John 14:15-24

Read John 14:15-24 If you love me, you will keep my commandments, and I will send you the Spirit of truth

In verse 15, Jesus says that if we love him, we will keep his commandments.  What is the connection between love and obedience?

Jesus hopes we will obey him consistently, but he knows we are not perfect.  That’s why he died.  1 John 1:8-10 says that if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and make God out to be a liar.  So how can we interpret this verse in light of our tendency to sin?  Does it mean we don’t love Jesus, or that we don’t yet love him enough, or what?

The fact that we are not perfect doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.  What is Jesus asking us to do here?

What can we do to get better at keeping Jesus’s commandments?

The word in verse 16 that is translated Advocate or Comforter or Helper or Counselor is the Greek word Paraklētos (Paraclete).  No single English word captures the meaning of this word.  It was a legal term used for a lawyer or defense attorney, but it literally means one who is called alongside (i.e., to help), so it can mean an advocate, a counselor, an intercessor, a consoler, or a comforter.  How is the Holy Spirit an advocate?  A counselor?  An intercessor?  A comforter or consoler?  A helper?

How have you experienced the Holy Spirit acting as an advocate, counselor, intercessor, comforter, consoler, or helper in your life?

Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as “another” advocate because Jesus is the first advocate, as John indicates in 1 John 2:1.

In verse 16 Jesus says the Holy Spirit will “be with you always.”  What does that mean to you?

In verse 17, Jesus calls the Holy Spirit the “spirit of truth.”  Why is truth so important to the role of the Holy Spirit as our Advocate, Counselor, and Comforter?

In Greek, nouns can be masculine, feminine, or neuter.  The Greek word for “spirit” is neuter, so John uses the neuter pronoun “it” when referring to the Spirit in verse 17.

In verse 17, Jesus says the world cannot accept the Holy Spirit because it neither sees nor knows the Holy Spirit.  Why is this the case?  What is needed, to see, know, and accept the Holy Spirit?

Jesus adds in verse 17 that the Holy Spirit dwells with you and will be in you.  He is looking forward to the time after his death and resurrection when he will impart the Holy Spirit to his disciples.  Ever since then, the Holy Spirit has been given to all believers, so the Holy Spirit dwells in us.  How do you experience the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life?

For verse 18, the NRSV provides the most literal translation of Jesus’s words: “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.”  This is not referring to his return at the end of time, but rather to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in those who believe in Jesus.  Jesus is saying that if the Holy Spirit is dwelling in them, he is with them.  How is that so?

God is a Trinity of Persons, but he is one God.  So if the Holy Spirit is with us, Jesus is with us in spirit even though not in body.  (Acts 16:7 and Phil. 1:19 even refer to the Holy Spirit as “the Spirit of Jesus.”)  In John 14:23, Jesus says that if you love Jesus and keep his word, the Father and Jesus will come to you and make their dwelling with you.  Putting it all together, if you are following Jesus, then all 3 Persons of the Trinity dwell in you.  You are, very much, not an orphan.

Do you ever have times when you feel like you have been orphaned from God?  If so, how can developing a relationship with the Holy Spirit who lives within you help deal with that feeling?

In verse 20, Jesus indicates that after his death and resurrection, the disciples will come to understand not only that Jesus is in the Father but also that the disciples are in Jesus.  In other words, we share a taste of the relationship between Jesus and the Father as we live in Jesus and he lives in us.  How is our communion with Jesus a limited but real reflection of the communion among the Persons of the Trinity?

Jesus now comes back, in verse 21, to the point with which he started this passage in verse 15: This relationship we have with God, this indwelling of the Holy Spirit, is based on love.  According to verse 21, how do you know if you love Jesus?

And is this relationship of love just a one-way street, from us to God?  Who loves us?

What difference does it make, to know that as you try to love God, Jesus and the Father are loving you?

Our love is imperfect, and God’s love is perfect.  So as we offer our love to God, as imperfect as it is, we receive his perfect love.  What is the significance of that love?  How does it help us love God all the more?

How have you experienced the love of God in your life?

At the end of verse 21, Jesus adds that he will reveal himself to those who love him.  What do you think that looks like, and how have you experienced Jesus revealing himself to you?

There was more than one disciple named Judas.  The Judas in verse 22 is not the Judas who betrays Jesus.  He is confused.  He is expecting Jesus to do what most Jews of that time thought the Messiah would do: reveal himself in a dramatic, public confrontation with the Roman Empire that would free the Jewish people from domination.  He is shocked that Jesus is saying he will only reveal himself to the disciples.

What does Jesus say in verse 23?

Why does Jesus link together so tightly these 3 points: loving Jesus, keeping his commandments (doing what he tells us to do in his word), and having the Holy Spirit dwell within us?   Why are those so deeply connected with each other?

What does verse 23 say to us about how we live our lives?

This verse is very challenging.  It tells us that our faith is a serious matter and God wants all of us, not just our Sunday mornings.  The question isn’t whether we’re perfect – we’re not.  The question is whether we are trying.  What does it look like when people truly love Jesus and try hard to keep his word?  What does it look like when people allow God to dwell deeply in them and strengthen them to live according to his word?

Take a step back and consider this:

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German minister who stood up against the Nazi dictatorship during World War II as the Third Reich worked to subvert Christianity and force churches to support its evil work.  He ultimately sacrificed his life to remain true to his faith.  (See Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Discipleship, Responsibility, Transformation for more about his remarkable life and incisive teachings.)

While he was training pastors to resist the Nazi regime and stay true to the gospel, he wrote a book published in the United States under the title The Cost of Discipleship in which he challenged everyone in God’s Church to embrace “costly grace,” not “cheap grace.”

Cheap grace is the belief that, because Jesus died for our sins, it doesn’t matter whether we obey his commandments or not: we can receive God’s grace and the gift of his Spirit, and live with God forever, without having ever living according to Jesus’s teachings.

Costly grace calls us to die to ourselves and life for Christ by following his commandments, living according to his word, and submitting to the leadership of the Spirit of God living within us.

In John 15, Jesus is clearly calling us to a life of costly grace, a life worthy of the One who, first, gave up his life to give us life, and second, called us to embrace his life and mission.

This is not, however, something to be summoned up by willpower alone, as though we could manufacture on our own the grace we need to follow God’s ways.  If that were possible, we would not need the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  Instead, we are invited to embrace God with an initial love, however imperfect it may be, that welcomes the presence of the Holy Spirit and allows him to transform us and shape us so that we become people who do Jesus’s will joyfully because his love expands our love and his work in our hearts leads us to want to follow his commands.

In what aspects of your life are you tempted to settle for “cheap grace” and not actually follow the commandments and teachings of Jesus?

In what ways does your church or the Christian culture around you settle for a low level of conversion rather than a transformed lives lived fully for Jesus?

How can you allow the Holy Spirit to kindle in you a greater love for God that allows you to let him transform you by his love, so that you become the kind of person who welcomes the opportunity to follow all that Jesus taught?