¹⁵ “If you love me, keep my commands. ¹⁶ And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— ¹⁷ the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. ¹⁸ I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. ¹⁹ Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. ²⁰ On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. · ²¹ Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.” ²² Then Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, “But, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?” ²³ Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. ²⁴ Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.
You may live like an orphan, but
He is always your Father.
Thoughts
- The Advocate Jesus Asks For (15–17) Understanding turns on the sentence order of the first verse. Some Bibles read (15) as a command, others as a statement, and the Greek carries either. The paragraph settles it: Jesus pairs loving and keeping three more times, at (21), (23) and (24), and love comes first every time. So (15) is not the price to receive what follows; it describes what happens in a man who loves him. He will ask the Father, and the Father will give another Advocate, allos (ἄλλος), another of the same kind. Paraklētos (παράκλητος) is a courtroom word for counsel called to your side, and its only other appearance, 1 Joh 2:1, is Jesus himself. The disciples already have an Advocate and are given a second on the same side, asked for by the Son himself. Then the verdict: the world cannot receive him because it neither sees nor knows him. Two small words carry the future of the church: he is beside them now, and he will be in them. ➤ Jesus says the world is not able to receive the Spirit of truth—not unwilling, unable.
- Christ Will Not Leave Your Orphans (18-21) Orphanous (ὀρφανούς) means a child whose father has died. He had called them little children a few minutes earlier, and now he takes the thing they fear most and negates it, hours before they all run. Then, in the middle of Jesus’ arrest (18:9), John stops the story to say that Jesus kept his word: of those whom you gave me I have lost not one. Think of the younger son in Luke 15, who spent the inheritance and would have said that he had no father. He had made himself an orphan; but he never was one. His father saw him while he was still a long way off, which means he had been watching the road. The verb here is present tense, I am coming to you, and the ground is his own life, not their endurance: because I live, you also will live. Verse 21 adds a promise easy to blow past: I will show him myself. In Exodus 33 Moses asked God to show him himself and was told no, because no man can see God’s face and live. Jesus speaks the same word, and in his mouth it is a promise rather than a request, made to anyone who loves him. ➤ You are always his son: not because you keep your word, but because he keeps his.
- The Home Christ Makes (22-24) Judas, (not Iscariot), asks the quiet part out loud: how will you show yourself to us and not to the world? Jesus never answers the not-the-world half; he answers the how, and the answer is a home: my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Monē (μονή) appears twice in NT, here and 21 vv. earlier, where his Father’s house has many rooms. He prepares a place for us there; he comes to make a place of us here. The Greek says they make that home for themselves, so this is not a visit that is paid to us; we are the house they mean to live in. Then (24) adds that the word being kept is not his own but the Father’s, so we don’t get the final say about what our lives are for. ➤ The word for the room he prepares in his Father’s house is the word for the home he makes in a man. He is not visiting, he is moving in.
Reflection
- If it’s true that it’s God’s word and not yours that makes you a son, what have you been doing to keep your own record clean? What would you lose if you stopped?
