Author: Josh King

Learning the Father (John 16:25–33)

25 “I have said these things to you in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech but will tell you plainly about the Father. 26 In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; 27 for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.

—John 16:25–27

The Mediatorship of Christ is a blessed truth. But have you ever considered the blessedness of what it does not mean? Jesus means for you too. He wants us to know what He is not saying. It is not that a loving Jesus brings us near to a wrathful Father. A loving Father gave the Son. The Father gave a people to the Son so that those people might draw near to Him through the Son.

The Father is not antagonistic. The Father is not even indifferent. The Father loves. You do not lay your concerns at the feet of Jesus for Jesus to then carry them to the Father on your behalf. That is not how Christ works as our Mediator. You come in Christ, through Christ, to the Father Himself. Yes Christ intercedes for you, but this means you come in Jesus’ name before the Father Himself. Jesus does not simply take your prayers to the Father. He takes you, praying, to the Father. Don’t forget that the Son taught us to pray, “Our Father who art in heaven.”

“Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.”

—Hebrews 10:19–22

Oh dear souls, are you not in this being taught Christ by the Spirit through the Word such that you learn the Father (John 16:25)? Are you not in marvel at the good news of Christ crucified, risen, and ascended, having sent the Spirit so that we draw near to the Father through Him?

But, what Jesus says next may sound like a contradiction to some of what we have just outlined, such that verses 26 and 27 are in tension. Here they are again.

“26 In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; 27 for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.”

The Father loves us because we have loved Jesus and believed in Jesus (v. 27). There are two reasons I don’t believe a tension exists here. First, I believe this couplet, loving Jesus and believing in Jesus, explains what it means to come “in Jesus’ name.” To come in Jesus’ name to the Father means to come embracing Jesus with the arms of faith and love. Second, I take this to be harmonious with what we saw in John 15:9–10. 

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.”

Jesus has loved us, we abide in that already love by keeping His commandments. Our obedience doesn’t cause Jesus to love us, it abides in His love. Prayer, in the name of Jesus, is an abiding in the love of the Father who gave the Son. When you come before the Father in prayer loving Jesus, you abide in the Father’s love.

As an illustration of all that is involved here, listen afresh to Luke 11:5–13.

“And he said to them, ‘Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, “Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him”; and he will answer from within, “Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything”? I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!’”

Oh what it is to come to the Father in the name of the Son! What confidence we can have. And how striking that there Jesus speaks of the Father giving the Spirit to those who ask Him. There Jesus speaks of the Father giving the Holy Spirit. I believe this is in answer to our coming to Him as Father. This then is not a reference to receiving the Spirit as the seal of our salvation. It is not a reference to the Spirit’s indwelling. I believe our text in John explains what it means: “Father, send the Spirit to teach me Christ and Christ to teach me you.”

Oh what blessed communion. By the Spirit we learn Christ. By Christ we learn the Father. In learning the Father, we draw near by the Spirit through the Son to the Father. We ask. And the best gift we could ask for is the Spirit. And then the circle begins again!

In on the Divine Joke of the Gospel (John 16:16–24)

“A little while, and you will see me no longer; and again a little while, and you will see me.” So some of his disciples said to one another, “What is this that he says to us, ‘A little while, and you will not see me, and again a little while, and you will see me’; and, ‘because I am going to the Father’?”

—John 16:16–17

As the Upper Room Discourse draws to a close, Jesus presents to the disciples something of a riddle. “A little while, and you will see me no longer; and again a little while, and you will see me.” Later, this riddle, along with Jesus’ elaborations thereon, are referred to as “figures of speech.” The disciples later say that they understand once Jesus speaks plainly (16:29), but it is clear that even then they don’t yet fully get it.

The gospel is a divine joke that Jesus lets His friends in on. When the joke sets in for the disciples, their sorrow will be turned to joy. They will then see how Jesus’ trouble speaks to their comfort. They will laugh and their joy will be indestructible. “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy” (16:20).

When does the joke set in? They will see when they see. In a little while, they will see. The resurrection is the punch line that brings joy out of the cross. The gospel is not a joke for those with a dark, twisted, macabre sense of humor.

John Piper has said that the gospels are meant to be read backwards. There is a sense in which you have to read them twice in order just to read them once. In particular, he was referring to the cross as illuminating everything that comes before it, but of course he meant the cross in light of the resurrection. You must not only read the life of Jesus in light of His death. You must read His death in light of His life—His resurrection life.

Sinclair Ferguson tells of a clever British economist who when asked one December of the expected economic forecast answered, “the significance of Christmas will not become clear until Easter.” Easter is the explanation to the riddle of Christmas. God wrapped His Son in Human flesh in the incarnation. The meaning of that gift was unwrapped when His flesh was rent on the cross. But it is the Resurrection that then makes sense of why Good Friday is good. If there is no resurrection, there is no gospel. Without the resurrection, the cross is void of good news. But the tomb is empty, and thus, our hearts are full of joy.

The Greatest Evil Is Found In the Presence of the Greatest Light (John 15:18–16:4)

“But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my Father also. If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin, but now they have seen and hated both me and my Father.”

—John 15:21–24

Because of Jesus, the Jews are guilty of sin. It is not that they were sinless and guiltless before Christ came, but that now because He has come, they are guilty of great sin. They’ve sinned against the remedy for sin. John 3:19–20 tells us “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.” As the light draws near, their darkness is illuminated, exacerbated, and intensified. The principle of judgment at work here is the same one seen in Luke 11:31–32.

“The queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.”

The Jews are not in the dark for lack of light. The abundance of light intensifies their guilt. The magnitude of their guilt can be seen in that by hating Jesus, they hate the Father (15:23). This is because Jesus doesn’t simply come as light exposing their darkness, but as light revealing the Father. “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known” (John 1:18). Jesus has just told the disciples that in seeing Him, they have seen the Father (John 14:9). Inversely, in hating Jesus, the Jews have hated the Father. Jesus’ works bear witness that He is in the Father and that the Father is in Him (John 14:10–11). The works Jesus does are the very works the Father does (John 5:19). These works are given to Him by the Father as a testimony to the Son (John 5:36–37). By these works the Son reveals the Father.

Here then is the greatness of their guilt: They have sinned against the Father’s revelation of the Son. They have sinned against the Son’s revelation of the Father. They have sinned against the Spirit’s witness to the Son as a witness to the Father. And they have sinned against them in the revelation of their grace. This is a sin against the Father who gave His only begotten Son. This is a sin against the Son who loved and obeyed His Father unto death. This is a sin against the Spirit who was sent by the Father and who anointed the Son. All in grace to sinners. Oh how great is this sin. Sin in the dark is evil, but sin in the light is greater evil, and sin in the greatest of light is the greatest of evil.

Dear soul, are guilty of such sin? If so, you have not sinned in the dark. You have sinned in the light. You have sinned against the Light. J.C. Ryle warns, 

“Let us settle it down as a first principle in our religion, that religious privileges are in a certain sense very dangerous things. If they do not help us toward heaven, they will only sink us deeper into hell. They add to our responsibility. ‘To whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required’ (Luke 12:48). He that dwells in a land of open Bibles and preached gospel, and yet dreams that he will stand in the judgment day on the same level with an untaught Chinese, is fearfully deceived. He will find to his own cost, except he repents, that his judgment will be according to his light.”

Dear soul, know this, the Father counts indifference to the Son as hatred. Don’t attempt to give soft names to your hatred. If you do not trust and love the Son, it is not well with your soul. You have no excuse. If you will not receive this great grace, you will bear great guilt. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ who bore judgment for sinners, receive His grace, and you need bear such guilt no longer.

The Love We Are Called to Abide in (John 15:9–17)

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.”

—John 15:9

Here is the door by which we come into what is known as the “Upper Room Discourse:”

“Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” (John 13:1).

Having entered that door, we hear Jesus calling us to abide in His love. Here is part of the gospel bliss of this command: the love we are called to abide in, already is.

Jesus loved His own and He loved them to the end. He has washed them, physically, as a testimony of His washing them spiritually. Jesus will stoop lower yet to serve them in love. Saints, we do not need to create the love of Christ for us to then abide in it. The love we are called to abide in is not a bathtub that we fill; it is an infinite and eternal ocean that already is.

This is amplified when Jesus goes on to tell them, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” The love in which we are called to abide, is rooted not in our choice, but His. Be gone any idea that you spark this love. This love has ever burned. This love is. It was before you were and it will be for all eternity. You did not create this love. This love was before you were created.

Jesus is not saying that our choice is nonexistent. He is saying His choice is paramount and supreme. What Jesus says here is harmonious with what John writes when he says, “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 5:19). His love is the cause of ours. His choice is the cause of ours. Richard Sibbes writes, 

“If we choose him, we may conclude he hath chosen us first: ‘if we love him, we may know that he hath loved us first,’ (1 John 5:19). If we apprehend him, it is because he hath apprehended us first. Whatsoever affection we shew to God, it is a reflection of his first to us. If cold and dark bodies have light and heat in them, it is because the sun hath shined upon them first.”

Some object to this saying that this speaks of the apostles being chosen to their office, not chosen for salvation. Let’s see if that stands. This language of “choosing” goes back earlier in the upper room to 13:18. “I am not speaking of all of you; I know whom I have chosen.” Eleven were chosen. Judas was not. Judas was chosen to the office of apostle. He was not chosen as one of Christ’s friends (vv. 13–15). He was not clean (John 13:11). He didn’t enjoy the promises of the upper room. He had no part in Christ. Soon, Jesus will tell the disciples, “If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (John 15:19). The disciples were not simply chosen from among the saints for an office. They were chosen out from the world for salvation.

The love of Christ doesn’t fall like a limp wrist on this world, loving all but loving ineffectually. Jesus loves with a mighty right hand of redemption. It is a strong love we are called to abide in. A love that we do not spark, but rather, a love that has always burned.

Trading the Assembly Line Back for the Vine (John 15:1–11)

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

—John 15:5

We have traded the vine for the assembly line, the natural for the manufactured, the living for the artificial. This is true of the saints both corporately and individually.

The church in America largely doesn’t abide in the vine; she maintains the assembly line. Pragmatism drives the line. Statistics and numbers are the measurement of success. How many people? How many baptisms? How much money? How many churches planted? How many missionaries sent out? Programs, Advertising, events, the liturgy, style, methodology, and even the teaching are all shaped and developed, not strictly in accord with the Scriptures, but in service to this business-model goal of success.

I’m afraid that a whole lot of the activity of the American church is an attempt to get fruit without abiding in the vine. We can do it more efficiently with the assembly line. The word doesn’t abide in us; His commands are not obeyed. We irrigate with spontaneous baptisms, we cultivate with worldly methodologies, we fertilize by appealing to the flesh, and we grow using artificial lights. But for all this efficiency, I’m afraid it will be shown that we have far more tares than wheat.

Individually we don’t fare any better. We’ve tried to baptize the world’s ideas of success. Jesus comes like a supplement to our diet plan. When it comes to our work, our marriages, our homes, our children, our aspirations and goals—it’s not necessarily that we’re running after inherently evil things, but we’re running after good things as though they were god, all while asking God’s blessing on our idolatry. Rather than tapping our life into the vine, we’re trying to tap the vine into our life. We want to be successful and efficient and productive at a number of things, and we try to graft the vine into them to give them life. Rather than Jesus making us fruitful for the kingdom, we want Jesus to make our kingdoms fruitful.

Ask yourself, which of these triads characterize the life of the church in general in these days and which of these characterize your life: busyness, efficiency, and success or industry (as in good hard work), faithfulness, and fruitfulness? There is nothing intrinsically evil about being busy, being efficient, or being successful, but when these categories dominate our thoughts and drive our behavior, then I believe something is seriously wrong. Kevin DeYoung explains, 

“Busyness does not mean you are a faithful or fruitful Christian. It only means you are busy, just like everyone else. And like everyone else, your joy, your heart, and your soul are in danger. We need the Word of God to set us free. We need biblical wisdom to set us straight. What we need is the Great Physician to heal our overscheduled souls. If only we could make time for an appointment.”

Saints, perhaps this is that much needed appointment for you. Perhaps you need to repent right now of chasing after a worldly idea of success and by faith abide in the vine right now that you may be truly fruitful. If thoughts of busyness, efficiency, and success dominate your life such that they rob you of life, you are doing it wrong. Set your hearts instead on industry (working heartily unto the Lord), faithfulness, fruitfulness. And set your hearts on them in this way: remember that faithfulness is your lot and fruitfulness is God’s. The admonition of this passage is not “be fruitful,” but “abide.” And the result of such abiding, is joy.

The Bishop: Useful Forms and Deadly Formality

“Yet all this time there is no heart in their religion. Anyone who knows them intimately can see with half an eye that their affections are set on things below, and not on things above: and that they are trying to make up for the want of inward Christianity by an excessive quantity of outward form. And this formal religion does them no real good. They are not satisfied. Beginning at the wrong end, by making the outward things first, they know nothing of inward joy and peace, and pass their lives in a constant struggle, secretly conscious that there is something wrong, and yet not knowing why. Well, after all, if they do not go on from one stage of formality to another, until in despair they take a fatal plunge, and fall into Popery! When professing Christians of this kind are so painfully numerous, no one need wonder if I press upon him the paramount importance of close self-examination. If you love life, do not be content with the husk, and shell, and scaffolding of religion. Remember our Saviour’s words about the Jewish formalists of his day: ‘This people draweth nigh with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship’ (Matt. 15:9). It needs something more than going diligently to church, and receiving the Lord’s supper to take our souls to heaven. Means of grace and forms of religion are useful in their way, and God seldom does anything for his church without them. But let us beware of making shipwreck on the very lighthouse which helps to show the channel into the harbour. Once more I ask, ‘How do we do about our souls?’” —J.C. Ryle, Practical Religion

Love and Law (John 14:15–24)

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”

—John 14:15

This is a radical statement for at least two reasons: for what it says about love and for what it says about Jesus. First, this is counter to the world’s concept of love. John Piper writes, 

“Jesus shatters many common notions. For example, one notion is that commandments and love don’t mix. You don’t command someone you love. And you don’t tend to love one who commands. Commanding connotes military hierarchy, not relationships of love. We tend to think that commanding restricts winsomeness and willingness both ways. And this is often true.

Paul wrote to his friend Philemon and said, ‘Though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do what is required, yet for love’s sake I prefer to appeal to you’ (Philemon 8-9; see also 2 Corinthians 8:8). Paul probably meant his love and Philemon’s love. So it’s true that, for love’s sake, a person in authority may choose not to command.

But Jesus shatters any absolute dissociation of commandments and love. He says, ‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments…. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father’ (John 14:15, 21). ‘If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love’ (John 15:10). Thinking in terms of commandments and obedience did not stop Jesus from enjoying the love of his Father. And he expects that our thinking of him as one who commands will not jeopardize our love relationship with him either.”

There are many earthly relationships where love, for one with authority, is demonstrated by obedience. Perilously, ours is an age that denies this. Parents fail to see that love commands. Children fail to see that love obeys. Such an idea of love is shocking enough for modern ears, but it is the absoluteness of it here that is most radical. There are no exceptions. If you love, you will keep. With earthly authorities, sometimes love may disobey. But here, there is an understood absoluteness to this rule. There are no exceptions. This brings us to the second reason Jesus’ statement is radical.

Look at what the absoluteness of this statement says about Jesus. You can sense it in the words, “my commandments.” Moses gave commands, but he didn’t speak of “my commandments.” They were the Lord’s. The incarnate Son obeyed His Father’s commands as a man. He gives commands to men as God. There are then no exceptions to this rule. If you love Jesus, you don’t improvise. You don’t demonstrate it by originality. You don’t get creative. You obey. 

Or you may see it this way: Jesus said elsewhere that all the law is summed up with two commandments: Love God with all and love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37–40). Jesus, earlier in the Upper Room, told the disciples, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (13:34). And now He is telling them to love Him by obeying His commandments. He is telling them to love Him by loving others. He is telling them to love God (Himself) by loving one another.

Commandments then, are not contrary to love; they are essential to all love, even when you want to love another who is not an authority over you or under you. When you want to love others, Jesus defines what love to others looks like. Sinclair Ferguson is spot on when he writes, “love is what the law commands, and the commands are what love fulfills.” You cannot truly love, either man or God, unless you keep the commands of God.

But not only are commandments essential to truly love, love is essential to true obedience to the commandments. Love lies underneath true obedience. Sheer outward obedience is not obedience, no matter how great the outward action is. “If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:3). Jesus commands the heart as well as the hands. Hands without heart are still disobedient hands. Here’s the kind of obedience Jesus is speaking of, “I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart” (Psalm 40:8). Keeping commandments doesn’t mean you love. Love does mean you keep the commandments.

The Bishop: The Doctrine of Perseverance

“When I speak of the doctrine of perseverance, I mean this. I say that the Bible teaches that true believers, real genuine Christians, shall persevere in their religion to the end of their lives. They shall never perish. They shall never be lost. They shall never be cast away. Once in Christ, they shall always be in Christ. Once made children of God by adoption and grace, they shall never cease to be His children, and become children of the devil. Once endued with the grace of the Spirit, that grace shall never be taken from them. Once pardoned and forgiven, they shall never be deprived of their pardon. Once joined to Christ by living faith, their union shall never be broken off. Once called by God into the narrow way that leads to life, they shall never be allowed to fall into hell. In a word, every man, woman, and child on earth who receives saving grace, shall sooner or later receive eternal glory. Every soul who is once justified and washed in Christ’s blood, shall at length be found safe at Christ’s right hand in the day of judgment.” —J.C. Ryle, The Upper Room

A Troubled Christ Gives Comfort (John 14:1–14)

“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me.”

—John 14:1

The disciples’ hearts were troubled. When Jesus purposed to return to Judea, Thomas said, “Let us also go, that we may die with him” (John 11:16). Now, at this Supper, Jesus has just told them that one of them will betray Him. At this they look at one another, uncertain of whom He spoke. Matthew tell us that “they were very sorrowful and began to say to him one after another, ‘Is it I, Lord?’” (Matthew 26:22). To cap it off, Jesus goes on to tell them that He will be with them only a little while longer and that where he is going, they cannot come (v. 33).

Peter protests, “Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you. Jesus rebukes Him. Peter will not lay down His life. He will deny Jesus. Three times. Their hearts are troubled. Jesus had called these men to Himself saying “Follow me.” He now tells them they cannot follow Him. Jesus tells them that the feet He has just washed not only will not follow, they will flee (cf. John 16:32; Matthew 26:31).

If you’re paying attention to John’s gospel, then this command should cause a reverent “hmmm?” Or, if you are not in a more reverent and righteous mood, you might even object, “Wait a minute?” As we approach the cross, we have just been told three times that Jesus was troubled. In returning to Judea, they come first to the village of Bethany and to the grave of His beloved friend Lazarus. After encountering Lazarus’ sister Mary, we are read, “When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled” (John 11:33). Then in John 12:27 we hear our Lord cry out, “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour.” Finally, Jesus’ statement that one of the disciples would betray Him, was preceded by this narration in John 13:21, “After saying these things, Jesus was troubled in his spirit, and testified, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.’”

Jesus is troubled and He tells His disciples not to be. Why is this not hypocrisy? You know it is not, but why is it not. There are two reasons I can see. First, they are troubled ignorantly; Jesus is troubled knowledgeably. Second, they are troubled for unbelief; Jesus is troubled for belief.

But even so, Jesus here is not admonishing them to be troubled rightly. He is admonishing them not to be troubled at all. How is it that a troubled Jesus can tell them not to be troubled? Here is the glorious gospel answer: It is a troubled Christ who can give comfort. It is because Jesus is troubled that they are not to be troubled. It is because He goes to the cross that they need not face the wrath of God. His trouble is our comfort. His cross is our salvation. We don’t look to the cross as a tragedy. It was conquest. Jesus is holding out to them the comfort of the gospel, for the terror of the cross. It is a troubled Christ who gives comfort. Only a Christ troubled in our place can extend comfort to us.

The Bishop: The Jachin and Boaz of the Temple of Our Soul

“May this be our divinity, your divinity, my divinity; your theo-logy, my theology! May repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ be Jachin and Boaz, the two great pillars before the temple of our religion, the corner stones in our system of Christianity! (2 Chron. 3:17). May the two never be disjoined! May we, while we repent, believe; and while we believe, repent! And may repentance and faith, faith and repentance, be ever uppermost, foremost, the chief and principal articles, in the creed of our souls!” —J.C. Ryle, The Upper Room