¹ “All this I have told you so that you will not fall away. ² They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God. ³ They will do such things because they · have not known the Father or me. ⁴ I have told you this, so that when their time comes you will remember that I warned you about them. I did not tell you this from the beginning because I was with you,
He grew them up in the Father’s love. When the hour came, Christ sent them out with the Spirit right beside them.
Thoughts
- So you will not fall away (1) Jesus has just named the worst: the synagogue door shut behind them, and men who will kill them believing they serve God. Then he tells them why he said it. The word behind fall away is skandalizō, to trip over something you never saw in the path. He worries less about the weight of the suffering than about the surprise of it. The first time the door shuts, they will be tempted to decide that Jesus was wrong, or that they were wrong about him. We can lose a church family and still know the Father. We can even lose our lives and still know the Son. What undoes us is the lie that suffering proves the love was never real. So Jesus tells them ahead of time, and he has already promised that the Spirit will stand with them (15:26). Every verb in these verses belongs to him: he told them, he warned them, he was with them. He holds on to them before they have to hold on to anything. ➤ Jesus tells them that to suffer for his name is to follow him, and not to lose him.
- Offered as worship (2–3) The word for service in (2) is latreia, the worship offered at the temple altar. The men who kill the disciples will believe they are bringing God a sacrifice, and the book of Acts gives them a face. When Stephen is stoned, the witnesses lay their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul (Acts 7:58), who later admits he cast his vote when believers were put to death (Acts 26:10). Saul had the résumé of a faultless Pharisee (Phil 3:5–6), and every step toward the God of Israel carried him further from the Son. That is (3): they have not known the Father or me. Then Jesus met him on the Damascus road and asked, why do you persecute me? (Acts 9:4). Paul came to count that résumé as loss next to knowing Christ (Phil 3:8). He took the synagogue lashes himself (2 Cor 11:24), and at the end he called his life a drink offering poured out (2 Tim 4:6). ➤ Christ shows that zeal without the Son leads away from the Father.
- Because I was with you (4) A good father doesn’t sit his four-year-old down and tell her everything that could go wrong in her life. While he is in the house, the hard things of the world hit him first. He keeps her, and he stands in the doorway. When she is grown and packing to leave, he tells her the truth about the world she is walking into, because he loves her and because he will not always be standing there. Jesus has done this for three years. When the leaders threw the man born blind out of the synagogue, Jesus went and found him (9:34–35). When the wind rose on the lake, he came to them across the water (6:19). When men in Judea picked up stones, they picked them up for him (10:31). Now the cross is hours away and the blows will start falling on his friends, so he tells them. He waited as long as love would let him, and he sends them out with the Spirit at their side. ➤ Jesus releases them because they’ve grown up, not because he’s letting go of them.
Reflection
- Jesus sent them out with the Spirit beside them. Where do you need to remember that you are not going it alone?
