Over the next few days, we’ll be continuing our study of John chapter 14. Today we are looking closely at verses 14-17. You’re welcome to start with me here but I would encourage you to check the May 6-8 posts on the sermons page of our website as well as yesterday’s post for the first portion of John 14.

Thanks for participating in our daily posts from Peachtree Baptist Church, my name is Paul Capps, pastor. Before we dive back into John 14, I hope that you all are staying healthy, both physically, emotionally and spiritually. My hope is that these posts can help a little in all those areas and can be a place of oasis, but also a place that can challenge you to act upon your faith. Scripture can indeed both be comfort and prod, and there are many things we all could be doing that better represent Jesus during this time.

One of the ways we can understand that challenge is to understand the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives. In this long speech at the Last Supper, with the disciples listening to Jesus and trying to understand his sometimes enigmatic way of speaking, Jesus introduces the idea of the Spirit. The concept of God’s Spirit certainly wasn’t new to the disciples, but Jesus describes the Spirit in two distinct ways: as an advocate and as truth. These two descriptions are important because of what Jesus had just said prior in verse 14: “You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.” Unfortunately, many Chrisitians down through the centuries have taken verse 14 and plucked it out of the Bible without the verses that come before and especially without the verses that come after. Without an understanding of a relationship with God by faith in Christ and without an understanding of the Spirit, we are not asking in Christ’s name but in our own. In other words, we are not representing Jesus when we ask, we are just representing ourselves.

Jesus says ‘ask anything and I’ll do it,’ but prior to the ask in the previous verses, belief comes first - that Jesus perfectly represents God. And not only that, but the things his disciples would ask would be things Jesus himself had done and would do. Then in verse 15 Jesus says, “If you love me, keep my commands.” So if the meat is ‘ask anything,’ it is sandwiched by belief and obedience.

When we ask something of Jesus, the framework for the asking is a submissive relationship with Jesus. Jesus is King. Jesus is Lord. Jesus is the way, truth and life, and we are not. But when we submit to the law of Christ, and put our faith in him, Jesus will do anything we ask in his name, because only his name exists within us. We belong to Jesus and Jesus has taken residence in us by faith. Our identity begins to be transformed into looking like Jesus.

So what are the commands of Jesus? We look to scriptures. We read the story of the gospel, the good news of a King who died for us and was resurrected so that we can have life beyond life and who ascended to God but asked God to give us another advocate, like Jesus, to help us to stay true to his commands here on earth until he comes again. And why do we keep the commands of Jesus? Because we love him, we accept him, we entrust ourselves fully to him. When we have those things even a little bit figured out, we start to know what it means to ask anything of him in his name. But there’s one more key to making any of it possible, and that’s the Spirit. 

Tomorrow we’ll look more closely at the way Jesus describes the Spirit and how important the role of the Spirit is in knowing Jesus and representing God’s work in the world. I hope you’ll join us.

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