Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to John · About this commentary
Another Counselor
John 14:15-24
15 If you love me, keep my commandments. · WEB
The Spirit is promised as a replacement presence, and the condition attached is love that shows.
"If you love me, keep my commandments" John 14:15.
The relation between the two is the whole of this paragraph, and it is stated three more times before it ends John 14:21 John 14:23 John 14:24. Obedience is not the price of the love; it is the evidence of it, and the order is never reversed.
"I will pray to the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, that he may be with you forever" John 14:16.
Another is the word for another of the same kind rather than a different sort of thing. What is promised is a replacement presence equivalent to the one being withdrawn — which is the only comfort that would meet the situation in that room.
The title has no clean English equivalent. It is a word for someone called alongside — an advocate in a court, a supporter, someone who stands with you when you need standing with. And forever is the difference from the arrangement they have had for three years.
"The Spirit of truth, whom the world can't receive, for it doesn't see him and doesn't know him. You know him, for he lives with you and will be in you" John 14:17.
The two prepositions are the chapter's quiet hinge. With them now; in them shortly. Nothing about the change is explained, and Pentecost is what it points at.
And the personal pronouns are worth registering. The Spirit is him throughout — one who teaches, reminds, and is received or not received, which is not how a force is spoken of.
"I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you" John 14:18.
The word is orphans, which is what a rabbi's disciples were called when he died. It is an exact description of what they are about to be, and the promise is that they will not be.
"Because I live, you will live also" John 14:19. Their life is made a consequence of his, which is the vine's argument in the next chapter and the reason a resurrection matters to anyone but him.
"In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you" John 14:20.
Three relations in one sentence, and the chain runs from the Father through the Son to them. The mutual indwelling claimed of Father and Son ten verses earlier is now extended to include the men at the table.
"Lord, what has happened that you are about to reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?" John 14:22.
Judas — the writer is careful to say not Iscariot — asks the question everyone would ask. The Messiah was to be revealed publicly, and the plan appears to have contracted to a private circle.
"If a man loves me, he will keep my word. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him" John 14:23.
The answer does not address the strategy at all, and its refusal is the point. The disclosure is not being withheld from the world by policy; it is given wherever the condition is met, and the condition is love that keeps his word. Anyone may qualify.
And the promise itself is the largest in the chapter. We will come — Father and Son — and make our home, which is the same word as the many homes in verse two. The house being prepared there is matched by a dwelling made here, in a person, and this book's answer to where God may be found ends up being neither a mountain nor Jerusalem John 4:21 but somebody's life.
settled What this mark means