John 13-17 contains the final teachings of Jesus’ life before His crucifixion. It was a very difficult time for Jesus because from that point on, Jesus’ disciples would effectively be on their own… except they would not be left on their own. For three years, Jesus had trained His disciples to be teachers and preachers of a new message and to lead a new Kingdom, but none of them got it. None of them would understand what Jesus had been saying all along for another fifty days, and this was the hardest message for them. Because Jesus was leaving and they were going to suffer greatly. In this post, I’ll cover His teachings in John 13-15.
After washing His disciples’ feet, Jesus told everyone that He was about to be betrayed. Then Jesus immediately identified Judas by giving him the dipped bread and told him to do what he was about to do. Once Judas left, no one suspected him. Judas had the money box and suspected Jesus was sent to get something. With that, Jesus announced that He was leaving, and where He was going, they could not come. This was a total heartbreak for the disciples. They knew Jesus was their Messiah, their Savior, and they loved Him and knew He had everything they could ever need and had nowhere else to go. Peter said he would go anywhere, including dying for Jesus, and Jesus simply sighed and told Peter he would deny Him three times that very night.
But Jesus then began to comfort the disciples by telling them what He was going to do while away: prepare a place for them and then come back for them, and they would know where and how to meet Him. Thomas and Philip tried to get clarification on this and never understood that Jesus was not merely the Messiah, but was one with God; by knowing Jesus, they knew the Father. But then Jesus said He would not leave them alone but would give them something far better than His physical presence: the Holy Spirit. And it would be the Holy Spirit who would do more than just comfort them.
The Holy Spirit is called “the Helper,” the “parakletos,” and is so much more than the “helper” that Eve was to Adam. The Holy Spirit is the very engine that makes the car called mankind operate as intended. It is the Holy Spirit who teaches us how to love one another. It is the Holy Spirit who teaches how to obey the Lord. It is the Holy Spirit who overcomes the world and enables us to rise above our culture and live the supernatural life.
I want to dwell on this for a moment because we have a severe problem in our time today. We have a massive movement of making a huge emphasis on the Holy Spirit that attributes practically anything and everything to Him, no matter how ridiculous it is. And we have a reaction to that movement that practically denies anything to do with Him. The Charismatics very well acknowledge the action of the supernatural, but they rarely check what they say or think against Scripture to know what is actually Him or not. But the Reformed cessationists, while doing an excellent job at checking this movement, all but practically deny the actual nature of the supernatural in the process. Many truly think that the nature of spiritual warfare is ONLY regarding teachings, and they miss the mark on that one. What they end up with if they are not careful is a very well-constructed theology, but one that is dead. Both sides have a severe problem: no real power.
The world does not give them the time of day. The world has always had to respect the true Church when she has had power, often to the point of taking it very seriously to try to shut it down. But with only a few exceptions, the government has been very subtle in its opposition to the church. They go after Creationists because that is where a severe threat to worldly ideals lies, but they aren’t going after the church as a whole. Not openly. Just gradually setting things up so that the Church will not raise her head above an accepted level. And I am asking: Why has the church allowed this? And I have to ask myself, why have I been part of “keeping the status quo”? We are to live supernatural lives, and we are satisfied with pure academic lives. That’s not what Jesus intended. Jesus intended for us to be a force that no one could stop, and the source of that force is the Holy Spirit.
After that, Jesus emphasizes making sure our source is Him. We must be attached to the vine and get our source of life from the vine; otherwise, we are merely dead branches, and dead wood is only good for the fire. And worse are branches that don’t produce fruit and are just wasting the vine’s energy. So those will be pruned. It’s a severe warning that those who are supposed to be Christians can’t just get a free ride. But those who engage in the Father’s mission will have a joy beyond anything that we can describe. The mission we are sent to do cannot be done without our power source: the Holy Spirit.
Jesus repeatedly emphasizes to the disciples to love one another. He says this many times in this final teaching. Jesus calls them “friends,” and for God to call you a friend is something special. Never forget, He is still the King, and we are still His servants. We see throughout Acts and the Epistles that the Apostles never lost sight of this. They never forget that Jesus was King and they were but His servants, yet Jesus called them His friends. And that is a severe problem with the world, because the world hates Jesus.
The world has been in rebellion against God from the very start. The world does not want God to rule, and the ultimate reason is that Jesus points out that they are sinners who deserve judgment. The world hates us because we are no longer of them, of their same likeness. We are representatives of God, and they hate God. So why would we want to curry their favor? Now, understand this. They don’t hate God because of ignorance of Him. They hate God because they DO know Him. They DO know that God exists, and they hate Him; they hate God without a cause. But when we have the Holy Spirit, we need to not fear them or their silly arguments or their attempts to weaponize the law against us. Let them try. We go preach Jesus because that is what a Holy Spirit-filled person will do.
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