John: Chapters 13-21
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JohnSurvey of the New Testament: The Gospels & ActsWinter 2005 |
[Previous: The Testimony of the Son of God] [Next: Bibliogrpaphy]
It is Thursday evening of the Passion Week, and He has gathered with His disciples for the Passover feast (13:1a). The prior Sunday Jesus entered Jerusalem with a large crowd proclaiming Him as Messiah (12:12ff). But Jesus is coming to be glorified not as they expect, but as a suffering servant (12:27). For Jesus, the way to glory is through the role of a servant, not a king.
Jesus knows that He is about to depart, and because of His love for the disciples, He sets forth to teach them the way to glory (13:1b). But Jesus is also aware that one of His disciples is about to betray Him (13:2). Nonetheless, Jesus picks up a towel, takes off his robe and begins his lesson with an illustration.
The washing of feet would have been a normal practice in this day. When you wear sandals in the dusty streets of Jerusalem, you feet get dirty. It would be the normal practice for a servant of the host to come around with a basin and a towel and wash the feet of the guests before the meal starts. In this case, however, there is no servant; so, Jesus takes the role of the servant and washes the disciples' feet (13:5).
Peter is offended by this situation. He knows that Jesus is the Messiah, and therefore should not be taking the role of the servant. Jesus, however, patiently responds that he will soon understand this is an object lesson and it is okay for Him to do this (13:7).
Peter becomes indignant at this point, stating that He will not allow Jesus to stoop to such a low level (13:8). Jesus tells Him that if he doesn't let Him wash his feet, that He will have nothing to do with Peter. While this discussion is in the immediate context of the washing of feet, there is a foreshadowing to the upcoming death of Christ. If Peter does not allow Jesus to be servant, He is not allowing Jesus to die for him on the cross, and therefore he can not be in relationship with Jesus. Some refuse the tenants of Christianity because the picture of Messiah as a suffering servant is offensive and degrading to their image of God. Yet, like Peter, unless we let Jesus be our servant, we can have nothing to do with Him.
Peter, in his exuberance, asks Jesus then to wash his whole body (13:9). Jesus assures Him that this is not necessary, for he is already clean. The comparison to the washing of our sins here is clear. Those who have believed in Christ have had their sins forgiven. We have bathed. However, in our daily walk we continue to sin and are in need of our feet to be washed. We are still forgiven in the macro sense, but have sullied our feet such that we still need to confess and be forgiven as we walk through the dirty streets of our daily life.
However, Jesus says, “not all of you are clean.” Jesus has washed Judas feet along with the disciples, knowing full well that in just a few short hours this man would betray Him.
The lesson is simple: if Jesus is willing to take the role of the servant and wash the disciples' feet, so then how much more ought the disciples be willing to humble themselves and serve one another as servants. Jesus is illustrating that the path to glory is as a humble servant motivated by love and by the desire to meet the needs of others.
Jesus had plenty of reasons not to take the role of servant:
After dismissing Judas, Jesus continues his lesson on the path to glory through a teaching known as the Upper Room Discourse. The discourse begins with Jesus foretelling of His death an His departure, and includes commandments to love on another and abide in Him. He then concludes the discourse with a prayer to the Father.
Jesus begins the discourse with an announcement that He is about to be glorified, and that God will be glorified through Him. But this path to glory will be a path on which the disciples can not follow Him. Therefore, while He is gone, Jesus has a new commandment: love one another.
Peter is so struck by the announcement that Jesus will be leaving them and that they can't follow that he ignores the point of Jesus announcement, namely that they love one another. Instead he asks the obvious question, “Lord, where are you going?”
Jesus reiterates that where he is going they can't follow right now, for He must take the path of glory alone. But later, they would follow him down this path. Peter, in his typically impulsive style, boldly states that he will follow, even if it cost him his life. Jesus answers that, not, indeed Peter will deny Him three times before the morning.
Jesus words have troubled the disciples. But Jesus wants to assure them that it will be alright. Yes, he is going to leave them, but they are not to worry, for He is going to prepare a place for them, and then He will come back and they will dwell with Him in His Father's house. For you see, says Jesus, you already know the way.
Thomas, who is still thinking of the immediate, doesn't have a clue where Jesus is going or what is about to happen. So he asks, “How will we know the way.”
Indeed, the disciples may not know where Jesus is going specifically, but if they are looking for the path to the Father, indeed they know the way, for they know Jesus, for Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth & the life. No man comes to the father but by me.”
Philip request something which seems ignorant to us now, but probably was seen by Philip as an earnest and legitimate request. He asks to see the Father, for that is indeed enough for Him. He only wants to connect with God and to have relationship with Him.
Jesus response reveals what seems to almost be a frustration with Philip. It's as if Jesus responds by saying, “what do you think I've been doing for the last 3 years? Were you not with me all this time? Everything I've been doing up to this point is a revelation of the Father.”
All of this question and answering, however, has been a rabbit-trail in Jesus discourse; so He returns to His primary message of encouragement in verse 15: love one another.
Furthermore, while Jesus will be leaving them, He is not going to leave them alone, for He will ask the Father to send the Spirit. That Spirit will dwell with them and will show them the truth of what Jesus is saying. The disciples will know where Jesus has gone (i.e. to the Father), for the Spirit will teach them that. However, the world, which does not have the Spirit, will not see Jesus any longer.
Judas (not Iscariot) has realized that when Jesus says He is about to be glorified, He is not not the Messianic glory he had in mind. Jesus is saying He is going back to the Father, but the world won't know what happened to Him. This troubles Judas, and He asks Jesus, “Hey, what happened to the plan? What changed?”
Jesus seems to ignore Judas altogether, and gets back to His original point: love one another!
One might think Jesus is frustrated with the disciples for missing His point. However, He is not concerned, because after He is gone the Holy Spirit will remind them of all the things He has taught them. They may not understand what He is saying now, but they will understand, for the Spirit will show them.
Jesus has been sharing this with them because when He suffers and dies, He wants them to remember that this is all part of the plan (14:29), and that they would have peace, not fear (13:27).
At this point it appears they leave the Upper Room and they head for the Garden of Gethsemane. (14:31b0
As they are walking Jesus gives an illustration of His relationship with His disciples. He is the vine, they are the branches and the Father is the vinedresser. If the branch remains connected it will bear fruit. If it is not connected, it can not bear fruit (15:4-6). If the branch does bear fruit, then the Father prunes the branch so that it can bear even more fruit (15:2b).
However if the branch is connected, but it is not bearing fruit, the vinedresser “takes away” (15:2a). This word literally means “to lift up [1]” The picture here is not the vine dresser cutting off the branch and taking it away from the vine, but lifting the vine off the ground and hanging it again so it can begin to be productive.
This is all a picture of Jesus command to the disciples to “abide” in Him (15:4). To abide means to remain, to wait, to endure and to not depart [2]. There is no action required, no effort to be extended. Instead, to bear fruit only requires that we remain attached to vine.
This is the path to glory, for the Father will be glorified (15:8) by our abiding in Christ and the resulting fruit it bears. Jesus does not want the disciples to be troubled and worried about the future. If through all the suffering and crisis that is about to happen, they remain in Christ, not forsaking Him, then they will find joy in the midst of trouble (15:11).
If indeed disciples abide in Jesus and His love, then we will keep His commandments and we will love one another. Jesus comes back to this point again. He is leaving, so they only have each other now. Therefore, love each other (15:17). He has illustrated that love through the basin and the towel in chapter 13, but now he would explain that love is not just washing feet, but love is laying down your very life, for “greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” (15:13). And indeed, His disciples had become His friends. No longer is it a slave-master relationship (15:15).
Jesus declares that the world is going to hate the disciples, for the world has hated Him (15:18). But even though the world will persecute them, Jesus is not going to take them out of the world, for the disciples must remain and be His witness in the world (15:27). The Holy Spirit, sent by the Father, will come and be Jesus' witness to the disciples (15:26), and they are to turn around and proclaim Jesus to the world.
Jesus warns them that this will be difficult and full of hardship (16:2-3). However, He is telling them this ahead of time so they will expect it and not falter when the persecution, their hour, comes (16:1).
Jesus then states something quite remarkable. He says “it is to your advantage that I go away” (16:7). If Jesus were not to go away, the Holy Spirit would not need to come. With Jesus, his ministry had been limited by Jesus' physical presence. But now the Holy Spirit can come and multiply the ministry by indwelling each and every disciple. The Spirit will come to convict the world of sin (16:8), and He will guide the disciples into truth (16:13). But primarily, the Holy Spirit will glorify the Son (16:14).
But now, Jesus must leave them (16:16). The disciples still don't understand what he means by this (16:18-19). Jesus acknowledges that His leaving is an occasion for grief, and that indeed in a few short hours their grief would be intense (16:20-21). However, speaking of the resurrection, Jesus tells them that He will see them again, and that they will have great joy (16:22).
When they see Him again, everything will start to make sense. Jesus will speak to them plainly and not in figurative language (16:25). If things are unclear, they only need to ask, and He will grant it to them (16:23-24, 26-27). But, now, He must go to the Father (16:28).
The disciples say that they haven't asked for anything at this point because they now understand—he is now speaking plainly. He is speaking plainly and they believe (16:29-30).
But Jesus asks, “do you now believe?” He is seeming to say, “do you really believe?” For in a few short hours they will all be scattered and abandon Him.
But He is telling them these things so they might have peace and courage, for though in a few hours it will look like the world has defeated Him, indeed has overcome the world (16:33).
Jesus then begins a prayer, which traditionally has been called the High Priestly Prayer of Christ, where Christ intervenes on behalf of the disciples asking the Father to protect, set apart, and unify the disciples. Finally, Jesus concludes His prayer by asking that the disciples be allowed to participate in the glory of God.
This prayer is most immediately asked on behalf of the 11 disciples who have been with Him. Yet, there seems to be an element where Jesus is asking these things not just for them, but for all who believe because of their ministry (17:20). Jesus prayed this prayer for all His disciples, including those who believe today!
Before Jesus makes His request on behalf of the disciples, He tells the Father that He has accomplished all that the Father has asked:
Jesus lists off His accomplishments not to brag to the Father, but as if to say, “I've done all you've asked me to do for these disciples, but now that I am about to return to you, I must leave them to your care.”
Jesus first requests that the Father would keep the disciples safe (17:11). Jesus had been guarding them (17:12), but now that he is returning to the Father (17:13), Jesus is concerned because the world will hate them (17:14) and Satan will seek to destroy them (17:15b). Jesus does not ask that the Father take them out of the world, for we know that Jesus has already commissioned them to be witnesses of the truth to the world (17:18, 15:27), but that the Father protect them while in the world. Jesus asks the Father protect the disciples in the midst of the world by sanctifying, or setting them apart in the truth (17:17,19).
Jesus then asks on behalf of not just these disciples, but all future disciples (17:20), that the Father would unify the disciples (17:21a). That unity would be based in the unity of the Trinity, for just as the Father and the Son are One, Jesus requests that the Father cause the disciples to be one (17:21b-22), not just with each other but one with the Father and the Son (17:23).
The purpose for this unity is to demonstrate to the world that Jesus was sent by the Father (17:21b, 23b), and that Jesus loved the disciples in the same way that the Father loves the Son (17:23c).
At the beginning of the prayer, Jesus asked the Father to glorify the Son (17:1). While this may sound like a selfish request, it is anything but. First, this glory comes through the cross (“the hour has come”), which is an act of great humility. Secondly, Jesus requests this glory so that the Son can turn around and give that glory back to the Father (“that the Son may glorify You”).
Jesus entire ministry was to bring glory to the Father (17:4). But when He gave glory to the Father, the Father returned that glory to Him. In John 12:27-28, when Jesus submits to the Father and announces his intention to go to the cross, He asks, “Father, glorify your name.” The Father responds with an audible voice from heaven, “I have glorified it and will glorify it again.”
When the Son is glorified, the Father is glorified, and when the Father is glorified, so also is the Son (13:31-32). Jesus asks God to glorify Him so that He can glorify God (17:1) that together they can both be glorified (17:5).
This dynamic gives us remarkable insight to the inner workings of the Trinity. This passing of glory from Father to Son and Son back to Father is like a cosmic game of hot potato, with neither grasping onto the glory, but always passing back to the one from whom it came. Even the Holy Spirit is involved. His ministry is also to glorify the Son, for He does not take credit for His teaching as if it were His own, but only passes on what the Father gives Him (16:14).
But this mutual glorification is not limited to the Trinity. For in Jesus request for the disciples' unity, Christ seeks to share His glory with His disciples:
The glory which You have given Me, I have given to them that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me. (John 17:22-23a)
Jesus is requesting that the Father allow Him to now include all His disciples in the unity of the Trinity, and to share in the mutual sharing of glory within the Trinity. He is asking the Father to include the church in the Trinitarian game of glory hot potato!
Jesus request for unity in His High Priestly Prayer is not merely a request that the church get along. There is a much deeper, much more glorious significance than just a call to quit squabbling in the church. It is a call to be included in the unity of the Trinity. It is a call to share in the glory of God. It is a call to not selfishly hold onto glory, but to pass that glory off to the Father, the Son, the Spirit.
It is also a call for us as Jesus disciples to humble ourselves before each other, and thus emulate the Trinity. Jesus demonstrated this for us in the foot washing of John 13. He commands it of us in 15:12 and 15:17, as we “love one another.” When Jesus' disciples love one another, we prove we are His disciples (15:18), for that is the attitude the Son has towards the Father. Just as Jesus' humility gave glory to the Father, so also the love and humility of His disciples will glorify the Father (15:18).
Immediately after His prayer, Judas brought officers from the High Priests and a cohort from the Roman army to arrest Jesus. Jesus steps forth and asks the group who they seek. They answer, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus' response must have carried some authority in it, for when he responds, “I am,” the crowd falls to the ground.
But when Jesus responds a second time, we see His love for the disciples become evident. In His prayer of chapter 17, Jesus tells the Father that He has kept and guarded His disciples and Jesus asks the Father to continue that protection. Now we see an illustration of that guardianship. For Jesus says to the arresting troops, “if you seek Me, let these go their way.”
While Jesus is in the midst of His trials, John interjects into the narrative the account of Peter's three denials. While Peter had been willing to fight the Roman cohort during Jesus arrest (18:10), now Peter feared for His life. In fact, Peter's last denial was in response to a relative of one whose ear Peter caught off. Jesus had called on the Father to guard and protect the disciples, a request Peter likely would have heard. But now Peter sought to protect himself by denying His association with Christ.
Jesus, even while on the cross was looking out for those whom He loved. Never selfish, even in the end, He sought to care for His own mother. In 19:25-27, Jesus asks John to care for Mary as he would for his own mother, stating to him, “Behold, your mother.” From that time on John declares that indeed he did care for Mary.
Having taken care of her, he was now ready to die. He proclaims, “It is finished!” bows his head, and gives up His spirit. Jesus voluntarily gave up His Spirit. The Jews, or the Romans, or anyone else did not kill Him. Jesus died because that was the very purpose for which He came (12:27). When his work on the cross was accomplished, He gave up His own Spirit.
John's gospel is the only gospel that describes two appearances of Jesus in Jerusalem one week apart prior to his appearing to them in Galilee. At this first appearance, the disciple Thomas was not with them. His unbelief has given him the moniker, doubting Thomas. But John's emphasis on Thomas is not his doubt but, in keeping the theme of belief, on Thomas' belief.
At the second appearance of Jesus, Thomas sees the resurrected Christ. Jesus tells Thomas, “Do not be unbelieving but believing.” This invitation on the part of Jesus to Thomas is used by the gospel writer as a call not just to Thomas, but to all who are reading the book to respond the way Thomas does: “My Lord and my God!” Jesus answer demonstrates this call to everyone to believe, as He states, “blessed are they who did not see, and yet believe.”
John states in 21:25 that this gospel is not intended to be an exhaustive account of all that Jesus did and said while on the earth. Indeed, if they all of Jesus' life were written down, there world itself could not contain the books necessary. Even a cursory comparison of John with the synoptics has us wondering why he did not include the parables, the Sermon on the Mount, the Olivet Discourse, and so many other of Jesus miracles.
But John gives us his criteria for including the things He did in the book. John's book was compiled to point the reader to one purpose: belief in the Christ, the Son of God.
While Thomas needed to see to believe, John wants the reader to believe His testimony (21:24) of what he has seen so that they might be blessed as one who believes without seeing. But more, that John wants his readers to believe that they might “have life.”
After Jesus appeared in Jerusalem, the disciples head back to Galilee to go fishing. Jesus appears to them again, providing them with a miraculous catch of fish, harkening back to the same miracle that he performed before calling many of them to become “fishers of men” (Luke 5:1-11).
As soon as Peter recognizes Jesus because of the miracle, he throws off his robe and swam to shore to see Jesus on the beach. The rest of the disciples follow in the boat. There, while eating a breakfast cooked by the Lord, Jesus seeks to restore Peter who had denied Him three times.
Three times Jesus asks Peter, “do you love me,” and three times Peter responds that indeed he does love Jesus. But our English translations do not do justice to the interaction between Peter and John, for there are two different Greek words being used here, both of which are translated as love. The first two times Jesus asks Peter, “do you love me,” he uses the Greek word agape , which is an unconditional, selfless love. Peter responds back to Jesus in each of these occasions saying he loves Jesus, but using the Greek word phileo , which is a brotherly or friendship love. The third time Jesus asks Peter if he loves him, he switches and uses the word phileo , which grieves Peter, not because Jesus doesn't believe him and has to ask him three times, but because Jesus has “downgraded” his question to a lower form of love.
Peter is grieved because he realizes that, due to his denial, he demonstrated that his love for Christ was not unconditional. Indeed, while Peter was boasting before the arrest that he would die for Jesus, and even took up a sword to defend him, when his life was on the line he denied even knowing him.
Jesus responds by asking Peter to tend His sheep, calling on Peter to take on a pastoral role. What a relief it is to all pastors and church leaders knowing that Peter's call as a pastor came only after Peter's admission of his greatest failure. But it is often only after we recognize our failures that God will call us.
Finally, then, Jesus foretells of Peters' martyrdom, announcing that as an old man he will be bound and imprisoned. This would have been an encouragement, for before when Peter faced death for believing in Christ, he failed. But Jesus shows Him that indeed he will stand firm in his faith and become martyred.
The book then ends with an unusual little epilogue concerning John himself. Jesus has predicted Peter's martyrdom. Peter, curious, asks Jesus if John would also be martyred. Jesus responds by saying, “if I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!” In other words, Jesus is telling Peter not to worry about what will happen to John, but to focus on devoting His life to Jesus.
However, evidently these words of Jesus had lead to a belief in the church that John would not die until Jesus returned. Adding to this belief was the fact that John was probably a very old man when this book was written. But John dispels this belief by showing that Jesus was only telling Peter that it wasn't any of his business when or how John would die.
Unlike the other gospel narratives, John's gospel is an eyewitness account. In 18:15, we discover that John was an acquaintance of the High Priest, and so was allowed to enter the court of the High Priest to hear what took place at His trial. John is also the only disciple who was an actual eyewitness to the crucifixion.
The fact that John is an eyewitness to these events is important to him. We can be assured of the truth of this gospel because of his personal experience. That is why John says in 21:24:
This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and wrote these things, and we know that his testimony is true.
John's eyewitness testimony is the basis for not just the truth of His gospel, but also His authority as a disciple, for as we see in John 17:20-24, unity with the disciples who were eyewitnesses means we have unity with the Father and the Son. For that reason in his first epistle John says:
What we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.(1 John 1:3)
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