Trust & Obey, Week 1: John 3 & John 14, Part 4
It’s now just hours before Jesus will be forcibly taken from his disciples, and less than a day before he will be killed. In John 14, Jesus is having a final conversation with his disciples, trying to prepare them for what will rock their world. Of course, they cannot imagine what is coming and how it will make them feel. But still, Jesus is trying to prepare them. But as we learned in the previous post, Jesus is being somewhat mysterious, evidence by the questions that his disciples ask him. They are not getting it. Jesus needs to clear things up, and he uses the word “believe”. Look at his response to Philip in verses 9–11.
“Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.”
Believe, believe, believe. Jesus is saying, “You saw the works I did, the miracles. How else could I be a miracle worker, except from the Father in me doing the work.” Because of the clear evidence of those miracles, Jesus is saying that the proper response to the evidence is to fully believe in him.
Then he comes to a key point about belief, and the nature of belief, to show that it is not just intellectual assent. In verse 12 he makes this clear when he says, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing,”
Belief in him, total reliance on him, will show itself because that person will do what Jesus did.
To put it another way, look at what he says in verse 15, “If you love me, keep my commands.”
Jesus is being abundantly clear here. We show what we believe by how we live our lives. We show our reliance on Jesus by doing the things he did.
We live a particular kind of way. The way of Jesus. The way we live shows what we believe. We do not need to believe perfectly or live perfectly to enter his kingdom. Instead, we live by trusting in Jesus, and we show that trust by striving to live like he lived. His ways will very often be counter-cultural, sacrificial, not always the easiest road. But as we live his ways, the result will be trust and reliance on him.
And as we follow his kingdom way of life, we are not alone. It is not as if we are striving to live like Jesus all by ourselves. Jesus continues, “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—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.”
And that is exactly what happened. The Holy Spirit came, which we read about in Acts 2, and the Spirit helps us become more like and live like Jesus. Notice in John 14:17, Jesus tells us that the Spirit lives in us. God in us. It is amazing to think about.
What the idea that God’s Spirit lives in us can also be mysterious. If you are a Christian, do you feel God living in you? Maybe sometimes yes. Maybe sometimes no. Jesus’ disciples had likely never felt that, because the Holy Spirit had not yet arrived. So once again, Jesus needs to do some more explaining. We’ll hear his further explanation in the next post.
Photo by Wylly Suhendra on Unsplash
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