To put John 14 into context, we have to go back to the 12th chapter of John, where Jesus begins to say “goodbye” to His disciples. There is no way to dislodge them from the notion that this Messiah will be installed in Jerusalem as a king victorious over Rome and in their lifetime. There has to be a dramatic change in the way they look at things before they can understand.
By way of example, we find Peter, in John 13:37, asking, “Lord why can’t I follow you now?” We find Thomas and Philip, not understanding where He is going and how they could possibly know the way.
Jesus goes to “prepare a place” for them (John 14:2). It is critical that He go in order that His ministry be kicked into high gear. Jesus is preparing them for a new dimension in their relationship with God. He has to go away in order for this new relationship to be initiated.
It is not just about a relationship, however. In John 13:34, Jesus defines that new relationship as a “new command.” As we discussed several weeks ago, that new command had the same words as the old command except that in Jesus it takes on new meaning. “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”
In order for this new definition of an old command to have meaning, the disciples need to experience how Jesus has loved them. Then, they must experience the reality of the presence of Jesus in an infinitely more powerful and global a way than they had experienced with Him as their teacher. They cannot know the extent of this new epoch in God’s redemptive plan unless and until they are given the power to love others as God in Christ Jesus has loved them.
Jesus not only is preparing them for His departure, He has to leave in order for them to experience the power that will become theirs through the HS. This new power will enable them to move from the “me” to “we;” from the exclusive law to inclusiveness grace. He must leave them to get things ready – prepare a place for them. He has work to do on the other side that will unleash the greatest spiritual power the world has ever seen before or since.
This is the defining moment in redemptive history.
On Resurrection morning, Mary Magdalene recognizes Jesus and runs toward Him to embrace Him. Jesus says to her, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father.” “Do not insist that I stay, Mary, for I have not finished my work.” Instead, “Go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
“Go tell my brothers…” What the death and Resurrection of Jesus had accomplished at that point was a new relationship – from Teacher and Lord in John 13:13, to “brother.” They have moved from servants to brothers. The last step of Ascension must be taken so that His Father might truly become their Father and His God might truly become their God. Jesus must return to the glory and majesty and power that He had laid aside for us.
Listen to the last few verses of John 14:
You have heard me say, “I am going away and I am coming back to you.” If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. I have told you before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe. I will not speak with you much longer, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold on me, but the world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what the Father has commanded me.”
Jesus is telling them that they ought to be glad for two reasons. First, if they love Him, they ought to be glad for Him that He will be in the presence of the Father who is greater than He. Secondly, they ought to be glad because in the presence of the Father, Jesus will have new power for the task to which He has appointed them – telling the world of His love for the Father and for us.
The context, then, is to launch Jesus’ followers into a new life of service to God and others. Jesus cries for them in the Garden of Gethsemane in John 17 – that God will keep them from drifting away. He prays for us that not one of us will be lost.
Within that context we read the most troubling of Scriptures – that His disciples will do greater works than those they had seen Him do, and that He would give them whatever they should ask of Him.
I have talked often about this business of seeking the whole counsel of God as opposed to a cafeteria faith that picks and chooses Scripture verses to build our own theology. Seeking the whole counsel of God requires that we rise above the words of God to study the Word of God. In order to do that, we have to do a certain amount of critical thinking – connecting the dots in a reasonably intelligent fashion. That is very difficult for many people.
You cannot build a theology around a couple of verses. It you do that, you are in danger not only of deceiving yourself but of deceiving others. There is in America something called the Word-of-Faith movement. They believe that through faith, we can obtain anything we want – health, wealth, success, whatever. Closer to an area of our interest, John Hagee of Christians United for Israel is a Word-of-Faith preacher. At the root of WOF is that we can produce whatever our hearts desire simply by demanding what we want by faith. We can manipulate the universe and perhaps even God. In Hagee’s case, he operates on an extra-biblical revelatory knowledge that intends to force the issue of the Great Tribulation.
People like Hagee love John 14:14 – “You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.” In fact, he takes in millions of dollars a year by insisting that if you want to be rich, give all that you have to the Lord (through him, as the case may be).
A boyhood friend of mine once as an adult wrote 2 checks for $2,000 each to a ministry that needed the funds to purchase a major piece of equipment. He prayed that God would provide the money to cover the checks, and the checks bounced.
The people who were in that ministry were deeply hurt because they made the purchase after depositing the checks and found later that they didn’t have the funds to cover the purchase. I imagine that to my friend’s way of thinking, John 14:14 didn’t work for him, and he probably condemned himself for not having enough faith. In the meantime, I am sure that those who received the checks were praising God that their needs had been met.
In order to understand a Scripture like this, we might want to make a list of exceptions. What kind of things could you ask for in Christ’s name and not receive them no matter how much faith you have? You might ask for eternal youth – stop aging. You might ask to become a man instead of a woman, or vice versa. You might ask to be better looking. You might ask for a different set of parents. You might ask for more hair. I can dig that! If you have been sentenced to prison for a crime, God is probably not going to let you out.
You might ask to be taller, or more buxom or to be white if you are black. You might ask for a Mercedes Benz or a villa on the ocean. Chances are pretty good that none of these things is going to happen, no matter how many times you chant Jesus’ name. Does it appear, then, that this is a lie – that you in fact cannot ask for “anything” and it will be given to you?
The first thing that strikes me is that loving Jesus is trusting that He will give you what you need or what is best for you. If you are asking for all these American Dream comforts, chances are that you don’t know Jesus, even though you may ask for them in His name. If you don’t know Him, then you don’t love Him. If you don’t love Him, you will not do what He commands (v.15). What does He command? “That you love each other as I have loved you” (John 15:12). His definition of the new command of love is that we lose our lives in order to find them.
(John 15:15) I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit – fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. This is my command: Love one another.
All these things, then, that people think they ought to get if they ask for them in Jesus’ name are anything but “fruit that will last.” The condition for getting is going and bearing fruit. It we love one another, the last thing we will be thinking about is some new toy for ourselves that will cause us to lord it over others. Be aware, then, that if we are asking for those kinds of things, chances are that we are not His disciples, even if we are asking in His name.
I’ll get back to my proof for that in a minute.
First, though, I have to ask why Christians insist on taking Scripture out of its historical context. Where do we get the idea that Jesus is talking to us moderns in this passage of Scripture? He is saying “goodbye” to His disciples. They are crushed, and He is crushed with grief. He is trying to give them some hope and is preparing them for things that their wildest imagination could not have predicted. He has appointed them to be the forerunners of the great Christian faith that we in our day has spread throughout the world.
If Jesus is talking to modern Christians, we have to be careful about who we consider to be entitled to this promise that anything we pray for in His name will be given. We also have to read the rest of the verse –“so that the Son may bring glory to the Father.” The purpose of giving you anything you ask for, then, is that it brings glory to God. That is the condition – glory to the Father. Glory to the Father is not something we determine. It is something that God determines.
There is another piece to this passage that is critical to our understanding of it. “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to my Father.”
Jesus is speaking here to His faithful ambassadors. He does not need to ascend to the Father in order for His followers to perform miracles of healing. He had proved that earlier when He sent His disciples out into the cities to heal the sick, cast out demons and raise the dead. The Apostles did all that in grand style. Those things, however, are incidental to the big picture. In fact, there is no indication that any of the healings that Jesus did amounted to that much. They were simply proofs of His divinity and the fulfillment of prophecy.
This passage, however, is directed to those who would be doing “greater things.” Can you think of anything greater than the healings that Jesus did? I can. 3,000 converts on the Day of Pentecost is one. Spreading the Gospel to the Gentiles is another. Building the Kingdom of God from the ground up is another. When we add to that hospitals and jobs and our comforts in this life and technology and education, we can trace all that back to the impact of the Kingdom of God on the nations. How much greater does it get than that?
Jesus was not insinuating that we would be performing greater parlor tricks and would be given the tools with which to do that if we ask in His name. I think He had something else in mind. His miracles tended to focus on the outward circumstances. I think He was saying, “So, you think these miracles are cool? Wait till you see what is coming! Today I have fixed a problem on the outside. In the future, we are going to work together to heal people’s hearts and lives. People can live without an eye; they can’t live with a broken life.” On top of that, He has promised to give us the tools with which to make that happen so that the Father might be glorified.
I don’t know of a single Christian in the last 20 centuries who could hold a candle to Jesus in terms of signs and wonders. But I wonder if Jesus might have counted feeding millions of hungry kids around the world as greater than feeding 5,000. Maybe Jesus’ plan to change the world doesn’t involve superheroes of faith who move mountains and put the legions of darkness to flight. Maybe He is thinking about just a bunch of unremarkable people who do what they can to help the needy in body and spirit.
Maybe it is not the great speakers and healers and the leaders of successful ministries that we should look to for spiritual guidance. Maybe it’s the ones who are serving soup to the homeless and hanging out in nursing homes and volunteering in prisons who best understand the heart of God and make their prayers coincide with His glory.
We have to be careful there as well, however, lest we be substituting the social gospel for the redemptive work of Christ. In that regard, I direct your attention to a couple of seemingly conflicting Scripture passages:
In Matthew 25, Jesus is separating the “sheep” from the “goats” at the judgment. Whether we go to heaven or hell seems to depend on how we have treated “the least of these, my brothers.”
In Matthew 7, however, we read what seems to be the opposite:
Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord” will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in Heaven. Many will say to me on that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive our demons and perform many miracles?” Then I will tell them plainly, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!”
Doing great works of charity or praying in the name of Jesus will not work unless what you are doing is the will of the Father. The will of the Father is to believe on and love the Son whom the Father sent. Social justice, while in conformity with Scripture, is meaningless unless done out of love of the Son of God. To do acts of kindness simply because of the Scriptures is to live under the Law that condemns rather than saves.
1 Corinthians 13 begins with these words:
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not love, I am as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. Though I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. Though I give all that I possess to the poor and surrender my body to be burned and have not love, I gain nothing.
In the Gospels, Jesus is disgusted with many of whom you and I would be in awe. These are prophets, miracle-workers and exorcists, and Jesus calls them evil doers and opposers of God’s will.
It is clear to me that the bottom line that distinguishes between works that are considered faithful and the same works that are considered evil is the new command – the new interpretation of love that leads to the death of self by taking up our crosses daily and following Him.
The first prayer from the heart of God’s elect, therefore, ought to be, “Lord, help me to love as Jesus has loved me, in Jesus name, Amen.” After doing that, I challenge you to try and pray for a new snowmobile in Jesus’ name!
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