John 14-16

Here starteth the commentary.

14:2: "In 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."

An intriguing hypothetical: if there were no mansions in heaven, Jesus would have told us so. I wonder what that would've looked like. "Sorry, guys, you'll have to share this celestial duplex." And what does it mean that Jesus goes to prepare a place for us? Is He going to physically prepare the mansions? Is He referring to His ensuing death and resurrection that opens up a means for us to enter His Father's house?

14:5-7: After hearing about heaven, Doubting Thomas asks how to get there, and Jesus responds that He is the way, and not only the way, but the truth and the life. A lot of Christian theology centers around either Jesus being the nexus to God or Jesus Himself being the epicenter of the faith, and here Jesus equates the two with Himself.

14:18: In fact, when Jesus reassures the disciples, "I will not leave your orphans; I will come to you," He implies that He is their father, again equating Himself with the Father.

14:28: Jesus states, "My Father is greater than I." It's hard to say whether this sentence is a theological inequality or a statement of submission to and worship of the Father. We usually like to put Jesus and the Father on the same plane, if not merge them together as an Echad, but clearly there are separate roles that Jesus identifies.

14:11: If we don't believe that Jesus and the Father are one, then, Jesus says, at least "believe Me for the sake of the works themselves." This reasoning is reminiscent of the case where he healed the blind man, who commented afterward, "Whether He is a sinner or not, I do not know. One thing I know: that though I was blind, now I see." (John 9:25) What a powerful personal statement! Even if we don't grasp salvation in all its theological complexity and mystery, we can definitely grasp the understanding that once we were dead and blind, and now we've been granted life and vision.

14:19: "Because I live, you will live also." Foreshadowing of the truth of resurrection.

14:10, 11, 20, 30: Several times, Jesus uses the preposition "in" to describe relationships: "I am in the Father and the Father in Me." "At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you." It sounds like a wacked-out game of Apples to Apples. Jesus explains the "in" relationship in more detail in the first half of John 15, describing Himself as the vine and His disciples as branches and reminding us of how the two collaborate to bear fruit.

15:14: "You are My friends if you do whatever I command you." Exactly how I feel about my own friendships. No one seems to appreciate the sentiment.

15:15: "No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father, I have made known to you." And then, 16:12: "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now." Confusing and seemingly contradictory statements. Probably shouldn't read too much into the antithetical; just take them for the sentiment that each conveys: the fact that Jesus calls us friend and confides in us, and the fact that He doesn't want to give us more than we can bear.

15:16: "You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you." Score one for the Reformed Christians.

15:19: "Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you." A good reminder that conflict and friction with the culture and society around us is not something gone awry, but a consequence expected with following Christ in a world that rejects Him. Not that we should seek conflict and suffering, but we shouldn't shy away from it.

15:22, 24: Jesus points out that if He had not spoken to the evildoers, "they would have no sin," but "now they have no excuse for their sin." The reflexive reaction of the reader is, well, why did You come into the world if we wouldn't have had sin otherwise? But the question misses the point: the point of Jesus coming into the world isn't that He revealed our sin, uncovering our disparity and distance from God, but rather the reconciliation and redemption and grace He came to offer.

16:3: "These things they will do to you because they have not known the Father nor Me." Rumored to have been Al Gore's quoted favorite Bible verse.

16:7-16: Jesus gives His disciples some explication as to what exactly the Holy Spirit (the Helper) will do and what His role is: to convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment; to guide us to all truth; to glorify both Jesus and the Father; and to take what is Jesus's and declare it to us. It seems that what we commonly term our "conscience" can be encompassed in the role of the Holy Spirit that is supposed to indwell in Christians.

16:25: Jesus notes that up to this point, He has spoken in figurative language, but the time is coming when He will speak plainly about the Father. Since the remaining chapters in John are about His crucifixion and resurrection, we can conclude that this time has not yet come. Jesus mentions that the disciples will not see Him for "a little while" because He will have gone to the Father, and when asked what "a little while" means, Jesus compares the timeline to a woman giving birth: first a period of anguish and pain and then a time of joy and exultation. The timing of Biblical events and prophesy is one of the most stupefying aspects of reading the Bible.

What a crazy set of chapters. The reader is constantly challenged to either look for consistency or look for Jesus.

Here endeth the commentary.