for ever--never go away, as Jesus was going to do in the body.
17 whom the world cannot receive, &c.--(See
1Co 2:14).
he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you--Though the proper fulness of both these was yet future, our Lord, by using both the present and the future, seems plainly to say that they already had the germ of this great blessing.
18 I will not leave you comfortless--in a bereaved and desolate condition; or (as in Margin) "orphans."
I will come to you--"I come" or "am coming" to you; that is, plainly by the Spirit, since it was to make His departure to be no bereavement.
19 world seeth--beholdeth.
me no more, but ye see--behold.
me--His bodily presence, being all the sight of Him which "the world" ever had, or was capable of, it "beheld Him no more" after His departure to the Father; but by the coming of the Spirit, the presence of Christ was not only continued to His spiritually enlightened disciples, but rendered far more efficacious and blissful than His bodily presence had been before the Spirit's coming.
because I live--not "shall live," only when raised from the dead; for it is His unextinguishable, divine life of which He speaks, in view of which His death and resurrection were but as shadows passing over the sun's glorious disk. (Compare
Lc 24:5;
Ap 1:18, "the Living One"). And this grand saying Jesus uttered with death immediately in view. What a brightness does this throw over the next clause, "ye shall live also!" "Knowest thou not," said LUTHER to the King of Terrors, "that thou didst devour the Lord Christ, but wert obliged to give Him back, and wert devoured of Him? So thou must leave me undevoured because I abide in Him, and live and suffer for His name's sake. Men may hunt me out of the world--that I care not for--but I shall not on that account abide in death. I shall live with my Lord Christ, since I know and believe that He liveth!" (quoted in STIER).
20 At that day--of the Spirit's coming.
ye shall know that I am in my Father, ye in me, I in you--(See on
Jn 17:22-
Jn 17:23).
21 He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, &c.--(See on
Jn 14:15).
my Father and I will love him--Mark the sharp line of distinction here, not only between the Divine Persons but the actings of love in Each respectively, towards true disciples.
22 Judas saith . . . not Iscariot--Beautiful parenthesis this! The traitor being no longer present, we needed not to be told that this question came not from him. But it is as if the Evangelist had said, "A very different Judas from the traitor, and a very different question from any that he would have put. Indeed [as one in STIER says], we never read of Iscariot that he entered in any way into his Master's words, or ever put a question even of rash curiosity (though it may be he did, but that nothing from him was deemed fit for immortality in the Gospels but his name and treason)."
how . . . manifest thyself to us, and not to the world--a most natural and proper question, founded on
Jn 14:19, though interpreters speak against it as Jewish.
23 we will come and make our abode with him--Astonishing statement! In the Father's "coming" He "refers to the revelation of Him as a Father to the soul, which does not take place till the Spirit comes into the heart, teaching it to cry, Abba, Father" [OLSHAUSEN]. The "abode" means a permanent, eternal stay! (Compare
Lv 26:11-
Lv 26:12;
Ez 37:26-
Ez 37:27;
2Co 6:16; and contrast
Jr 14:8).
25 he shall teach you all things, and bring all to . . . remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you--(See on
Jn 14:15;
Jn 14:17). As the Son came in the Father's name, so the Father shall send the Spirit in My name, says Jesus, that is, with like divine power and authority to reproduce in their souls what Christ taught them, "bringing to living consciousness what lay like slumbering germs in their minds" [OLSHAUSEN]. On this rests the credibility and ultimate divine authority of THE GOSPEL HISTORY. The whole of what is here said of THE SPIRIT is decisive of His divine personality. "He who can regard all the personal expressions, applied to the Spirit in these three chapters ('teaching,' 'reminding,' 'testifying,' 'coming,' 'convincing,' 'guiding,' 'speaking,' 'hearing,' 'prophesying,' 'taking') as being no other than a long drawn-out figure, deserves not to be recognized even as an interpreter of intelligible words, much less an expositor of Holy Scripture" [STIER].
27 Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you--If
Jn 14:25-
Jn 14:26 sounded like a note of preparation for drawing the discourse to a close, this would sound like a farewell. But oh, how different from ordinary adieus! It is a parting word, but of richest import, the customary "peace" of a parting friend sublimed and transfigured. As "the Prince of Peace" (
Es 9:6) He brought it into flesh, carried it about in His Own Person ("My peace") died to make it ours, left it as the heritage of His disciples upon earth, implants and maintains it by His Spirit in their hearts. Many a legacy is "left" that is never "given" to the legatee, many a gift destined that never reaches its proper object. But Christ is the Executor of His own Testament; the peace He "leaves" He "gives"; Thus all is secure.
not as the world giveth--in contrast with the world, He gives sincerely, substantially, eternally.
28 If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father, for my Father is greater than I--These words, which Arians and Socinians perpetually quote as triumphant evidence against the proper Divinity of Christ, really yield no intelligible sense on their principles. Were a holy man on his deathbed, beholding his friends in tears at the prospect of losing him, to say, "Ye ought rather to joy than weep for me, and would if ye really loved me, "the speech would be quite natural. But if they should ask him, why joy at his departure was more suitable than sorrow, would they not start back with astonishment, if not horror, were he to reply, "Because my Father is greater than I?" Does not this strange speech from Christ's lips, then, presuppose such teaching on His part as would make it extremely difficult for them to think He could gain anything by departing to the Father, and make it necessary for Him to say expressly that there was a sense in which He could do so? Thus, this startling explanation seems plainly intended to correct such misapprehensions as might arise from the emphatic and reiterated teaching of His proper equality with the Father--as if so Exalted a Person were incapable of any accession by transition from this dismal scene to a cloudless heaven and the very bosom of the Father--and by assuring them that this was not the case, to make them forget their own sorrow in His approaching joy.
30 Hereafter I will not talk much with you--"I have a little more to say, but My work hastens apace, and the approach of the adversary will cut it short."
for the prince of this world--(See on
Jn 12:31).
cometh--with hostile intent, for a last grand attack, having failed in His first formidable assault (
Lc 4:1-
Lc 4:13) from which he "departed [only] for a season" (
Jn 14:13).
and hath nothing in me--nothing of His own--nothing to fasten on. Glorious saying! The truth of it is, that which makes the Person and Work of Christ the life of the world (
Heb 9:14;
1Jn 3:5;
2Co 5:21).
31 But that the world may know that I love the Father, &c.--The sense must be completed thus: "But to the Prince of the world, though he has nothing in Me, I shall yield Myself up even unto death, that the world may know that I love and obey the Father, whose commandment it is that I give My life a ransom for many."
Arise, let us go hence--Did they then, at this stage of the discourse, leave the supper room, as some able interpreters conclude? If so, we think our Evangelist would have mentioned it: see
Jn 18:1, which seems clearly to intimate that they then only left the upper room. But what do the words mean if not this? We think it was the dictate of that saying of earlier date, "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!"--a spontaneous and irrepressible expression of the deep eagerness of His spirit to get into the conflict, and that if, as is likely, it was responded to somewhat too literally by the guests who hung on His lips, in the way of a movement to depart, a wave of His hand, would be enough to show that He had yet more to say ere they broke up; and that disciple, whose pen was dipped in a love to his Master which made their movements of small consequence save when essential to the illustration of His words, would record this little outburst of the Lamb hastening to the slaughter, in the very midst of His lofty discourse; while the effect of it, if any, upon His hearers, as of no consequence, would naturally enough be passed over.
