John 14:21

Jesus speaks these words in the upper room on the night before his crucifixion, in the farewell to his disciples that fills John 13–17. His teaching runs from John 13:31 to John 16:33, and his prayer for them follows in John 17. He has washed their feet, Judas Iscariot has gone out to betray him (John 13:30), and he has told the eleven that he is leaving them (John 13:33). Their hearts are troubled (John 14:1), and Jesus has been answering that fear with the place he is preparing in his Father’s house (John 14:2), his promise to come again and receive them (John 14:3), his word that he is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), and his promise to do whatever they ask in his name (John 14:13–14).

These twelve verses take up the question beneath all of it: what becomes of us when you are gone? For three years the disciples had his teaching, his presence and his care, and they had left everything to follow him. In Israel the last words of a leader to those he left behind carried great weight, as with Jacob, Moses, Joshua and David. Jesus’ farewell carries God’s own authority, and he speaks knowing that he will die, rise and send the Spirit. After these verses he leaves them his peace (John 14:27–31).

“If ye love me, keep my commandments” (verse 15). The word for love here is agapáō, a love of the will that commits itself to the one it loves and shows itself in what it does. To keep, tēréō, means to guard, watch over, observe and preserve. We keep his commands the way we keep something precious, holding on to them with care and putting them into practice day after day. A commandment, entolḗ, is a charge or command, something laid on us with authority.

Jesus calls them “my commandments.” In Israel, keeping the commandments of the LORD was how his people showed that they loved him with all their heart (Deuteronomy 6:4–6). Here Jesus speaks of his own commandments, and he asks for the love and obedience that belong to God.

He comes back to this three more times in the passage. “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me” (verse 21). To have them, échō, is to have and hold them, so the one who loves Jesus has received his commands and holds on to them as well as doing them. “If a man love me, he will keep my words” (verse 23). And the same truth is said from the other side: “He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings” (verse 24). “Words” and “sayings” both translate lógos, a word or saying, which in the plural takes in all that Jesus has said. In every one of these verses, love for Jesus and keeping what he says belong together.

John says the same in his first letter: “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous” (1 John 5:3). He writes that keeping Christ’s commandments is how we know that we know him (1 John 2:3–5). Jesus warned, “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21), and he asked, “And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46). He told his opponents that the one who is of God hears God’s words (John 8:47). He lived this way himself: “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love” (John 15:10). His obedience to the Father went as far as death on the cross (Philippians 2:8).

“And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever” (verse 16). The verb for pray, erōtáō, means to ask or to request, and here it is a request for a gift. The Son asks, the Father gives, and the Spirit comes. All three persons of the one God are at work in this single promise, and the Son’s asking on behalf of his disciples carries on in his prayer for them in John 17.

The Comforter is the paráklētos, one called alongside to help. The word takes in an advocate who stands with someone to defend him, a helper, a counsellor and an encourager, and among the Greeks and Romans it described a person who stood beside another to give aid, counsel or defence. “Comforter” in the KJV gathers all of that into one English word, and the Holy Spirit does all these things for God’s people. He helps us in our weakness when we pray and “maketh intercession for us” (Romans 8:26–27). John speaks of Jesus himself in the same way when he calls him our “advocate with the Father” (1 John 2:1).

The word “another” is állos, other or another, a second one beside the first. Its point in this verse is that Jesus has been their Comforter until now. He has stood by them, taught them and cared for them, and the Father will give them a second Comforter to be with them once Jesus has gone. Jesus speaks of the Spirit as “he”, one who abides, dwells, teaches and reminds, a divine Person distinct from the Father and the Son.

“That he may abide with you for ever.” To abide, ménō, is to stay, remain, continue and dwell. “For ever” is eis aiṓn, literally “into the age”, the Greek way of saying for ever. Jesus’ days with them in the body were about to close, and the Spirit’s stay with them will last for ever. In the Old Testament the Spirit of God moved upon the waters at creation (Genesis 1:2) and came upon prophets, judges and kings, often for a particular task or a time, as when the LORD put his Spirit on the seventy elders (Numbers 11:25). Here Jesus promises the Spirit to every believer, to stay for good. Paul calls the Spirit the seal and the earnest of our inheritance (Ephesians 1:13–14), God’s own guarantee that those he has saved are his.

The Father kept this promise on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2), when the disciples were all filled with the Holy Ghost (Acts 2:1–4). The gift came through Jesus’ finished work, and he had to go to the Father first, as he told them that same night: “It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you” (John 16:7). The Spirit he sends will testify of him, and the disciples will bear witness too (John 15:26–27).

“Even the Spirit of truth” (verse 17) tells the disciples who the Comforter is. Spirit is pneûma, the word for breath or wind and, from that, for a spirit, and here it names the Holy Spirit. Truth, alḗtheia, is what is real and true, the opposite of falsehood. The Spirit of truth makes God’s truth known. He will guide the disciples “into all truth” (John 16:13), and John sets “the spirit of truth” against “the spirit of error” (1 John 4:6). He testifies of Christ (John 15:26) and glorifies him (John 16:14).

“Whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him.” In John’s Gospel the world, kósmos, is very often mankind apart from God and set against him: “He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not” (John 1:10). To receive, lambánō, is to take or to receive what is given. The world looks only at what it can see and handle, and the Spirit is invisible to it. Its blindness is also unwillingness, for “men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19–20). Paul writes, “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God” (1 Corinthians 2:14).

“But ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.” To know, ginṓskō, is to know, come to know, perceive or understand, and the disciples know the Spirit because he has been with them. The verse gives that as the reason. He already dwelt “with” them, pará, beside them, present and at work through Jesus during his ministry. He “shall be in” them, en, within them, from the day he was poured out. “Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his,” Paul writes, and the Spirit of the One who raised up Jesus dwells in those who belong to him (Romans 8:9–11). Those who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God (Romans 8:14), and by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body (1 Corinthians 12:13).

“I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you” (verse 18). To leave, aphíēmi, is to let go, send away, forsake or abandon. The word behind “comfortless” is orphanós, bereaved or orphaned, used of children who have lost their parents and are left helpless and unprotected. Disciples who lost their teacher were left in much the same place, with nobody to guide them. Jesus’ disciples, troubled and afraid, are facing exactly that, and he answers their deepest fear with a promise.

The verb érchomai is the ordinary word for coming or going, and Jesus keeps “I will come to you” in more than one way. He came to them alive after his resurrection, when he “stood in the midst” of them (John 20:19) and appeared to them again (John 20:19–29). He comes to them, and to us, in the Spirit he sends, who is the Spirit of Christ (Romans 8:9), so that Christ is in us (Romans 8:9–10). This is the coming that the verses around this one speak of most. And he will come again at the end of the age to receive his own, as he promised a few verses earlier (John 14:3).

His last words in Matthew carry the same promise: “lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Matthew 28:20). The letter to the Hebrews gives every believer the word, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Hebrews 13:5).

“Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more” (verse 19). Within hours Jesus would be crucified, and after his resurrection and ascension he would be gone from the world’s sight. The verb for see, theōréō, means to look at, behold or be a spectator of. The world had watched him as onlookers, and it was about to lose sight of him altogether. Jesus sets his disciples apart from that world when he prays for them (John 17:14–16). His own “received him not” (John 1:10–11), and yet he tells the disciples that he has overcome the world (John 16:33).

“But ye see me.” The disciples would see him alive with their own eyes after the resurrection. After his ascension they would go on seeing him by faith, as the Spirit made him known to them, and every believer since sees him in the same way, with the eyes of faith, and knows him in fellowship.

“Because I live, ye shall live also.” To live, záō, is to live, to be alive. Jesus says “I live” on the night before his death, and his life is the life of the One who said, “I am the resurrection, and the life” (John 11:25). He was “declared to be the Son of God with power ... by the resurrection from the dead” (Romans 1:4), and his resurrection is the source and the guarantee of ours. Because he lives, we live now, raised with him through faith (Colossians 2:12–13), dead to sin and alive to God (Romans 6:8–11). Because he lives, we will live for ever, for our life is hid with Christ in God, and when he appears we will appear with him in glory (Colossians 3:3–4). “He that hath the Son hath life” (1 John 5:11–12).

“At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you” (verse 20). Day, hēméra, can mean a single day or a time, and “that day” is the time that opens with Jesus’ resurrection and the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost. Then the disciples will know, ginṓskō, they will come to understand, what they only half grasp on this night.

They will know first that Jesus is in his Father. He has already said, “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30). The Father and the Son dwell in each other, a mutual indwelling that the old word co-inherence describes. Then come the words that bring us into it: “ye in me, and I in you.” The little word en, “in”, is repeated three times and speaks of a union, of life shared and lived within another. We are in Christ, joined to him by faith through the work of the Spirit, and Christ is in us by his Spirit, giving us his life. Paul can say, “Christ liveth in me” (Galatians 2:20), and he calls this “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). John writes that God dwells in whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, and he in God (1 John 4:15). In the next chapter Jesus pictures it as a vine and its branches (John 15): “Abide in me, and I in you” (John 15:4).

This union is what Christ came to bring about. The Word who “was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14) died to take away the sin that kept us from God, and through him “we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father” (Ephesians 2:18). Our bodies are now the temple of the Holy Ghost (1 Corinthians 6:19).

“And he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him” (verse 21). To manifest, emphanízō, means to show in person or to make known in words. Jesus promises a personal showing of himself to the one who loves him, given through the Spirit. The believer meets him in Scripture understood more deeply, in a sense of his presence in prayer and worship, in clear leading when a decision has to be made, in peace in the middle of trouble, and in a growing awareness of who he is. Each step of obedience becomes a way in which Christ shows himself more fully.

“If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him” (verse 23). “We” is the Father and the Son together. Abode, monḗ, is a dwelling place, from the verb ménō, to abide. It is the same word Jesus used at the start of the chapter for the “mansions” in his Father’s house. While he goes to prepare a dwelling place for us there, the Father and the Son come to make their dwelling with us here, and they come to stay.

God once dwelt among his people in the tabernacle and the temple. Now the Father and the Son make their home in the person who loves Jesus. It is a foretaste of the end, when a great voice will say, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them” (Revelation 21:3). Jesus’ word to the church at Laodicea has the same warmth: “if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3:20). He prays that his people may be one, “as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us” (John 17:21–23).

“He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s which sent me” (verse 24). The first half says from the other side what verse 23 has said: where love for Jesus is missing, his sayings go unkept. The second half gives the reason his words carry such weight, which is that they are the Father’s word. Sent is pémpō, to send or dispatch, and the Father is the one who sent him.

Jesus said this before. The Father gave him commandment what he should say (John 12:49–50), the Son does what he sees the Father do (John 5:19), and he speaks as the Father has taught him (John 8:28). Moses had foretold a prophet into whose mouth God would put his words (Deuteronomy 18:18), and the LORD put his words in Jeremiah’s mouth (Jeremiah 1:9). Jesus is the Son who has declared the Father (John 1:18), the Word who was with God and was God (John 1:1). So to set his sayings aside is to set aside the Father’s word, and to keep them is to walk with the Father who sent him.

“These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you” (verse 25). “These things”, taûta, points back over everything Jesus has said in the chapter (John 14:1–24). Spoken is laléō, the plain verb for talking. “Being yet present” uses ménō again, the verb of verse 16, and the two belong together: Jesus’ stay with them is about to end, and the Spirit will stay with them for ever. The disciples have heard all this face to face, and much of it is still beyond them.

“But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name” (verse 26). Here Jesus names the Comforter plainly as the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit. The Father sends him “in my name”. A name, ónoma, stands for the person himself, his authority and his character. The Spirit comes with Jesus’ authority, as his representative, to carry on his work, and all that he does honours Jesus and agrees with what Jesus taught. Jesus says later that the Spirit “shall not speak of himself” and “shall glorify me” (John 16:13–15).

“He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” To teach, didáskō, is to instruct, and “all things”, pâs, comes twice, so the Spirit’s teaching and reminding reach everything Jesus said. Disciples in Israel learned their teacher’s words by heart and repeated them. Jesus promises his disciples a Teacher who will bring his words back to them and open their meaning. After the resurrection Jesus opened their understanding to the Scriptures (Luke 24:44–45), and the Spirit carried that work on. The whole church depends on this promise, since the apostles’ recall and understanding of Jesus’ words is what they preached and handed down to us.

For us the Spirit does this through the Scriptures. He opens the written word and shows us “the deep things of God” (1 Corinthians 2:10–13), and John tells believers that “the same anointing teacheth you of all things” (1 John 2:27). What the Spirit teaches is what Jesus has already said, made living and clear. In confusion, doubt or temptation he brings to mind the words of Christ we need, for comfort, for correction or for guidance. He gives power to bear witness (Acts 1:8) and goes on shaping us to be “conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29).

If you love Jesus, the Spirit of truth lives in you, and through him the Father and the Son have made their home with you. Your life is held in the life of the risen Christ, and because he lives you will live also. Keeping his commandments is how your love for him shows itself, and the Spirit he sent gives you the strength to do it. When you open the Gospels, the same Spirit who brought these words back to the apostles is with you to teach you. And whatever loss or loneliness comes, his promise stands: “I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.”