insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3866','1','43','12','12','12','<p>12:12 <i>The next day, a great crowd that had come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem</i>- On the triumphal entry, see on Mt. 21:1-8. John\'s chronology suggests that the triumphal entry took place once there were gathered together a mass of people who were pro-Jesus, because of the witness made by the resurrection of Lazarus. I have repeatedly emphasized that events did not overtake the Lord; He used His own planning and awareness of human psychology, as well as the Father\'s direct power, to orchestrate things so that He gave His life precisely when and how He did. It was not taken from Him, He laid it down (see on 10:17,18). So it could be that the Lord raised Lazarus, knowing that such a spectacular miracle would provoke support for Him and also the desire to kill Him at all costs. And He orchestrated the triumphal entry in order for it to be a total come down and dashing of Messianic expectation for all who apparently supported Him, so that they would turn against Him and empower the Jews to crucify Him.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3867','1','43','12','13','13','<p>12:13 <i>Took the branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, and cried out: Hosanna Blessed is he that comes in the Name of the Lord, the King of Israel- </i>It has been so often pointed out that the crowd who welcomed the Lord into Jerusalem with shouts of &ldquo;Hosanna&rdquo; were the very people who days later were screaming &ldquo;Crucify him&rdquo;. It&rsquo;s been suggested that the crowds were comprised of two different groups; those who shouted &ldquo;Hosanna&rdquo; were those who had come up from Galilee, and the Jerusalem crowd shouted &ldquo;Crucify Him&rdquo;. But Jn. 12:13 and Jn. 19:14,15 seem to encourage us to make a connection between the two scenes, for &ldquo;the crowd&rdquo; <i>shouts </i>both times- firstly &ldquo;Hosanna&rdquo;, and then &ldquo;Crucify Him&rdquo;. Personally I am convinced it was the same basic crowd. They were a classic witness to the fickleness of human loyalty to God&rsquo;s Son. And remember that only a few months after Jerusalem slew Him, the leaders of the Jews feared that &ldquo;the people&rdquo; would have stoned them if they acted too roughly with the followers of Jesus (Acts 5:26). Popular opinion had swayed back the other way again. And a while later, it was to sway against the Christians again, when &ldquo;there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem&rdquo; (Acts 8:1). But this leads to questions, questions which aren&rsquo;t answered by a simple acceptance of humanity&rsquo;s fickleness. Why this <i>anger </i>with Jesus, a man who truly went about doing good, caring for little children, impressing others with the evident congruity between His words and His person? How could it have happened that the anger of His people was so focused against Him, leading them to prefer a murderer as against a Man who clearly came to give life, and that more abundantly&hellip;? &nbsp;</p><p><i>Branches of palm trees- </i>They welcomed Him into Jerusalem with the waving of palm fronds. These were a symbol of Jewish nationalism- hence the palm appeared on the coins of the Second Revolt (AD 132-135). Back in 164 BC when Judas Maccabeus rededicated the temple altar, palms were brought to the temple (2 Macc. 10:7); and Simon Maccabeus led the Jews back into Jerusalem with palm fronds in 1 Macc. 13:51. The crowd were therefore welcoming Jesus, expecting Him to announce His Messianic Kingdom there and then. The &ldquo;Hosanna&rdquo; of Jn. 12:13 was used in addressing kings in 2 Sam. 14:4; 2 Kings 6:26. It meant literally &ldquo;Save <i>now</i>&rdquo;. They wanted a Kingdom there and then. His whole interpretation of the Kingdom, extensively and so patiently delivered for over three years, had simply failed to register with them. It seems that only after the crowd had started doing this, that the Lord consciously dashed their expectations by sitting on a donkey.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3868','1','43','12','14','14','<p>12:14 <i>And Jesus, having found a young donkey, sat upon it- as it is written</i>- The Lord sat upon the donkey, to fulfil the prophecy of Zech. 9:9 that Israel&rsquo;s King would come to them &ldquo;humble, and riding upon a donkey&rdquo;- not a warhorse. And, moreover, Zechariah says that He would come commanding peace and not bloodlust <i>to the Gentiles</i>, with a world-wide dominion from sea to sea, not merely in Palestine. Those who perceived the Lord&rsquo;s allusion to Zechariah 9 would have realized this was what His acted parable was trying to tell them- the Lord Jesus was not out to destroy Rome but to bring peace to them as well as all the Gentile world. A humble, lowly king was a paradox which they could not comprehend. A king, especially the Messianic King of Israel, had to be proud and war-like. The crowd must have been so terribly disappointed. He purposefully abased Himself and sat upon a donkey. This Jesus whom they had liked and loved and hoped in, turned out to totally and fundamentally <i>not </i>be the person they thought He was- despite Him so patiently seeking to show them who He really was for so long. He had become an image in their own minds, of their own creation, convenient to their own agendas- and when the truth dawned on them, that He was <i>not</i> that person, their anger against Him knew no bounds. The Russian atheist Maxim Gorky commented, in terrible language but with much truth in it, that man has created God in his own image and after his own likeness. And for so many, this is indeed the case. The image of Jesus which the crowds had was only partially based on who He really was. Some things they understood right, but very much they didn&rsquo;t. And they turned away in disgust and anger when they realized how deeply and basically they had misunderstood Him. They angrily commented: &ldquo;Who is this son of man?&rdquo; (Jn. 12:34). In that context, Jesus had not said a word about being &ldquo;son of man&rdquo;. But they were effectively saying: &lsquo;What sort of Messiah / son of man figure is this? We thought you were the son-of-man Messiah, who would deliver us right now. Clearly you&rsquo;re not the type of Messiah / Christ we thought you were&rsquo;. All this would explain perfectly why the awful torture and mocking of Jesus in His time of dying was based around His claims to be a King. The crown of thorns, the mock-royal robe, the &lsquo;sceptre&rsquo; put in His hand, then taken away and used to beat Him with, the mocking title over His body &ldquo;This is the King of the Jews&rdquo;, the anger of the Jewish leaders about this even being written as it was, the jeers of the crowd about this &ldquo;King&rdquo;- all this reflects the extent of anger there was with the nature of His &lsquo;Kingship&rsquo;. All the parables and teaching about the true nature of His Kingship / Kingdom had been totally ignored. The Lord had told them plainly enough. But it hadn&rsquo;t penetrated at all&hellip;&nbsp; The Lord was not only misunderstood by the crowds, but His very being amongst men had provoked in them a crisis of conscience; and their response was to repress that conscience. As many others have done and do to this day, they had shifted their discontent onto an innocent victim, artificially creating a culprit and stirring up hatred against him. Their angry turning against Him was therefore a direct outcome of the way He had touched their consciences. Such tragic misunderstanding of persons occurs all the time, to varying intensities. One frequently finds married couples with such anger against each other that it seems hard for an outsider to appreciate how two such nice people could be so angry with each other. The source of that anger is often traceable to a misunderstanding of each other during courtship. Each party built up an idealized or simply incorrect image of the other; and once they really got to know the other, in the humdrum of daily life, there was a great release of anger- that the spouse was not the person the other partner had imaged. The goodness of who they really goes unperceived and is readily discounted- simply because they don&rsquo;t live up to the mistaken image which the spouse had of them in other areas.&nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3869','1','43','12','15','15','<p>12:15 <i>Fear not, daughter of Zion Look, your King comes, sitting on an donkey\'s colt</i>- The colt would not have been broken in; it would have careered all over the place in a most unseemly way. It would be like a president elect driving through the streets of his capital city in an old, backfiring two door economy car- rather than a brand new Mercedes. But this humility was the special sign that was to be looked for &quot;Look...&quot;. It was the sign that the faithful remnant &quot;the daughter of Zion&quot; would take encouragement from. Those who looked only for immediate Messianic blessing would be bitterly disappointed and let down; but that was the Lord\'s design.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3870','1','43','12','16','16','<p>12:16- see on Jn. 14:29.</p><p><i>These things his disciples did not understand at first; but when Jesus was glorified</i>- This is associated in John with the giving of the Holy Spirit (Jn. 7:39). The suggestion is surely that the Holy Spirit enabled them to understand the significance of events during the Lord\'s ministry. The Comforter was promised to enable them to do this, and in this sense the Comforter brought about the Lord\'s glorification (Jn. 16:14; Acts 3:13). In a sense, the Lord was glorified in the events of the cross (Jn. 13:31,32 &quot;Now is the Son of Man glorified&quot;). And yet the perception of that glory was only achieved by the disciples some time later.</p><p><i>Then they remembered that these things were written about him, and that they had done these things to him</i>- The Comforter brought things to their attention and helped them see the significance and meaning in the Lord\'s words and actions. For it was after all His personal presence in the hearts of the disciples. That same power and gift of the Spirit is for all time, and can have the same effect upon us.</p><p>The purpose of prophecy such as Zechariah 9 is that we shall be able to recognize the signs when they appear, not that we shall be able to predict the future:<br />&middot; The disciples did not expect the Lord Jesus to enter into Jerusalem &quot;sitting on an ass\'s colt&quot; in fulfilment of Zech. 9:9. But when He did, then soon afterwards, all became clear to them- that He had fulfilled this prophecy (Jn. 12:16).</p><p>&middot; &quot;I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe&quot; (Jn. 14:29). <br />&middot; Likewise with prophecies such as &quot;the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up&quot; in Ps. 69:9, and even the Lord\'s own prophecies of His resurrection. When it happened, &quot;his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture (Ps. 69:9), and the word which Jesus had said&quot; (Jn. 2:17-22).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3871','1','43','12','17','17','<p>12:17 <i>The crowd that was with him, when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead, made testimony</i>- As noted on :12, I would say that the Lord psychologically orchestrated the flow of events which would lead to His death. &quot;The crowd&quot; who were the basis of His triumphal entry, who were stirred up in wanting Him to &quot;save now&quot; &quot;Hosanna&quot;, were the crowd who had been motivated by their experience of Lazarus\' amazing resurrection. It was their manic enthusiasm which led the Jews to panic and seek to murder the Lord at all costs. When their expectations were dashed by the whole style of the triumphal entry, this same crowd then turned violently and disappointedly against the Lord, and this fitted in perfectly with the Jewish plot to kill the Lord without problems from the masses. Yet the whole thing was orchestrated by the Lord- for He gave His life, when and how He wished; it was not taken from Him (see on 10:17,18).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3872','1','43','12','18','18','<p>12:18 <i>For this cause also the crowd went and met him, for they heard that he had done this miracle</i>- As noted on :17, John is stressing that the crowd so manic for the Lord to &quot;save now&quot;, who welcomed Him into Jerusalem, was the crowd motivated by the resurrection of Lazarus. This was all planned by the Lord; He was winding them up to a peak of popularist support for Him, and then through the triumphal entry being the very opposite of their hopes, in fact a mocking of traditional Messianic expectation... He was setting them up to then turn against Him. See on :12 and :17.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3873','1','43','12','19','19','<p>12:19 <i>The Pharisees complained to one another: You see that you can do nothing. Look, the world has gone after him</i>- As noted on :12 and :17,18, the Lord intended His miracle to have this effect. He intended the Jewish world to momentarily turn after Him whilst their leadership became the more committed to murdering Him at all costs; so that if He then disappointed the masses of the Jewish world, then His demise would be brought about. In all this we see the Lord scheming to give His life for us, because He loved us. It was not taken from Him (see on 10:17,18).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3874','1','43','12','20','20','<p>12:20 <i>Now there were certain Greeks among those that went to worship at the feast</i>- These were presumably proselytes, like the Ethiopian eunuch, who had travelled to Jerusalem in order to keep Passover as far as they could. Perhaps the Ethiopian eunuch was present at this time amongst them. This would explain why Philip was sent to baptize him, for this group approached Philip at this time (:21).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3875','1','43','12','21','21','<p>12:21 <i>These went to Philip, who was of Bethsaida of Galilee, and asked him: Sir, can we see Jesus?</i>- The Gentiles perhaps approached Philip because he was known to be from an area which was mocked as being largely Gentile. When men asked &ldquo;We would see Jesus&rdquo; (AV), He responded by giving a prophecy of His death&nbsp;(Jn. 12:21)- just as the broken bread <i>is</i> Him; His death is the essence of Him. To know Him crucified was and is to know Him. He continues by saying that if a man lost his life for Him, then that man would be with Jesus where He is. Those who want to know where Jesus is, to see Him, have to die His death (Jn. 12:25,26). The fact the disciples did <i>not</i> appreciate His death meant, therefore, that they didn&rsquo;t really appreciate <i>Him</i>. And they so openly stress this in their Gospels.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3876','1','43','12','22','22','<p>12:22 <i>Philip went and told Andrew, and then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus- </i>Andrew and Philip occur together in Jn. 1:45; 6:7,8; Mk. 3:18. Such friendship between two of a group of twelve is normal, and is another evidence that the Gospel records are true to reality accounts.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3877','1','43','12','23','23','<p>12:23- see on Rev. 7:9.</p><p><i>Jesus told them: The hour comes that the Son of Man should be glorified</i>- It can be inferred from :23 that the Lord perceived that His hour had come to lay down His life when He was told that there were Gentiles who wanted to &ldquo;see&rdquo; Johannine language for &lsquo;believe&rsquo; Him. It was as if this were the cue for Him to voluntarily lay down His life. The conversion of the whole world was a major reason for the Lord&rsquo;s death; and thus there is the inevitable connection between His death, and the need to take the knowledge and power of that death to the whole planet.</p><p>Through John&rsquo;s Gospel, the Lord inspired an awareness that the <i>essence</i> of His coming, the day of judgment and the future Kingdom was in fact to be realized within Christian experience right now. John&rsquo;s Gospel brings this out clearly. The Synoptics all include the Lord&rsquo;s Mount Olivet prophecy as a lead-in to the record of the breaking of bread and crucifixion. In John, the record of this prophecy is omitted and replaced by the account of the Lord&rsquo;s discourse in the upper room. &ldquo;The day of the son of man&rdquo; in John becomes &ldquo;the hour of the cross&hellip; that the son of man should be glorified&rdquo; (Jn. 12:23). &ldquo;Coming&rdquo;, &ldquo;that day&rdquo;, &ldquo;convict / judge the world&rdquo; are all phrases picked up by John and applied to our experience of the Lord right now. In our context of judgment now, we have to appreciate that the reality of the future judgment of course holds true; but the essence of it is going on now. As John Robinson put it, &ldquo;the Last Assize is being accomplished in every moment of choice and decision&hellip; Judgment Day is a dramatized, idealised picture of every day&rdquo;.</p><p>The Synoptics record several references to &quot;the day of the Son of Man&quot; as the day of His second coming. But in John, this becomes the time when the Son of Man is glorified- which refers both to His death, and to the subsequent glorification through the giving of the Spirit into the hearts of the believers. For this was the effective \'coming\' of the Lord to the believers, as they await His literal return. This is only one of many examples of where the language and events of Matthew, Mark and Luke are alluded to and expressed by John in more spiritual and abstract terms. Here are some examples:</p><p>:</p><div align=center><table border=0 cellspacing=10 cellpadding=0 width=80%>    <tbody>        <tr>            <td width=396 valign=top>            <p>The Synoptic Gospels</p>            </td>            <td width=401 valign=top>            <p>John&rsquo;s Gospel</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td width=396 valign=top>            <p>Mt. 16:19 the keys of the Gospel of the Kingdom</p>            </td>            <td width=401 valign=top>            <p>Jn. 20:21,23</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td width=396 valign=top>            <p>the more literal accounts of the birth of Jesus</p>            </td>            <td width=401 valign=top>            <p>Jn. 1: 1-14</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td width=396 valign=top>            <p>The great preaching commission</p>            </td>            <td width=401 valign=top>            <p>Jn. 14:12; 17:18; 20:21; Jn. 15:8,16; Jn. 17:23   RV</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td valign=top>            <p>Lk. 16:31</p>            </td>            <td valign=top>            <p>&quot;If you believe not (Moses\') writings, how   shall you believe my words?&quot; (Jn. 5:47). This is John\'s equivalent of   the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, which concluded with the same basic   point (Lk. 16:31).</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td valign=top>            <p>The transfiguration</p>            </td>            <td valign=top>            <p>Whilst there is no account of the transfiguration   in John, he repeatedly stresses how the Lord manifested forth His glory and   was glorified. For John, the Lord\'s whole life was in a spiritual sense a   form of the transfiguration experience which the synoptics described.</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td width=396 valign=top>            <p>The Synoptics all include the Lord&rsquo;s Mount Olivet   prophecy as a lead-in to the record of the breaking of bread and crucifixion</p>            </td>            <td width=401 valign=top>            <p>In John, the record of this prophecy is omitted   and replaced by the account of the Lord&rsquo;s discourse in the upper room. &ldquo;The   day of the son of man&rdquo; in the synoptics becomes &ldquo;the hour of the cross&hellip;   that the son of man should be glorified&rdquo; (Jn. 12:23). &ldquo;Coming&rdquo;, &ldquo;that day&rdquo;,   &ldquo;convict / judge the world&rdquo; are all phrases picked up by John and applied to   our experience of the Lord right now. In our context of judgment now, we have   to appreciate that the reality of the future judgment of course holds true;   but the essence of it is going on now.</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td valign=top>            <p>The three synoptic gospels all include Peter&rsquo;s   &lsquo;confession&rsquo;, shortly before Jesus&rsquo; transfiguration on the mountain.</p>            </td>            <td valign=top>            <p>In John&rsquo;s gospel the account of the   transfiguration is lacking. Are we to assume that Thomas&rsquo; confession in   chapter 20 is supposed to take its place?</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td width=396 valign=top>            <p>The need for water baptism<br />            The account of the breaking of bread</p>                                    <p>The many quotations from the Old Testament, shown   to be fulfilled in the Lord Jesus.<br />            The synoptics each give some account of the literal origin of Jesus through   giving genealogies or some reference to them.</p>            </td>            <td width=401 valign=top>            <p>Jn. 3:3-5<br />            John&rsquo;s version is in John 6:48-58. He stresses that one must absorb Christ   into themselves in order to really have the eternal life which the bread and   blood symbolize. It seems John puts it this way in order to counter the   tendency to think that merely by partaking in the ritual of breaking bread,   believers are thereby guaranteed eternal life.<br />            John expresses this in more abstract language: &ldquo;The word was made flesh&rdquo; (Jn.   1:14).<br />            John&rsquo;s Gospel speaks of Jesus as if He somehow existed in the plan of God   from the beginning, but &ldquo;became flesh&rdquo; when He was born of Mary.</p>            </td>        </tr>    </tbody></table></div><p>The transfiguration is recorded in the synoptics, and their records include the idea that it happened &ldquo;after six days&rdquo; (Mk. 9:2). John speaks of the same theme of Christ manifesting God&rsquo;s glory, but he sees it as happening not just once at the transfiguration, but throughout the Lord&rsquo;s ministry and above all in His death. Interestingly, John&rsquo;s record also has the idea of the Lord manifesting the Father&rsquo;s glory after six days. The Gospel opens by describing events on four successive days (Jn. 1:19,29,35,43), and then we read that &ldquo;the third day&rdquo; i.e. six or seven days after the story has begun, Jesus &ldquo;manifested his glory&rdquo; (Jn. 2:1,11). Again in Jn. 7:37, it was on the last great day of the feast of Tabernacles, i.e. on the 7th day, that the Lord Jesus manifests Himself. Perhaps too we are to pay attention to the six days mentioned in Jn. 12:1, after which the Lord was crucified and manifested the Father&rsquo;s glory.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3878','1','43','12','24','24','<p>12:24- see on Mk. 14:35.</p><p><i>Truly, truly, I say to you: Except a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it abides alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit</i> - Gk. \'The grain\'. Vine observes that this was spoken to some Greeks (:20); it was &quot;addressed to Greeks, familiar with the Eleusinian mysteries... the risen Dionysus in the freshness of his second life was conducted from Athens to Eleusis in joyful procession. An ear of corn, plucked in solemn silence, was exhibited to the initiated as the object of mystical contemplation, as the symbol of the god, prematurely killed, but, like the ear enclosing the seed-corn, bearing within himself the germ of a second life&quot;. Here we have an example of the Lord speaking to people in terms which they could relate to. He of course didn\'t believe the Eleusinian mysteries were true, just as He didn\'t believe in demons, but He alludes to their incorrect ideas in order to realign their thinking towards God\'s power in Himself. We likewise are to engage with this world in their own terms and language, in order to lead them to the better way.</p><p>In the parable of the sower, the Lord likened the preaching of the Gospel to a seed falling onto various types of ground, good, stony, etc. In all the synoptics, the account of the sower parable is recorded at length; and within that parable, the Lord emphasizes this falling of the seed onto the ground. Likewise He likens response to the Gospel message to &ldquo;a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown in the earth&hellip; but when it is sown&hellip;&rdquo; (Mk. 4:31,32). But the Lord clearly understood the image of a seed falling into the ground as prophetic of His forthcoming crucifixion (Jn. 12:23-25). The connection in His mind is surely clear- the preaching of the Gospel is a form of death and crucifixion, in order to bring forth a harvest in others. Through preaching, we live out the Lord\'s death for others in practice, we placard Him crucified before the world\'s eyes. We are not simply &quot;Him&quot; to them; we are Him crucified to them. The honour of this is surpassing.</p><p><i>It abides alone- </i>The Lord Jesus died a lonely death. Loneliness is a part of sharing in the crucifixion life. The Lord hinted at the loneliness of the cross in saying that the seed falls into the ground and &lsquo;dies&rsquo; &ldquo;alone&rdquo;- but then brings forth much fruit as a result of that alone-ness (Jn. 12:24). The High Priest entered alone into the Most Holy place with the blood of atonement (Heb. 9:7). Any stepping out of the comfort zone is an inevitably lonely experience, just as the crucifixion life of Jesus was the ultimately lonely experience. For nobody else knows exactly how you feel in e.g. turning down that job, giving away those savings, quitting that worldly friendship, quietly selling something...</p><p><i>It bears much fruit</i>- He mused that if He didn&rsquo;t allow Himself to fall to the ground and die, no fruit could be brought forth (Jn. 12:24). The fact He did means that we will bring forth fruit. It could be that the reference in Jn. 7:39 to the Holy Spirit being given through the Lord&rsquo;s death (His &lsquo;glory&rsquo;), as symbolized by the water flowing from His side, means that due to the cross we have the inspiration to a holy, spiritual way of life. It is not so that His death released some mystical influence which would change men and women whether or not they will it; rather is it that His example there inspires those who are open to it. We have been reconciled to God through the cross of Jesus, and yet therefore we must be reconciled to God, and take the message of reconciliation to others. What has been achieved there in prospect we have to make real for us, by appropriating it to ourselves in repentance, baptism and a life of ongoing repentance (2 Cor. 5:18-20 cp. Rom. 5:10; 2 Cor. 5:14,15).</p><p>The fruit brought forth depends upon our freewill bringing forth of that fruit: &quot;I chose you, and appointed you to go and bear fruit s.w. 12:24, and that your fruit should remain&quot; (Jn. 15:16, as in the parable of the sower, Mk. 4:8). The more fruit we bring forth, the more His work and death is glorified. And the language in 15:16 of <i>going</i> and bearing fruit is surely John\'s version of the great preaching commission recorded in the Synoptics.</p><p>Here the Lord assumes that His death, His falling into the ground, would be matched by His followers also hating their lives, that they might rise again. And He connects His death with glorification. Soon afterwards, the Lord spoke of how his followers would likewise &ldquo;bear much fruit&rdquo;, and thus <i>glorify</i> God. And in this context He continues with words which can be read as John&rsquo;s record of the great preaching commission: &ldquo;I have chosen you... that ye should <i>go </i>cp. &ldquo;Go ye into all the world...&rdquo; and bring forth fruit&rdquo; (Jn. 15:8,16). Clearly the Lord connected His bringing forth of &ldquo;much fruit&rdquo; through His death with the same &ldquo;much fruit&rdquo; being brought forth by the disciples&rsquo; witness. It follows from this that the fruit which He potentially achieved on the cross is brought to reality by our preaching. And perhaps it is also possible to see a parallel between our preaching and His laying down of His life on the cross, as if the work of witness is in effect a laying down of life by the preacher, in order to bring forth fruit. Likewise the Lord had earlier linked the life of cross carrying with bearing witness to the world around us (Lk. 9:23,26). As His witnesses we bare His cross as well as share His glory. See on Jn. 17:20.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3879','1','43','12','25','25','<p>12:25 <i>He that loves his life</i>- &quot;Life&quot; translates <i>psuche</i>, &quot;soul&quot;. This is surely the Gospel of John\'s equivalent of the parable of the rich fool, who so loved his own soul but lost it: &quot;I will say to my soul: Soul, you have many goods...&quot; (Lk. 12:19). But here in John we see that the Lord half spoke that parable to Himself; if He refused the cross, He would be loving His own soul, trying to be briefly rich for himself in this world.</p><p><i>Loses it</i>- As so often, the Lord was clearly half talking to Himself here. For in the immediate context, it was His life which was to be lost, or could be temporarily kept if He were to refuse the cross. We are right now losing our lives if we love ourselves. The final judgment is likened to a winnowing process. But right now, according to Ps. 139:3 RVmg., God winnows our path our daily living, all day (&quot;my path&quot;) and every evening (at my &quot;lying down&quot;). &quot;The Lord sat as king in judgment at the Flood. Yea, the Lord sitteth King for ever&quot; (Ps. 29:10 RV); He is just as much sitting in judgment now as He was at the flood, which is a well-known type of the judgment to come. He speaks of our death in the context of His death. Baptism is a statement that we are prepared to identify with His death as the guiding principle for the rest of our eternal existence.</p><p><i>He that hates his life in this world, shall keep it to everlasting life</i>- The Lord carefully doesn\'t speak of \'losing\' life and then receiving it. Instead, He speaks of keeping life and that life becoming everlasting. As He made clear in the events and teaching of the resurrection of Lazarus in Jn. 11, death for Him was not death. The important thing was the kind of life we now live; for He is often recorded by John as teaching that we can live the eternal life right now. We can live the kind of life we shall eternally live. Note that we \'keep\' our current spiritual life eternally; we will eternally be who we are spiritually today. In this lies the paramount and eternal importance of spiritual mindedness and character development.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3880','1','43','12','26','26','<p>12:26- see on Lk. 9:54,55.</p><p><i>If anyone desires to serve me, he must follow me</i>- Whoever serves Gk. &lsquo;is a deacon of&rsquo; the Lord Jesus must follow Him, and the idea of following Him is usually connected with His walk to death on the cross (Jn. 12:26). We are all asked to follow Him, it is all part of being His disciples, and so we are all asked to be &lsquo;deacons&rsquo; in this sense. Our service is of <i>each other</i>; to walk away from active involvement because of personality clashes etc. is to walk away from true, cross-carrying Christianity. In unfeigned humility, let us by love serve one another, and in so doing know the spirit of the Lord who served, and thereby share together His exaltation.</p><p>I have suggested that John\'s Gospel record had a missionary intention and background. It was the transcript of how John preached the Gospel to a particular Jewish interest group, and he backed it up by his three letters which are full of allusion to the Gospel. The Greek for &quot;serve&quot; here is elsewhere translated &quot;use the office of a deacon&quot;. There could well be a specific localized point being made to the Johannine community of converts- any desiring to be a deacon in the church community must be aware that such service is all about sharing in the spirit of the Lord\'s cross. Truly, &quot;If anyone serves me as a deacon, in this initial context, the Father will honour him&quot;. Honour is what church servants receive (1 Tim. 5:17)</p><p><i>He must follow me- </i>&ldquo;Follow me&quot; is usually used by the Lord in the context of taking up the cross and following Him. True service is cross-carrying. It cannot be that we serve, truly serve, in order to advance our own egos. It is all too easy to &ldquo;serve&quot; especially in an ecclesial context without truly carrying the Lord&rsquo;s cross.</p><p><i>And where I am, there shall also my servant be- </i>Where He was right then was at a place where He saw so clearly the cross beckoning, and desperately wished there might be another way. When there was not. We can know something of the spirit of His cross. We can be where He was and where He is, in spirit. The life of cross carrying, devotion to the principles of the cross, will lead us to be with Him always wherever He leads us. In John 12:24-26 losing life as the Lord lost His, serving Him, following Him, being &ldquo;where I am&quot; are all parallel. &quot;I am&quot; can legitimately be read as an allusion to the Yahweh Name, and this was manifested supremely in the Lord\'s death. The sense is therefore that where &quot;I am&quot; would be, i.e. on the cross, to there those who follow the Lord will also come.</p><p><i>If anyone serves me, the Father will honour him- </i>It makes an interesting exercise to compare all the Lord\'s references to &quot;<i>My</i> Father&quot; and to &quot;<i>The </i>Father&quot;. So much of what He says about His relationship with &quot;My Father&quot; He says about our relationship to &quot;The Father&quot;. He was seeking to inculcate an awareness of what He finally states in so many words in Jn. 20:17- that His Father is our Father. His relationship with the Father can be replicated in ours with the same Father, through the spirit of adoption which makes us His dear sons too.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3881','1','43','12','27','27','<p>12:27 <i>Now is my soul disturbed</i>- The same word used about the Lord\'s disturbed soul at the death and resurrection of Lazarus (Jn. 11:33). He saw in the death and resurrection of Lazarus a foretaste of His own, hence His groaning in spirit.</p><p><i>What shall I say?</i>- This is often read as the Lord meaning: \'Shall I say \'Save Me from this hour?\'\', as if He is going through various options of possible prayer. But He does indeed ask to be saved from the hour. Therefore I see this as Him wondering how to find the right words with which to verbalize His emotions. The language of the Lord\'s intercession with groanings which cannot be spoken (Rom. 8:26,27) clearly alludes to His groanings at the resurrection of Lazarus and now as He faces His own death. In that very context, Paul says that we too know not how to pray as we should (Rom. 8:26). The Lord also was at that place.</p><p><i>Father, save me from this hour?</i>- Jesus seems to have prepared His words before praying them. But it appears He decided against praying that. The question mark isn\'t required by the Greek. The sense is \'save me <i>out of</i> this hour\', and we read in Heb. 5:7 that the Lord prayed this and was heard because of His groanings in prayer. So this was not just a prayer He contemplated praying. He prayed it, and it was answered in His resurrection.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3882','1','43','12','28','28','<p>12:28 <i>Father, glorify your name</i>- The Lord Jesus struggled in Gethsemane between &ldquo;save <i>me</i>...&rdquo; and &ldquo;Father, glorify Your name&rdquo;. The glorifying of the Father&rsquo;s Name meant more to him than his personal salvation. Likewise Moses and Paul in spirit were prepared to sacrifice their personal salvation for the sake of Yahweh&rsquo;s Name being glorified in the saving of His people (Ex. 32:30-34 cp. Rom. 9:1-3).</p><p>When He addressed God as <i>abba</i>, \'dad\', the Jews would have been scandalized. But this was the experience He had of God as a near at hand, compassionate Father. He purposefully juxtaposed <i>abba</i> with the Divine Name which Jews were so paranoid about pronouncing: &quot;Abba, glorify your name&quot; (Jn. 12:28). This was nothing short of scandal to Jewish ears. And we&nbsp;are to pray as the Lord prayed, also using &quot;Abba, father&quot; (Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:6). Seeing it was unheard of at the time for Jews to pray to God using \'Abba\', Paul is clearly encouraging us to relate to God and pray to Him as Jesus did (cp. Jn. 20:17). The Lord made a big deal of calling God \'Abba\', even forbidding His Jewish followers to use the term about anyone else (Mt. 23:9).</p><p>The Lord Jesus prayed out loud: &quot;Father, glorify Your name&quot;. A voice came from Heaven saying that God had already done this and would do it again. And the Lord told the listeners that this response came not for His sake, not really as an answer to His prayer, but for their sakes, that in the apparent \'answer\' to His words, they might see the power of prayer and the extent of the Father\'s relationship with the Son (Jn. 12:28-30). But He knew that the prayer had already been answered before it was prayed. And even with us, answers can come not necessarily for the sake of the answer, but to demonstrate other principles. Likewise the Lord asks us to pray for the Kingdom to come, not because this means that a certain number of prayers will change the date, but surely because the process of petition for the Kingdom is for our benefit.<br />&quot;Father, glorify your name&quot; could have been a request for the whole crucifixion and resurrection event to start there and then. It would only be natural for any genuine human to wish for it to start and be done with. There is good reason to understand that in those wretched hours of crucifixion, God was especially manifested to the world. There was a matchless, never to be surpassed partnership between Father and Son on the cross. God was in Christ on the cross, reconciling the world unto Himself (2 Cor. 5:19). There the Lord Jesus manifested and declared the Father\'s Name, His essential character, to the full (Jn. 12:28; 13:31,32; 17:5,6,26). The Lord\'s references to \'going to the Father\' referred to His coming crucifixion. That was where the Father was, on the cross. In the very moment of His death the observing Centurion gasped, twice: &quot;<i>Truly</i> this was the Son of God&quot; (Mk. 15:40; Lk. 23:46). There was something so evidently Godly in that death. God was so near.</p><p>&quot;Hallowed be your name&quot; isn\'t merely an ascription of praise- it\'s actually a request for God to carry out all the implications of His Name in practice. When we sing praise to God\'s Name, we ask for it to be glorified- and here is where praise isn\'t mere painless performance of music. Once we bring the Name of God into it, we\'re actually asking for action in our lives. Jesus Himself prayed that part of His model prayer- &quot;Father, glorify your name&quot; (Jn. 12:28)- and soon afterwards He could comment that in His death, &quot;Now the Son of man is glorified, and in him God is glorified&quot; (Jn. 13:31). Thus in the Lord\'s case, a request to glorify God\'s Name lead Him ultimately to the cross.</p><p>The continuity of personality between the human Jesus and the now-exalted Jesus is brought out by meditation upon His &ldquo;glory&rdquo;. The glory of God refers to His essential personality and characteristics. When He &lsquo;glorifies Himself&rsquo;, He articulates that personality- e.g. in the condemnation of the wicked or the salvation of His people. Thus God was &quot;glorified&quot; in the judgment of the disobedient (Ez. 28:22; 39:13), just as much as He is &quot;glorified&quot; in the salvation of His obedient people. God glorified Himself in redeeming Israel, both in saving them out of Babylon, and ultimately in the future. Thus He was glorified in His servant Israel (Is. 44:23; 49:3). There are therefore both times and issues over which the Father is glorified. He was above all glorified in the resurrection of His Son. Each of these \'glorifications\' meant that the essential Name / personality of the Father was being manifested and justified. The glory of the Lord Jesus was that of the Father. He was glorified in various ways and at different times within His ministry (e.g. Jn. 11:4); but He was also glorified in His resurrection and exaltation (Jn. 7:39). As the Lord approached the cross, He asked that the Father\'s Name be glorified. The response from Heaven was that God had already glorified it in Christ, and would do so again (Jn. 12:28). At the last Supper, the Lord could say: &quot;Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him&quot; (Jn. 13:31).&nbsp; And yet various Scriptures teach that the Son of man was to be glorified in His death, in His resurrection (Acts 3:13), at His ascension, in His priestly mediation for us now (Heb. 5:5), in the praise His body on earth would give Him, in their every victory over sin, in every convert made (Acts 13:48; 2 Thess. 3:1), in every answered prayer (Jn. 14:13), and especially at His return (2 Thess. 1:10)... So the glorification of the Lord Jesus wasn\'t solely associated with His resurrection, and therefore it wasn\'t solely associated with His nature being changed or His receiving a new body. In each of these events, and at each of these times, the Name / glory / personality of the Father is being manifested, justified and articulated.</p><p><i>I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again</i>- The Name was glorified in the Lord\'s perfect life, and would be supremely in His death. There, in the nakedness, blood and spittle of the cross, the Name of God was declared. And yet the Name is glorified in that the characteristics of God are declared in the willing response of people (&quot;Who shall not fear You and glorify Your Name?&quot;, Rev. 15:4 s.w.). But here, God speaks of how He will glorify His Name; the revealing of His characteristics in people is not only over to them to achieve; God through the Spirit will do His part in bringing this about.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3883','1','43','12','29','29','<p>12:29 <i>The crowd that stood by and heard it</i>- They heard the &quot;voice&quot; from Heaven (:28). Significantly, Jn. 3:29 has spoken of John the Baptist as \'standing and hearing\' same Greek words the Lord\'s voice. The voice came for their sakes (:30), so we are led to imagine this crowd as containing believers, perhaps prepared by John the Baptist\'s preaching. &quot;The crowd&quot; had heard God\'s voice; to turn away from His Son was to totally deny His personal appeal to them. And yet this &quot;crowd&quot; were the very group who soon were to turn against the Lord and cry for His crucifixion, because their expectations of Messiah had been dashed.</p><p><i>Said that it had thundered. Others said an angel had spoken to him</i>- This is all the language of Old Testament theophany, especially to Moses. The Lord is clearly being established as greater than Moses, and they are being called to be a new Israel obedient to a new covenant.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3884','1','43','12','30','30','<p>12:30 <i>Jesus responded: This voice has not come for my sake, but for your sakes</i>- To hear the actual voice of His Father might seem the ultimate encouragement to the Lord. After all the years of abstraction, of praying to the Father and reading His voice in His written word... to finally hear His actual voice would seem to be a case of faith gloriously and triumphantly turned to sight. But the Lord emphasizes that hearing the Father\'s actual voice was not for His sake. It did not as it were encourage Him. We are reminded of Elisha being so sure there were Angels surrounding him that he asked for only the eyes of his servant to be opened to behold them (2 Kings 6:17). And so we are set up for the momentous teaching about the Comforter which is to come in chapters 14-16. Physicalities like seeing or hearing a person are on a very low level. The presence of the Comforter in our hearts will actually be more significant than having the Lord\'s literal presence. And likewise, the manifestation of the Father in the Son is far more than hearing His literal, physical voice. This is a huge challenge to us. To read the Bible and have the Spirit operative in our hearts, and the Lord\'s presence there, as of the word made flesh, is <i>more than</i> actually hearing the voice of God almighty.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3885','1','43','12','31','31','<p>12:31 <i>Now is the judgment of this world</i>- The coming of the voice was to encourage that crowd that the Lord was indeed of God, and that the Jewish world which had such a pull on them against Him was actually under judgment, just as He had proclaimed. The Lord plainly described His death as &quot;the judgment of this world&quot;. Because there was &quot;no judgment&quot; in the ultimate sense as there was no justice, therefore the Lord Jesus died on the cross (Is. 59:15,16). This was the ultimate judgment of this world. There the Lord God, through His Son, acted as judge in condemning sin (Rom. 8:3).</p><p><i>Now shall the prince of this world be cast out- </i></p><p>The &ldquo;prince of this world&rdquo; is described as being &ldquo;cast out&rdquo;, coming to the Lord Jesus, having no part in Him and being &ldquo;judged&rdquo;, all during the last few hours before Christ&rsquo;s death (Jn.12:31; 14:30; 16:11). All these descriptions seem to fit the Jewish system as represented by the Law, Moses, Caiaphas the High Priest, Judas and the Jews wanting to kill Jesus, and Judas. Note that &ldquo;the prince of this world&rdquo; refers to Roman and Jewish governors in 1 Cor. 2:6,8. At the Lord&rsquo;s death the Mosaic system was done away with (Col. 2:14&ndash;17); the &ldquo;bondwoman&rdquo;, representing the Law in the allegory, was &ldquo;cast out&rdquo; (Gal. 4:30). &ldquo;The prince of this world&rdquo; is described, in the very same words, as being &ldquo;cast out&rdquo; (Jn. 12:31).</p><p><b>Caiaphas?</b></p><p>Wycliffe in archaic English renders Mt. 26:3: &ldquo;Then the princes of priests and the elder men of the people were gathered into the hall of the prince of priests, that was said Caiaphas&rdquo;. The &ldquo;world&rdquo; in John&rsquo;s Gospel refers primarily to the Jewish world; its &ldquo;prince&rdquo; can either be a personification of it, or a reference to Caiaphas the High Priest. Caiaphas&rsquo; equivalent name in Hebrew could suggest &lsquo;cast out&rsquo;; his rending of his priestly clothes at Christ&rsquo;s trial declared him &ldquo;cast out&rdquo; of the priesthood (see Lev. 10:6; 21:10). &ldquo;This world&rdquo; and its &ldquo;prince&rdquo; are treated in parallel by John (12:31 cp. 16:11) &ndash; just as Jesus, the prince of the Kingdom, can be called therefore &ldquo;the Kingdom&rdquo; (Lk. 17:21). Colossians 2:15 describes Christ&rsquo;s ending of the Law on the cross as &ldquo;spoiling principalities and powers&rdquo; &ndash; the &ldquo;prince&rdquo; of the Jewish world being &ldquo;cast out&rdquo; (a similar idea in Greek to &ldquo;spoiling&rdquo;) would then parallel this. The Jews &ldquo;caught&rdquo; Jesus and cast Him out of the vineyard (Mt. 21:39) &ndash; but in doing so, they themselves were cast out of the vineyard and &ldquo;spoiled&rdquo; by Jesus (Col. 2:15).</p><p>If indeed &ldquo;the prince of this world&rdquo; is a reference to Caiaphas, then we have to face the fact that this individual is being singled out by the Lord for very special condemnation, as the very embodiment of &lsquo;Satan&rsquo;, sin and its desires, all that was then in opposition to God. This is confirmed by the Lord&rsquo;s comment to Pilate that &ldquo;he that delivered me unto you has the greatest sin&rdquo; (Jn. 19:11 Gk. &ndash; &ldquo;greater&rdquo; in the AV is translated &ldquo;greatest&rdquo; in 1 Cor. 13:13; Mk. 9:34; Mt. 13:32; 18:1,4; 23:11; Lk. 9:46; Lk. 22:24; Lk. 22:26). It was Caiaphas and the Jews who &ldquo;delivered&rdquo; Jesus to Pilate to execute (Mt. 27:2,18; Jn. 18:30,35 s.w.). But the Lord speaks as if one person amongst them in particular had delivered Him to Pilate &ndash; and that specific individual was Caiaphas. If Caiaphas had the &ldquo;greatest sin&rdquo; in the crucifixion of God&rsquo;s son, we can understand how he is singled out by the Lord Jesus for such description as the &ldquo;prince of this world&rdquo;. A number of expositors have interpreted &ldquo;the Devil... that had the power of death&rdquo; in Heb. 2:14&ndash;17 as an allusion to Caiaphas.</p><p><b>Judas and &ldquo;The prince of this world&rdquo;</b></p><p>There are points of association between &quot;the prince of this world&quot; and Judas; I suggest, because Judas was the agent of Caiaphas and the Jewish world. After Judas left the upper room we get the impression that Jesus started to talk more earnestly and intensely. Immediately after Judas went out Jesus said, &ldquo;<i>Now </i>is the Son of man glorified... Little children, yet a little while I am with you... Hereafter I will not talk much (longer) with you: for the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me&rdquo; (Jn. 13:31,33; 14:30). Because He knew Judas would soon return with his men, Christ wanted to give the disciples as much instruction as possible in the time that remained. This would explain the extraordinary intensity of meaning behind the language used in John 14&ndash;17. After He finished, &ldquo;Judas then, having received a band of men and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees, <i>cometh</i>...&rdquo; (Jn. 18:3); &ldquo;The prince of this world <i>cometh</i>&rdquo;, Jesus had prophesied, epitomized in the person and attitude of Judas. Christ had told the disciples that &ldquo;the prince&rdquo; &ldquo;hath nothing (cp. no part) in Me&rdquo; (Jn. 14:30). Not until Judas appeared with the men would the disciples have realized that he was the betrayer (see Jn.18:3&ndash;5). Jesus knew this would come as a shock to them, and would lead them to question whether they themselves were in Christ; therefore He warned them that Judas, as a manifestation of &ldquo;the prince of this world&rdquo;, had no part in Him any longer. For &ldquo;the Devil&rdquo; of the Jewish authorities and system, perhaps Caiaphas personally, had put into the heart of Judas to betray the Lord (Jn. 13:2). The whole Jewish leadership were the &ldquo;betrayers&rdquo; of Jesus (Acts 7:52) in that Judas, the one singular betrayer, was the epitome of the Jewish system and the agent of Caiaphas. The prince having nothing in Christ suggests a reference to Daniel 9:26: &ldquo;And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, and shall have nothing (A.V. margin &ndash; i.e. have no part): and the people of the prince that shall come (the Romans) shall destroy the city and the sanctuary&rdquo;. Thus it was the Jewish world as well as Judas which had nothing in Messiah, and the system they represented was to be destroyed by another (Roman) &ldquo;prince that shall come&rdquo; to replace the (Jewish) &ldquo;prince of this world&rdquo;. The occurrence of the phrase &ldquo;prince&rdquo; and the idea of having nothing in Messiah in both Daniel 9:26 and John 14:30 suggest there must be a connection of this nature.</p><p>Judas betrayed the Lord Jesus because he was bought out and thus controlled by the Jewish &lsquo;Satan&rsquo;. The fact that Judas was &ldquo;one of the twelve&rdquo; as he sat at the last supper is emphasized by all the Gospel writers &ndash; the phrase occurs in Matthew 26:14; Mark 14:20; Luke 22:47 and John 13:21. Thus later Peter reflected: &ldquo;he was numbered with us (cp. &ldquo;one of the twelve&rdquo;), and had (once) obtained <i>part</i> of this ministry&rdquo; (Acts 1:17), alluding back to Christ&rsquo;s statement that &ldquo;the prince of this world&rdquo; ultimately had <i>no </i>part in Him. Similarly 1 John 2:19 probably alludes to Judas as a type of all who return to the world: &ldquo;They went out from us, but they were not of us&rdquo; (cp. &ldquo;Judas, one of the twelve&rdquo;). Judas is described as a Devil (Jn. 6:70), and his leaving the room may have connected in the Lord&rsquo;s mind with &ldquo;the prince of this world&rdquo; being cast out. Those who &ldquo;went out from us&rdquo; in 1 John 2:19 were primarily those who left the Jewish ecclesias (to whom John was largely writing) to return to Judaism, and they who left were epitomized by Judas. 2 Peter 2:13,15 equates the Judaizers within the ecclesias with Balaam &ldquo;who loved the wages of unrighteousness&rdquo;. The only other time this latter phrase occurs is in Acts 1:18 concerning Judas.</p><p><b>&ldquo;Cast out&rdquo;</b><br />Apostate Israel are described in the very language of the adversaries / Satans of God\'s people. Because they acted like the world around them, from which they had been called out, they were ultimately judged by God as part of that world. Consider all the times when God&rsquo;s apostate people are recorded as acting in terms of their Arab cousins; thus apostate Israel and the Jewish system were to be &quot;cast out&quot; (Jn. 12:31) just as Ishmael had been (Gen. 21:10).</p><p>&ldquo;Cast out&rdquo; in the Old Testament at times refers to Israel being cast out of the land for their disobedience (cp. Lk. 19:45). This was what was to happen to the first century Jews. The Law itself was to be &ldquo;cast out&rdquo; (Gal. 4:30). The idea of being cast out recalls the casting out of Hagar and Ishmael. The Lord commented concerning the end of the Mosaic system: &ldquo;The servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever&rdquo; (Jn. 8:35). The description of apostate Israel as being &ldquo;cast out in the open field&rdquo; with none to pity them except God must have some reference to Ishmael (Ez. 16:5). Galatians 4:29&ndash;30 specifically connects the Law with Hagar, and the source of this passage in Isaiah 54:1&ndash;7 concerning the calling again of a forsaken young wife who had more children than the married wife has similarities with Hagar&rsquo;s return to Abraham in Genesis 16. After Hagar&rsquo;s final rejection in Genesis 21, she wandered through the Paran wilderness carrying Ishmael &ndash; as Israel was carried by God through the same wilderness. The miraculous provision of water for Israel in this place is a further similarity, as is Ishmael&rsquo;s name, which means &lsquo;God heard the cry&rsquo; &ndash; as He did of His people in Egypt. Thus Hagar and Ishmael represent apostate Israel, and both of them were &ldquo;cast out&rdquo;. Romans 9:6&ndash;8 provides more confirmation: &ldquo;For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel... but, in Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God&rdquo;. Paul&rsquo;s reminder that the seed was to be traced through Isaac, and that the apostate Israel of the first century were not the true Israel of God but the children of the flesh, leads us to identify them with Ishmael, the prototype child of the flesh. In the same way, Jeremiah describes wayward Israel as a wild ass (Jer. 2:24), perhaps inviting comparison with Ishmael, the wild ass man (Gen. 16:12).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3886','1','43','12','32','32','<p>12:32- see on Jn. 3:14-21; 19:13.</p><p><i>And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself- </i>The Lord\'s lifting up on the pole resulted in all men being drawn unto him (Jn. 12:32); but this is taking language from Isaiah\'s prophecies of how the Lord Jesus at His return would be raised up like an ensign (s.w. pole, Num. 21:9), and all people would be gathered to Him for judgment (Is. 5:26; 11:10; 18:3; 49:22; 62:10). There is evidently a connection between the Lord\'s lifting up on the pole / cross and gathering all men to Him, and the way in which all men will be gathered to Him at His return. His cross was a foretaste of the judgment. Our feelings before His cross <i>now </i>will be those we experience before Him at the final judgment. See on Jn. 19:37.</p><p>The Lord foresaw that if He were lifted up, He would <i>thereby</i> draw all men men of all types, of all nations and languages unto Him in truth (Jn. 12:32). And a brief reflection upon the effect of the cross in human lives will reveal that this has indeed been the case. The cross was an instrument of torture; yet it inspires men to write hymns of praise about it e.g. &ldquo;When I survey the wondrous cross&hellip;&quot;. Men have never written hymns of praise to the guillotine or hangman&rsquo;s rope. Nor have men made small relics of an electric chair and glanced towards them for inspiration at hard times.</p><p><i>From the earth</i>- Gk. <i>out of</i> the earth. The reference is not only to the lifting up in crucifixion, but to the lifting up in resurrection and then ascension glory.</p><p><i>All men- </i>&ldquo;All men&quot; would be drawn together unto the crucified Christ (Jn. 12:32). There is a theme in John\'s Gospel, that there was disunity amongst the Jews whenever they rejected the message of Christ crucified (7:43; 9:16; 10:19- which implies this was often the case). Conversely, acceptance of His atonement leads to unity. The crucified Son of Man must be lifted up by our preaching before the eyes of all, so that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish (Jn. 3:14,15). &ldquo;I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me&rdquo; (Jn. 12:32)- but we draw men by our spreading of the Gospel net, preaching to &ldquo;all men&rdquo;. Thus the extent of the Lord&rsquo;s achievement on the cross depends upon our preaching of it.</p><p><i>Whenever</i> we come into contact with Him, or reflect upon Him and His death, we are in some sense coming before Him in judgment. Indeed, <i>any </i>meeting of God with man, or His Son with men, is effectively some kind of judgment process. The brightness of their light inevitably, by its very nature, shows up the dark shadows of our lives. In the cross we see the glory of the Lord Jesus epitomised and presented in its most concentrated form. In Jn. 12:31,32, in the same passage in which Isaiah 6 and 53 are connected and applied to the crucifixion, He Himself foretold that His death would be &ldquo;the judgment of this world&quot;. And He explained in the next breath that His being &lsquo;lifted up from the earth&rsquo; (an Isaiah 6 allusion) would gather all men unto Him (cp. &ldquo;all men&quot; being gathered to the last judgment, Is. 49:22; 62:10; Mt. 25:32). When He was lifted up, then the Jews would know their judgments (Jn. 8:26-28).</p><p>The whole congregation (LXX <i>ekklesia</i>) of Israel were &quot;gathered together&quot; before the smitten rock, which &quot;was Christ&quot; crucified (Num. 20:8 cp. 21:16; 1 Cor. 10:4). The &quot;ensign&quot;, the pole on which the brazen serpent was lifted up, would draw together the scattered individuals of God\'s people (Is. 11:2); and as stricken Israel were gathered around that pole, so the lifting up of the crucified Christ brings together all His people (Jn. 12:32 cp. 3:14). See on Jn. 17:21.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3887','1','43','12','33','33','<p>12:33 <i>But this he said to signify by what manner of death he should die</i>- The Lord intended to die by crucifixion. &quot;Should&quot;, <i>mello</i>, has a strong flavour of intention and self-purpose. This was the manner of death He chose. He became obedient to death, even the death of the cross; and yet that death was also of His own device. This gives even more significance to &quot;the cross&quot;; for it was His own intention to die that way. He could have legitimately sacrificed Himself in many ways; for He gave His life totally of Himself and it was not taken from Him. But He chose this cruellest and most public form because He so wanted to appeal to men and women to repent. May we respond to it and not shrug and walk on by.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3888','1','43','12','34','34','<p>12:34- see on Jn. 12:13.</p><p><i>The crowd asked him: We have heard out of the law that the Christ abides forever; and how do you say: The Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?</i>- This same &quot;crowd&quot; had been enthused by the resurrection of Lazarus and were welcoming the Lord as Messiah on the basis that He would establish an eternal Messianic Kingdom there and then. As explained on :12 and elsewhere, the Lord purposefully deflated their expectations. They were in love with an image of Him and not He Himself; and when He brought that to their attention, saying that He had come to die and not start a political Kingdom; it had the desired effect. They turned against Him. &quot;Who is this Son of Man?&quot; can imply \'We don\'t need a Son of Man Messiah of <i>this</i> kind\'. A crucified Messiah was anathema to them, so much so that they actually went and got Him crucified.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3889','1','43','12','35','35','<p>12:35 <i>Jesus replied to them: Yet a little while is the light among you. Walk while you have the light, so that darkness does not overtake you. He that walks in the darkness does not know where he goes- </i>He had earlier spoken of Himself as the light of the world, meaning a torch lifted up, just as the snake was lifted up on a standard pole. And He had spoken this in evident anticipation of the manner of His death. Yet He speaks as if He was in His life the light of the world, by which men must walk; the prologue introduces this theme. His life exhibited the spirit of His final death. And this is the light, lifted up, by which we must live. There can be no sense of direction to life unless it is guided by the principles of the cross- we will know not whither we go. For those whose lives seems a long tunnel, through reason of their jobs or family burdens, let His cross enlighten our darkness. The light of His example was literally only to be with them a few more days before He would die. The darkness which could overtake them was that of Judaism, according to the prologue; and John\'s letters define that darkness as hating our brother. For those Jews to not accept the Lord as their Messiah and to crucify Him, and then persecute His followers, is all not living in love towards our brother. This is to live in darkness.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3890','1','43','12','36','36','<p>12:36 <i>Believe in the light, so that you may become sons of light- </i>Our belief in any statement of faith should be just that- a statement of our living faith, rather than a mere statement of our intellectual, academic, theoretical opinion. Our lives and personalities above all are our individual statement of faith. The doctrine of the cross, of the Gospel, of the man and Lord Christ Jesus, is to be the centre of not merely our mind and reason, but at the core of our actual life and conscience. For we become like what we believe in- if we believe in the light, we become children of light (Jn. 12:36). The Lord had stated that &quot;you are the light of the world&quot;, just as He was &quot;the light of the world&quot;. If we walk by His light, we shall in turn become light in the darkness- which in John\'s first context referred to the darkness of the Jewish world.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3891','1','43','12','36','36','<p>12:36 <i>While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become sons of light</i>- This is an intensely urgent appeal to the crowd who had apparently believed in Him. The Lord had set them up to turn against Him (see on :12) but all the same, He begs for them to not do the psychologically inevitable- and to believe in Him.</p><p>John\'s later interpretation of this is in 1 Jn. 1:7: &quot;But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin&quot;. The light is ultimately God, but we see His light reflected in the face of the Lord Jesus. Walking in the light refers to the Lord\'s desire that they make the most of every minute of His mortal company. Soon the light would be taken from them, in that He would die. He urges His followers the same way in Jn. 11 . By walking with Him in the light, believing in Him, walking as He walked, they would become sons of light, true believers. But 1 Jn. 1:7 is saying that we who never met the Lord Jesus can walk in the light as much as those who walked with Him in Palestine two millennia ago. And that is indeed the promise of the Comforter- that although He was to be taken from the disciples in death, the ministry of the Spirit would mean that He was as real to believers as He had been to the disciples who literally touched and watched Him. This is quite the challenge to us all. That man is not alone; God with us, in Christ, walks that close, as if literally with us.</p><p><i>Jesus spoke these things, then he departed and hid himself from them- </i>He had just spoken of Himself as the light of the world, which must be viewed and walked in, but having said that, He hides Himself. The idea is that He is the light to those who seek Him, who find where He is \'hidden\'; the metaphor of light doesn\'t mean that He is shining like the sun, obvious to all. He is- but in the spiritual world and heart of the believer.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3892','1','43','12','37','37','<p>12:37 <i>But though he had done so many signs before them, yet they did not believe in him</i>- This was the identical experience of Moses, described in just the same language (Num. 14:11). And this was despite His desperate appeal to the crowd to truly believe in Him (see on :36).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3893','1','43','12','38','38','<p>12:38 <i>So that the word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, when he spoke: Lord, who has believed our report?</i>- The prophecies of Isaiah 53 had fulfilment in the Lord\'s life as well as in His death. His crucifixion in that sense was the essence of His life. His whole life was a being acquainted with grief (Is. 53:3); and yet we read in this same context that He was put to grief in His death (:10). The grief of His death was an extension of the grief of His life. &ldquo;Who has believed our report?&quot; (Is. 53:1) was fulfilled by the Jewish rejection of Him in His life, as well as in His death (Jn. 12:38).&quot;He bore the sin of many&quot; (Is. 53:12) is applied by Jn. 1:29 to how during His ministry, the Lord Jesus bore the sin of the world. He was glorified in His death (although the world didn&rsquo;t see it that way), as well as in His life (Jn. 12:23,29). The Jews refused to believe in Jesus whilst He was still alive- and yet by doing so, John says, they fulfilled Is. 53:1:&quot;Who hath believed our report&quot;. But the &ldquo;report&quot; there was clearly the message of the cross. It&rsquo;s as if John applies a clear prophecy about the cross to people&rsquo;s response to Jesus during His lifetime.</p><p>Jn. 12:38 parallels our preaching or &ldquo;report&rdquo; of the Gospel with the Lord Jesus, the &ldquo;arm of the Lord&rdquo;, being &lsquo;revealed&rsquo; through us. The body of Christ thus witnesses to itself by simply <i>being</i> Christ to this world. This is the essence of our calling and of our lives- to manifest / reveal the Christ.</p><p><i>And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?- </i>&quot;The arm of the Lord&quot; is the Father\'s operation in human individuals and society. Only those who accept the crucified Messiah will perceive that. For it is through the crucified Saviour that God works in hearts and minds and whole groups of people. But that is only revealed to believers in the cross. Those who \'believe the report\' about the crucified Lord Jesus see the arm of the Lord revealed.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3894','1','43','12','39','39','<p>12:39 <i>Because of this they could not believe, because Isaiah also said</i>- In Jn. 12:39-42 we find John quoting the words of Isaiah about how Israel would not believe the message of Jesus: &ldquo;Therefore they could not believe, because Isaiah said again, He hath blinded their eyes&hellip; <i>nevertheless </i>even of the rulers many believed on him&rdquo; (RV). &ldquo;Nevertheless&rdquo; shows the wonder of it all; despite clear prophecy that they would not believe, some of them did. The Lord&rsquo;s hopefulness paid off. And so can ours. It is not that God doesn\'t want people to believe; but those who refuse His voice, who will not see with their eyes, are blinded so that they will not see. They are confirmed in their attitudes.</p><p>Here the Lord combines quotations from Isaiah 53 and Isaiah 6, applying them to His cross. There He was lifted up in glory, with the power to both convict Isaiah of his sinfulness and also inspire his service of the Gospel. Yet Is. 53:1 also applies to Israel&rsquo;s refusal to hear the &ldquo;report&quot; of the Lord&rsquo;s miracles. The Lord saw His death as summing up the message of all the &ldquo;works&quot; of miracles which He had done, at least those recorded by John. This opens up a fruitful line of investigation of the miracles; they all show something of the spirit of the cross, and find their final fulfilment in the cross. In 4:34 see notes there He had spoken of His death as the final, crowning &ldquo;work&quot; of His ministry. If men understand the cross, then they see with their eyes, understand with their heart, and are converted.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3895','1','43','12','40','40','<p>12:40 <i>He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, lest they should see with their eyes, lest they should understand with their hearts, and turn, so that I should heal them</i>- As noted on :39, this blinding of Israel is not because God wanted to. It was because He was confirming them in attitudes they had themselves adopted. Seeing / understanding is paralleled with believing; the understanding in view is simple belief in the Lord Jesus. This would then lead to the Lord\'s healing- which speaks in the context of a healing of hearts, the kind of thing spoken of in the beatitudes. So belief / understanding / seeing leads to the Lord\'s action on the heart, in the healing of human hearts or minds. This speaks of the work of the Spirit in the hearts and psychology of the believer. &quot;Turn&quot; is \'be converted / turned\'. The work of turning a heart around is a matter of the spirit, and happens when one believes. We see here a difference between initial belief, and the process of conversion / turning and healing of the heart which is done by the Lord in response to belief. Note that these words of Isaiah are quoted five times in the New Testament (Mt. 13:13; Mk. 4:12; Lk. 8:10; Acts 28:26). This is a major teaching which we need to give due weight to.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3896','1','43','12','41','41','<p>12:41 <i>These things said Isaiah, because he foresaw his glory, and he spoke about him</i>- The hour of glory was the hour of crucifixion. The son of God, naked, covered in blood and spittle... was the Son of man glorified. And likewise when we are fools for Christ&rsquo;s sake, then we know His glory<i>. </i>John 12:37-41 tells us that Isaiah 6 is a vision of the Lord Jesus in glory; and in this passage John quotes both Isaiah 6 and 53 together, reflecting their connection and application to the same event, namely the Lord\'s crucifixion. So it is established that Is. 6 is a vision of the crucified Lord Jesus, high and lifted up in glory in God\'s sight, whilst covered in blood and spittle, with no beauty that man should desire Him. The point is, when Isaiah saw this vision he was convicted of his sinfulness: &quot;Woe is me, for I am undone...&quot;. And yet the same vision comforted him with the reality of forgiveness, and inspired him to offer to go forth and witness to Israel&nbsp;of God\'s grace. Isaiah saw a vision of the Lord &quot;high and lifted up&quot;, with the temple veil torn (Is. 6:4 cp. Mt. 27:51), and was moved to realize his sinfulness, and vow to spread the appeal for repentance (Is. 6:1,5). The high, lifted up Lord whom he saw was He of Is. 52:13- the crucified Lord. And yet He saw Him enthroned in God\'s glory, as it were on the cross. John links the visions of Is. 6 and 52/53 as both concerning the crucifixion (Jn. 12:37-41); there the glory and essence of God was revealed supremely. Jn. 12:38-41 draws a parallel between being converted, and understanding the prophecies of the glory of the crucified Christ. To know Him in His time of dying, to see the arm of Yahweh revealed in Him there, is to be converted. &nbsp;</p><p>Isaiah\'s vision of &quot;the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up&quot; (Is. 6:1) connects with the description of the crucified Lord high and lifted up (Is. 52:13). This vision, John tells us, was of Christ in His glory. And John combines his citation of this passage with that of Is. 53 concerning the cross (Jn.&nbsp; 12:41,42). The Lord, high and lifted up in glory, was the crucified Lord. There He was enthroned, in God\'s eyes, in His throne of glory. When He comes again and sits in the throne of His glory, He will be repeating in principle the glorification of the cross. The very vision of the lifted up Lord convicted Isaiah of his sinfulness, and steeled his faith in forgiveness (Is. 6:5-8). See on Jn. 19:37.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3897','1','43','12','42','42','<p>12:42- see on Rom. 10:9.</p><p><i>Nevertheless even among the rulers many believed in him, but because of the Pharisees they did not confess him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue</i>- Why then did they turn so quickly against Him? The answer, I suggest, lies in the way that they misunderstood Him. They liked Him; the Jewish authorities despaired even just prior to His death that &ldquo;the world is gone after him&rdquo;, because so many of the Jews were apparently &ldquo;Believing in him&rdquo; (Jn. 12:11,19); His popularity seems to have resurged to an all time high on his final visit to Jerusalem. The crowds liked some aspects of the idea of this man Jesus of Nazareth; they are described in John&rsquo;s Gospel as &ldquo;believing on him&rdquo;, and yet John makes it clear that this was not the real belief which the Lord sought. John makes this point within Jn. 6:14,26: &ldquo;When therefore the people saw the sign which he did, they said, This is of a truth the prophet that cometh into the world&hellip; Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw signs, but because ye ate of the loaves, and were filled&rdquo;. The crowd appeared to respond and perceive the significance of the sign-miracles; but the Lord knew that they had not properly understood. They apparently &ldquo;believed&rdquo;, but would not confess Him before men (Jn. 12:42)- and such &lsquo;confession&rsquo; is vital for salvation (Rom. 10:9,10 s.w.). For all their liking of Jesus and some of the things that He stood for, they willingly closed their hearts to the radical import of His essential message of self-crucifixion, of a cross before the crown, of a future Kingdom which inverts all human values, where the humble are the greatest, the poor in spirit are the truly rich, the despised are the honoured...</p><p>Any who openly confessed Jesus as Messiah were put out of the synagogue (Jn. 9:22). The chief rulers are described as believing on Christ (Jn. 12:42), even though their faith was such a private affair at that time that it was hardly faith at all.&nbsp; The positivism of Jesus counted them as believers. Perhaps Jn. 1:12 alludes to them: &quot;<i>Whoever</i> accepts him, those who believe in his name, to them he gave the right to become children of God&quot;. The &quot;whoever&quot; would then be implying that even if their faith was so weak that they would not publicly confess it, all the same they were counted as God\'s children. Yet we could read Jn. 12:42 the other way- belief alone is not enough, there must be public confession. It could be that we are to see a parallel between not confessing and not believing. We were called and converted <i>so that</i>&nbsp;we might give light to others. These Jewish leaders who believed wanted praise / glory of men (:43), and this desire to receive praise from men was exactly what led men <i>not</i> to truly believe (Jn. 5:44). The expositional choice before us is purposefully ambiguous- was the \'faith\' of these leaders accepted, or was it nullified by their refusal to \'confess\'? The ambiguity is to exercise our own consciences, as we naturally look within to enquire whether we have simply believed but not confessed... for we all will have a tendency to do this. In any case, there was a terrible outcome of not confessing their faith publicly- the condemnation and crucifixion of God\'s Son. Whether or not their faith was counted as acceptable, this was the outcome of not confessing it. And it is John who demonstrates how Joseph and Nicodemus \'came out\' publicly after the Lord\'s death. See on 12:46 <i>So that whoever believes in me may not remain in the darkness</i>.</p><p>Note the grace reflected in the record here, where we read that some Jews were credited with having believed in Jesus, even though they did <i>not</i> confess Him (Jn. 12:42), presumably because those who confessed Jesus as Christ were excommunicated from the synagogues (Jn. 9:22). Those will not confess Jesus are antichrist (1 Jn. 4:3)- and yet the inspired record is so eager to note that these weak \'believers\' were still believers, and their weak faith appears still to have been credited to them. This is a comfort to us in the weakness of our faith- and yet also a challenge to us to accept weak believers as believers. It seems that the record is prepared to accept that some achieved a valid faith in Jesus, even though they didn&rsquo;t confess Him. And yet there are abundant reasons for understanding that unless we witness to our faith, it isn&rsquo;t a faith that&rsquo;s worth much. And yet the record still accounts these who didn&rsquo;t testify as they ought to have done as &lsquo;believers&rsquo;. This is a comfort for us in those times when we know we chose a far lower level than we should have done, and simply kept quiet about the wondrous hope within us. Perhaps the idea was and is that an initial belief can be worked upon by the Lord, in order to bring it to open confession. We see several examples of this in John\'s Gospel, e.g. Nicodemus. And perhaps multitudes of these secret believers \'came out\' in baptism on the day of Pentecost a few weeks later.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3898','1','43','12','43','43','<p>12:43- see on Jn. 4:14.</p><p><i>For they loved the glory that is of men more than the glory that is of God</i>- The cause of unbelief and refusal to see / understand is not because a person doesn\'t \'get it\' intellectually, or they fail to rightly process the information received. Disbelief is here blamed upon pride; a desire for glory to themselves from men, rather than as men giving glory to God, and seeking His glory above all. No amount of clever intellectual argument or accommodation with the latest science will elicit faith. Unbelief is not because of not being able to answer academic arguments. It is because of human pride.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3899','1','43','12','44','44','<p>12:44 <i>And Jesus cried and said: He that believes on me does not believe on me, but on him that sent me</i>- The crying out of the Lord was a reflection of His earnest desire that they should believe. He knew that those who had welcomed Him with cries of &quot;Hosanna&quot; would turn against Him. And He urges them to really believe, and to realize that their rejection of Him was a rejection of God. Not because He was God Himself, but because the Father was manifest in the Son.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3900','1','43','12','45','45','<p>12:45 <i>And he that sees me, sees him that sent me</i>- Again, seeing is used to mean understanding and believing. To see God was instinctively known by all Jews to be impossible. But as noted on :30, such physical seeing of God or His Son, or literally hearing His voice, is irrelevant. The spiritual \'sight\' of Him and sense of the Son\'s presence through the Spirit is worth far more than that. And to see the Son was and is to see God; not literally, but because the Son manifests the Father.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3901','1','43','12','46','46','<p>12:46 <i>I have come into the world as light</i>- This is how the prologue opens the Gospel, with the Lord personally represented as light shining in the darkness of the Jewish world. His \'coming into the world\' was insofar as He revealed the light, and that only happened at the start of His ministry at age 30. This was when He came into the world. He was not the light of the world as a new-born baby desperate only for milk. His point of \'coming\' into the world is defined as when He was the light of the world, which was at the beginning of His ministry. As He was sent into the world, so are we sent; and there is no question in our case that we were sent literally from Heaven to earth. Trinitarian thinking is very shoddy when it comes to verses such as these.</p><p><i>So that whoever believes in me may not remain in the darkness</i>- What in practice does this mean, to have Jesus as our light, and not to be remain in darkness? John\'s letters allude to this and in clear practical terms inform us that not loving our brother is abiding in darkness (1 Jn. 2:9,11). We cannot claim to believe in Jesus, to have Him as a merely intellectual light of correct theory- and not love our brother. Perhaps this explains the question raised in the commentary on :42 as to whether the unconfessed, very private and theoretical \'faith\' of many of the leaders was acceptable. Because it was not confessed, it resulted in their condemning and crucifying God\'s Son- the deepest depth of not loving our brother.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3902','1','43','12','47','47','<p>12:47 <i>And if anyone hear my sayings and keep them not, I judge him not. For I came not to judge the world but to save</i>- For judgment He came into this world (Jn. 9:39), although He Himself came not to judge so much as to save (Jn. 12:47; &quot;not&quot; is also used in the sense of \'not so much to... but rather to...\'&nbsp; in 2 Cor. 7:12: &quot;I did it not so much for his cause ....but that our care...&quot;. Likewise in Mk. 10:45, the Lord came not <i>so much as </i>to be ministered unto, but to minister. He was and is ministered unto, but His focus is upon <i>His</i> ministering to us: Mk. 1:13,31; 15:41; Col. 1:7; 1 Tim. 4:6). God said He judged His people \'according to their way&hellip; according to their judgments I will judge\' (Ez. 7:27 LXX). A man\'s way, freely chosen, is his judgment. We truly \'make the answer now\'. The Saviour came more to save than condemn (Jn. 12:47); it is men who condemn themselves as inappropriate to receive eternal life. It is <i>their</i> words, not His, which will be the basis of their rejection.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3903','1','43','12','48','48','<p>12:48- see on Lk. 14:18; Jn. 3:13.<br /><i>He that rejects me and receives not my sayings has one that judges him. The word that I spoke, the same shall judge him in the last day</i>- Our conscience is not going to jump out of us and stand and judge us at the day of judgment. There is one thing that will judge us, the word of the Lord (Jn. 12:48), not how far we have lived according to our conscience. They crucified Him because they rejected the words He spoke from God (Jn. 12:48). The language of rejection is used both about the Jews\' crucifixion of Christ (Lk. 17:25; Mk. 12:10) and their rejection of His words. Thus Heb. 6:5,6;10:28,29 connect despising the word with crucifying Christ afresh. As the prologue explains, He was the word made flesh. To not receive His sayings <i>rhema</i> meant that His <i>logos</i> &quot;word&quot; would judge them. His teachings had an essential <i>logos</i> to them. And that singular word is spoken of in :49 and :50 as God\'s singular &quot;commandment&quot;- the offer of eternal life in His Son (see on :50).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3904','1','43','12','49','49','<p>12:49 <i>For I spoke not from myself, but the Father that sent me, He has given me a commandment, what I should say and what I should speak</i>- Just as the Lord\'s miracles were revealed to Him by the Father ahead of time (5:30), so were the words which He should teach. To reject the Lord\'s words was to therefore reject God\'s word; and as the prologue states, &quot;the word was God&quot;. To reject His words is to reject Him. Judaism was so deeply into theism, it was so God centred, that such ideas were repugnant to them. But this is what they were doing by rejecting His word as it was in His Son. The &quot;commandment&quot; is singular, and parallels the singular <i>logos</i> or word of :48.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3905','1','43','12','50','50','<p>12:50 <i>And I know that His commandment is everlasting life. The things therefore which I speak, even as the Father has said to me: So I speak- &quot;</i>The commandment&quot; is surely put for all that the Lord said and spoke (:49). It was His <i>logos </i>(see on :48). His words and person were an imperative to respond to; He was in Himself a command to be obeyed in following Him in total surrender. To believe in Him was the everlasting life. The commandment, the <i>logos</i>, was and is to believe in Him and receive everlasting life, in the sense of allowing Him to live in our lives. All He spoke was summed up in that. To refuse that eternal life meant therefore to remain in eternal death, and that would therefore be the outcome of the final judgment (:48).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3906','1','43','13','1','1','<p>13:1 <i>Now before the feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that his hour had come- </i>I argued on 12:12 and throughout chapter 12 that the Lord arranged the exact point of His death; for He gave His life, it was not taken from Him (10:17,18). He wanted to die at that particular Passover feast, which explains why John records how at other feasts, the Jews tried to kill Him but He somehow avoided them. The implication here in 13:1 is that the coming of Passover meant that the Lord knew His hour of death and glory had come.</p><p><i>That he should depart out of this world to his Father- </i>The Lord saw His death as an exodus, as He had been taught at the transfiguration. And He saw the whole process of death, resurrection, 40 days on earth and ascension as a going to the Father. His prayer that the Father not take His disciples &quot;out of the world&quot; could be understood as asking that their lives, for the time being, be preserved; they should be &quot;kept from the evil&quot; (Jn. 17:15). For He understood departing out of the world as a reference to His death. And yet the word for \'departing\' is used of how believers in Him depart or pass from death to life, right now (5:24; 1 Jn. 3:14). The essence of His experience becomes ours if we walk in the light of life we have seen and known in Him.</p><p>The language of departing from this world to the Father is a quotation from a common Rabbinic claim that these were the words of Moses before he died (Targum on Song of Solomon i. 1, 7, Bereshit Rabba, sect. 96. fol. 84. 1. and Debarim Rabba, sect. 11. fol. 245. 2). The Lord clearly understood Himself as the greater than Moses (Dt. 18:18). Without any doubt there is also reference to the well-known at the time John was writing Jerusalem Targum on Dt. 32: &ldquo;And when the last end of Moses the prophet was at hand, that he should be gathered from the world&hellip;&rdquo;.&nbsp;</p><p><i>Having loved his own that were in the world, he loved them to the end</i>- His love for His own during His ministry is part of His final love for them unto the end. The essence of His self-giving for them throughout His life was seamlessly continued in His death. &quot;His own&quot; is another allusion to the prologue, where the Lord comes to &quot;His own&quot; and they do not receive Him; but others do (1:11,12). Israel becomes redefined; no longer are &quot;His own&quot; His own kith and kin of Israelites, but those who receive Him.</p><p>The \'love to the uttermost\' here can of course be applied to the crucifixion. But the Lord at this point felt He had now departed from this world (17:11 &quot;I am no longer in the world&quot;), and so it could be that the following account of the foot washing is to be understood as a preview of the Lord\'s death on the cross. The grammar of the whole verse implies that &quot;Before the feast of the Passover... He loved them to the end&quot;, as if the \'love to the end\' was before the feast, before His death. When did He loved them to the end? Before the Passover. That is the idea. The last supper therefore becomes the love feast, the exemplification of His love unto the end; and it is to be felt like that by us as we partake to this day.</p><p>The Lord&rsquo;s conscious attempt to develop the twelve appears to have paid off to some extent, even during His ministry. For there was evidently some spiritual growth of the disciples even during the ministry. There are indications that even before the Lord&rsquo;s death, the disciples did indeed progressively grasp at least some things about Him. John&rsquo;s Gospel is divided into what has been called &lsquo;The book of signs&rsquo; (Jn. 1:19-12:50) and &lsquo;the book of glory&rsquo; (Jn. 13:1 and following). In the book of signs, the disciples always refer to the Lord as &ldquo;rabbi&rdquo; or &ldquo;teacher&rdquo;; whereas in the book of glory, they call him &ldquo;Lord&rdquo;. We have seen in other character studies how spiritual maturity is reflected in some ways by a growth in appreciation of the titles used of God. Although Jesus was not God Himself,&nbsp;so it seems was the case in how the disciples increasingly came to respect and perceive the Lordship of Jesus.&nbsp; &nbsp;</p><p>In the New Testament, we see the love of Christ directly, openly displayed. Particularly on the cross we see the very essence of love. Having loved His own, He loved us there unto the end, to the end of the very concept of love and beyond. He knew that in His death, He would shew &quot;greater love&quot; than any man had or could show. There He declared the Name and character of God, &quot;that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them&quot; (Jn. 17:26). &quot;Walk in love, as Christ hath loved us (in that) he hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God&quot; (Eph. 5:2). &quot;Hereby perceive we love, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren&quot; (1 Jn. 3:16 Gk.).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3907','1','43','13','2','2','<p>13:2- see on Lk. 22:3.</p><p><i>And during supper, when the Devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon\'s son, to betray him</i>- &quot;Supper&quot; is literally \'a supper\'; not \'the feast\' as we would expect if this was indeed the Passover feast of 14 Nissan. It was a Passover supper, but kept earlier and perhaps in a slightly different way. The whole style in this section suggests that when certain conditions were fulfilled, then the Lord could die on the cross. I have suggested on 12:12 that the Lord arranged the entire scenario, as He gave His life as He did of His own choice of time and place. The account here reads as if the Lord knew that Judas had in his heart to betray Him, and so knowing this, He acts out the essence of His future service for others on the cross by washing the disciples\' feet. He knew this would offer Judas the chance to repent, but if he would not, then it would be the psychological trigger for Judas to go off and hand Him over to the Jews. And that is indeed how it worked out.</p><p>&quot;The devil&quot; in the New Testament, including in John\'s writings, refers to organized, systemic opposition to the Lord\'s person and work, and in the first instance refers to the Jewish opposition. I have exemplified this at length in <i>The Real Devil</i> especially section 2-4, \'The Jewish Satan\'. The thought to betray the Lord had been put into the heart of Judas by the Jewish opposition, who were the great \'satan\' adversary and false accuser \'devil\' with regard to the Lord and His work. This explains why when \'satan entered into Judas\', he goes to the Jewish leadership to arrange the betrayal (Lk. 22:3-6).&nbsp; It could even be that &quot;the devil&quot; here is to be paralleled with &quot;the prince of this Jewish world&quot; whom I have suggested on 12:31 had specific reference to Caiaphas the High Priest, who is presented as the one who came up with the specific scheme to kill the Lord (see on 11:49).</p><p>The reference to &quot;Simon\'s son&quot; would be appropriate if the reference is to the Simon the Pharisee of Lk. 7:40, in whose house Mary Magdalene had previously anointed the Lord. I noted on 11:2 that the woman who was a sinner who anointed the Lord in Simon\'s house was Mary Magdalene. The fact she had access to the meal table suggests she was a close relative. And Judas was the son of Simon. We therefore can conclude that Judas was a relative of Mary, Martha and Lazarus; perhaps even their brother. This would explain his anger at her wasting of family wealth by anointing the Lord in chapter 12 (see on Mt. 26:14). If the family had Pharisee connections, then this would explain why &quot;the Jews&quot; came from Jerusalem to their home in Bethany, as they were relatives.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3908','1','43','13','3','3','<p>13:3 <i>Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God</i>- This may seem axiomatic, but the text seems to be saying that as He sat at supper, the Lord had a deep sense of utter certainty that He was from God and was going to successfully accomplish what lay before Him, and this \'go to God\'. The &quot;all things&quot; refer to the believers (Eph. 1:22); He had earlier spoken of the Father having given Him the sheep, who were safe in His hands (10:28,29). He was deeply aware that we were in His hands, and He must now go and die for us.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3909','1','43','13','4','4','<p>13:4 <i>Rose from supper, laid aside his garments, and girded himself with a towel</i>- He dressed Himself as He would for the crucifixion, naked but for a loincloth, with His outer clothing taken away, as Johns crucifixion account emphasizes. Phil. 2 seems to allude to the descriptions here of the Lord progressively setting aside all human trappings in order to humble Himself to serve and thence to actually die the death of the cross for us. &quot;Laid aside&quot; is the same term used for the Lord\'s giving over of His life (10:11,15,17,18; 15:13; 1 Jn. 3:16).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3910','1','43','13','5','5','<p>13:5 <i>Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples\' feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which he was girded</i>- This was the work of the lowest slave, and Phil. 2 alludes to this in saying that the Lord took upon Himself the form of a slave- not in adopting human nature, but in His mental attitude in the lead up to the cross, and in His final death there. The record is as it were zoomed up close upon the Lord, with every action recorded. This action of foot washing is seen as highly significant; it was the essence of his death. And it was, as suggested on :1, the epitome of love unto the end. The usage of water could look forward to baptism, but the idea is that He does something to the disciple- His death was not just something to be emulated. It is His action upon us; as a result of it, the Spirit was to be given, whereby He would cleanse / sanctify the disciples. But the outpouring of water is used as a figure for the outpouring of the Spirit which would come as a result of the Lord\'s death and glorification (7:38,39). John\'s crucifixion record notes how the Lord\'s death resulted in water issuing from His side toward the disciples; and here, the towel from His side is used to wash the disciples\' feet. The gift of the Spirit is in view, and connects with the frequent references to our sanctification or being made clean by the Spirit. The mention of the basin is perhaps to recall the Mosaic rituals whereby blood and water were taken from a basin to sanctify the priests. This motley crew of mixed up men were being declared the priesthood of the new Israel, and the prayer of chapter 17 is full of allusion to the theme of sanctification. This, it must be emphasized, is something done to a willing person, and not done by themselves. This is the picture of the Lord\'s activity in our lives through the Spirit.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3911','1','43','13','6','6','<p>13:6 <i>When he came to Simon Peter, Peter said to him: Lord, are you going to wash my feet?</i>- The Lord had taught that when one was invited to a feast, they should take the lowest seat. It seems that at the last supper, Peter did just this. There would likely have been petty jealousy over who sat next to Jesus, and there may have been a desire to sit closest to Him as a sign of faithfulness to their beloved teacher. John was clearly sitting next to Jesus, as he was able to have his head on Jesus&rsquo; breast. And the fact the Lord dipped in the dish at the same time as Judas may imply that Judas was also next to Him. It&rsquo;s tempting to imagine John at Jesus&rsquo; right hand and Judas at His left. But it seems Peter was the last to have his feet washed. Jesus &ldquo;came to Simon Peter&rdquo; to wash his feet, and when he had done so, He commented that now, all His men were clean (Jn. 13:6). This implies to me that Peter was sitting at the end of the couch, furthest away from Jesus. He certainly wasn&rsquo;t that close to Jesus, because he had to signal Gk. &lsquo;to nod&rsquo; to John to ask the Lord who the betrayer was (Jn. 13:24). So I conclude from all this that Peter took the lowest seat at that feast- in conformity to what the Lord had taught them earlier. And I imagine it would have been especially difficult, as the order of seating at the Jewish Passover was a classic opportunity to demonstrate a pecking order within a group of friends or family.&nbsp;But despite taking the lowest seat, Peter\'s pride objected to the Lord washing His feet. The Lord had taken more than the lowest seat at the table; He had shown Himself to be the lowest slave who was present but not seated even at the table.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3912','1','43','13','7','7','<p>13:7 <i>Jesus answered and said to him: What I am doing you do not comprehend now, but later you shall understand</i>- This would appear to be an allusion to how the Comforter / Holy Spirit would give them understanding of the Lord\'s words and ministry. The Holy Spirit was not yet given (7:38,39), so the sense of His work would still be not fully understandable.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3913','1','43','13','8','8','<p>13:8- see on Jn. 3:5.</p><p><i>Peter said to him: You shall never wash my feet Jesus answered him: If I do not wash you, you have no part with me-</i> The critical importance of washing could speak of how baptism is connected to salvation. But &quot;no part with me&quot; is surely alluded to by Paul in writing that if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is &quot;none of His&quot; (Rom. 8:9). The sanctifying work of the Spirit is clearly in view, bearing in mind that &quot;wash&quot;, <i>nipto</i>, has ceremonial associations; it spoke of sanctification for priestly service. And to accept that sanctifying work of the Spirit requires a humility which Peter initially struggled with. Resistance to the idea of the internal work of the Spirit is likewise associated with pride and self-confidence in the flesh.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3914','1','43','13','9','9','<p>13:9<i> Simon Peter said to him: Lord, wash not only my feet but also my hands and my head</i>- Peter got the Lord\'s drift, and wanted not only cleansing of his feet, his path in life; but of his actions hands and head thinking.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3915','1','43','13','10','10','<p>13:10 <i>Jesus said to him: He who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but he is clean all over; and you are clean, but not every one of you</i>- This is surely suggesting that all baptized believers (&quot;washed&quot;) were like the priests, who firstly washed their bodies and then their hands and feet, before entering on service (Ex. 30:21). &quot;He who has bathed&quot; could be about the only discernible hint that the disciples had been baptized. But they needed to be born of water and of the Spirit as well. Surely the Lord was saying that baptism is a one time event- he has been thus bathed does not need to wash again, or be re-baptized. But, he does need to periodically wash his feet, which I would take to be a reference to the breaking of bread and acceptance of the sanctification of the Spirit which Peter seemed to want to avoid.</p><p>&quot;You are clean&quot; is developed in 15:3, where the Lord teaches that we are clean by the word He spoke. But here, the cleansing is on account of His death and sacrifice. His death and work of saving is His &quot;word&quot; to us. His &quot;word&quot; is not therefore necessarily a reference to His actual sayings, but is used as it is in the prologue, for His whole being and message which was lived out in His person; for the word was made flesh in Him, supremely in His death on the cross.</p><p>The importance of self-examination at the breaking of bread is indirectly hinted at here. This is surely a reference to how Num. 19:19 prescribed that a Levite was required to take a plunge bath in order to be clean. The Lord is therefore saying that <i>all</i> His people, when they partake of His feast, are to present themselves as cleansed Levites. He understood His people as <i>all</i> being part of a priesthood. Additionally, we need to bear in mind that the Lord spoke those words just before the breaking of bread, in response to how Peter did not want to participate in the Lord&rsquo;s meal if it meant the Lord washing him. Thus whilst forgiveness is not mystically mediated through the bread and wine, there is all the same a very distinct connection between the memorial meeting and forgiveness, just as there is between baptism and forgiveness. To not break bread is to walk away from that forgiveness in the blood of Jesus, just as to refuse baptism is to do the same. Whilst forgiveness itself is not mediated in any metaphysical sense by the memorial meeting, it is nonetheless a vital part of the life of the forgiven believer. When Peter didn&rsquo;t want to break bread, the Lord reminded him that he who has been baptized / washed is indeed clean, but needs periodic feet-washing. This, surely, was a reference to the breaking of bread (Jn. 13:10). The same word for &lsquo;wash&rsquo; is found in Jn. 15:2, where we read of how the Father washes / purifies periodically the vine branches. Could this not be some reference to the effect the breaking of bread should have upon us?</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3916','1','43','13','11','11','<p>13:11 <i>For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said: Not all of you are clean</i>- The cleansing was not therefore simply a question of being baptized; for Judas had presumably been baptized along with the others. But he had not allowed the sanctifying work of the Spirit within him, and was therefore not cleansed or sanctified within.</p><p>The Lord Jesus knew from the beginning who should betray Him; and yet He went through the pain, shock and surprise of realizing that Judas, his own familiar friend in whom He trusted, had done this to Him (Ps. 41:9; Jn. 6:64; 13:11). He knew, and yet He chose to limit that foreknowledge from love. This is in fact what all human beings are capable of, seeing we are made in the image of God. Thus Samson surely knew Delilah would betray him, and yet his love for her made him trust her. And we as observers see women marrying alcoholic men, wincing as we do at the way their love makes them limit their foreknowledge. There is an element of this in God, as there was in His Son as He faced the cross. Thus we read of the Lord Jesus being silent before His slaughterers, being led out to death as a sheep (Is. 53:7). But this idiom is used about Jeremiah to describe his wilful naivety about Israel\'s desire to slay him: &quot;I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter; and I knew not that they had devised devices against me&quot; (Jer. 11:19). In this Jeremiah was indeed a type of Christ.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3917','1','43','13','12','12','<p>13:12 <i>So when he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and sat down again, he said to them: Do you comprehend what I have done to you?</i>- The putting on of His clothes speaks of His resurrection after the death on the cross which His washing their feet spoke of. The sitting down would then correspond with His sitting down at the right hand of the Father after His work had been accomplished (Heb. 1:3; 10:12). &quot;Do you comprehend...?&quot; was presumably asked with the implication that \'No, you do not- because if you did, you would be on your knees washing each other&rsquo;s feet (:15)\'. If we comprehend the Lord\'s work, we shall do likewise, living out the essence of His cross for others.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3918','1','43','13','13','13','<p>13:13 <i>You call me teacher and lord, and you say well; for so I am</i>- The Lord reasons that He is no mere teacher of ideas and doctrine, as the Jewish rabbis were. He was their teacher by example, and they therefore ought to fall to their knees in washing each other&rsquo;s feet (:15). He was the word made flesh; His word was not just what He spoke, but His example and very being (see on :10). To call Jesus \'master\' and \'Lord\' was meaningless unless the pupils <i>did</i> what He said; so closely were His words associated with action, a word made flesh. See on Mt. 7:22.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3919','1','43','13','14','14','<p>13:14 <i>If I then, your lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another\'s feet</i>- His teaching was therefore not so much by spoken words but by example. He was His word made flesh. His example was to be taken as His word to His disciples. Because Jesus is Lord and Master, and because He is our representative in every way, therefore all that He did and was becomes an imperative for us to follow. They called Him &ldquo;Lord and Master&quot;, but <i>wouldn&rsquo;t</i> wash each other&rsquo;s feet. Like us so often, they had the right doctrinal knowledge, but it meant nothing to them in practice. They failed to perceive that &quot;my word&quot; referred to His whole being and personality rather than the words which came from His mouth in teaching sessions. To know Him as Lord is to wash each other&rsquo;s feet, naked but for a loincloth, with all the subtle anticipations of the cross which there are in this incident. &ldquo;Wherefore because of the exaltation of Jesus be obedient and work out your own salvation with fear and trembling i.e. in humility&quot; (Phil. 2:12).&nbsp;</p><p>We would so dearly wish for the suffering Christ to be just an item in history, an act which saved us which is now over, an icon we hang around our neck or mount prominently on our study wall- and no more. But He, His cross, His &lsquo;last walk&rsquo;, His request that we pick up a cross and walk behind Him, the eerie continuous tenses used in New Testament references to the crucifixion- is so much more than that. &nbsp;If He washed our feet, we <i>must</i> wash each other&rsquo;s. Everything He did, all He showed Himself to be in character, disposition and attitude, becomes an imperative for us to do and be likewise. And it is on this basis that He can so positively represent us to the Father: &ldquo;They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world&rdquo; (Jn. 17:16).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3920','1','43','13','15','15','<p>13:15 <i>For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you</i>- The \'doing\' of the Lord was to die for us in service (14:31). The height of the challenge is so high- to have the cross as our pattern, and not just something to be looked to with thanksgiving. This challenge transforms all departments of human thought and action. The immediate context of course was the Lord\'s attitude to His brethren at the last supper; and this should be reflected in our attitude to others at the breaking of bread. That so many of His disciples have lost their way here is tragic, for closed table policies and exclusion of His people from the table is the very opposite of His example.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3921','1','43','13','16','16','<p>13:16 <i>Truly, truly, I say to you: A servant is not greater than his lord, neither is one sent greater than he that sent him</i>- To act as if the Lord\'s attitude at the last supper and on the cross is <i>not</i> our example is effectively to consider ourselves greater than Him. If our Lord and master acted and thought as He did- we His servants can do nothing else; we are to be as the Master (Mt. 10:24,25; Lk. 6:40). If we do not emulate the spirit of feet washing and death on the cross, then we are pronouncing ourselves greater than Him. The logic requires an urgency in seeking by all means to follow His example. The apostles were those sent; and the Lord frequently refers to Himself as the One sent, and the Messianic servant. He as the sent One was therefore also living out the essence of the Father who sent Him. To have acted otherwise would have suggested He was greater than the One who sent Him, the Father. See on :20.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3922','1','43','13','17','17','<p>13:17 <i>If you know these things, and if you do them, you will be blessed</i>- The Lord sensed the tension between knowing and doing. To know but not do would not lead to being happy&nbsp; / blessed. And this is the root cause of a lack of joy amongst many believers; they know but do not do. The doing, of course, is radical- to be the lowest servant, to wash the feet of others, living out the spirit of the cross. To know this but not do it is to not attain happiness. The only path to Christian joy is to surrender all in the emulation of the Lord\'s spirit in these ways. The Lord had concluded the sermon on the mount with a similar challenge, to do what we know (see on Mt. 7:22). The &quot;things&quot; immediately in view here in John 13 were the spirit of foot washing, of radical servanthood, and death on the cross. But these were all a fulfilment in practice of the various principles outlined in the sermon on the mount.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3923','1','43','13','18','18','<p>13:18 <i>I speak not of you all. I know whom I have chosen; but the scripture must be fulfilled: He that eats my bread lifted up his heel against me</i>- I have suggested on 12:12 and elsewhere that the Lord arranged the entire scene in order to die by crucifixion at that Passover. It could be that He means here that He knew Judas whom He had chosen; and He chose him to perform the role of betrayer which He knew was necessary in order to bring about the intended final scene. But that is not to say that Judas had no choice in the matter; he did, and the Lord urged him against his path. But He also knew the outcome, and in that sense knew the betrayer whom He had chosen for this role. He was led to plan things as He did by Scripture, which required that one who ate His bread would then betray Him. And so He set things up so that an offended Judas would be present at the last supper, and then do the act of betrayal.</p><p>The implication is that Judas had a heel to crush the Lord with, as if Judas was the seed of the woman and He was the seed of the serpent due to His close association with sin and sinners. However, it has also been pointed out that &ldquo;To show the bottom of one&rsquo;s foot to someone in the Near East is a mark of contempt&rdquo;- E.F. Bishop, <i>Evangelical Times</i> Vol. 70 p. 331. The non-violent resistance to evil and the message of grace led Judas to despise the Lord; and the outpouring of the precious ointment upon Him appeared senseless to the materialistic Judas. His despite of the Lord was therefore a factor in his betrayal.</p><p>Ps. 41:9,10 is quoted from the LXX in Mk. 14:18,21. Yet Jn. 13:18 quotes the same passage from the Hebrew text, with a slight difference. Which was inspired? Surely, both sources of the original were accepted as worthy of quotation. So from this evidence alone we should be wary of concluding that the differences between LXX and the Hebrew text are mutually incompatible. See on Acts 15:16.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3924','1','43','13','19','19','<p>13:19 <i>From this time forward I will tell you before it happens, so that when it happens, you may believe that I am he</i>- This refers to the Lord\'s prediction of Judas\' betrayal. He knew that later, they would reflect on all things and perceive that the Lord was master of the whole situation. He had set up the entire stage, including with one of His disciples betraying Him, in order to bring about the end which <i>He</i> intended- that He would be crucified that Passover. His total mastery of the scene (see on 12:12) was a declaration of the Yahweh Name, &quot;I am&quot;, and a sign of His identity with the Father.</p><p>We also see here the intention of prophecy- not in order to predict the future in detail, but so that when things happen, we perceive that they were exactly foretold. This needs to be remembered- for so many attempts to foretell sequences of political events heralding the Lord\'s return have been proven wrong, and have ended up damaging faith rather than building it up. Bible prophecy is not, therefore, to be appealed to in order to support faith, unless we are pointing out how predictions or required scenarios have already been fulfilled.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3925','1','43','13','20','20','<p>13:20 <i>Truly, truly, I say to you: He that receives whoever I send receives me, and he that receives me, receives Him that sent me</i>- The Lord has just reasoned that if He has washed their feet, and they are sent by Him, then they are to do likewise (:16). In doing as He did, their witness was a manifestation of Him. And more than that, of the Father who had sent Him. See on :16. In this sense, God was in Christ on the cross, reconciling the world to Himself. The \'receiving\' in John\'s writings speaks of receiving a message. The assumption is that the message we preach will be &quot;Him&quot;, centred upon and about Him. Those who accept the Lord Jesus at our word thereby receive the Father too. So much hinges upon our witness. We represent so much- even God Himself.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3926','1','43','13','21','21','<p>13:21 <i>When Jesus had said this, he was disturbed in his spirit, and testified: Truly, truly, I say to you: One of you shall betray me</i>- The Lord has just spoken of how His followers are representatives of Him and thereby of the Father; and attitudes to Him are attitudes to the Father. Perhaps this was why He was so upset, remembering that what Judas was doing to Him was in effect to God, and there would be such terrible judgment for it.</p><p>The Lord was able to attract all kinds of sinners to Him, when those who are spiritually marginalized tend normally to steer away from those who exude righteousness but no humanity. He was real, He really was who He appeared to be, there was total congruence between His words and actions; and He encouraged others in the same spirit to simply face up to who they were. And He would accept them at that. Yet He was real and human; although there was this congruence between His words and actions, consider how His spirit was &ldquo;troubled&rdquo;; &ldquo;now is my soul troubled&rdquo; (Jn. 12:27; 13:21). Yet He goes on to use the same word to exhort the disciples hours later: &ldquo;Let not your heart be troubled&rdquo; (Jn. 14:1, 27). Was this inconsistency, &ldquo;Do as I say, not as I do&rdquo;? Of course not. The strength and power of His exhortation &ldquo;Let not your heart be troubled&rdquo; was in the very way that His heart <i>had been troubled </i>but He now had composed Himself in calm trust in the Father. And Peter remembered that, as he later in turn exhorted <i>his </i>flock to not be troubled nor afraid under persecution (1 Pet. 3:14).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3927','1','43','13','22','22','<p>13:22 <i>The disciples looked at each other, wondering of whom he spoke</i>- We see here the ability of Judas, as of all men, to disguise real motives. The others had absolutely no inkling that Judas would betray the Lord. This stands as a warning for all time not to attempt to judge who is sincere and who is not amongst the Lord\'s people. We cannot judge not least because we <i>cannot</i> judge. They were so unable to do this that having looked at one another, wondering who it was, they concluded that it might be them- for after trying to decide which of them it was, they began to ask Him &quot;Is it me?&quot; (Mk. 14:19). We simply cannot tell the wheat from the weeds.</p><p>&quot;He spoke&quot; is a continuous present tense- \'Of whom He is speaking\'. This change of tenses in the Gospels is to enable to us to relive the situation, playing as it were Bible television with the record.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3928','1','43','13','23','23','<p>13:23 <i>There was at the table reclining on Jesus\' chest one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved</i>- John&rsquo;s Gospel is the personal testimony of the beloved disciple (Jn. 19:35; 21:24). Not that John was loved any more than the others- his point is surely that &lsquo;I am one whom Jesus so loved to the end&rsquo;. He describes himself as resting on Jesus&rsquo; bosom (Jn. 13:23); yet he writes that Jesus is now in the Father&rsquo;s bosom (Jn. 1:18). He is saying that he has the same kind of intimate relationship with the Lord Jesus as Jesus has with the Father. Yet John also records how the Lord Jesus repeatedly stressed that the intimacy between Him and the Father was to be shared with all His followers. So John is consciously holding up his own relationship with the Lord Jesus as an example for all others to experience and follow. Yet John also underlines his own slowness to understand the Lord. Without any pride or self-presentation, he is inviting others to share the wonderful relationship with the Father and Son which he himself had been blessed with. John knew his Lord. He repeatedly describes himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved (Jn. 13:23; 20:2; 21:7,20). Doubtless John was aware that Jesus loved all His people; but John is surely exalting in the fact that the Lord loved him personally. &nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3929','1','43','13','24','24','<p>13:24- see on Jn. 13:6.</p><p><i>Simon Peter motioned to him, and said to him: Tell us who it is of whom he speaks</i>- This all has the ring of truth to it. He would not have called across the table to John, but could easily have motioned with his eyes and other non-verbal language. We have an example here of non-verbal communication being counted as words- for the motioning was in effect saying to him the words. This is significant because the references in John to the Lord\'s &quot;word&quot; or &quot;words&quot; are not necessarily referring to His literally spoken words; but to all the other communication from Him that went on. For He as a person and character was His word, as the prologue begins by explaining.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3930','1','43','13','25','25','<p>13:25 <i>He leaning back, as he was on Jesus\' breast, said to him: Lord, who is it?</i>- As noted on :23, John saw his own intimate relationship with the Lord as reflected in how close the Lord was to His father (1:18). We could infer from 21:20 that John\'s close access to the Lord was a cause of jealousy for Peter.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3931','1','43','13','26','26','<p>13:26 <i>Jesus answered: It is he to whom I gave the morsel of bread after I dipped it. When he had dipped the morsel, he had given it to Judas the son of Simon Iscariot</i>- The motive of the question had surely been \'Tell us who it is, and we shall stop him forcibly\'. But the Lord is saying that they were too late; He had chosen Judas to do this job. And yet the &quot;morsel&quot; may refer to the prized portion of the bread which a father would give to a favoured child at the Passover feast. It could be read as a sign of the Lord\'s special love and care for Judas. He so wanted him to repent. But it was the sign of the Lord\'s extreme love for him, to the point of apparent favouritism, which made Judas then go out into the darkness and betray the Lord. This was all according to the Lord\'s plan, but there was still the absolute possibility for Judas\' repentance. The Lord\'s psychology was superb; He knew the things of the human spirit. He realized that the special exposure to His love would make Judas either collapse in repentance, or harden him in his fell purpose. And this is true throughout John\'s Gospel; encounter with the Lord as the only light of the world made men either live in that light, or recoil deeper into their darkness. And Judas was the parade example.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3932','1','43','13','27','27','<p>13:27 <i>Then after Judas had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him- </i>As noted on :2, the devil and satan, the false accuser and adversary to the Lord\'s cause, refers in the immediate context to the Jewish system. It could be that a representative from &quot;the satan&quot; entered into the upper room, and Judas went out with him, as if doing some errand. This would make good sense in the context of :29. Or it could be that as elsewhere, &quot;satan&quot; refers to the great adversary, sin within. And in the face of the Lord\'s supreme and special love for Judas, Judas was faced with the choice to accept it or be hardened by sin, personified as the great satan / adversary to all human spiritual endeavour.</p><p>The breaking of bread brings us face to face with the need for self-examination and the two paths before us. It is a T-junction which reflects the final judgment. Judas&rsquo; reaction to the first memorial meeting exemplifies this. The Lord took the sop (of bread) and dipped it (in the vinegar-wine, according to the Jewish custom), and gave it to Judas. This was a special sign of His love and affection, and one cannot help wondering whether Peter and John observed it with keen jealousy. Yet <i>after taking it, </i>after that sign of the Lord&rsquo;s <i>especial love</i> for him, &ldquo;satan entered into&quot; Judas and he went out and betrayed the Lord of glory (Jn. 13:27). In that bread and wine, Judas was confronted with the Lord&rsquo;s peerless love for the very darkest sinner and His matchless self-sacrifice; and this very experience confirmed him in the evil way his heart was set upon. And it also works, thankfully, the other way. We can leave that meeting with the Lord, that foretaste of judgment, that conviction of sin and also of the Lord&rsquo;s victory over it, with a calm assurance of His love which cannot be shaken, whatever the coming week holds.</p><p><i>Jesus said to him: What you are about to do, do quickly</i>- I somewhat doubt that the Lord meant \'Please, get it over with quickly, don\'t draw out the agony for Me\'. That seems out of character with the Lord, and certainly with the nature of John\'s highly spiritual record. So we can assume that the Lord wished for Judas to repent, and He urged him to do so quickly, knowing that human nature ever seeks to procrastinate, and thus lose the power of decision against the flesh. In this case, &quot;you are about to do&quot; would suggest that Judas was on the verge of repentance, and the Lord urges him to go all the way with it quickly. But it could be that the Lord perceived that Judas had sold himself completely to the evil he had allowed to develop within him; and He is now encouraging Judas in the path he had embarked upon.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3933','1','43','13','28','28','<p>13:28 <i>Now no one at the table knew for what reason Jesus spoke this to Judas</i>- This is an open admission from John that they did not understand at the time, but now they did- all confirming the truth of the Lord\'s promise of the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, to bring all things to their remembrance and understanding.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3934','1','43','13','29','29','<p>13:29 <i>Some thought because Judas had the money bag, that Jesus said to him: Buy what things we have need of for the feast, or that he should give something to the poor</i>- This supposition would rather support the idea suggested on :29 that a member of the Jewish \'satan\' came into the upper room, requesting Judas\' attention. We can maybe infer that Judas had gone out with the money bag in his hand. For we know that he kept the money bag, from which the group made donations to the poor. So we imagine Judas leaving the room clutching the bag, hence the supposition that he was going to buy something or donate to the poor. The association between Judas and money is very clear; although his motivations were multi-factorial, Mt. 26:15 is clear that Judas went to the priests and asked what they would give him if he betrayed the Lord to them. It may seem incredible that a man would do such evil for money; but we constantly see the power of covetousness and materialism leading men to throw away life eternal. The power of these things is great indeed.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3935','1','43','13','30','30','<p>13:30- see on Mk. 14:68; Lk. 22:62.</p><p><i>He then having received the morsel went out immediately into the night</i>- There seems an echo of how Esau &quot;for one morsel of meat sold his birth right&quot; (Heb. 12:16). The immediate and the visible is so powerfully attractive, so powerful that it can lead men to throw away their spiritual birth right and betray God\'s peerless Son. &quot;Went out&quot; is a term later used by John to describe all those who went out from the community of John\'s converts- back into the darkness of Judaism, just as Judas did (1 Jn. 2:19). Judas is not, therefore, any special case. He is representative of an entire class of people, indeed, all those who turn away from the Lord\'s love.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3936','1','43','13','31','31','<p>13:31- see on Jn. 12:28.</p><p><i>When he was gone, Jesus said: Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him</i>- With Judas gone, the Lord sensed that all those gathered around Him were to be ultimately and eternally saved by the sacrifice He was about to make. That was the final glory to God which He sought. In this we see the importance of all preaching and pastoral work; this shall climax in the glorification of the Father in the Son.</p><p>But the Lord had in view the way that He was about to die. This would be to the glory of God, just as the death and resurrection of Lazarus had been to the glory of God in His Son. The Lord knew that the exit of Judas to the Jewish \'satan\' was now going to set in process the final train of events which would lead to His crucifixion.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3937','1','43','13','32','32','<p>13:32 <i>And God shall glorify him in Himself, and will glorify him immediately</i>- The second stage of the glorification was presumably in the events of the resurrection. However the idea may simply be as in GNB: &quot;Now the Son of Man\'s glory is revealed; now God\'s glory is revealed through him. And if God\'s glory is revealed through him, then God will reveal the glory of the Son of Man in himself, and he will do so at once&quot;. The idea is that the glory of the Son is that of the Father and <i>vice versa</i>, God Himself would glorify the Son just as the Son had Himself glorified the Father; even though both Father and Son have their own glory.</p><p>&quot;In Himself&quot; could be translated &quot;by Himself&quot;; and the &quot;immediately&quot; may mean that the time was soon coming when this mutual glorification was going to happen, in a spiritual intercourse between Father and Son which was the most sublime moment of all time and space. No wonder the translation is difficult, for the ideas are the profoundest to ever be expressed in language. The mutual glorification of Father and Son speaks of the Lord\'s death and resurrection; the mutual quality and nature of it is hard to plumb and express, hence the difficulty in both translation and interpretation at this point.</p><p>The Lord Jesus had that &ldquo;glory&rdquo; in what John calls &ldquo;the beginning&rdquo;, and he says that he and the other disciples witnessed that glory (Jn. 1:14). &ldquo;The beginning&rdquo; in John&rsquo;s Gospel often has reference to the beginning of the Lord&rsquo;s ministry. There is essentially only one glory- the glory of the Son is a reflection or manifestation of the glory of the Father. They may be seen as different glories only in the sense that the same glory is reflected from the Lord Jesus in His unique way; as a son reflects or articulates his father&rsquo;s personality, it&rsquo;s not a mirror personality, but it&rsquo;s the same essence. One star differs from another in glory, but they all reflect the same essential light of glory. The Lord Jesus sought only the glory of the Father (Jn. 7:18). He spoke of God&rsquo;s glory as being the Son&rsquo;s glory (Jn. 11:4). Thus Isaiah&rsquo;s vision of God&rsquo;s glory is interpreted by John as a prophecy of the Son&rsquo;s glory (Jn. 12:41). The glory of God is His &ldquo;own self&rdquo;, His own personality and essence. This was with God of course from the ultimate beginning of all, and it was this glory which was manifested in both the death and glorification of the Lord Jesus (Jn. 17:5). The Old Testament title &ldquo;God of glory&rdquo; is applied to the Lord Jesus, &ldquo;the Lord of glory&rdquo; (1 Cor. 2:8; James 2:1). It is <i>God&rsquo;s</i> glory which radiates from the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 4:6). Jesus is the brightness of God&rsquo;s glory, because He is the express image of God&rsquo;s personality (Heb. 1:3). He received glory from God&rsquo;s glory (2 Pet. 1:17). God is the &ldquo;Father of glory&rdquo;, the prime source of the one true glory, that is reflected both in the Lord Jesus and in ourselves (Eph. 1:17). The intimate relation of the Father\'s glory with that of the Son is brought out in Jn. 13:31,32: &quot;Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him; and God shall glorify him in himself, and straightway shall he glorify him&quot;. &nbsp;What all this exposition means in practice is this. There is only &ldquo;one glory&rdquo; of God. That glory refers to the essential &ldquo;self&rdquo;, the personality, characteristics, being etc. The Lord Jesus manifested that glory in His mortal life (Jn. 2:11). But He manifests it now that He has been &ldquo;glorified&rdquo;, and will manifest it in the future day of His glory. And the Lord was as in all things a pattern to us. We are bidden follow in His path to glory. We now in our personalities reflect and manifest the one glory of the Father, and our blessed Hope is glory in the future, to be glorified, to be persons (note that- <i>to be persons</i>) who reflect and &lsquo;are&rsquo; that glory in a more intimate and complete sense than we are now, marred as we are by our human dysfunction, sin, and weakness of will against temptation. We now reflect that glory as in a dirty bronze mirror. The outline of God&rsquo;s glory in the face of Jesus is only dimly reflected in us. But we are being changed, from glory to glory, the focus getting clearer all the time, until that great day when we meet Him and see Him face to face, with all that shall imply and result in. But my point in this context is that there is only one glory. The essence of who we are now in our spiritual man, how we reflect it, in our own unique way, is how we shall always be.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3938','1','43','13','33','33','<p>13:33- see on Jn. 7:33; Mt. 18:6.</p><p><i>Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You shall seek me, but as I said to the Jews, where I go, you cannot come. So now I say to you</i>- &quot;As I said to the Jews&quot; as well as to you suggests they were far more influenced by the Jews than they should have been. The Lord has explained the deep spiritual intercourse and mutual glorification between Father and Son which was to be achieved on the cross. And there, into that profound mutual unity with the Father, they could not go. It was a communion unenterable by the disciples at that time.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3939','1','43','13','34','34','<p>13:34 <i>A new commandment I give to you: Love one another. Even as I have loved you, you also love one another</i>- &ldquo;As I <i>have</i> loved you&quot; is another example of how the Lord spoke of His impending sacrifice as if He had already achieved it in His life. Having loved His own, He loved them unto the end in His death (13:1). 15:12-13 says the same: &ldquo;This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends&quot;. Only the cross can be a strong enough power to inspire a love between us quite different to anything known in previous times; a love so powerful that it in itself could convert men and women. The newness of the commandment was to love as the Lord loved us.</p><p>The Greeks had various words for love, <i>agape </i>(a rather general word, used in the LXX); <i>eros </i>(referring to the physical aspect) and <i>phileo</i>, referring (for example) to the love of parents for children. These terms had loose definitions and are almost interchangeable in their OT (LXX) and NT usage. But then the Lord introduced a whole new paradigm: &quot;A new commandment I give unto you, That you love (<i>agape</i>) one another; as I have loved you&quot; (Jn. 13:34). To love as the Lord loved was something fundamentally new, and He chose one of the available terms and made it into something else. He chose a rather colourless word in the Greek language: <i>agape</i>, and made it refer specifically to the love of God and Christ towards us, and also to the love which their followers should show to each other. \'This is <i>agape\'</i>, He says: \'This is My redefinition of that word, which must enter your new vocabulary\'. It is true that <i>agape</i> and <i>phileo</i> are apparently interchangeable in some places; but the Lord&rsquo;s redefinition of love, His placing of new meaning into old words, still stands valid. Not only does the Lord give &lsquo;love&rsquo; a new flavour as a word. He above all showed forth that quality of love. He turned man&rsquo;s conception of love on its head. Thus He plugged in to the Pharisee&rsquo;s debate about who could be identified as their neighbour- by showing, in His Samaritan parable, that we must make ourselves neighbours to others.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3940','1','43','13','35','35','<p>13:35- see on Acts 4:13.</p><p><i>By this shall all men know you are my disciples- if you have love for one another</i>- The Lord has just redefined &quot;love&quot; as the love He was showing by dying for them, epitomized in the foot washing incident. If His followers could do this for each other, then the witness would be made to &quot;all men&quot;. Christian love must be distinctively different from any other profession of \'love\' made by others. That is a great challenge; and it is only capable of fulfilment by being motivated by the Lord\'s love. It will be a witness powerful enough to convert the world. Indeed, this is John&rsquo;s version of the great commission- see on Lk. 22:32. The Lord&rsquo;s death was to result in a unity between us that would lead the world to understand Him and the love the Father has for Him (Jn. 17:21,23); and yet through the loving unity of believers, the world knows <i>them</i>, that they are His disciples (Jn. 13:35). We are an exhibition to this world of the relationship between the Father and Son. Hence our behaviour is so crucial. For if we are divided and unloving, this is the image of the Father and Son which we are presenting. It is also therefore sadly true that if all men do not see love for one another, then we are in fact not the Lord\'s disciples. This makes so many forms of cranky denominationalism self-condemned as non-Christian.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3941','1','43','13','36','36','<p>13:36- see on Jn. 21:18,19.</p><p><i>Simon Peter said to him: Lord, where do you go? Jesus answered: Where I go, you cannot follow now, but you shall follow afterwards</i>- As noted on :32 and :33, the Lord was going to the cross, but to an unenterable mutual intercourse between Father and Son which would be to the profoundest glory of them both. This was unenterable by the spiritually immature disciples at that stage. The Lord was indeed telling Peter that he was not yet able to die for Him, but He would do so ultimately. But the essence of &quot;Where I go&quot; was to this intimate unity with the Father which was unenterable by the disciples at that stage. But the promise of the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, would mean that the Lord\'s prayer of chapter 17 could and would come true- that the depths of His unity and mutual glorification with the Father would become true for them too.</p><p>The question is &ldquo;Where are you going?&quot;, in the context of the Lord going to the cross. Yet later, the Lord pointed out that &ldquo;Not one of you asks me, &lsquo;Where are you going?&rsquo;&rdquo; (Jn. 13:36; 16:5). Clearly enough the Lord&rsquo;s point was that Peter had enquired about the cross, but not really enquired. Peter took \'Where the Lord is going\' as referring to a literal place, or His death. But as noted on :32 and :33, where the Lord was going, as He understood it, was the most profound unity between Father and Son. And is it that same with us? That we wish to know of the cross, but we are not <i>really</i> enquiring as to it, as the personal and spiritual implications are too great for us? It wasn&rsquo;t that Peter was unaware of the cross and the Lord&rsquo;s teaching about it; it was rather that he and we failed to let the realities sink home and failed to appreciate the deep spiritual implications of it all. The Lord had clearly taught Peter that He must lay down His life for the sheep (Jn. 10:11)- but Peter wished to sacrifice his own life to save Jesus&rsquo; having to do this (Jn. 13:36-38). So great was Peter&rsquo;s barrier to the idea of the Lord Jesus having to die. And we too run into this same barrier with the cross of Christ; it&rsquo;s why, e.g., we find it so hard to make an extended study of the crucifixion, why people walk out of movies about the Passion of Christ half way through, why we find it hard to concentrate upon the simple facts of the death of Christ at their memorial meetings&hellip;&nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3942','1','43','13','37','37','<p>13:37 <i>Peter said to him: Lord, why cannot I follow you even now? I will lay down my life for you</i>- Peter understood where the Lord was going as meaning \'to His death\'. But the Lord had in view the intense spiritual intercourse with the Father and mutual glorification which would arise from that death (see on :32 and :33). His death was far more than death <i>per se, </i>it was a profound glorification of the Father. Peter\'s loyalty and desire to physically die <i>f</i>or the Lord is commendable, but the record shows that he was rather missing the point and spiritual perspective of the Lord\'s death. When he says &ldquo;Though I should / must die with you&rdquo; (Mt. 26:35), he uses the word elsewhere translated &ldquo;must&rdquo; in connection with Lord&rsquo;s foreknowledge that He must suffer the death of the cross. Peter knew that he must share the cross- but the flesh was weak. When it became apparent that the Lord was going to actually die, he asked: &ldquo;Lord, why cannot I follow thee now? I will lay down my life for thy sake&rdquo; (Jn. 13:37). He saw the connection between following and laying down life in death. He had heard the Lord saying that He would lay down His life for them (Jn. 10:15,17). And Peter thought he could do just the same for his Lord- but not, it didn&rsquo;t occur to him, for his brethren. He didn&rsquo;t then appreciate the weight or extent of the cross of Christ. The Lord replied that he was not yet able to do that, he would deny Him rather than follow Him, but one day he would be strong enough, and then he would follow Him to the end (Jn. 13:36,37). Peter thought he was strong enough then; for he followed (s.w.) Christ afar off, to the High Priest&rsquo;s house (Mt. 26:58). But in ineffable self-hatred he came to see that the Lord&rsquo;s prediction was right.</p><p>Just before His death, the Saviour spoke of going to the Father, and coming again in resurrection (Jn. 13:36,37 cp. 14:28; 16:16,17; 17:11). He somehow saw the cross as a being with God, a going to Him there (&lsquo;going to the Father&rsquo; in these Johannine passages is hard to apply to His ascent to Heaven after the resurrection). When in this context He speaks of <i>us</i> coming to the Father, He refers to our taking up of His cross, and in this coming to the essence of God (Jn. 14:6 cp. 4, 13:36). See on Jn. 19:19.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3943','1','43','13','38','38','<p>13:38 <i>Jesus answered: Will you lay down your life for me? Truly, truly, I say to you: The cock shall not crow, till you have denied me three times</i>- As noted on:37, Peter had rather missed the point anyway. The Lord was \'going\' not to simply die <i>per se</i>, but into the profoundest spiritual glorification process with the Father which Peter was too immature to enter. But the Lord goes along with Peter\'s literalism, and gently points out to him that he was not even up to dying with Him, let alone entering the spiritual things which were implied in the Lord\'s death and where He was \'going\'. The issues relating to the Lord\'s words to Peter here are discussed on Mt. 26:34,35.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3944','1','43','14','1','1','<p>14:1- see on 17:3.</p><p><i>Do not let your heart be disturbed- </i>John has used this very phrase for a troubled or &quot;disturbed&quot; heart in describing the stress felt by the Lord as He faced the eternal issues of human salvation which were before Him (11:33; 12:27; 13:21). That is enough emphasis for us to safely conclude that the Lord meant- and means- that He is taking our stress and &quot;trouble&quot; about salvation onto Himself, and we need not worry about. For all the issues concerning whether we shall be saved were carried by Him. And it is surely alluded to when He urges them after His resurrection not to be &quot;troubled&quot; (Lk. 24:38). &quot;Let not your heart be troubled&quot; is an allusion to 1 Sam. 17:32, where Israel were not to fear Goliath because of the salvation which would be achieved through David.</p><p><i>Believe in God, believe also in me</i>- For first century Jews, belief in God was taken as natural and normal. If they believe that He is from the Father and one with the Father in a functional sense, then they should believe also in Him. And the belief in view is faith in salvation (see on :1).</p><p>The Lord\'s goodbye address in Jn. 14-16 has many connections with those of Moses and Joshua, in which they expressed fear that after their death there would be a mass falling away within Israel, and their guise of spirituality would give way due to their lack of a real faith. This further indicates the weakness of the disciples. Our Lord\'s speech was shot through with doubt of the twelve and recognition of the weakness of the disciples, which needs tabulating to show its full force:</p><div align=center><table border=0 cellspacing=12 cellpadding=0 width=80%>    <tbody>        <tr>            <td width=5% valign=top>            <p>14</p>            </td>            <td width=7% valign=top>            <p>:2</p>            </td>            <td width=88%>            <p>&quot;If   it were not so&quot; - implying they doubted</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td>            <p>&quot;If   I go... I will come again&quot; - using logic to answer their implied doubt.</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td valign=top>            <p>:5</p>            </td>            <td>            <p>&quot;We   know not whither Thou goest&quot;</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td valign=top>            <p>:7</p>            </td>            <td>            <p>&quot;If   ye had known me&quot;</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td valign=top>            <p>:9</p>            </td>            <td>            <p>&quot;Have   I been so long with you, and yet hast thou not known me?&quot;</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td valign=top>            <p>:10,11</p>            </td>            <td>            <p>&quot;Believest   thou?... believe me&quot;</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td valign=top>            <p>:14</p>            </td>            <td>            <p>&quot;If   ye shall ask...&quot;</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td valign=top>            <p>:15</p>            </td>            <td>            <p>&quot;If   ye love me... if ye loved me, ye would rejoice...if a man love me&quot;   (v.28,23)</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td valign=top>            <p>15</p>            </td>            <td valign=top>            <p>:4</p>            </td>            <td>            <p>&quot;Abide   in me... no more can ye, except ye abide in me... without me ye can do   nothing...if ye abide in me&quot;</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td valign=top>            <p>:9,14,15</p>            </td>            <td>            <p>&quot;Continue   ye... ye are my friends, if ye...I have called you friends&quot; - implying   \'But you\'ve got to live up to it\'.</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td valign=top>            <p>:17</p>            </td>            <td>            <p>&quot;These   things I command you&quot; - emphatic, desperate warning</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td valign=top>            <p>:20</p>            </td>            <td>            <p>&quot;Remember   the word&quot;</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td valign=top>            <p>16</p>            </td>            <td valign=top>            <p>:1</p>            </td>            <td>            <p>&quot;That   ye should not be offended&quot;</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td valign=top>            <p>:5</p>            </td>            <td>            <p>&quot;None   of you asketh me, Whither goest Thou?&quot; - implying Jesus was disappointed   that they hadn\'t. &quot;Sorrow hath filled your heart&quot; (v.6) seems a   similar rebuke.</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td valign=top>            <p>:24</p>            </td>            <td>            <p>&quot;Hitherto   have ye asked nothing in my name; ask...&quot;</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td valign=top>            <p>:31</p>            </td>            <td>            <p>&quot;Do   ye now believe? (said almost sarcastically)... ye shall be scattered, every   man to his own, and shall leave me alone&quot; - cp. Joshua and Moses   questioning Israel whether their commitment was really what they claimed, and   warning that after their death they would soon fall away.</p>            </td>        </tr>    </tbody></table></div><p>&ldquo;Let not your heart be troubled&hellip; neither let it be afraid&rdquo; (:1,27) repeats Moses&rsquo; final encouragement to Israel to &ldquo;fear not, neither be dismayed&rdquo; (Dt. 31:8; 1:21,29; 7:18). Inheritance of the Kingdom was assured- if they believed.</p><p>I think it is worth all of us pausing to ask the most basic question: Do we <i>really</i> believe that God exists? &quot;Those who say that they believe in God and yet neither love nor fear him, do not in fact believe in him but in those who have taught them that God exists. Those who believe that they believe in God, but without any passion in their heart, any anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the God-idea, not in God&quot;. The Jews must have been shocked when the Lord told them to &quot;believe in God&quot; (Jn. 14:1 RVmg.). For there were no atheists amongst them. What the Lord Jesus was saying was that their faith was in the God-idea, not in the real God. For if they believed the Father, they would accept His Son. We must ask whether we feel any real passion for Him, any true emotion, any sense of spiritual crisis, of radical motivation&hellip;&nbsp; See on Acts 16:34.</p><p>There are many other references in the Upper Room discourse to Moses- without doubt, Moses was very much in the Lord&rsquo;s mind as He faced His end. Consider at your leisure how Jn. 14:1 = Ex. 14:31; Jn. 14:11 = Ex. 14:8. When the Lord speaks in the Upper Room of manifesting the Father and Himself unto the disciples (Jn. 14:21,22), He is alluding to the way that Moses asked God to &ldquo;manifest Yourself unto me&rdquo; (Ex. 33:18 LXX). The Lord&rsquo;s allusion makes Himself out to be God&rsquo;s representative, and all those who believe in Him to be as Moses, receiving the vision of God&rsquo;s glory. Note that it was that very experience above all others which marks off Moses in Rabbinic writings as supreme and beyond all human equal. And yet the Lord is teaching that that very experience of Moses is to be shared <i>to an even higher degree</i> by all His followers. It would&rsquo;ve taken real faith and spiritual ambition for those immature men who listened to the Lord that evening to really believe it&hellip; And the same difficult call comes to us too.</p><p>The command not to be troubled is also an allusion to &ldquo;Then I said unto you, Dread not, neither be afraid of them&rdquo; (Dt. 1:41). Yet the contrast is with Moses, who fain would have gone ahead into the promised land to prepare the place, but was unable.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3945','1','43','14','2','2','<p>14:2- see on Lk. 14:12.</p><p><i>In my Father\'s house are many dwelling places- </i>This is a form of the verb \'to abide\' which features so frequently in John\'s record. The Father and Son seek to abide in the believer through the Spirit, deep in the heart of the believer (:17; 1 Jn. 3:24; 4:13). In this sense, each believer becomes like one of the rooms or cubicles around the temple, each used by a different priest. Insofar as the Spirit abides in us now, we are the temple of God, we are the new priesthood, and are therefore called to active service for others to His glory.</p><p><i>If it were not so, I would have told you- </i>The offer of salvation is so repeatedly stated by the Father and Son throughout the Bible that we are left with a terrible choice: Either it is true, or God is the worst deceiver. And if that were the case, the Lord as the obviously good man would have told us. This awful choice points up the amazing truth- that God really wishes us to be saved and assures any and every believer of the certainty of salvation.</p><p><i>I go to prepare a place for you</i>- The abiding Spirit was only given as a result of the Lord\'s death and glorification (7:38,39), and He will go on throughout the Comforter discourse to make this point. He was going to the cross, and to the intense mutual glorification of Father and Son there of which He has just spoken in chapter 13. He is speaking here in response to Peter&rsquo;s question as to where the Lord Jesus was now going to disappear to, i.e. in death. &ldquo;I go to prepare a place for you&rdquo; alludes to the idea of Moses and the Angel bringing Israel &ldquo;into the place which I have prepared&rdquo; (Ex. 23:30).</p><p>And it is also surely an allusion to the Palestinian tradition that the wife came to live with the new husband after a year and a day, whilst He \'prepared the place\' for her. The cross was His purchase of us as His bride. The bridegroom was &ldquo;taken away&rdquo; from the wedding guests (Mk. 2:20)- the same word used in the LXX of Is. 53:8 for the &lsquo;taking away&rsquo; of the Lord Jesus in His crucifixion death. But the groom is &lsquo;taken away&rsquo; from the guests- because he is going off to marry his bride. The cross, in all its tears, blood and pain, was the Lord&rsquo;s wedding to us.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3946','1','43','14','3','3','<p>14:3- see on Lk. 17:34; 1 Cor. 13:12; 1 Thess. 4:15.</p><p><i>And if I go and prepare a place for you- </i>The Lord\'s death and glorification on the cross in God\'s eyes, being lifted up in glory from God\'s viewpoint, was in order to release the Spirit. This was symbolized by the water which came from the Lord\'s side, and His breathing His last breath / spirit toward the weak and fearful disciples. He had asked the disciples to &quot;prepare&quot; the Passover meal for them (s.w. Lk. 22:12). And now He demonstrates the mutuality between Him and His followers by saying that He was now going to prepare a place for <i>them</i>, an abiding place, on account of actually being the Paschal lamb.</p><p><i>I will come again- </i>The coming again refers therefore to His resurrection, and the spiritual intimacy with His followers which the gift of the Spirit would enable. There is of course some reference to the second coming, but the Lord is to go on now to explain that His physical coming and presence were to be experienced in spiritual essence by His presence amongst them through the Spirit. The way He was going was to the cross- not to Heaven. There our place was prepared. He &ldquo;came again&rdquo; in resurrection.</p><p>The fact we sin and fail inevitably militates against a robust faith that &ldquo;we will be there&rdquo;. The Lord predicted how Peter would deny him; but went straight on to assure the shocked and worried disciples: &ldquo;Let not your heart be troubled because some of you will fail me: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my father&rsquo;s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you&hellip; if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also&rdquo; (Jn. 13:36-14:3). These wonderful words of assurance were in the very context of predicting the disciples&rsquo; failure. It&rsquo;s as if the Lord is saying: &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t let the fact that you will fail me shake your faith that I will never fail <i>you</i>, and I will save you in the end, despite your weakness and collapses of faith&rsquo;.</p><p><i>And will receive you to myself; that where I am, there you may be also- </i>This speaks of the spiritual intimacy which would be achieved through the gift of the Spirit released by the Lord\'s death. His death was enabling or preparing the abiding place by the Spirit in every believers\' heart. &quot;Where I am&quot; is a distinct present tense. His being so united with the Father, able to lift up His eyes to Heaven and pray with no senses of barrier, was to be shared with the believers on account of the gift of the Spirit released through His death. This idea of His relationship and unity with the Father being shared with us is the great theme of His prayer of chapter 17. Where He was in His relationship with the Father would be ours. He would \'receive us unto Himself\'- a phrase so intimate that it implies the closest form of marital union. It is used of taking a woman unto oneself in marriage (Mt. 1:20,24). &quot;Unto myself&quot; is the very phrase He used in 12:32 of how the cross would draw all the men of the new creation &quot;unto me&quot;. This drawing unto and into Himself is all the work of the Spirit, an outflow of His work on the cross. The idea is not at all of going to be with Him in Heaven, but of being personally connected with Him; being received unto Himself is to be drawn unto Him on the cross. Again there is a connection with the prologue, where Israel generally did not &quot;receive&quot; Him, but those who did were given the Spirit of adoption, His grace / gift, His fullness (1:11,12,16 s.w.). The Jewish world refused to receive the gift of the Spirit (:17 s.w.). The same word is used of the receipt of the Spirit through His death (7:39; 20:22 &quot;receive the Holy Spirit&quot;; 1 Jn. 2:27 &quot;the anointing which you have received&quot;). There is a mutuality in all this; we receive Him, and He receives us (:20 s.w.). The receipt of the Spirit enables us to be received unto and into Himself, to be with Him where He was with the Father as He spoke those words. To deny the Spirit\'s operation is to miss out on the relationship with the Lord Jesus which is the essence of Christianity.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3947','1','43','14','4','4','<p>14:4 <i>And where I go, you know the way</i>- He had often told them of His forthcoming death, but rarely if ever about His ascension to Heaven. Where He was going clearly refers to the cross. The Lord seems to have imputed their future maturity to them at a time when they still didn&rsquo;t have it. &lsquo;You know where I go&rsquo;, He told them (:4,5)- when, as they themselves responded, they didn&rsquo;t. He said that they knew the Spirit of Truth, whereas the Jewish world didn&rsquo;t (14:17)- because &ldquo;in that day you shall know&hellip;&rdquo; (14:20). And this approach will help us with our immature and frustrating brethren; we need to impute to them that spiritual maturity to which we must believe they will rise. &nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3948','1','43','14','5','5','<p>14:5 <i>Thomas said to him: Lord, we do not know where you go. How do we discern the way?</i>- See on :4. Here we have our typical problem- we know the way of the cross, but in practice we don&rsquo;t know- or rather, we don&rsquo;t want to know. The disciples were confused as to where the Lord Jesus was going and to where He was leading them. His response was that He was and is &ldquo;the way&rdquo;. C.H. Dodd in <i>The Interpretation Of John&rsquo;s Gospel</i> p. 412 suggests the meaning of Jn. 14:4,5 as: &ldquo;You know the way in that I am the way, but you do not know where it leads&rdquo;, and Thomas therefore objects: &ldquo;If we do not know the destination, how can we know the way?&rdquo;. The Lord&rsquo;s response is that He is the way. That&rsquo;s it. It&rsquo;s not so much the destination as the way there. The excellency of knowing Christ demands of us to walk in His way, to know Him as the life right now, to live His life, to be in His way. The way is the goal; &lsquo;You don&rsquo;t need any further horizons than that, than me, right now&rsquo;. This is totally unappreciated by the prosperity Gospel.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3949','1','43','14','6','6','<p>14:6- see on Jn. 13:37.</p><p><i>Jesus said to him: I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except by me</i>- The way to the cross had been lived out by the Lord throughout His life. And that too is &quot;the truth&quot;. &ldquo;The way&quot; was to the cross, and there we find and see the only true kind of life. That &ldquo;way&quot; of crucifixion life leads us to the Father, just as the Lord understood His death on the cross as a going to the Father. Because the cross so supremely manifested the Father, there we find Him, if we will live the life of Christ crucified. Yet if we keep His commandments, the Father and Son come to us (14:23), and we come to them. The cross enables a mutuality of relationship between us all. Note too that &ldquo;the way&quot; is now another term for &ldquo;the cross&quot;. They were asking where He was going; was He going to die on a cross? And He replies that &ldquo;I am the way&quot;- that they ought to have realized that His whole way of life was a cross carrying, and so of course, He would be literally going to die on the cross; He would follow His &ldquo;way&quot; to the end.</p><p><i>&ldquo;</i>I am <i>the</i> way&quot; may allude to the one great way of Proverbs. The whole way of life which leads to the Kingdom, the things we do, our deepest thoughts, our daily decisions; these are all &quot;the way&quot; which leads to the Kingdom; and yet Christ is &ldquo;the way&quot;. This clearly means that all these things, the very essence of our being, the fibre of our thought processes, the basis of all our works; must be the Lord Jesus Christ. The fact God&rsquo;s ways and principles are unchanging encourage our self-examination; for there is always the rock of God and His way against which to compare our ways. The Lord Jesus is the same yesterday and today and for ever.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3950','1','43','14','7','7','<p>14:7- see on Jn. 17:7.</p><p><i>If you had truly known me, you would have truly known my Father also. From this time forward you will truly know Him and will have seen Him</i>- The Lord tells the Father in 17:7,8 that the disciples have known Him and the Father, unlike the Jewish world who had not known Him (16:3). Here we see a wonderful principle revealed: The Lord speaks so positively to the Father about us, imputing righteousness and levels of commitment to us which we do not currently have. They would truly know and see the Father through the work of the cross and the gift of the Spirit which would open their eyes to the Son and thereby to His Father.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3951','1','43','14','8','8','<p>14:8- see on Dt. 5:4,5.</p><p><i>Philip said to him: Lord, show us the Father, and it suffices us</i>- The Lord replies that He is the manifestation of the Father. This is the language of Ex. 33:18 LXX, where Moses likewise asks God &ldquo;show Yourself to me&rdquo;. The answer was in the theophany on Sinai, with the Name of Yahweh declared, as full of grace and truth. This, according to Philip&rsquo;s allusion to it, is what we see in Jesus. And this is why the prologue in Jn. 1 speaks of the Lord Jesus in terms of the theophany of Exodus, that in His personality the full glory of the Father dwelt. Philip was the one who commented that &ldquo;two hundred pennyworth of bread is not <i>sufficient</i>&rdquo; for the crowd to eat and be filled. Yet he now uses the same, relatively uncommon, Greek word some time later, when he says that if he could see the Father, it would &lsquo;suffice&rsquo; him (Jn. 6:7; 14:8). Perhaps John intended to bring out the growth in Philip; he now perceived that the bread created by the Lord for the crowd was indeed representative of the bread of life, the Lord Jesus who was the manifestation of the Father. The Lord had taught in Jn. 6:35 that He was the bread, and He bade His followers &lsquo;see&rsquo; Him; and Philip had absorbed the point, even though, as the Lord makes clear, Philip still did not &lsquo;see&rsquo; Him as he ought.&nbsp;</p><p>The relationship of the Lord Jesus with His Father was evidently intended by Him to be a very real, achievable pattern for all those in Him. The prayer of chapter 17 makes this clear, for the Lord there prays that we would share His relationship with the Father, or as He has just said, we would be with Him where He then was in relationship with the Father. He wasn\'t an aberration, an uncopiable, inimitable freak. John\'s Gospel brings this out very clearly. The Father knows the Son, the Son knows the Father, the Son knows men, men know the Son, and so men know both the Father and Son (10:14,15; 14:7,8). The Son is in the Father as the Father is in the Son; men are in the Son and the Son is in men; and so men are in the Father and Son (Jn. 14:10,11; 17:21,23,26). As the Son did the Father\'s works and was thereby &quot;one&quot; with Him, so it is for the believers who do the Father\'s works (Jn. 10:30,37,38; 14:8-15). Whilst there obviously was a unique bonding between Father and Son on account of the virgin birth, the Lord Jesus certainly chooses to speak as if His Spirit enables the relationship between Him and His Father to be reproduced in our experience.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3952','1','43','14','9','9','<p>14:9 <i>Jesus said to him: Philip, have I been with you such a long time, and still you do not truly know me? He that has seen me has seen the Father. How do you ask: Show us the Father?</i>- Although the Lord speaks quite toughly to them at this point, as noted on :7, He is totally positive about them in talking with the Father about them (17:7,8). They did not truly know Him nor the Father, and yet He uses just that same Greek word in telling the Father that His men did &ldquo;know&rdquo; Him and His word (Jn. 17:7,8,25). He had faith and hope in their future maturity- they didn&rsquo;t then &ldquo;know&rdquo;, but they did in the future (Jn. 12:16; 13:7). The Lord had hope that &ldquo;In that day you shall know&rdquo; (Jn. 14:20). For there was no absolute guarantee that the eleven would come to &ldquo;know&rdquo; Him and His word, seeing they had freewill- Jesus had faith they would, and He expressed that faith and Hope to the Father so positively. For to love someone is to impute things to them which we only hope for. That is the simple basis of the \'imputed righteousness\' of which Paul writes in Romans.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3953','1','43','14','10','10','<p>14:10 <i>Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? The words that I speak to you, I speak not from myself; but the Father abiding in me does His works</i>- John&rsquo;s Gospel especially seems to speak of the &ldquo;words&rdquo; and &ldquo;works&rdquo; of the Lord Jesus almost interchangeably (Jn. 14:10-14); in illustration of the way in which the word of Jesus, which was the word of God, was constantly and consistently made flesh in Him, as the prologue stated (1:14); issuing in the works / actions of this man who was &ldquo;the word made flesh&rdquo;. See on Jn. 8:28. The Lord is encouraging us to see beyond the miracles or &quot;works&quot;; all of His words, works, miracles, character, spirit, personality were summarized in Him as a person. There was perfect congruence between Him as a person and all that He said, did and showed Himself to be. He was as He has just stated &quot;the truth&quot;, the word made flesh. The appeal to let His words abide in us does not therefore only imply that we are to memorize His recorded words and endlessly recycle them in our minds. Although there may well be an allusion to the idea of memorizing the Gospel records. It is more a question of allowing Him to dwell or abide within us, with all His spirit, words, personality and essence of His being. For this would be the Hebraic understanding of a man\'s &quot;word&quot;.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3954','1','43','14','11','11','<p>14:11- see on 14:1.</p><p><i>Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me; or else believe me for the very works\' sake</i>- He wanted them to perceive the indwelling of the Father in Himself, and His mutual abiding in the Father, because this was the very thing which He was promising them- to share His relationship with the Father, to come to be where He now was with the Father (:3). The prayer of John 17 and the promises of the effect of the Comforter all speak of the same possibility.</p><p>As noted on 10:38, the Lord was willing to accept \'belief\' if it was simply at the level of accepting that His miracles &quot;works&quot; were from God; in the hope that He could take such faith further. Yet here He seems to be saying that belief in Him as a person, was the same as believing in Him for the sake of His miracles. He as a personality, as a character, was the most powerful witness, at least equal to that witness provided by the miracles. To encounter Him without miracles ought to be persuasive enough, and we see this from the conversion of the Samaritan woman, who believed He was in the Father without seeing miracles.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3955','1','43','14','12','12','<p>14:12- see on Mk. 11:24; Jn. 17:20.</p><p><i>Truly, truly, I say to you: He that believes in me, the works that I do, shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do, because I go to the Father</i>- As noted on :10 and :11, &quot;the works&quot; of the Lord refer not only to His miracles but to all that He was. His going to the Father on the cross would release the gift of the Spirit (7:39). This was and is fundamentally a gift of internal strengthening in the heart, although it had issue in miraculous works for the disciples in the first century context.</p><p>It may be the Lord had in mind that the disciples through having the miraculous gifts of the Spirit would do greater works than He had done. But this raises the question of what is meant by &quot;greater&quot;. It could mean &quot;more&quot;, numerically. But the Greek word specifically carries the idea of being older, more mature- e.g. &quot;Are you greater than our father Abraham?&quot; (Jn. 8:53) in the context means \'Are you older than Abraham?\'. So He could be saying that the disciples would do greater works&quot; in the sense that collectively between us we would reveal to an even greater or mature extent the works of God. Because there must be a connection in His thought with Jn. 5:20, where alone elsewhere we meet the phrase &quot;greater works&quot;: &quot;For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth: and greater works than these will he shew him, that ye may marvel&quot;. The greater works that the Father showed the Son were the works which the believers in Christ were to perform subsequent to the Lord\'s resurrection. The &quot;works&quot; are the works of God Himself. The community of believers in Christ are doing His works, acting as God would do if He were a human being living on planet earth, and in this sense we are doing greater works than what Jesus personally did; for He was \'only\' one person, and we are many. And Jesus was aware of this. He explained repeatedly that the works He did were the works which God did (Jn. 5:36; 10:25,32,37,38; 14:10,11). As God showed Him the works He was to do, so He showed those works to the world in which He lived (Jn. 10:32). Paul therefore states that there are good works which are prepared in Heaven for us to fulfil: &quot;We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them&quot; (Eph. 2:10). In a sense, all the works were finished from the foundation of the world, it\'s for us to go out there today and perform them (Heb. 4:3). Practically this means that as we contemplate &quot;good works&quot;, we can be assured that somehow God will provide all that\'s needed for them to be performed. Our little faith so often stops us from performing them because we doubt whether we have the resources, the time, the money, the ability... whereas instead the need should be the call, and we should approach them in confidence that this is indeed God\'s will for us to do His works here on earth. For He has prepared both them and us to fulfil them. &nbsp;</p><p>The works of the Father and Son are defined in 6:29 as believing on the Son whom the Father sent. This is what it means to do the works of God. We could therefore read these promises as John\'s version of the great commission- to take the Gospel into all the world, and to trust that we shall be empowered by the Spirit to do this.</p><p>Another take on all this is that the potential enabled by the Spirit was never fully lived up to by the disciples, just as it is not with us. The Lord&rsquo;s promise that whatever the disciples asked, they would be given seems never to have been fully realized in them (Jn. 15:16). Likewise the &lsquo;prophecy&rsquo; here that they would do greater works than done by the Lord, once they received the Comforter, and possibly the promise that they would be taught &ldquo;all the truth&rdquo; about &ldquo;things to come&rdquo; (Jn. 16:13), were all likewise promises / prophecies whose potential it seems the disciples never fully rose up to.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3956','1','43','14','13','13','<p>14:13 <i>And whatever you shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son</i>- This is not a blank cheque promise. I suggested on :12 that the works of God were to bring others to faith in His Son, for that is how they are defined in 6:29. It is in that context that whatever we ask for will be ultimately provided. The connection with the great commission in the Synoptics is in the promise that &quot;all power&quot; would be given to enable this work to be done (Mt. 28:18). The laboured emphasis upon &quot;in my name&quot; here and in :14 would then connect with the command to &quot;preach in his name&quot; with the promise of the Spirit to empower them in that work (Lk. 24:47,49). Whilst we do not now have the miraculous gifts, the essence of this remains powerfully true. All shall be provided, the Spirit works in non-miraculous ways, if we ask for empowerment to glorify the Father in the Son through bringing others to Him. My own ministry is proof enough of that.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3957','1','43','14','14','14','<p>14:14 <i>If you shall ask anything in my name, that will I do</i>- This repeats word for word the assurance of :13; but as noted there, it is in the context of doing the &quot;works&quot; of the Father, which are bringing others to faith in His Son (6:29).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3958','1','43','14','15','15','<p>14:15- see on Jn. 17:6.</p><p><i>If you love me, you will keep my commandments</i>- As noted earlier in this chapter, the Lord is ever alluding to the last speech of Moses in Deuteronomy; here the appeal to &quot;keep my commandments&quot; sets the Lord as greater than Moses, mediating a new law to a new Israel; for &quot;keep the commandments&quot; reflects a major identical theme in Dt. 5:10; 7:9; 11:1,22; 13:3,4; 19:9; 30;16. The Lord&rsquo;s comment to the disciples that if they loved him, then they would &lsquo;keep his word&rsquo; (Jn. 14:15,21,23) implies their love was at best imperfect. Their keeping of His word and loving Him was certainly under question in Jn. 15:10. And yet He confidently represents them to the Father as those who had kept His word (Jn. 17:6).</p><p>But the Lord\'s commandments are &quot;not grievous&quot; (1 Jn. 5:3); it is not that we have been given a whole set of detailed regulations similar to the 613 given by Moses. It is not hard to be obedient to His commandments, 1 Jn. 5:3 implies. The Lord states clearly that He has left us one commandment- to love one another as He loved us (13:34; 15:12; 1 Jn. 4:21; 5:2). The plural &quot;commandments&quot; may be a reflection of the Hebraism whereby the plural is used to emphasize the greatness and cardinal value of one singular thing, the plural of majesty. This is perhaps confirmed by 15:17: &quot;These thingsplural I command you: That you love one another&quot;. Love of each other was the great \'thing\'. To love should not be grievous; if we are walking in the light of His endless love. Therefore &quot;This is his commandment, that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another&quot; (1 Jn. 3:23). The commandment to love as He loved us is only capable of understanding and fulfilment if we have believed into the Name of the Lord Jesus, and experienced that love, having God\'s love shed abroad in our hearts by the Spirit we receive after believing into Him (Rom. 5:5).</p><p>God is His word, as the prologue states (Jn. 1:1); to love God is to love His word. If we love His Son, we will keep His words (Jn. 14:15,21; 15:10). This is evidently alluding to the many Old Testament passages which say that Israel\'s love for God would be shown through their keeping of His commands (Ex. 20:6; Dt. 5:10; 7:9; 11:1,13,22; 30:16; Josh. 22:5). Israel were also told that God\'s commands were <i>all</i>&nbsp;related to showing love (Dt. 11:13; 19:9). So there is a logical circuit here: We love God by keeping His commands, therefore His commands are fundamentally about love. Thus love is the fulfilling of the law of God; both under the Old and New covenants (Rom. 13:10). It is all too easy to see our relationship with God and His Son as a question of obedience to their words, as if this is somehow a test of our spirituality. This is to humanize God too far, to see God as if He were a fallible man; for if we were God, we would institute some kind of written test for our creatures: \'Do this, and if you don\'t, then I know you don\'t love me\'. The God of glory is beyond this kind of thing. He is His word. If we love Him, we will be eager to know His words, we will dwell upon them, we will live them out in our daily experience as far as we can. In our seeking to know an infinite God, we will of course fail to see or appreciate the spirit of all His words. But He appreciates this. Yet in a sense our attitude to His word is an indication of our state of \'in-loveness\' with God. Reading His word will not be a chore, a mountain to be grimly climbed and achieved each day; it will be a vital and natural part of our daily life, as natural and spontaneous as our desire to eat; and even <i>more so</i>&nbsp;(cp. Job 23:12).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3959','1','43','14','16','16','<p>14:16 <i>And I will ask the Father, and He shall give you another comforter, that he may be with you for ever</i>- Another Comforter / intercessor implies that the Lord Jesus was the first Paraclete as confirmed in 1 Jn. 2:1. Yet Moses was the foremost intercessor for Israel, and is actually called &lsquo;the Paraclete&rsquo; in the Midrash on Ex. 12:29. But the idea is that the Lord was only physically with them for so long; the Comforter would mean that His presence was with them &quot;for ever&quot;. Any attempt to confine the work of the Comforter to the first century is therefore ill founded. For the contrast is with how the Lord physically was with them for only a period; but the Comforter, His abiding presence, would remain with them &quot;for ever&quot;.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3960','1','43','14','17','17','<p>14:17 <i>The Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive. For it neither sees him nor knows him. You truly know him, for he abides with you and shall be in you</i>- This is clarified when we appreciate the allusion to the prologue. The Jewish world did not receive the Lord Jesus, and therefore did not receive His Spirit; but those who did received power to become God\'s children, and the grace / gift of all His fullness (1:11,12,16). &quot;You truly know him&quot; was not then true; as noted on :9 and :10, the Lord is imputing knowledge to them which they did not have at that very moment. We too need to see the spiritual potential in people, rather than relating to them how they are at this given moment.</p><p>Likewise the Spirit of truth, so named because it would guide them into all truth (16:13), &quot;abides with you&quot; right then. Although the Spirit was only poured out at the Lord\'s glorification on the cross (7:38,39), this was so certain that the Lord perceived that potentially, the Spirit was within them already. This is the scenario in Corinthians, where they had been given the Spirit potentially, but were &quot;not spiritual&quot; (1 Cor. 3:1); and it is the case with many believers today who have not perceived the potential of the Spirit within them.</p><p>The promised Spirit &quot;shall be in you&quot;; it speaks fundamentally of an internal power, guiding into truth (16:13), which is a matter of the mind rather than miraculous external gifts. The Lord has just defined Himself personally as &quot;the truth&quot;, so the promise is not so much of intellectual purity of understanding as relationship with Him; for &quot;truth&quot; is a Hebraism for relationship. It is only the Western mindset which would see in &quot;truth&quot; here a reference to academic, intellectual purity of understanding.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3961','1','43','14','18','18','<p>14:18- see on Mt. 18:6.</p><p><i>I will not leave you desolate as orphans. I will come to you</i>- The Lord has just addressed them as &quot;little children&quot; (13:33), and senses their panic that He is leaving them. He assures them that He will come to them, just as He has stated in :3; that coming to them would be to receive them for ever to Himself through the ministry of His abiding Spirit. The allusion is to the way the Rabbis spoke of their disciples being left orphans after the Rabbi died. But the Lord\'s death would not be like that, but the opposite. His death would lead to His abiding personal presence and continual teaching of His disciples deep within their hearts. It is this allusion which explains the emphasis upon the Comforter providing continued teaching to the disciples. The discourse about the Comforter is inserted it seems in place of the Olivet prophecy, which in the Synoptics forms the Lord\'s promise of literally coming back. John\'s Gospel was written after them, and he is perhaps addressing the concern that the Lord had not returned, and might delay His return, by reminding them that the Comforter enabled the Lord\'s presence to be with us just as really as when He was literally present. There is an understandable desire in every true believer for the Lord\'s literal return; but we must be careful that our enthusiasm for it does not become so obsessive that we fail to sense His very real coming to us now in the Spirit. It is unfortunately significant that some of those most obsessive about the signs of the times fulfilling Bible prophecy and pointing to the Lord\'s imminent return are in fact those who also deny the operation of the Spirit today.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3962','1','43','14','19','19','<p>14:19 <i>Yet a little while, and the world sees me no more; but you will see me. Because I live, you shall live also</i>- The Lord carefully uses a present tense: &quot;I live&quot;, not &quot;I will live&quot;. His life was going to become their life because He would give them His spirit of life. The Lord would no longer be visible to the Jewish world; but He would be \'seen\' by the disciples because the gift of the Comforter would be such that His presence was as real as if He were physically present.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3963','1','43','14','20','20','<p>14:20- see on Jn. 17:7.</p><p><i>In that day, you shall truly know that I am in my Father, and you in me and I in you</i>- The &quot;truth&quot; in to which they would be guided by the Comforter, &quot;the spirit of truth&quot;, would not be intellectual purity of understanding, but the knowledge or seeing of the Father and Son. And they would also &quot;know&quot; that &quot;I am in you&quot;. This promise is often alluded to by John when later writing to the converts made from hearing or reading his Gospel record. For he writes about &quot;hereby we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit which he has given us&quot; (1 Jn. 3:24; 4:13; also alluded to in 1 Jn. 2:3,5; 3:19; 4:6). So the knowledge that the Son dwells in us is from the experience of the Spirit. &quot;That day&quot; therefore refers to the day when the Spirit would be given, and they would \'see\' the Lord ever before them and have His personal presence within them (:19).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3964','1','43','14','21','21','<p>14:21- see on Jn. 14:1.</p><p><i>He that has my commandments and keeps them, he it is that loves me; and he that loves me, shall be loved of my Father; and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him</i>- I suggested on :15 that the plural &quot;commandments&quot; refers to the singular commandment to love which is paramount to Christianity. And the connection between commandment and love is continued here. To love one another as He loved us, keeping the commandments, is to love the Lord. And John later makes this explicit, in explaining that love of the Lord and love of each other are related and inseparable. The commandments must be both \'had\' and kept. To love those in Christ was a commandment which the Jewish world did not \'have\' in that they did not accept it, and not only killed God\'s Son but persecuted and hated all who believed in Him. John\'s letters refer to those who hate their brother, and the reference is primarily to the Jewish persecution of their Christian brothers. Obedience to the command to love one another is effectively a loving of the Son, which is a loving of the Father; and in response the Son will love us in manifesting Himself to us. This self-manifestation of the Lord to those who love Him and His brethren is again through the ministry of the Spirit. It is paralleled in :23 with coming to the believer and abiding &quot;make our abode&quot; with him. &quot;Manifest myself&quot; is the word used of the manifestation of the risen Christ in Acts 10:40, and of the appearing of resurrected people of Mt. 27:53. John uses a related verb about the \'showing\' of the Lord to the disciples after His resurrection (21:1,14). The evidence of the resurrection is not therefore in the literal visible appearance of the risen Lord to believers, but in His appearance or manifestation to them by the Spirit. In this sense His life is manifested or shown to us (1 Jn. 1:2 s.w.). This is why His resurrection, His life, His living again, can never be proven in Euclidean terms; it is a matter of experience. No amount of apologetics can prove the Lord rose from the dead, that a living body emerged from a cave on the outskirts of Jerusalem; and yet this is the cornerstone of the whole Christian faith. It is proven by His resurrection manifestation to those who accept His claims and live in His love, and whose lives are His life, His living. This may appear a circular argument, and so it is, in secular, human terms. But the transformation of life elicited by it, in radical love for each other, is to be the exhibit which cannot be argued against.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3965','1','43','14','22','22','<p>14:22- see on Jn. 7:4.</p><p><i>Judas (not Iscariot) said to him: Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?</i>- They were far from understanding. His manifestation to the believers was because they had accepted Him and His claims, and were obeying His commandment to love each other. The Jewish world had not received Him, and so the internal manifestation of the Spirit could not be experienced by them. In simple terms, they did not love Him (:23).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3966','1','43','14','23','23','<p>14:23 <i>Jesus answered and said to him: If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him; and we will come to him and make our home with him</i>- The Jewish world did not accept the light of the Lord Jesus, as the prologue emphasizes. The manifestation of the Lord would be through His Spirit in the hearts of those who loved Him, and also loved their brethren, i.e. \'kept His word\', His singular commandment of loving each other (13:34; 15:12; 1 Jn. 4:21; 5:2). See on :15. John\'s letters put this in so many words by saying that if we love the Father and Son, then we will love other believers. Here the Lord says that if we love Him, then we will &quot;keep my word&quot;, which is the singular commandment to love one another. In that life of love, the Father and Son will \'come\' to us by the Spirit, as explained on :3, and abide with us on a permanent level &quot;make our home&quot;. Not just in moments of emotional connection with them, but on a permanent basis.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3967','1','43','14','24','24','<p>14:24 <i>He that does not love me, does not keep my words; and the word which you hear is not mine, but the Father\'s who sent me</i>- The words which are to be kept, as noted on :15, refer to the singular commandment to love each other (13:34; 15:12; 1 Jn. 4:21; 5:2). If we do not love the Lord, we will not love our brethren. And that word, of radical love, is the word of the Father. He is love, in that sense. This interpretation is confirmed by John\'s later interpretation of these words in 1 Jn. 4:16: &quot;And we know and have believed the love which God has toward us. God is love, and he that abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him&quot;. See on :31, where again, keeping God\'s commandment meant simply loving Him, unto death on the cross for His people.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3968','1','43','14','25','25','<p>14:25- see on Jn. 1:38.</p><p><i>These things have I spoken to you, while still with you</i>- The Lord predicted His personal presence amongst them through the Spirit before He left them. He didn\'t leave them to just experience His presence through the Spirit. That experience would remind them that this was precisely what He had predicted. And yet He realized that at that time, they did not understand. But the coming of the Spirit would make clear what He meant. These words spoken about the Comforter, spoken at that moment whilst still with them, were the words which would be recalled to their mind by the Comforter (:26).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3969','1','43','14','26','26','<p>14:26 <i>But the comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and cause you to remember all that I said to you</i>- The Spirit was &quot;in my name&quot; in that it would be as if the Lord was literally with them. The Lord was aware that His teaching about the Comforter could not then be understood by them; and so He assures them that the Comforter would make them remember these words about the Comforter and then all would be plain to them; see on :25. It could be that the Comforter had a specific role in recalling literally all the Lord had spoken to them, so that the Gospel records could be written under inspiration. But the connection with :25 suggests to me that the Lord had in view His specific teaching about the Comforter.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3970','1','43','14','27','27','<p>14:27 <i>Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives, do I give it to you. Let not your heart be disturbed, neither let it be fearful</i>-&nbsp; &ldquo;&rsquo;Peace&rsquo; &lsquo;<i>shalom</i>&rsquo;- the usual Semitic greeting is my farewell to you&rdquo; is an example of how He seems to have almost purposefully delighted in using language in a startlingly different way. There are times when the Lord Jesus seems to have almost coined words. The gift of the Spirit would be the source of peace with God, which is how &quot;peace&quot; is commonly used in the Bible. Therefore they need have no fear before God, troubled thoughts about the outcome of judgment day; see on :1. The peace given would affect their heart; the gift of the Spirit in view was primarily internal, in the heart. &quot;My peace&quot; refers to the peace which the Lord had with the Father, with no barriers. This is another way of saying what He does so often in this section- that the Spirit was enabling them to have the same relationship with the Father which He had. His <i>shalom</i> peace was not as the Jewish world could give it; each time He called out <i>shalom </i>across the street or to the guys at work each morning, He meant it. And He perceived that it would take His death on the cross to really achieve what He was giving to them in His words. &nbsp;</p><p>The Lord&rsquo;s commission to His preachers comes along with a promise that He would &ldquo;be with them always&rdquo;. This is perhaps Matthew&rsquo;s equivalent to John&rsquo;s promise of the Comforter, who would abide with the Lord&rsquo;s people for ever. The promise of Holy Spirit support in the work of fulfilling the great commission is not necessarily fulfilled in the ability to do miracles etc. It was in the first century, but not today. Yet the promise that &ldquo;I am with you always, even as you fulfil my commission to preach unto the ends of the world&rdquo;, is surely fulfilled in the promised Comforter, who is to &lsquo;abide with us for ever&rsquo;. What does this mean? The Comforter clearly refers to the personal presence of Jesus, even though He is not visibly with us:</p><div align=center><table border=0 cellspacing=6 cellpadding=0>    <tbody>        <tr>            <td width=318 valign=top>            <p>            <b>The Comforter</b></p>            </td>            <td width=319 valign=top>            <p><b>The   Lord Jesus</b></p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td width=318 valign=top>            <p>Will come   into the world</p>            </td>            <td width=319 valign=top>            <p>Jn. 5:   43; 16:28; 18:37</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td width=318 valign=top>            <p>Comes   forth from the Father</p>            </td>            <td width=319 valign=top>            <p>Ditto</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td width=318 valign=top>            <p>Given   by the Father</p>            </td>            <td width=319 valign=top>            <p>Jn.   3:16</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td width=318 valign=top>            <p>Sent by   the Father</p>            </td>            <td width=319 valign=top>            <p>Jn.   3:17</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td width=318 valign=top>            <p>The   spirit of truth</p>            </td>            <td width=319 valign=top>            <p>The   truth Jn. 14:6</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td width=318 valign=top>            <p>The   Holy Spirit</p>            </td>            <td width=319 valign=top>            <p>The   Holy One of God Jn. 6:69</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td width=318 valign=top>            <p>The   disciples would know / recognize the Comforter</p>            </td>            <td width=319 valign=top>            <p>As they   knew / recognized Jesus Jn. 14:7,9</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td width=318 valign=top>            <p>Would   remain within the disciples</p>            </td>            <td width=319 valign=top>            <p>Jn.   14:20,23; 15:4,5; 17:23,26</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td width=318 valign=top>            <p>Declares   things to come</p>            </td>            <td width=319 valign=top>            <p>Jn.   4:25,26</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td width=318 valign=top>            <p>Bears   witness, against the world</p>            </td>            <td width=319 valign=top>            <p>Jn.   8:14; 7:7</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td width=318 valign=top>            <p>Not   accepted by the world</p>            </td>            <td width=319 valign=top>            <p>Jn.   5:43; 12:48</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td width=318 valign=top>            <p>Unseen   by the world</p>            </td>            <td width=319 valign=top>            <p>Jn.   16:16</p>            </td>        </tr>    </tbody></table></div><p>Because of this, the Lord made a clever word play by saying that &ldquo;&lsquo;Peace&rsquo; <i>shalom</i> is my farewell to you&rdquo; (Jn. 14:27)- when &lsquo;Peace&rsquo; was what you said when you met someone, to say &lsquo;Hello&rsquo;. His farewell in the flesh was His &lsquo;hello&rsquo;, in that His personal presence would be with them. This Comforter, this personal presence of Jesus, is given <i>especially in the context of fulfilling the great commission to take Him to the whole world</i>. He will be with us, there will be a special sense of His abiding presence amongst us, because we are witnessing &ldquo;in Him&rdquo;, and our witness is a shared witness with Him. Any who have done any witnessing work, not necessarily missionary work, but any witnessing to Him, will have felt and known His especial presence, as He promised. And we live in a time similar to that when John&rsquo;s Gospel was written- a time when the church were disappointed the Lord had not returned as quickly as they thought He would, when the eyewitnesses of Jesus in the flesh were not with them any longer. John&rsquo;s point is that through the Comforter, it&rsquo;s as good as if Jesus <i>is</i> here with us; and he brings out in his gospel how things like the judgment, eternal life, the coming of Jesus etc. all essentially occur within the life of the believer right now.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3971','1','43','14','28','28','<p>14:28 <i>You heard how I said to you: I go away and I come to you. If you loved me, you would have rejoiced because I go to the Father. For the Father is greater than I</i>- As explained on :3, the going away was to the cross and the coming to them through His abiding presence in the Comforter. &quot;If you loved me&quot; may seem rather severe, seeing they were willing to die for Him. But their sorrow rather than rejoicing at His departure was actually because in real spiritual terms they did not love Him; they wanted Him to remain for their own sakes. If they loved the essence of what He and the Father stood for, they would have rejoiced at His departure, for it meant the giving of the Comforter which would glorify the Father and Son so much more than if He did not depart. &quot;The Father is greater than I&quot; may mean that the Father\'s glory was far greater an issue than the Lord\'s death or presence with them- the issues they were immediately concerned about. To love the Son was to love the glorification of the Father, who was greater than Him. They should therefore have rejoiced at the teaching that He was going away in order to come to them in the power of the Comforter. The same word has just been used of how &quot;greater works&quot; were to be done when the Comforter was given (:12), on account of the Lord\'s going to the Father on the cross. The &quot;works&quot;, the miracles, would glorify the Father and Son (2:11; 11:4,40). The cross itself would glorify the Father and Son (12:41).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3972','1','43','14','29','29','<p>14:29- see on Jn. 12:16.</p><p><i>And now I have told you before it happens, so that when it happens, you may believe</i>- The purpose of prophecy isn&rsquo;t to specifically predict the future, but so that we shall be able to recognize the signs when they appear. The disciples did not expect Jesus to enter into Jerusalem &ldquo;sitting on an ass&rsquo;s colt&rdquo; in fulfilment of Zech. 9:9. But when He did, then soon afterwards, all became clear to them- that He had fulfilled this prophecy (Jn. 12:16). Likewise with prophecies such as &ldquo;the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up&rdquo; in Ps. 69:9, and even the Lord&rsquo;s own prophecies of His resurrection. When it happened, &ldquo;his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture (Ps. 69:9), and the word which Jesus had said&rdquo; (Jn. 2:17-22).&nbsp;Such later clarification of the Lord\'s words and actions was all part of the ministry of the Comforter to the disciples (:26).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3973','1','43','14','30','30','<p>14:30 <i>I will no longer say much to you. For the prince of the world comes; but he has no claim on me</i>- There was a Rabbinic tradition that the whole world was under the power of the Angel of death which controlled Egypt at the first Passover, but had no dominion over Israel. They referred to this Angel as&nbsp;the <i>Sar ha-olam</i>, and at the time of Jesus the phrase &quot;Prince of this world&quot; would have been understood as referring to this Angel. This is how the Lord\'s use of the phrase would have been understood. He described the &quot;prince of this world&quot;- the Angel of death and darkness- as coming to him and finding nothing in Him. This would be alluding to the Angel of death at the first Passover (and Jesus was speaking at Passover time) coming to each house and finding nothing worthy of death there because of the blood of the lamb on the lintel. Jesus may have been using the \'language of the day\' as He did regarding Beelzebub and demons, but the consistent fitting of the type implies Jesus believed the Rabbinic idea was at least partially correct, in that the whole world apart from Israel was under the control of a specific Angel. However, spiritually Israel were not under the protection of the blood of the lamb because they rejected Christ. The &quot;prince of this world&quot; Angel would therefore destroy them too. I have suggested on 12:31 that this prince refers to leader of the Jewish system, Caiaphas. This man, the very epitome of apparent spirituality, who had dominion over Israel, was being compared to the Angel of evil which the Jews believed had dominion over the Jews\' enemies but not over the Jews. The Lord is turning it all around, to show that actually the Jews were like the Egyptians, and were under the domination of a leader who would not preserve them from the destruction now coming to them.</p><p>The Jews believed that the <i>Sar ha-olam </i>had no claim upon the Jews who were the true Israel, covered by the blood of the Passover lamb. The Lord is saying that <i>He </i>is that true Israel upon whom Caiaphas and his evil system had no power. This is the force of &quot;he has no claim on me&quot;. The Angel whom the Jews thought would not touch them because of the other Angels hovering over them (the real idea of the word \'Passover\') to protect them from the destroying Angel, was going to destroy them; the protecting Angel which hovered over them and led them through the wilderness was &quot;turned to be their enemy&quot;- i.e. to be the destroying Angel (Is. 63:10), the <i>Sar ha-olam</i>. And that destroying Angel was operating on earth through his human representative, Caiaphas, the prince of the Jewish world.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3974','1','43','14','31','31','<p>14:31 <i>And he comes so that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, thus I shall now do. Arise, let us leave here</i>- The prince of the Jewish world would come to take the Lord away to death, epitomized in his agent Judas, who \'came\' to the Lord with the forces of the Jewish world to arrest Him (18:3). It was through reflection on all this that the Jewish world would &quot;know&quot; the Lord\'s sincerity, His love for the Father. That was however only potentially true, for even His death, with all the internal contradictions and evil within the Jewish system which were thereby exposed, did not bring all the Jewish world to know Him. &quot;That the world may know&quot; is an allusion to David\'s words just before the victory over Goliath.&nbsp;</p><p>The Lord\'s obedience to the Father\'s commandment was His love of the Father. Again we see a connection between love, and keeping commandment. I have suggested on :15 and :24 that the keeping of the Lord\'s commandment means loving our brethren unto the death of the cross, as He loved us. Here we see the same idea- the Son obeyed the Father\'s commandment by loving Him, unto death on the cross.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3975','1','43','15','1','1','<p>15:1- see on Lk. 13:8.</p><p><em>I am the true vine and my Father is the husbandman</em>- The Lord Jesus in John&rsquo;s Gospel describes Himself in terms of the &ldquo;I am&hellip;&rdquo; formula. Each time, He was referring back to the burning bush revelation of Yahweh as the &ldquo;I am&rdquo;; and by implication, the Lord&rsquo;s audience are thereby placed in the position of Moses, intended to rise up in response as he did. This parable is in the direct context of the promise of the Spirit. This is expressed here as the Father\'s constant activity as our husbandman, seeking to elicit spiritual fruit from us. And likewise our partaking in the vine means that we receive the sap, representing the Spirit, without which we are &quot;none of His&quot; are dead, unable to bring forth fruit.</p><p>&quot;The true vine&quot; suggests that the community in view is the true one compared to a false one; and the false vine was the community of Israel: &quot;Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt and planted it in this land&quot; (Ps. 80:8).</p><p>In this parable, the mediation of the Spirit is envisaged as being provided collectively, to the whole vine. If we opt out of realistic mixing with each other, we are effectively resigning from Christ. For He <em>is</em> His brothers and sisters. He didn&rsquo;t say &lsquo;I am the trunk and you are the branches&rsquo;, He said &lsquo;I <em>am</em> the vine, and you are the branches&rsquo;. We <em>are</em> Him, His body. Our attitude to our brothers and sisters is our attitude to Him. We cannot claim to love God if we don&rsquo;t love our brother. It&rsquo;s as simple as this. &nbsp;</p><p>The Father is the husbandman, and is noted for His long patience in waiting &quot;for the precious fruit&quot; (James 5:7). Every bit of spiritual development is so precious to Him. To hinder it by our attitude to others, or enforcing situations which are going to limit the development of spirituality in others, is deeply displeasing to God and frustrating of His purpose and work for people.</p><p>The same word is used by the Lord in the synoptics concerning the parable of the husbandmen in Mt. 21; Mk. 12 and Lk. 20. This is surely John\'s take on that parable. The Jewish husbandmen had failed to develop fruit for the Father, and had been replaced by other husbandmen. But ultimately, the owner of the vineyard also becomes the husbandman. He is manifested through our efforts to be husbandmen. If we consciously seek to develop spiritual fruit in others then we will experience God\'s especial blessing and empowerment of our efforts.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3976','1','43','15','2','2','<p>15:2- see on 2 Cor. 4:4.</p><p><em>Every branch in me that carries no fruit, he prunes away; and every branch that carries fruit, he cleanses it, that it may bear more fruit</em>- The removed branch which was not cleansed refers initially to Judas, who had now left them, as he was the one of them who was not clean / cleansed (13:10). Bearing the fruit of the Spirit is absolutely essential; Paul puts it another way when he writes that if we have not the Spirit of Christ, we are &quot;none of His&quot;. The Lord Jesus here speaks of how we as shoots on the vine tree are either &lsquo;cut off&rsquo; in rejection, or &lsquo;trimmed / purged&rsquo; to be more fruitful. There is a paronomasia here in the Greek text i.e. a play on similar sounding verbs- <em>airein</em> and <em>kathairein</em>. The point being that the purging process works through condemning oneself now; by going through the realization of our condemnation now, we are thereby purged so that we avoid condemnation at the day of judgment.</p><p>The fruit to be produced is the fruit of the Spirit- which is all internal attributes, elicited by the sap / Spirit: &quot;The fruit of the Spirit (that which the Spirit produces) is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control&quot; (Gal. 5:22,23). Nine qualities gathered as one cluster, just as on a grapevine.</p><p>As also to be noted on the parable of the vineyard in Isaiah 5, God does all He can to ensure that we have an optimal environment for bearing spiritual fruit. So often we complain that if only we were in this or that situation, then we would bear more fruit. But He knows best. The cleansing, spoken of in this Upper Room context, must be understood in the context of the Lord\'s washing of the disciples\' feet, whereby they were cleansed, but not all (13:10); for Judas was not cleansed internally. His comment that feet needed regularly washing may refer to some regular cleansing by the Lord, of which He again speaks here. \'Cleansing\' may refer to internal cleansing of the heart; the pure / cleansed in heart (Mt. 5:8), those cleansed &quot;within&quot; (Mt. 23:6), and the internal work of cleansing the heart and conscience is that of the Spirit, operating within the heart of believers.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3977','1','43','15','3','3','<p>15:3 <em>Already you are clean because of the word which I have spoken to you</em>- How does the Lord\'s word cleanse? It is inadequate to suppose that by reading the whole Bible, we are somehow internally cleansed. The same word is used in 13:10 of how they had been cleansed, but not all- for Judas was excepted. Yet he had heard the word, as spoken words- but was not cleansed. As ever in John, the prologue helps us toward understanding. &quot;The word was made flesh&quot;, and was &quot;in the beginning&quot; of His ministry, and &quot;was God&quot;. The reference is not to all the recorded statements of the Lord Jesus, as if we are to read and recite all the red letter words in a New Testament and thereby be cleansed by the exercise. I have suggested elsewhere that the Gospel records were indeed intended to be memorized. But &quot;the word&quot; is the Lord Jesus as a person, in the flesh, as the personality which was the sum total of all His words, miracles, work, personality and character. The word of John 1 was the light of men, in which they should live. <em>Logos</em>, &quot;word&quot;, like <em>rhema</em>, is used to translate the Hebrew <em>dabar</em>. These terms, however, are used to refer not just to words, but to actions and persons. <em>Dabar</em> is used to refer to far more than spoken words; but to things and causes. When the Lord speaks of &quot;My word&quot;, He means not simply His recorded statements, but He Himself, the summary of all His being and personhood. &quot;The acts <em>dabar</em> of David&quot; (1 Chron. 29:29) means not simply his words, but his acts and whole life story. &quot;The things <em>dabar</em> which your eyes have seen&quot; (Dt. 4:9) referred not to words heard, but to experience; and this is a common usage, speaking of event as a &quot;word&quot;. In Hebraic thought, a \'word\' is a thing done and not merely words as in lexical items. &quot;The Lord was angry with me for your sakes <em>dabar</em>&quot; (Dt. 4:21) doesn\'t refer to words so much as to the sake or cause of a person. The Lord\'s &quot;word&quot; must be understood in this Hebraic sense, far wider than simply His recorded speech as it stands in the Gospels. This is why He speaks of &quot;<em>My</em> words&quot;; the word / <em>logos / dabar</em> which was Him. His reference is not to the words of God in the Bible, but to the word which was Him. Dt. 26:17 records that Israel had chosen Yahweh to be their King; but the Targum on this says that they had appointed the word / <em>logos </em>of God to be their king. The <em>logos</em> of a person is them, with all their actions and events; and thus the word of the Lord Jesus refers to He Himself, just as &quot;the word was God&quot; in the prologue.</p><p>We therefore at this point note the singular, &quot;word&quot;, not &quot;words&quot; as we would expect if His utterances were in view. References in the plural to His &quot;words&quot; may well be an example of the Hebrew plural of majesty- the one great word / <em>logos</em>, which in John\'s writing can be none other than the Lord personally. We are cleansed by Him, by His blood, His work, and His sacrifice of a uniquely perfect life. The association of cleansing with His sacrifice is a common New Testament theme.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3978','1','43','15','4','4','<p>15:4 <em>Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, so neither can you, except you abide in me-</em> The Lord&rsquo;s common Upper Room theme of &lsquo;abiding&rsquo; in Him uses the same word as Moses used when exhorting his people to &lsquo;cleave unto&rsquo; God (Dt. 10:20; 11:22 LXX). This abiding involved loving God and keeping His commandments- all ideas which occur together in Dt. 13:4; 30:20. The branch can only bear fruit if it receives the sap which is in the whole tree. This sap represents the Spirit, which is why this parable is found wedged in between the promises of the indwelling of the Comforter. Abiding in the Lord means Him abiding in us, which He does through the gift of the Spirit in our hearts (1 Jn. 3:24 etc.). The disciples were going to be tempted to turn away from the Lord; but He urges them to abide, because there can be no fruit of the Spirit on us unless the Spirit abides in us and brings forth those fruits. This is also a vital perspective on the claim that non-Christians produce spiritual fruit. The fruit brought forth by the Spirit, spiritual fruit, is indeed just that; and unless we are abiding in the vine, in the Lord Jesus, and He in us, then we simply cannot bring forth the fruit of the Spirit.</p><p>The man under the Old Covenant who made his offering of, e.g. an ox, at a place other than at &quot;the door of the tabernacle of the congregation&quot; was viewed as having shed blood and therefore was to be cut off from the congregation (Lev. 17:3,4). The Law foresaw that there would be this tendency, to worship God away from the rest of the congregation. Those who did so were condemned in the strongest terms: their sacrifice of an animal was seen as the murder of their brother, whereas they would have seen it as an expression of their righteousness. &quot;He that kills an ox is as if he slew a man&quot; (Is. 66:3) refers back to this, making it parallel with idolatry and proudly refusing to let God\'s word dwell in the heart.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3979','1','43','15','5','5','<p>15:5 <em>I am the vine, you are the branches. He that abides in me and I in him, the same carries much fruit. For severed from me you can do nothing</em>- He is the whole tree; He does not say that He is the trunk, and we the branches. To leave the tree is to leave Him; and He is His body, the entire community of believers. And severed from me, He said, you can do nothing, in spiritual terms. Much as some think they can. And in the end, like a slow cancer, the brother or sister who was offended by whatever, will eventually die in that they leave the vine of Christ. It is from the body of Jesus that there comes nurture and nourishment, supplied by every member of the body (Eph. 4:16). And we, all of us, are the body of Christ. To cut ourselves off from it, formally or informally, openly or deep within our hurt hearts, is to deprive ourselves of the nourishment which He is willing to give through our brethren. And likewise to try to exclude others from it is serious indeed; for so many who are disfellowshipped or excluded then fall away from true spirituality. It follows from this figure that not <em>all </em>our brethren are no good. There&rsquo;s a lot of goodness out there- those who give up lands, houses, parents etc. for the Lord&rsquo;s sake <em>will</em> find within His ecclesia a hundredfold of these things. But we will only share in these things if we are willing to look at the positive side in our brethren. For in many things we also offend others. Yet we know well enough we basically are sincere and willing to give to others. And as we expect others to relate to that good side in us, so we should to others. Nobody in the brotherhood is totally, purely evil- at least, seeing we cannot judge in that sense, we should not think that of any. We have to assume that each of our brethren is secured in Christ, and will be in the Kingdom. They have the Christ-man formed in them, however immaturely.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3980','1','43','15','6','6','<p>15:6- see on Mt. 13:6; Rev. 14:10.</p><p><em>If a man does not abide in me, he is thrown out as a branch and withers, and these are gathered and thrown into the fire, and they are burned</em>- The language of branches being severed from the vine is used in Romans 11 about how <em>God</em> can do this in judgment. But it is He who can do this, and not us. We are the branches, not the husbandman. Those who choose not to abide in the Lord shall wither. In the primary context, the Lord had Israel in view, the fig tree which &quot;withered&quot; and would then have to be burnt (s.w. Mt. 21:19). The Lord had this figure in view when He spoke soon afterwards, on the way to the cross, of Israel as a withered tree about to be burnt up in AD70 (Lk. 22:31).</p><p>But Israel then, as many today, are living out their own condemnation; they will be &quot;thrown out&quot; or s.w. &quot;cast away&quot; at the final judgment (Mt. 13:48; Lk. 14:35) in response to their conscious decision not to remain in the Lord, in the vine; and refusing the sap of the Spirit. It is they rather than the Lord who have chosen their fate.&nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3981','1','43','15','7','7','<p>15:7 My words- see on Job 22:27,28.</p><p><em>If you abide in me and my words abide in you, you shall ask whatever you will and it shall be done to you</em>- I have suggested elsewhere that the Lord\'s &quot;words&quot; refer not so much to His recorded statements, those printed in red letters in some Bibles; but rather to the whole essence of His being and personality. For He was &quot;the word made flesh&quot;, as the prologue states (1:14). The reference is not to the entire Bible, but specifically to the words of the Lord Jesus. If He abides in us, we will ask what <em>we</em> will, and it will be done. Yet only if we ask according to <em>God\'s</em> will can we receive our requests (Jn. 15:7 cp. 1 Jn. 5:14). The implication is that if the word that is Him dwells in us, our will becomes that of the Father, and therefore our requests, our innermost desires, are according to His will, and are therefore granted. It is by the Spirit that He abides in us (1 Jn. 3:24). His Spirit, His word, His way of thinking, is His will, which is the Father\'s will. If we have Him within, then our will shall be the Father\'s, and we will intuitively ask for only what we know is His will. We will not as it were be guessing, asking for lists of things in the hope that we shall hit on some points where our will and His coincide.</p><p>In our age, the Bible is indeed a valuable source for growing in knowledge of His will. The word of the Gospel becomes &ldquo;united by faith with them that hear it&rdquo; (Heb. 4:2 RVmg.). Through the medium of our response to God&rsquo;s word, our will becomes united with His. Therefore the word was what directed and motivated David\'s regular daily prayers (Ps. 119:164); they weren\'t standard repetitions of the same praises or requests, but a reflection of his Biblical meditation. He asks God to hear his prayers because He keeps God&rsquo;s word (Ps. 119:145,173). He asks God to hear <em>his</em> voice in prayer, using the very same words with which he reflects upon how he heard <em>God\'s</em> voice as it is in His written word. He even goes so far as to draw a parallel between God and his own &ldquo;reins&rdquo; or inner self- both of them &ldquo;instruct me&rdquo; (Ps. 16:7). His inner self was so absorbed into the reality of God. He asks God to hear <em>his</em> voice in prayer, using the very same words with which he reflects upon how he heard <em>God\'s</em> voice as it is in His written word. In successful prayer, therefore, our will merges with that of the Father. His will becomes our will; and <em>vice versa</em>. By this I mean that <em>our </em>will can become <em>His</em> will in that He will hear us and even change His declared will Moses several times achieved this during the course of his prayer life; prayer really does change things. Our will becomes God&rsquo;s just as His becomes ours. There is an awesome mutuality between a man and his God as he kneels at night alone, praying and asking for the very things which are now God&rsquo;s will.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3982','1','43','15','8','8','<p>15:8- see on Jn. 12:23-26.</p><p><em>Herein is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit; and so shall you be my disciples</em>- They were fearful that the Lord was going away, and they were being left &quot;orphans&quot;, pupils without a Rabbi. But the promise of the Spirit means that He will be present with us just as much, and even moreso, than when He was physically present as their teacher. He envisaged them, and all believers, continuing to be disciples, and Him through the Spirit being their continued teacher. The &quot;fruit&quot; in view is what Paul later terms &quot;the fruit of the Spirit&quot;, the fruit brought forth by the Spirit, through our allowing the Lord to operate in us. It is the Father\'s will that we should bear much fruit, because it glorifies Him; and this is the end result of all the Lord\'s teaching, and of our being His disciples. We may think that if only our life situation were different, then we would be the more spiritually fruitful. But the Lord is clear that it is the Father\'s will, and His will, that we should be fruitful. As taught in the parable of the vineyard of Isaiah 5, all has in fact been done to provide us with an optimal environment in which to bring forth fruit.</p><p>The Father is glorified in our fruit bearing; but it is a major theme of John that it is the cross of Christ which brings glory to Him. The connection is in the fact that a true response to the principles of the cross brings forth true spiritual fruit. The glory of God is His Name and the characteristics associated with it; and we will bear these if we respond to the spirit of the cross. In this sense the Lord Jesus could say that through His death, He would be glorified in us (Jn. 17:10). By beholding and perceiving His glory on the cross, we glorify Him (Jn. 17:24,10).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3983','1','43','15','9','9','<p>15:9 <em>Even as the Father has loved me, I also have loved you. Abide in my love</em>- Abiding is achieved through the Spirit abiding within us (1 Jn. 3:24); it is through the gift of the Spirit accepted within our hearts that His love is shed abroad within our hearts (Rom. 5:5). We abide in Him, in His love, and His love abides in us. And we therefore shall live in love to others. If we do not love our brother, we do not abide in Him nor He in us (1 Jn. 3:14). These allusions in John\'s letters seem to be saying that abiding in His love means loving each other, those others who are also in Him. This idea is continued in the next verse, speaking of how abiding in the Lord\'s love means keeping His commandment, of loving our brethren.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3984','1','43','15','10','10','<p>15:10- see on Jn. 17:6.</p><p><em>If you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father\'s commandments and abide in his love</em>- I suggest that the plural &quot;commandments&quot; is a Hebraism, a plural of majesty, referring to the one great commandment. And that is defined clearly in :12- the singular commandment is to love one another as He loved us, to death on the cross. This effectively means: \'If you love one another, then you shall abide in My love\'. Which is just what He has said in :9 (see note there). &quot;His commandments&quot; and &quot;the singular commandment&quot; are paralleled in 2 Jn. 6. The Father\'s commandment likewise is the same. For the Lord taught that all the Father\'s commandments are summarized in the idea of loving God and thereby our neighbour; see on Mk. 12:31. Any other reading of this verse is likely to veer towards treating the Lord\'s commandments as another list of statutes, similar in principle to the 613 given by Moses; as if He grants His love conditional upon our legal obedience to some extended moral code of behaviour. If this were the case, given our disobedience and weakness, we shall never know His love. And His love is not conditional upon legalistic obedience in this sense.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3985','1','43','15','11','11','<p>15:11- see on 1 Jn. 1:4.</p><p><em>These things have I spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full</em>- The filling up of joy means that something will be done to us within our hearts; for that is where &quot;joy&quot; is experienced. \'Filling up\' is the language of the ongoing filling of the Spirit, which is the context of this whole section in chapters 14-16. The Lord\'s spirit, His way of being and thinking, His mind, included &quot;joy&quot;. He wished to give His spirit to us, so that His spirit might become ours; and thereby His joy would be within us. His &quot;joy&quot; is expressed in the Gospels as joy over a lost sheep being found (Lk. 15:7), the joy of finding people for the Kingdom (Mt. 13:44), the joy of seeing others enter His Kingdom (Mt. 25:21). What He rejoices in, we shall. His joy shall be in us in that we share His spirit, His attitude and mindset (17:13). John himself experienced this when he wrote of having joy that his converts were abiding in Christ; and he could think of &quot;no greater joy&quot; (3 Jn. 4).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3986','1','43','15','12','12','<p>15:12 <em>This is my commandment: That you love one another, even as I have loved you</em>- As noted on :10, this singular commandment is spoken of in the Hebraic plural of majesty as His &quot;commandments&quot;, plural. This in one \'word\' is the essence of His message, His<em> logos</em> to men. We are to love each in on ongoing way, as Christ loved us in His death in that once-off act (Jn. 15:12,17). The combination of the present and aorist tenses of <em>agapan</em> &lsquo;to love&rsquo; in these verses proves the point. Thus our obedience <em>to</em> Christ in loving each other is exemplified by the obedience <em>of</em> Christ (:10). Quite simply, something done 2000 years ago really does affect us <em>now</em>. There is a powerful link across the centuries, from the darkness of the cross to the lives we live today in this century. &ldquo;By his knowledge&quot;, by knowing Christ as He was there, we are made righteous (Is. 53:11). As Israel stood before Moses, they promised: &ldquo;All the words which the Lord has spoken will we do&quot;. When Moses then sprinkled the blood of the covenant upon them- and this incident is quoted in Hebrews as prophetic of the Lord&rsquo;s blood- they said the same but more strongly: &ldquo;All the words which the Lord hath spoken will we do <em>and be obedient</em>&quot; (Ex. 24:3,7). It was as if their connection with the blood inspired obedience. Likewise the communication of God&rsquo;s requirements was made from over the blood sprinkled mercy seat (Ex. 25:22)- another foretaste of the blood of Christ. Quite simply, we can&rsquo;t face the cross of Christ and not feel impelled towards obedience to that which God asks of us, which is to love as the Lord loved us. For the next verse will define love as the love of the cross.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3987','1','43','15','13','13','<p>15:13 <em>Greater love has no one than this: That a man lay down his life for his friends</em>- This is a truth accepted in every human society, and many men have laid down their lives for their friends. What is unique about the Lord\'s love-unto-death was that He died for us whilst we were yet enemies, and not His friends (Rom. 5:8); He took the initiative in loving us through the death of the cross (1 Jn. 4:10,19). We only love, because He first loved us. As noted on 10:11, the Lord did not have His life taken from Him, He gave it of Himself, to the point of controlling the very period and moment at which He died, consciously out breathing His last spirit toward us. And so the Lord\'s &quot;greater love&quot; was in that He died for us whilst we were not actually His friends but enemies (Rom. 5:10 &quot;when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son&quot;). He <em>called us</em> friends; that is the huge force behind those words in :15. He took the initiative, calling us friends when we were enemies; and died for us. We show ourselves to be His friends by accepting His love, and living in that love toward others (:14).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3988','1','43','15','14','14','<p>15:14 <em>You are my friends, if you do the things which I command you</em>- For &quot;friends&quot;, we could read \'The ones whom I love\', for that is how the Lord has just defined love, as laying down life for friends (:13). The things commanded are quite simply to love our brethren as the Lord loved us (:12); that singular commandment is spoken of in the plural in :10 as a Hebraic plural of majesty, the one great commandment, the one great thing commanded. The Lord is not saying: \'I shall love you, if you first love Me, and demonstrate that by keeping a list of a few hundred commandments I have given you\'. That would be to totally miss the point. We love, because He <em>first</em> loved us (1 Jn. 4:19); it was not that we loved God, but that He loved us in giving His Son (1 Jn. 4:10). The Lord has died for us, showing us that &quot;no greater love&quot; (:13). We abide in that love if His spirit abides in us, and we likewise live in love, doing the great thing He commanded both by word and example- to love as He did.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3989','1','43','15','15','15','<p>15:15- see on Jn. 16:12.</p><p><em>No longer do I call you servants. For the servant does not know what his lord does; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from my Father, I have made known to you</em>- As noted on :13, the uniquely &quot;greater love&quot; shown by the Lord was that He died for us when we were still enemies (Rom. 5:10); but He <em>called us</em> His friends. His intense hopefulness in our response accompanies all our efforts to invite others to accept His love and consciously befriend Him who so befriended them. The &quot;no longer&quot; suggests that in His death on the cross, they will see the final revelation of God, the quintessential declaration of all that He had heard from the Father, made known to them. There is no hint here that He now is going to declare the future to them. Now they were going to understand what their Lord and friend had done; for the Comforter was to open their understanding to the things of the cross, to the meaning of it all. This explains how things were going to change in their understanding, from being servants just obedient for the sake of it to a Master they respect and obey but do not really understand, to friends who now have been shown the innermost essence of their Master. As noted on 16:13, the Comforter was to make known to them the things which were coming, the things of His death on the cross. He would show them plainly of the Father, in His death on the cross and the Comforter unpacking that death to them (16:25). Or as Paul puts it, the gift of the Spirit opens our eyes to understand the depth and height of our Lord\'s love for us (Eph. 1:18; 3:18,19). And His love was declared in essence in the death of the cross.</p><p>Friendship is exactly the language God uses about Abraham- because He was His &quot;friend&quot;, He showed Abraham what He was going to do (Gen. 18:17-19). But the things to be done here refer to the cross (see on 16:13). To the Lord&rsquo;s first hearers, a slave was defined by his or her obedience to the master&rsquo;s commands. The Lord says that His followers are His friends, who do His commandments- but they&rsquo;re not slaves. He seems to be saying that they were indeed His slaves- but a new kind of slave, a slave who whilst being obedient to the Master, was also His personal friend. It&rsquo;s lovely how the Lord speaks of such well known ideas like slavery, and shows how in the humdrum of ordinary life, He gives an altogether higher value to them. See on Jn. 10:28.</p><p>He has just reminded them that they call Him Lord, and rightly so, and therefore His washing of their feet was what they must do (Jn. 13:13). Earlier, He had rebuked them for calling Him &ldquo;Lord&rdquo; but not <em>doing</em> what He said (Lk. 6:46- this is in a speech directed at the disciples- Lk. 6:20,27.40). And yet He told others that His disciples <em>did</em> His word (Lk. 8:21). He was so positive about them to others, even though they did not <em>do</em> the consequences of calling Him Lord e.g. washing each other&rsquo;s feet- instead, they argued who was to be the greatest. Perhaps when the Lord says that He will no longer relate to them as a Lord, with them as His servants, but rather simply as their friend, He is tacitly recognizing their failure, and preparing Himself to die for them as their friend rather than as their Master. And yet, as the Divine economy worked it all out, it was exactly through that death that they exalted Him as Lord and Master as they should have done previously.&nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3990','1','43','15','16','16','<p>15:16- see on Mk. 4:8; Jn. 14:12.</p><p><em>You did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you to go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain. So that whatever you shall ask of the Father in my name, He may give it to you</em>- This is alluded to in 1 Jn. 4:10,19- it is not that we loved God and He responded, but He loved us. We were out seeking for the Lord Jesus and found Him as a result of hard Biblical scholarship. He found us; indeed Paul cites the whole question of choosing, calling and predestination as the parade example of God\'s grace through the work of the Spirit. His choosing of us is the supreme example that it is not of works, nor intellectual ability, but of grace through the Spirit. &ldquo;You did not choose me, but I chose you&hellip; out of the world&rdquo; (:16,19) corresponds to the oft repeated theme of Moses that God has chosen Israel &ldquo;out of all peoples&rdquo; (Dt. 7:6 RVmg.), by grace (Dt. 4:37; 10:15; 14:2).</p><p>It is not as if the Lord Jesus has said to us: \'Would you like me to die for you on the cross, to gain your salvation?\'. Because then we could say \'No, don\'t do it for me\', and we would be free of obligation. But He has taken the initiative. He has already died for us, He suffered for me, He won my redemption. And He has called me to know this and respond to it. I <em>can\'t</em> say, with eyes even only half open to the cross, \'No, I don\'t want what You did for me. Take it away, no, I don\'t want it\'. He has done it. He has called me. I can\'t say I don\'t want it. And for you too. We have not chosen Him of our own decision; He has chosen us, and asked us to bring forth fruit (Jn. 15:16). Reflected upon, this is one of the most tremendous imperatives which we have to a dedicated life of response to the principles of His cross: justifying the weak, showing a spirit of grace amidst hatred, imbibing the word, being concerned for the salvation of others amidst our own agonies, enduring apparently endless tribulation (notice, and circle in your Bible, all the occurrences of the word &quot;and&quot; in Mk. 15 A.V.)... that principle that <em>nothing else matters</em> apart from our response to His love, so great, so free. The whole horror, pain and tragedy of the cross was surely to show us that <em>He loved us far more than we have ever or will ever love Him</em>. And yet He asks us to accept His love, to respond to it, to love Him and in that love, show forth His character to others. With shame at the paucity and poverty of our own devotions, we can do little else but respond as fully and as best we can.</p><p>The twelve evidently saw Jesus of Nazareth as a Rabbi, their special, lovable, somewhat mystic teacher at whose feet they sat. But the disciples saw Jesus within the frames of Judaism. &quot;What does this mean? He tells us...&quot; (Jn. 16:17) is similar to a familiar Rabbinic formula. But of course Jesus was far more than a Rabbi, and He laboured to change their perceptions. For example, He stresses many times that <em>He </em>chose <em>them </em>to be His disciples (especially Jn. 15:16-19)- whereas in Judaism, it was always disciples who chose a Rabbi: &quot;Jesus chose the disciples, but the students of the rabbis almost always chose a teacher&quot;. The words of the Lord Jesus were the words which He had \'heard\' from the Father. But this doesn\'t mean that He was a mere fax machine, relaying literal words which the Father whispered in His ear to a listening world. When the disciples finally grasped something of the real measure of Jesus, they gasped: &quot;You do not even need that a person ask you questions&quot; (Jn. 16:30). They had previously treated Jesus as a Rabbi, of whom questions were asked by his disciples and then cleverly answered by him. They finally perceived that here was more than a Jewish Rabbi. They came to that conclusion, they imply, not by asking Him questions comprised of words and hearing the cleverly ordered words that comprised His answers. The words He spoke and manifested were of an altogether higher quality and nature. Here was none other than the Son of God, the Word made flesh.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p>The language here is very much that of ordaining to priestly service, just as in chapter 17 the Lord will talk about sanctifying His followers, as if they are Levites, and sending them out to do Divine service in the work of the great commission, calling others to His grace. We find this same theme of a new Israel being created in the usage of &ldquo;ordained Gk. <em>etheka</em> you&rdquo;. C.K. Barrett shows that <em>etheka</em> reflects the Hebrew <em>samak</em>, and that the Lord&rsquo;s phrase alludes to the ordination of a disciple as a Rabbi. Those guys must&rsquo;ve looked at each other in shock. They who were barely literate, and knew how very human they were, whose small minds were creaking under the burden of trying to understand this Man they so loved&hellip; were being ordained as Rabbis, by a man who&rsquo;d just washed their feet, which was what disciples usually did for their Rabbis. But yes, the Lord challenged them and us to have a far higher estimate of His opinion of us&hellip;&nbsp;</p><p>&ldquo;I have chosen you, and ordained you, that you should <em>go forth</em> and bring forth fruit... that whatsoever you shall ask of the <em>Father </em>in <em>my name</em>, he may give it you&quot; is full of connection with the world-wide preaching commission; and in this context, <em>whatever</em> we ask to this end will be given. All will be provided for our mission; if it is indeed solely for His mission that we are making request. Lack of resources has never therefore ultimately and truthfully hindered any sincere attempt to obey the great commission. I can personally testify to that and so can many.</p><p>The fruit brought forth is therefore in converts. The \'remaining\' s.w. \'abiding\' of the fruit would then refer to the converts abiding in the Lord and He in them through the Spirit, which would then be alluded to by John when he writes that he has no greater joy than to know that his converts abide in the Lord (3 Jn. 4). This is the branch and fruit abiding in the vine.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3991','1','43','15','17','17','<p>15:17- see on Eph. 1:5.</p><p><em>These things I command you, so that you may love one another</em>- This doesn\'t mean \'I command you to love one another, so that you may love one another\'. The idea rather is that all the &quot;things&quot; the Lord had taught, in the word or commandment which was Him as well as in His actual words, were summarized in the need to love one another. This was and is the essence of Him, His word made flesh. See on :17.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3992','1','43','15','18','18','<p>15:18 <em>If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you</em>- The &quot;if...&quot; is perhaps a reflection of the Lord\'s hope that the Jewish world would be persuaded by the witness of the disciples\' love and unity- although elsewhere He clearly envisaged their being cast out of the synagogues and experiencing evil at the hands of the Jewish world. And yet in that word &quot;if...&quot; we see reflected His positivism and hopefulness for others, which is to be part of our spirit too, if we have received His spirit. The hatred of the world has been explained by the Lord as a result of their resistance to the message preached (7:7). I suggested on :16 that the Lord is here repeating the essence of the great commission, to go into the world and bring forth fruit for Him. The comment about love in :17 would then be suggesting that our love for each other will back up that witness, as the Lord envisaged in chapter 17. And now He comforts His future preachers that they are to expect opposition to their witness, but in that experience they will know Him and share His spirit, for that was His experience too.&nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3993','1','43','15','19','19','<p>15:19 <em>If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you</em>- This is basic psychology; those who come &quot;out of&quot; a system are hated by that system. But the hatred is specifically because the disciples would preach to the world and seek to convict them of sin (7:7). The talk about love and hatred here is alluded to by John when he urges his converts not to hate each other, especially in 1 Jn. 4. By hating our brother, we are as the world. For that is what the world does. And John presents a chasmic divide between the believer and the world. To hate our brother is to place ourselves on the side of the world. John was writing for Jews and to Jewish converts; the pull of the Jewish world, the synagogue, was every strong. And he is reminding them that the Lord saw a huge divide between His followers and that world, a world which was fast heading to its destruction in AD70.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3994','1','43','15','20','20','<p>15:20 <em>Remember the word that I said to you: A servant is not greater than his lord. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will keep yours also</em>- The Lord has just taught that He treats His followers not as servants but friends; and yet here He addresses them again as servants. But I suggested on :15 that His idea was that they are His servants whom He treats as intimate friends, revealing absolutely bare all that He is and stands for, and dying for them. From how the Lord speaks here, serious opposition to the preaching of His word is absolutely to be expected. A merely social Gospel, a doing good works in the hope somebody might somehow notice and come to the Lord, will not have this effect. Our preaching of Him means that there will be the parallel made here between &quot;my word&quot; and \'your word\'. His word was the essence of Him, the light which challenged the darkness of men; and we shall meet the same response as He did. But it is that plain presentation of Him which will lead people to Him, rather than the supposed social Gospel of good works alone. For that is not a uniquely Christian statement, in that many folks do good works. \'Keeping My word\' meant receiving life eternal (8:51,52), and the Father and Son making their dwelling in the heart of the hearer (14:23); this is the profound message we have for men.&nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3995','1','43','15','21','21','<p>15:21 <em>But all these things will they do to you for my name\'s sake, because they do not truly know Him that sent m</em>e- John later speaks about those who fulfil the great commission as going forth for His name\'s sake (3 Jn. 7). Throughout this section, the Lord is speaking about the need to follow the great commission and preach forgiveness and repentance in His name (Lk. 24:47). If His Spirit, His word and essence, abode in them, then they would experience the same opposition which He did. Their \'not knowing\' the Father who sent the Son would be the basis of their hatred of the preachers. On the other hand, to know the Father is to have relationship with Him, and love His children. John\'s letters develop this same theme; to not love is to not have a relationship with the Father.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3996','1','43','15','22','22','<p>15:22 <em>If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin</em>- We see here that hearing the word is the basis for responsibility to judgment. The \'coming\' of the Lord was not a reference to some descent from Heaven to Palestine on planet earth; His coming to the Jewish world was in His words spoken to them. And as He was sent into the world, so He was sending His disciples. The fact they were without excuse issued in a hatred for the preachers who had spoken to them- for that is the context here in :23 and :21. All the synoptics use the word translated &quot;excuse&quot; about the Jewish leadership making a &quot;pretence&quot; of spirituality (Mt. 23:14; Mk. 12:40; Lk. 20:47). And this is John\'s version of that. He states specifically what the synoptic writers do not- that the &quot;pretence&quot; of external religion was in fact to cloak AV or hide their sin. The synoptics state that for a &quot;pretence&quot; the Jews made long prayers, but they do not specifically state what was being cloaked or covered over. And here, the Lord states it was &quot;sin&quot;. So often, religious behaviour is used in order to cover our sin from our own eyes. We must remember that we are all prone to the psychology of religious behaviour. The Lord \'spoke to them\' about this; and they no longer had that cloak, for He had removed it and demonstrated that He saw through it. Their works were evil (7:7) and He had urged them to address their internal issues instead of covering their evil thoughts with external acts of obedience. And their response was to hate Him.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3997','1','43','15','23','23','<p>15:23 <em>He that hates me hates my Father also</em>- The attitude of people to the Son is their attitude to God. The Jews of course considered that they loved God, but hated His Son. And the Lord is saying that this cannot be the case. And again John builds on this in a pastoral sense in 1 Jn. 4, arguing that if we hate our brother, then we hate the Father and Son. It was an awful thing to accuse an Orthodox Jew of hating God; their whole life was so apparently God-centred. But our attitudes to His Son and all His children are our attitudes to Him.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3998','1','43','15','24','24','<p>15:24 <em>If I had not done among them the works which no other man did, they would not have sin; but now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father</em>- This parallels the statement in :22 that it was because the Lord had &quot;spoken&quot; to them that they &quot;had sin&quot;. His spoken words were paralleled with the works He did amongst them. As John especially makes clear, all those miracles were &quot;signs&quot;, were a word to men. This confirms our earlier suggestion that the references to &quot;my words&quot; in John are talking about the essence of the Lord\'s self-declaration and declaration of the Father, rather than literally referring to His recorded lexical items, the sentences printed in red letters in some Bibles. The &quot;works&quot; were so that they could see the Son, and thereby the Father. The miracles were not therefore random acts of kindness to meet human compassion; for the Lord walked past many cases of human need without responding. They were specifically designed to enable men to see / understand / know / believe in the Son and Father. We also learn from this that the Jews through the miracles did in fact perceive who the Lord was, hence the hatred for Him which arose from a bad conscience. Throughout the Joseph record there is the unwritten sense that the brothers had a niggling conscience that Joseph might be alive. This typifies the underlying Jewish conscience towards the Lord Jesus. They knew Christ as Messiah, but blinded themselves to the fact (Jn. 6:36; 9:41; 15:24 cp. 14:7).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('3999','1','43','15','25','25','<p>15:25- see on 1 Cor. 11:20.</p><p><em>All this happens so that the word may be fulfilled that is written in their law: They hated me without a cause</em>- &quot;Their law&quot; rather than \'God\'s law\' is another reflection of how they had hijacked God\'s word and ways and turned it into their own religion; the feasts of the Lord and house of the Lord had become the feasts of the Jews, and the temple of the Jews. &ldquo;They hated me without a cause&quot; (Ps. 35:19; 69:4) surely refers to their crucifixion of Him &ldquo;without a cause&quot; as reflected in the collapse of the legal case against Him. Their own law &quot;their law&quot; admitted there was no cause for death. He died purely because of their hatred. He again seems to use the past tense to describe His yet future death. There men would see the Father and Son, which has to be connected with John&rsquo;s recurring theme that in the cross men saw what Moses so wanted to see- Yahweh Himself manifested.</p><p>The Messianic Psalms quoted about hatred of the Lord without a cause imply that this hatred was especially seen in His death. And yet the Lord has said that our sharing in His Spirit will mean that we too shall be hated if we witness &quot;in Him&quot;, in His Name. This means that in our experience of opposition and hatred, we are sharing in His crucifixion experiences. He there becomes each of us. He was indeed our representative, and we are His too. Our experiences therefore provide a bridge between Him there, many centuries ago, and us today. We thereby in an experiential sense come to &quot;know Him&quot;, and Him in His time of crucifixion. And if we thus suffer with Him, we shall also live with Him, eternally.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4000','1','43','15','26','26','<p>15:26 <em>And when the Comforter comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth which proceeds from the Father, he shall testify of me</em>- The opening of this verse, &quot;And...&quot; or &quot;But...&quot;, suggests a direct connection with what has preceded. There we have been told one of John\'s versions of the great commission. The Lord envisaged that believers in Him would go forth into the world and bring forth fruit, but would encounter the same hatred from the Jewish world which He had experienced. His anticipation of persecution for His witnesses (:20) is the background for this renewed promise of the Comforter. It is this context of persecution which provides the appropriacy of the language of <em>parakletos</em>. The Spirit would testify of the Lord Jesus; yet the disciples personally were to do so. They would have the Lord\'s Spirit within them, and so their witness would be in the power of the Spirit.</p><p>The <em>parakletos</em> / Comforter is literally \'one called alongside\', and this title is appropriate to the idea that the Lord is physically leaving them, but His presence will abide with them through the Spirit. It is as if the Lord is physically with us, as if He has come alongside us. The legal aspects of the word, referring to an advocate, may have been appropriate to the context of persecution. The association of the Comforter with &quot;testimony&quot; continues the legal association.</p><p>There is a definite link between the power of witness and the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit that bears witness; and yet we are the witnesses. The miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit are not in view, although in the first century context, they were a visible manifestation of possession of the Comforter. The Spirit bears witness in us in that the spirit of Christ, the joy, peace, love which we show as individuals and thereby as a community, gives as much credibility to our witness as did the performance of miracles in the 1st century. And so Paul told the Thessalonians: &ldquo;Our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with much assurance&rdquo;. The &ldquo;assurance&rdquo;, the power of confirmation, was in the credibility which the Spirit of Christ in their examples gave to their preaching of the word. And likewise in 1 Cor. 2:3-5: &ldquo;My speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God&rdquo;. &nbsp;</p><p>&quot;He shall testify of me&quot; reflects a masculine term in the Greek. But the object referred to is the Holy Spirit, which is neuter. This apparent mismatch of gender in Greek grammar is intentional; for the Lord is saying that the Spirit will enable them to have His personal presence in their hearts, to the point that the neuter &quot;Spirit&quot; is effectively Him, a male; so really can He be in us by the Spirit. The testimony of the Spirit would be their testimony (:27). It is our spiritual character, the evidence of the Spirit within us, which is the real and compelling witness to this world.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4001','1','43','15','27','27','<p>15:27 <em>And you also shall testify, because you have been with me from the beginning</em>- This was exemplified in Acts 4:13, where it was apparent from the nature of the disciples&rsquo; preaching that they &ldquo;had been with Jesus&rdquo;. To be with the Lord, to have experience of Him, meant that one would witness to Him; such is the true experience of Him that it is axiomatic that it issues in witness. All who have truly known the Lord will witness to Him. And if we don&rsquo;t... do we know Him, have we &ldquo;been with&rdquo; Him...?</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4002','1','43','14','26','26','<p>14:26 and 16:12 likewise associate the work of the Comforter with the testimony of the disciples, who had been with the Lord from the beginning of His ministry. There was a special sense in which the Comforter was relevant only to the disciples, the first eye witnesses from the beginning of the ministry. But the connections with other teaching about the gift of the Spirit lead us to conclude that as with all New Testament teaching about the Spirit, the essence is for all time, although the miraculous manifestation was only for the first century. These passages (here and in 14:26; 16:12) make it clear that the disciples were to witness as Christ to this world exactly because they had been with the Lord from the beginning. John\'s gospel is his obedience to that. And so he explains that he is recounting how things were from the beginning off the Lord\'s ministry. And Luke does the same, writing that he too was a witness from the beginning and is therefore testifying to what he had seen (Lk. 1:2).</p><p>The whole purpose of the Lord&rsquo;s life was that He should &ldquo;bear witness&rdquo; unto the Truth of the Father (Jn. 18:37). But John also records the Lord&rsquo;s expectations that all in Him should likewise &ldquo;bear witness&rdquo; (Jn. 15:27). And as John recounted the Gospel of which the Gospel of John is a transcript, He stresses that by doing so he is &lsquo;bearing witness&rsquo;, living out the work of the Lord who lived as the faithful and true witness to men (Jn. 3:11; 19:35; 21:24 cp. 18:37).</p><p><strong>The Comforter: An Angel? </strong><br />The point has been made by several expositors that as Israel were led by a special Angel through the wilderness, whom Isaiah 63 associates with God\'s Holy Spirit, so the new Israel were led by a Holy Spirit Angel, the Comforter, who was sent to the church by Jesus after His assuming of all power over the Angels on His ascension. The gift of the Holy Spirit was to be &quot;within&quot; the disciples; but it could be feasible that this was superintended by an Angel. The following thoughts are presented more for reflection; I am undecided about the matter. It could be that the Lord is alluding to Jewish ideas about a <em>paraklete </em>Angel and deconstructing them; urging His people to forget Jewish angelology and have His direct personal presence in their hearts through the Spirit. But for the record, here is a summary of the reasons for thinking that the Comforter may have some reference to an Angel:</p><p>- Is. 63:7-11 describes the Angel that guided Israel through the wilderness as the &quot;Holy Spirit&quot;- which is the Comforter. <br />- The Comforter was sent in God and Christ\'s Name (Jn. 14:26)- the Angel was sent in God\'s Name (Ex. 23:21)<br />- The Comforter would teach (Jn. 14:26), guide (16:13), be a judge (16:8) and prophesy (16:13); the Angel guided Israel through the wilderness, taught them God\'s ways, judged Egypt and the Canaanites, gave prophecies, and represented God to Israel as the Comforter represented Jesus to His people.&nbsp; As the church&nbsp;began a new Exodus and was constituted God\'s Kingdom in prospect as Israel were at Sinai, it was fitting that it should also have an Angel leading them, representing God to them. <br />- The Comforter would &quot;shew you things to come&quot; (Jn. 16:13)- fulfilled by the Angel giving the Revelation to John. <br />- The Angel testified to the churches (Rev. 22:16)- &quot;the Comforter... shall testify of Me&quot; (Jn. 15:26). <br />- The references in Acts to the Holy Spirit as a person would then be easier to understand - e.g. &quot;The Holy Spirit said, Separate Me Barnabas. . &quot; (Acts 13:2). Similarly the frequent occurrences of the ideas of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit together fall into place if the Holy Spirit has some degree of reference to a personal being in the form of an Angel. The error of the doctrine of the trinity is not in identifying the three common forms of God manifestation (i.e. through God Himself, Jesus and the Holy Spirit Angel), but in the inter-relationships between them which it proposes. This idea is worth applying&nbsp;to our understanding of the baptismal formula. <br />- The work of the Comforter Angel may have been confined to the first century, in the same way as the Angel was particularly evident to the ecclesia in the wilderness during the initial Exodus period. Thus the words \'Angel\' and \'Spirit\'&nbsp; are&nbsp; obviously interchangeable in the book of Acts (e. g. 8:26,29; 10:3,19,20). <br />- The Angel in Revelation &quot;like the son of man&quot; (i.e. representing Him but not Him personally) would then be this same Comforter Angel representing Jesus (Rev. 1:11 cp. 22:13,8,16). He carried the titles of Jesus, who carried the titles of God- e. g. &quot;Alpha and Omega&quot;. <br />- The Comforter is called &ldquo;the spirit of truth&rdquo; (Jn. 14:17; 15:26; 16:13). In the Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls literature, this phrase describes an Angelic Spirit who is the leader of the &ldquo;good forces&rdquo; and &lsquo;in whom&rsquo; the righteous walk <em>Testament of Judah</em> 20, 1-5. The Aramaic translation of Job, and the targums on it, uses the term <em>prqlyt</em> to describe the Angelic spokesman the <em>malak melis</em> who makes a testimony in Heaven in Job&rsquo;s defence (Job 16:19; 19:25-27; 33:23).<br />- Otto Betz, <em>Der Paraklet </em>(AGJU, 1963), brings out many connections between the Comforter and the Angel &lsquo;Michael the Spirit of truth&rsquo; in contemporary Jewish writings. <br />- When we read of the &ldquo;spirit of the Lord&rdquo; snatching away Philip, it seems logical to interpret this as the same Angel already mentioned earlier in the chapter (Acts 8:26,29,39). But this Angel is defined as the Lord&rsquo;s Angel- and the Lord in Acts is nearly always the Lord Jesus. Clearly we are led to understand the Lord Jesus as being associated with a specific Angel.&nbsp; <br />- &quot;Ye have an unction from the Holy One (the Comforter/ Holy Spirit), and ye know all things&quot; (1 Jn. 2:20) is clearly alluding to the promise of the Comforter in Jn. 14:26; but &quot;Holy One&quot; is Angelic language, as if the Holy One was also an Angel.</p><p>- The tongues sitting like flames of fire on the apostles at Pentecost was an Angelic manifestation; the Angels can be made &quot;a flame of fire&quot;.</p><p>- Jude 5 reminds the new Israel of the first century that Israel of old had been condemned due to their provoking of the wilderness Angel- a warning that takes on special power once it is recognized that the very same Angel was leading the early church. <br />- Stephen\'s speech in Acts 7 contains many references to the Angel of Israel. He uses examples from Israel\'s history in which they&nbsp;rejected&nbsp;those&nbsp;who&nbsp;were&nbsp;types of Jesus- e. g. v. 9,10,22,25. It follows then that v. 35 must refer to this same aspect of Moses as a type of Christ being rejected. &quot;This Moses whom they renounced... even him God sent to be a ruler and a redeemer with the hand of that Angel which appeared to him in the bush&quot; (Diaglott). Israel resisted the work of the Angel supporting Moses, and so years later they were also rejecting the support of the same guardian Angel for the teachings of Jesus and His disciples, the greater than Moses. So v. 51 stresses &quot;ye do always resist the Holy Spirit (the title of the Comforter Angel in Is. 63): as your fathers did, so do ye&quot;. Their fathers resisted the Angel of the presence which went with them; and so the Jews of the first century were doing just the same.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4003','1','43','16','1','1','<p>16:1 <em>These things have I spoken to you, so that you should not be made to stumble</em>- The context goes on to speak of excommunication from the synagogue. The Lord perceived that religious excommunication created a strong possibility of stumbling; and so it is to this day. He says this in the context of His promise of the Comforter, His presence amongst and within the believers. His argument is that if that is felt and experienced by believers, then being disfellowshipped from some human group will not at all affect them. The wonder of His abiding presence will be far greater than the trauma of being excluded from some human group or society. And that truth remains wonderfully true today, the ultimate comfort through all church politics and exclusions performed by those who thereby proclaim that they do not have the Spirit.</p><p>The discourse in the upper room was intended by the Lord &quot;to prevent your faith from being shaken&quot; or, literally, \'scandalized\' (Jn. 16:1). And yet He uses the same word to predict how &quot;This night you will all be scandalized because of me&quot; (Mt. 26:31). He knew they would stumble, or be \'scandalized\'. Yet He hoped against hoped that they would not be; so positive was His hope of them. And exactly because He was like this, the pain of their desertion and stumbling would have been so much the greater. And the Lord who is the same today as yesterday goes through just the same with us, hour by hour.&nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4004','1','43','16','2','2','<p>16:2 <em>They shall put you out of the synagogues. Yes, the time is coming, when whoever kills you shall think that he offers service to God</em>- See on :1. The coming time or hour in John\'s Gospel refers usually to the Lord\'s death (2:4; 7:30; 8:20,21; 12:23,27). In the crises of persecution we face, we are sharing in His death, that His life might be ours too.</p><p>Realizing the need of each believer for the brotherhood will lead us to be more than careful before ever evicting anyone from our association. Indeed, forced expulsion from any social group is highly damaging to the victim. The Lord appreciated this when He said that when His followers were cast out of the synagogues, then they would be likely to stumble (Jn. 16:1,2). They were excommunicated exactly because of their faith in Him; and yet He foresaw that in the aftermath of that rejection, emotionally, sociologically, economically, they would be likely to stumble. Eviction of anyone from our fellowship ought therefore never to be done lightly, if ever. For by doing so, we are likely to make them stumble from the path to eternity; and nobody would want such a millstone around their neck at judgment day. We may in this life appear to be &lsquo;keeping the truth pure&rsquo;, &lsquo;doing the right thing&rsquo;- but the Lord will judge the effect we had upon another&rsquo;s path to Him.<br />Initially, as we see from e.g. John\'s Gospel, the core issue in Christianity revolved around simply believing in Jesus. But soon, as we see from John\'s letters, it became important to counter wrong beliefs <em>about</em> Jesus. As controversy over interpretation developed, it was almost inevitable that the arguments led to exaggerations on both sides. We see it happen in political arguments today- the supporters of candidate X respond to criticisms of him by painting him as more exalted, wonderful and even Divine than he really ever could be. And as they do so, the critics become even more virulently against them. This is the nature of controversy. And as the Jews began expelling Christians from their synagogues (Jn. 9:22; 12:42; 16:2) and inventing many slanderous stories about Jesus, it was inevitable that those without a solid Biblical grounding in their faith would <em>react</em> rather than <em>Biblically respond </em>to this- by making Jesus out to be far more \'Divine\' than He was.</p><p>The apostate among God\'s people, both in Old and New Testaments, sunk to the most unbelievable levels, but sincerely felt that they were doing God\'s will. These things included killing righteous prophets (Jn. 16:2), turning the breaking of bread service into a drunken orgy (1 Cor. 11:21), and turning prostitution within the ecclesia into a spiritual act (Rev. 2:20). For believers to come to the conclusion that such things were the will of God surely they were not just misinterpreting Scripture. There was an extra-human power of delusion at work. We have seen in the above verses that God is responsible for this kind of thing. Note that the Bible knows nothing of a super-human devil who does all this.<br />The early believers were initially members of the synagogues, and Paul always visited the synagogue services in his travels. Peter and John went up to pray in the temple at the ninth hour along with everyone else (Acts 3:1). Early ecclesial meetings were based upon the synagogue system (James 2:2). The Lord didn&rsquo;t tell them to leave because they might catch some &lsquo;guilt by association&rsquo;. He knew that if they forthrightly preached the Truth, they would be excommunicated: &ldquo;the time will come when they will expel you from their synagogues&rdquo;, He had foretold; as if He expected them to stay there until they were chased away. Those who reject the Lord Jesus will treat us likewise (Jn. 15:18-21). However, it must be said that the Lord was perhaps making some concession to the weakness of His new people by allowing them to remain members of the synagogue system, and keep parts of the Law. As the New Testament period progressed, the Holy Spirit through Paul increasingly urged upon the believers the need to cast out the bondwoman of Judaism, to trust completely in grace not law. Consider, too, Paul&rsquo;s command in 1 Cor. 11:14 that brethren do <em>not</em> wear head coverings in ecclesial meetings. Assuming this to have been a universal principle which he intended to be followed in all ecclesias and the reasons he gives are based upon universal principles, this was really signalling an exit from the synagogues, where men <em>had</em> to attend with covered head. Now they could no longer go on attending the synagogues to fulfil their Christian worship; they had to realize the extent of the implications of the Lordship and Headship of Christ, as the image and glory of God. Yet sadly, the brethren increasingly returned to the synagogues rather than separated from them.&nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4005','1','43','16','3','3','<p>16:3 <em>And these things will they do, because they have not known the Father nor me</em>- The idea is \'because they have refused to know\'. They had been given the chance, as explained at the end of chapter 15, but had rejected it. And their bad conscience overflowed in personal anger. Not knowing the Father and Son was the reason why they killed the Lord (Acts 13:27,28). Because they killed Him, we must expect persecution at their hands, if we are in His Name and share His spirit. John stresses that because they knew not the Father nor Son, they crucified Jesus (15:21). And yet on another level they <em>did </em>know the Son and Father, especially when they saw His death (8:28). Even the Centurion was convinced that &quot;truly, this was the Son of God&quot;. And even before that, &quot;Jesus cried out in the temple, teaching and saying: You both know me, and know from where I am, and that I have not come of myself&quot; (7:28). They knew, but chose not to know. And this was the psychological cause of their extreme anger.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4006','1','43','16','4','4','<p>16:4 <em>But these things have I spoken to you, so that when the time comes, you may remember what I told you. And these things I did not say to you from the beginning, because I was with you</em>- The &quot;things&quot; presumably concern the persecution which they were to experience, and the supportive presence of the Comforter as their defence. The Lord did not begin His teaching of the twelve by telling them of their likely sufferings; and His personal presence with them involved their \'keeping\', both spiritually and in terms of physical safety (17:12; 18:9). Now He was departing, He would still be with them, in that the presence of the Comforter, His spirit in their hearts, would be as real as if He were personally with them. &quot;The time / hour comes&quot; is used in John normally concerning the hour of the Lord\'s cross. But now the Lord uses the term about the time of<em> their</em> sufferings, extending the idea that His Spirit<em>, </em>experience and destiny is to be theirs; or as the synoptics record it, they would pick up His cross, sharing in His sufferings.<em>&nbsp; </em></p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4007','1','43','16','5','5','<p>16:5 <em>But now I go to Him that sent me; and none of you asks me, Where do you go?</em>- Peter had asked that very question (see on 13:36-38). But he had asked it only from concern about himself and the disciples; not from interest in where the Lord was actually going. Real interest in the Lord Jesus can so often only be a form of self-interest and even self-preservation.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4008','1','43','16','6','6','<p>16:6 <em>But because I have spoken these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart</em>- We sense the Lord\'s disappointment that they did not grasp that His departure meant the glorification of the Name, and the receipt by them of the Comforter. All they could think of was His physical presence not being with them, and they were filled with sorrow rather than with the Spirit. And yet the whole of the Lord&rsquo;s last discourse to the twelve reflects His positive view of them- at the very time when their commitment to Him was in some ways at its lowest ebb. For they all forsook Him in His hour of need. He comments that they are filled with sorrow because of their misunderstanding about His departure from them. But He goes on to liken this sorrow to the sorrow of a woman in labour, who forgets that sorrow as soon as her child is born (Jn. 16:6, 20-22). In the analogy, the travailing woman is the disciples, and the new born child is the resurrected Jesus. For &ldquo;then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord&rdquo;. Their &lsquo;sorrow&rsquo; was thereby interpreted by the Lord as their longing and striving towards His resurrection. But this is a very positive way of interpreting their sorrow. Their sorrow was based on their misunderstanding (Jn. 16:6). Yet the Lord saw that deep underneath that sorrow, even though they didn&rsquo;t perceive it themselves, they were actually yearning for His resurrection. This helps explain the slight mismatch in the metaphor; for &quot;sorrow&quot; is not an emotion really associated with a woman facing labour pains; rather, anxiety, stress and fear. But the Lord as it were makes the analogy fit, because He wants to positively represent their sorrow and hope that something positive comes out of it.</p><p>This was all partly due to His penetration of their psychology, but it also reflects the simple fact that He certainly counted them as more spiritual than they actually were. He tells them to &ldquo;ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full&rdquo;, having just defined their future joy as the joy of seeing Him risen from the dead (Jn. 16:24,22). But did they ask to see His resurrection? Not as far as we know; for He upbraids them with their slowness to believe His predictions of resurrection. But despite all that, He said that they <em>would</em> have that joy which would come from asking to see Him risen from the dead. They didn&rsquo;t ask for this, but they would still have the joy. Why? Because He perceived them to have &lsquo;asked&rsquo; for what they didn&rsquo;t actually ask for in so many words. He read their basic inner yearning for Him as a prayer for His resurrection, even though they were far from understanding that He would ever rise again once dead. It&rsquo;s rather like God saying that the righteous remnant in Jerusalem had shaken their head at the Assyrian invaders and laughed at them in faith- when this was certainly not the case on the surface (Is. 37:22). And this Lord is our Lord today, interpreting our innermost, unarticulated desires as prayers to the Father (Rom. 8:26,27). &nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4009','1','43','16','7','7','<p>16:7 <em>Nevertheless I tell you the truth: It is expedient for you that I go away. For if I do not go away, the Comforter will not come to you. I will send him to you</em>- &quot;It is expedient&quot; is the very phrase used by Caiaphas in saying that it was expedient that the Lord die (11:50). The parallel is clearly between His \'going away\' and His death, confirming the suggestion that His talk of \'going to the Father\' refers specifically to His crucifixion and not only to the ascension to Heaven. The Lord sees a major purpose of His death as being the giving of the Comforter, His spirit. When he breathed His last, and blood and water flowed out from Him, He was giving His spirit toward us, the confused and misunderstanding disciples. This is the connection between His death and the gift of His spirit to us. Our understanding and acceptance of this gift of the Spirit is therefore crucial; it is in fact what He died for, it is the gift of His life given to and into us.</p><p>&quot;I will send him to you&quot; uses the same word frequently used of how the Father sent the Son, and the Son sends us. But here, the Son will send the Comforter to us. He explained in 8:29 that &quot;He that sent me is with me; the Father has not left me alone&quot;. The sending of the Son involved His being given the Father\'s presence. And in His sending of us into the world, in fulfilment of the great commission, He sends us as the Father sent Him, but He also sends us with His presence. The language of 8:29, &quot;not left alone... with me&quot; is exactly that which the Lord uses about His presence with us through the Comforter. That presence however is specifically associated with our mission, the purpose for which we have been sent. The great commission in Mt. 28:20 comforts us that &quot;I am with you always&quot;; and here in John\'s version of that commission we find that the Lord\'s presence refers to the gift of the Spirit, empowering our mission, guiding us to correct understanding, spiritually keeping us from falling, and mediating to us the sense of His personal presence. The theme continues into the Lord\'s prayer of chapter 17, where He speaks of how He has sanctified us, as Levites, and sent us forth on this great commission. Therefore the work of the Gospel, the fulfilment of the great commission, is to be utterly central to our Christian lives. The way it is solemnly placed at the end of the synoptics is proof enough of this.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4010','1','43','16','8','8','<p>16:8 <em>And he, when he comes, will convict the world in respect of sin and of righteousness and of judgment- </em>Just as the Lord convicted the world of sin (7:7; 15:22), so we will do so if the Comforter dwells in us, the presence within us of the Lord Jesus through the Spirit. We shall continue His work through our witness in the power of the Spirit / Comforter (15:26,27). The legal dimension to the word <em>parakletos</em> is here referred to. Our advocate will also be the prosecutor of the world. It is on our witness that the world is convicted of sin, because they heard the Gospel from us, through our obedience to the great commission, but rejected it as made clear in 15:22.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4011','1','43','16','9','9','<p>16:9 <em>Of sin, because they do not believe in me- </em>The Jewish world was convicted of sin through the Comforter-filled disciples witnessing to the Jews about their sin in rejecting the Lord. The implication of this statement is that when we preach Christ to people, they actually realize the truth of what we say, at least on a subconscious level no matter how well they disguise it. Otherwise, why would they be convicted of the sin of unbelief? The principle has been outlined in 15:22, that hearing the spoken word of the Lord Jesus is to be left with no excuse for sin. This is a huge encouragement in our preaching to an apparently disinterested world. Their disinterest is a guise, however unconscious, to attempt to cover their deep dis-ease at their rejection of the call they are receiving. And more often than we may think, our message cuts through that guise, that cloak (15:22), and touches hearts.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4012','1','43','16','10','10','<p>16:10 <em>Of righteousness, because I go to the Father and you see me no more</em>- To convict the Jewish world of righteousness is a strange idea, making little sense until we see the allusion to Is. 64:5 LXX, which describes Israel\'s righteousness as abomination. They would be convicted concerning their righteousness- that it was empty. It would be clear from the witness of the Comforter, the spirit of Christ within the preachers, that they were counted righteous by grace; and all the legalistic rightness of Judaism, and indeed the world in any time or place, is but filthy rags.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4013','1','43','16','11','11','<p>16:11 <em>Of judgment, because the prince of this world has been judged</em>- Just as &quot;righteousness&quot; in :10 refers to the false righteousness of the Jewish world, so here. The Lord has many times been wrongly judged by the Jewish world (7:24), coming to a climax in the way that Caiaphas, the prince of the Jewish world, judged the Lord as worthy of death. The witness of the Comforter, the Spirit-filled witness of the disciples, would demonstrate this to the Jewish world.</p><p>&quot;The prince of this world&quot; (sin, the devil?) was judged by the victory of the cross (Jn. 16:11). There, in that naked, abused body and infinitely tormented yet righteous mind, there was displayed the judgments, the character, the very essence of God; and the utter condemnation of the flesh, the devil, the prince of this world. Those judgments were displayed in front of a world which stood before it self-condemned. The Lord was judged by Caiaphas and other princes of this world, but He in fact stood before them as the judge and condemned them. And yet it is <em>our</em> witness, empowered by the Comforter, which is to convict the world of judgment. We take the spirit of the Lord\'s cross before the world, and it convicts them.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4014','1','43','16','12','12','<p>16:12 <em>I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now</em>-</p><p>The message or word of Jesus was far more than the words that He spoke from His lips. In one sense, He revealed to the disciples everything that He had heard from the Father (Jn. 15:15); and yet in another, more literal sense, He lamented that there was much more He could tell them in words, but they weren\'t able to bear it (Jn. 16:12). His person and character, which they would spend the rest of their lives reflecting upon, was the \'word\' of God in flesh to its supremacy; but this doesn\'t necessarily mean that they heard all the literal words of God drop from the lips of Jesus. I have shown elsewhere that both the Father and Son use language, or words, very differently to how we normally do. The manifestation of God in Christ was not only a matter of the Christ speaking the right words about God. For as He said, His men couldn\'t have handled that in its entirety. The fullness of manifestation of the word was in His life, His character, and above all in His death, which the prologue in 1:14 may be specifically referring to in speaking of how John himself beheld the glory of the word being made flesh.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4015','1','43','16','13','13','<p>16:13 -see on 1 Jn. 4:1; Jn. 14:12.</p><p><em>However, when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he shall guide you into all the truth. For he shall not speak from himself; but whatever he shall hear, these shall he speak- </em></p><p>&quot;The Spirit of truth&quot; is in reality &quot;the spirit of Christ&quot;, making His presence near and real just as if He were literally with us. So &quot;the truth&quot; is again a reference to the Lord Jesus personally, the truth of Him who is &quot;the truth&quot;, rather than a reference to the academic \'truth\' of a particular set of theology. &quot;All truth&quot; would be going far too far if it refers to intellectual truth, for nobody could ever claim to have &quot;all truth&quot; in that sense. It makes little sense to talk of being &quot;in&quot; truth in the sense of theological truth. The language is far more appropriate to a person, the Lord Jesus.</p><p>&quot;Guide&quot; is the language of a Rabbi teaching or guiding his disciples by teaching (s.w. Mt. 15:14; 23:16; Lk. 6:39; Acts 8:31; Rom. 2:19). The disciples were concerned that their Rabbi was leaving them and they would be without a teacher (see on 14:18). The Lord is assuring them that His teaching presence would continue amongst them through the presence of the Spirit, the Comforter.</p><p>&quot;He shall not speak from himself&quot; recalls the Lord\'s claims that &quot;I speak not from myself&quot;, but from what He heard from the Father (7:17; 8:28; 12:49). The Comforter is personified and spoken of in exactly the terms of the Lord Jesus because He wished to emphasize the idea that the presence of the Spirit would be as if He personally was with them, teaching them as He had done as their Rabbi on earth.</p><p><em>And he shall declare to you the things that are to come</em>- There could be a reference here to the giving of the book of Revelation, but the hour to come in John\'s Gospel, the even &quot;to come&quot;, is clearly the Lord\'s death. The meaning of that would be declared to them by the Spirit. They did not then understand what the Lord was doing, but they would do so afterwards- when the Spirit revealed it to them.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4016','1','43','16','14','14','<p>16:14 <em>He shall glorify me; for he shall take what is mine and shall declare it to you</em>- The Spirit would be the medium of communication between the Lord and His followers. The context here is of teaching, of the disciples continuing to be taught by the Lord from Heaven through His Spirit (see on :13). &quot;What is mine&quot; would therefore refer to the understandings given to the Lord by the Father, which were now going to be in turn transmitted to His followers by means of the Spirit. And that process would be to the glorification of the Lord Jesus. For they would understand Him and His achievements so much deeper. This is the same word used in 16:25 of how the Lord would declare or shew to them plainly of the Father. He was to do this in His death for them, but that death would be unpacked by the Lord\'s work within them through the Spirit.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4017','1','43','16','15','15','<p>16:15 <em>All things, whatever the Father has, are mine. Therefore I said: that he shall take of mine and declare it to you</em>- These &quot;all things&quot; which the Father has refer to the things which would be declared to them (:14), and those things centre in the Lord Jesus. All those things in that sense were \'Me\', the Lord Jesus. For the prologue states that the <em>logos</em> of Jesus is God, in the sense that the entire purpose and plan of God is centred in His Son. The focus of the Father upon His Son is significant beyond appreciation. The Son was &quot;all things&quot; to the Father; and the things of the Son, and thereby the &quot;all things&quot; of the Father, were to be declared to the believers by the Spirit.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4018','1','43','16','16','16','<p>16:16 <em>A little while, and you will see me no more; and then a little while, and you shall see me, because I go to the Father</em>- The first &quot;little while&quot; refers to the time remaining until His death (7:33; 13:33). The second &quot;little while&quot; is until the point when they would \'see\' Him because He goes to the Father. The \'seeing\' in view is the vision of the presence of Jesus which arises from the gift of the Spirit which would be given as a result of the Lord\'s death. His going to the Father could refer to ascension; but that was not when the Spirit gift was given and they \'saw\' Him. It was not through his ascension that the gift was enabled, but rather through His death. And it is to His death that \'&quot;I go to the Father&quot; refers elsewhere in John. The second &quot;little while&quot; I suggest refers to the period from His death until the receipt of the Comforter and the full seeing of Him then. He is of course presenting a purposeful paradox; that His going away was in fact when they would \'see\' Him. This \'seeing\' was the understanding of Him and experience of His presence which would be possible through the Comforter. Elsewhere in John, beholding or seeing the Son doesn&rsquo;t refer to physically seeing Him, but rather to understanding and believing in Him (Jn. 1:14,29,36,50; 6:40; 12:21; 14:9,19; 17:24 etc.). The Lord surely meant: &lsquo;Soon, you will no longer see / understand / believe me&hellip; but, in the end, you <em>will</em> understand / believe in me&rsquo;. And John, the author or speaker of this Gospel record, was one of those being referred to. So he, and all the disciples, would&rsquo;ve been appealing to people to see / understand / believe in Jesus, whilst openly telling them that they themselves had once lost that understanding / belief which they once had, even though they regained it later.</p><p>&quot;If I go&hellip; I will come again... A little while, and you shall not see me: and again, a little while, and you shall see me, because I go to my father&quot; (Jn. 14:3; 16:16). This may refer to Moses going up and down the mountain, disappearing from Israel\'s sight, and then returning with the covenant- to find Israel worshipping the golden calf. Perhaps this refers to the Lord\'s disappointment that they did not perceive the wonder of His resurrection.</p><p>The New Testament speaks in challenging terms of how real is to be our relationship with the Lord Jesus. The Lord&rsquo;s enigmatic words of Jn. 16:16 indicate just <em>how</em> close the Comforter was to make Him come to His people once He was in Heaven: &ldquo;Yet a little while, and ye shall not see me <em>theoreo</em>, to physically see: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me <em>horai</em>, to know or understand, to spiritually \'see\', because I go to the Father&rdquo;. It could be argued,<em> contra</em> my position just stated, that the &ldquo;little while&rdquo; in each clause is one and the same. In &ldquo;a little while&rdquo; they would not see Him physically, but exactly because He would be with the Father, He would send the Comforter, and enable His people to &lsquo;see&rsquo; Him in the sense that John usually speaks of in his Gospel. This &lsquo;seeing&rsquo; of Jesus, this perception of Him, is effectively a &lsquo;seeing&rsquo; of the Father.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4019','1','43','16','17','17','<p>16:17- see on Jn. 15:16-19.</p><p><em>Some of his disciples questioned each other: What is this that he said to us? A little while and you will see me no more; and then a little while and you shall see me, because I go to the Father?</em>- Their questions were presumably said out of the Lord\'s earshot, for He perceived rather than heard their questions (:19). His sensitivity of Spirit was such that He could perceive the hearts of men, without necessarily receiving some bolt of direct revelation as to what they were thinking. And His sensitive spirit is given to us. See on :16 for comment about the &quot;little while&quot;.</p><p>There are two different words for &quot;see&quot; used here, and at first blush they seem rather strange. But that was purposeful, as the Lord wished their minds to work upon this immense idea of His absence meaning His presence through the Spirit. The first means \'to discern\' and the second more literally \'to see\'. In a little while He would die and they would not discern / see Him, they would not understand; but then they would \'see\' Him when He went to the Father. The presence of the Son through the Comforter would be as real as if they were literally seeing Him; and this huge challenge comes down to us today.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4020','1','43','16','18','18','<p>16:18 <em>They said: What is this that he said? A little while? We cannot decipher what he said</em>- They struggled over which period He had in view, and whether there were two \'little while\' periods or whether they are referring to the same period. See on :16. The Lord was speaking in such a way that they would mull over His words. For the truth He presents here is so utterly profound and demanding that it cannot be accepted or perceived by just reading or hearing a few words and grasping the idea. The gift of the Spirit would mean that He would be amongst them just as really, and even moreso, as He had been in His physical presence.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4021','1','43','16','19','19','<p>16:19 <em>Jesus perceived that they wanted to ask him, and he said to them: Do you inquire among yourselves what I said? A little while and you will see me no more, and then a little while and you shall see me?</em>- See on :17 regarding the Lord\'s perception. The Lord may be rebuking them for asking <em>among themselves</em> for the answer to the paradox, rather than asking <em>Him</em>. Very rarely in the Gospel records does the Lord respond directly to the questions He was asked. He replies at a tangent, sometimes directing the questioner away from the question to more significant issues, or answering the question in terms of higher principle rather than focusing just on the specific case in question. And His response here is the same.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4022','1','43','16','20','20','<p>16:20 <em>Truly, truly, I say to you: You shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice. You shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy</em>- As noted on :19, the Lord\'s response to the question about what &quot;a little while&quot; meant is typical of how He tends not to directly answer questions. He wanted them to reflect about what He meant; He wanted them, like us, to personally come to realize the momentous truth that through the Spirit, He will be as present with us as He physically was with the disciples during His ministry, teaching us as He taught them, under the trees and in the&nbsp;courtyards of Galilee. Instead He re-focuses their minds on the trauma immediately ahead. The Gospels do not record the disciples weeping and lamenting the Lord\'s death whilst the Jewish world rejoiced, but that is what happened during the days the Lord lay dead. Their sorrow is read here positively by the Lord as sorrow for the loss of a loved one. But in reality, their sorrow was also because of dashed hopes, as the disciples on the way to Emmaus clearly reveal. Their sorrow was also partly because of disappointment. But the Lord wishes to interpret their sorrow positively, and therefore turns it into the idea that their sorrow was that experienced by a woman just before giving birth. But as noted on :21, that is to force a simile, for &quot;sorrow&quot; is not really the dominant emotion or feeling of a woman in advanced labour. The way the Lord forces the simile is a reflection of how He was simply so positive about the weakness of the disciples\' understanding. And we must have His positive spirit in all our dealings with our fellow disciples, never cutting them off because they lack understanding, faith or sufficient attention to the Lord\'s words; but ever hoping that they shall develop, and accepting what understanding they do have in a positive way; seeing the glass half full rather than half empty.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4023','1','43','16','21','21','<p>16:21 <em>A woman when she is in labour has sorrow, because her hour comes; but when she has delivered the child, she does not remember her anguish, because of her joy that a child is born into the world</em>- The coming hour is spoken of in John as the hour of the Lord\'s death. Although the Lord is addressing the disciples, as so often in His teaching, He is speaking to Himself too. For He was the one about to go through physical pain, to the end the child of the church should be born into the Jewish world- a world which would not accept it, as the drama of Revelation 12 makes clear, in its immediate first century application. Judaism used this very metaphor to speak of Israel\'s sufferings immediately prior to the coming of the Messianic Kingdom. The Lord is alluding to this, saying that His Kingdom is to come in the form of the birth of the church, but only as a baby, which must grow into the full maturity of His Kingdom on earth to be established at the second coming. His joy in us now means that He does not &quot;remember&quot; the anguish of the cross. The pain of the cross was therefore His bearing of the pain of Israel. The Lord is going along with the Jewish understanding of the metaphor, in that He is alluding to Is. 26:16-21 where we meet the ideas of a &quot;little while&quot;, the last day, the hope of resurrection and the metaphor of a woman in labour. And John was writing immediately prior to the pains of AD70 and Christian persecution/. The Lord had taken those pains into Himself in His crucifixion sufferings, and could absolutely relate to them.</p><p>The day of the Lord will result in the wicked being &quot;in pain as of a woman that travaileth&quot; (Is. 13:8).&nbsp; Yet the faithful just before His coming would also be like a woman in travail (1 Thess. 5:3), with the subsequent joy on delivery matching the elation of the disciples in realizing the Lord had risen and would be eternally present with them through the Comforter (Jn. 16:21). So, it\'s travail- or travail, especially in the last days. If we choose the way of the flesh, it will be travail for nothing, bringing forth in vain (this is seen as a characteristic of all worldly life in Is. 65:23). We either cut off the flesh now (in spiritual circumcision), or God will cut us off at the last day. This point was made when the rite of circumcision was first given: &quot;The uncircumcised un-cut off man...shall be cut off&quot; (Gen. 17:14). See on Mt. 3:11.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4024','1','43','16','22','22','<p>16:22 <em>You now have sorrow; but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no one will take away from you</em>- It is tempting to connect this joy with the joy of the disciples when they met the risen Lord and literally saw Him again (20:20). But the joy in the heart which would never be taken from them is really a stronger reference to the coming of the Comforter to abide with them for ever; this was when and how they \'saw\' the Lord in the sense John\'s Gospel uses the term, to mean understand / believe. The Lord\'s literal resurrection and the joy they had on literally seeing Him is presented as the joy that shall be with all who have received His abiding presence in the Comforter. That joy cannot be taken from them; but the joy of literally seeing Him would soon fade when He ascended, if the joy in view is simply that of literally seeing the risen Lord. The joy at seeing Him which does not fade is only possible if His presence abides permanently, and that is the work of the Comforter, making Him present to us as really as if He were physically with us. &quot;Your heart shall rejoice&quot; is a direct quotation from Is. 66:14 LXX about the permanent joy of the Kingdom age. This is not to say that the Kingdom has now come. The idea is that through the work of the Comforter we experience the life eternal, the permanent joy of the Kingdom age is known in our experience of His abiding presence now.</p><p>&quot;I will see you again&quot; reads strangely; we would rather expect &quot;You will see me again, so don\'t be sad&quot;. He sees us again, in that He comes to us. And He knows / sees us, as well as us seeing / knowing Him. Gal. 4:9 may have this idea in view, teaching that it is not so much a question of us knowing God, but of Him knowing us. Likewise, we did not choose Him, but He chose us (15:19).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4025','1','43','16','23','23','<p>16:23 <em>And in that day, you shall ask me no questions- </em>As noted on :22, the experience of abiding joy and seeing the Lord is all Kingdom language, in that the Comforter enables us to live the eternal life, the Kingdom life, right now. This explains why &quot;that day&quot; is a phrase commonly used to refer to the last day (2 Tim. 1:12,18 etc.). &quot;That day&quot; in essence comes to all who receive the Comforter, and thereby have the Lord\'s permanent presence. In 1 Jn. 2:18 John speaks as if the believers are right now in the last day / hour; not only in that they are expecting the second coming at any minute, but in that the last day is in essence being experienced by them.</p><p>&quot;Ask me no questions&quot; can be translated &quot;ask me nothing&quot;. The idea is that His relationship with the Father will be ours; we will relate directly to the Father as He did and does, because we are &quot;in my name&quot;, possessing the Comforter which is sent in His name. If we insist on the sense of \'ask me no questions\', the idea could be that because we know the Father and Son through having relation with them, we will not be full of questions (1 Jn. 2:20). Our base experience of relationship with them will mean that \'hard questions\' are of no particular angst to us. We know the things of our salvation (15:14,15), and that is enough. Any other questions are of far secondary importance. All struggles about apologetics, questions about the conflict between current science and the Bible, all become utterly subsumed beneath the reality of knowing the Father and Son in the sense of having ongoing relationship with them. The questions in the immediate context concerned the Lord\'s going away and coming again. The Comforter would explain those questions; and we note that the meaning of the Lord\'s death, resurrection and gift of the Holy Spirit were not understood by the disciples until after His resurrection and their receipt of the Holy Spirit Comforter. The Comforter works likewise with us, unpacking the meaning of these things- for the Lord was far from the only man to die through crucifixion. The personal import of <em>His</em> death and resurrection and gift of His Spirit has to be personally experienced; theology can only go so far. And that is the work of the Comforter.</p><p>We recall that towards the end of His ministry, the Jews ceased asking the Lord questions (Mt. 22:46). This was because things had come to such a pitch that the Lord had answered everything and presented Himself without doubt as their Saviour and God\'s Son. The choices left were to believe in Him, or turn against Him blinded by a bad conscience. The Lord seems to be alluding to that position, saying that the disciples were also going to be in a position where they totally believed in Him and needed answers to no more questions, for the answer was already clear.</p><p><em>Truly, truly, I say to you: If you shall ask anything of the Father, He will give it you in my name</em>- The intimacy of relationship between Father and Son is to be experienced by us on account of the Comforter. We will sense His will and pray accordingly, and receive. &quot;In my name&quot; is another way of saying that because we are in Christ and He in us, we shall directly dialogue with the Father just as He did and does. He will no longer be a mediator, in that sense. The language of His intercession which we encounter later in the New Testament is all concerning His attainment of salvation for us (Rom. 8:34; Heb. 7:25), and the contexts do not refer to some kind of mechanical transaction being performed between Son and Father every time we pray for some request. We who were enemies have now been reconciled to God in Christ, as Romans 5 teaches. The Lord\'s work of mediating between God and man is therefore for those who have yet to be reconciled; for us it is done, we already live as reconciled to God.</p><p>Moses reached something of that intimacy; he cried to Yahweh to take away the frogs, &quot;and Yahweh did according to the word of Moses&quot; (Ex. 8:12,13); the requests of prayer become almost a command to God; by His grace, we will ask what we will and He will do it for us (Jn. 16:23). W.E. Vine makes the point that the Greek here implies a superior asking an inferior to do something. Not only is this an essay in the humility of God\'s self-revelation, but it surely shows how if we seriously believe in the power of prayer, what we request really will be given. &quot;Thou shalt also decree a thing (in prayer) and it shall be established unto thee&quot; (Job 22:28). Rev. 9:13 portrays prayer as a command to the Angels. The prayer of command is to be found in the well known words of Ps. 122. &ldquo;Pray for the peace of Jerusalem&rdquo;, David exhorts. And the response made so much clearer when the Psalm is sung: &ldquo;Peace be within thy walls&hellip; I will now say, Peace be within thee&rdquo; (Ps. 122:6-8). The way peace is &lsquo;commanded&rsquo; to be in Jerusalem by those who pray is because they so believe that the answer will surely come.</p><p>The wonder of the resurrection would totally affect our attitude to asking for things, the Lord taught in Jn. 16:23,26. &ldquo;In that day of marvelling in the resurrected Lord, ye shall ask me nothing&hellip; if ye shall ask anything of the Father, he will give it you RV&hellip; in that day you shall ask in my name&hellip;&rdquo;. What are we to make of all this talk of asking and not asking, in the &lsquo;day&rsquo; of the resurrected Lord Jesus? My synthesis of it all is this: Due to the sheer wonder of the resurrection of the Lord, we will not feel the need to ask for anything for ourselves. The gift of freedom from sin is enough. Because if God gave us His Son and raised Him from the dead, we will serve for nothing, for no extra &lsquo;perks&rsquo; in this life; and yet, wonder of wonders, <em>if</em> we shall ask, in His Name, we will receive. But we must ask whether the implications and wonder of the fact of the Lord&rsquo;s resurrection have had such an effect upon us&hellip;?</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4026','1','43','16','24','24','<p>16:24 <em>So far you have asked nothing in my name. Ask and you shall receive, that your joy may be made full</em>-&nbsp; By receiving the spirit of the Lord Jesus, His mindset becomes ours. His joy becomes our joy (15:11). The Lord\'s joy was in our salvation (Mt. 25:21,23), that spiritual being were born into the world of the new creation (16:21) and human repentance (Lk. 15:7). This explains the Lord\'s exhortation to ask in His name so that their joy might be fulfilled. This doesn\'t simply refer to the joy of receiving a request which has earlier been requested in prayer. The fullness of joy received means having the Lord\'s joy within us; having His Spirit / mind / value set. This means that the thing asked for was the Comforter, the mind of Christ, His Spirit, which included His joy; the mindset which rejoices in the things He rejoices in. And they are the things of human salvation and the glorification of the Father\'s Name. See on 17:13.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4027','1','43','16','25','25','<p>16:25 <em>These things have I spoken to you in figurative language- </em>This explains why the Lord did not directly answer their question concerning what He meant by &quot;a little while&quot;; see on :18,19.</p><p><em>The hour comes, when I shall no longer speak to you in figurative language, but shall show you plainly about the Father</em>- God was especially in Christ at His death. Perhaps it was partly with reference to the cross that the Lord said: &ldquo;I shall shew you plainly of the Father&quot; (Jn. 16:25). See on Jn. 19:19.</p><p>John&rsquo;s references to the hour coming nearly always refer to the crucifixion. The plain showing forth of the Father was in the naked body of His crucified Son; there, all the theory which Jesus had taught was exemplified in stark, plain terms. The Father was ultimately revealed. Is. 64:1-4 had foretold: &ldquo;Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that thou wouldest come down, that the mountains might flow down at thy presence... For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him&quot;. This latter verse is quoted in 1 Cor. 2 about how the &ldquo;foolishness&quot; of the cross is not accepted by the wise of this world. Only the humble and spiritually perceptive eye of faith realized that there in the naked shame of Golgotha, God Himself had rent the heavens and come down, as all the faithful had somehow, in some sense foreseen and yearned for. There, in the battered body of Jesus, was God revealed to men.</p><p>As noted on Jn. 2:4; 4:21-23 and 5:25-29, the hour that was to come is a reference to the cross. There, we see and hear the preaching / word of &lsquo;which is&rsquo;, Gk. the cross. There on the cross, there was no allegory. There we were shown plainly the Father. He went on: &ldquo;Behold, the hour s.w. &ldquo;time&quot; cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me&quot; (16:32). The disciples scattered at the crucifixion, probably they came to see it and then scattered in fear after the first hour or so. But He was not left alone; for the Father was with Him there. Just as John began his Gospel by saying that &ldquo;the word was with God&quot;, with specific reference to the cross. Philip had just asked to be shown the Father, just as Moses had asked (14:9,10). And the Lord is saying that in the cross, they will see plainly of the Father. And perhaps therefore we are to understand 17:24 as meaning that Jesus prayed that the disciples would physically see and spiritually understand His cross: &ldquo;Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world&quot;. &ldquo;I am&quot;, &ldquo;my glory&quot;, given by the Father, and the lamb slain from &ldquo;the foundation of the world&quot;... this is all language of the cross.</p><p>And yet the showing plainly of the Father is spoken here in the context of assuring the disciples that although He, their Rabbi, was to be taken from them, His teaching of them would continue and intensify through the ministry of the Comforter in their hearts. The showing plainly is to be connected with the promise that the Comforter would guide them into all truth (:13), and then they would have no more questions (:23).</p><p>The Lord recognized the influence of the synagogue upon them when He said that He spoke to them in parables, and would later speak to them plainly (Jn. 16:25)- when He had earlier spoken to the Jewish world in parables rather than plainly, because they did not understand (Mk. 4:34). And yet the disciples got there in the end. He spoke to them in the end &quot;plain words&quot; (<em>parresia</em>), and this word is the watchword of the disciples\' own witness to the world (Acts 2:29; 4:13,29,31; 28:31). They spoke &quot;plainly&quot; <em>(parresia</em>) to the world, without parables, because they reflected to the world the nature of their understanding of their Lord. However, during His ministry, it would appear that the Lord treated them as if they were still in the Jewish world. When they asked Him why He spoke to <em>the people</em> in parables, He replies by explaining why He spoke <em>to them</em> in parables; and He drives the point home that it is to those &ldquo;outside&rdquo; that He speaks in parables (Mk. 4:11). &nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4028','1','43','16','26','26','<p>16:26- see on Mt. 6:13; 1 Pet. 2:5.</p><p><em>In that day you shall ask in my name; and I do not say to you that I will pray to the Father for you</em>- The Lord has just explained that &quot;in that day&quot; when they possess the Spirit, they will not need to go to the Father through the Lord. They will have the same relationship with the Father which the Son had and has; see on :23. They would ask the Father on account of being &quot;in Christ&quot;, in His Name, baptized into it and abiding in it with the presence of the Spirit of Christ in their hearts. The Lord will not in some mechanical sense pray to the Father with our words but expressed in different language, with a nudge, as it were, for Him to respond positively because we are the Lord\'s. We shall be in direct relationship with the Father.&nbsp;</p><p>This unity of Spirit between us, the Son and the Father explains an apparent contradiction in the Lord\'s discourse in the upper room: &quot;Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will <em>I</em> do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask <em>me</em> anything (being) in my name, that will I do (Jn. 14:13,14 RV)... If ye shall ask anything of <em>the Father</em>, he will give it you in my name... and I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you: for the Father himself loveth you&quot; (Jn. 16:23,26 RV). Who do we pray to? The Father, or the Son? Who \'does\' the answer to our prayers? God, or Christ? The context of the Lord\'s words was that &quot;the Father is with me... I am in the Father, and the Father is in me... the Father abiding in me doeth the works&quot;, even as the believers are in the Son and in the Father, as they are in us. This means that the question of who to pray to is on one level irrelevant. Our spirit bears witness with their Spirit, and there is only one spirit. This unity of the believer with the Father is only made possible through the Son, and so our formal prayers should be addressed to God not with &quot;in Christ\'s Name&quot; tagged on to the end of them for that smacks of ritualism, but on account of our being in Christ, we can have a direct relationship with the Father. But the essence of prayer is not formal request. To pray &ldquo;in my name&rdquo; could mean &lsquo;in union with me&rsquo;; yet Christ was at one with the Father. &quot;He that searches the hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit&quot; (Rom. 8:27) without us verbalizing our spirit in formal prayer. In the same way as the priests helped / assisted the Old Testament worshippers rather than actually offered their prayers or sacrifices, so with the Lord Jesus. Paul spoke of how he would be helped &quot;through your prayers and the help of the spirit of Jesus&quot; (Phil. 1:19 RSV). Their prayers ascended directly to God, but the response was helped by the spirit of the Lord Jesus which was to be given them in the Comforter; and because He is so sublimely at one with the Father, this means that the help will surely come. The rapport between our spirit and His Spirit is again reflected by the way Rom. 8:6,27 use the same phrase, &ldquo;the mind of the spirit&rdquo;, to describe firstly the mind of <em>our</em> spirit, and then, the mind of the spirit of the Lord Jesus.<br />We will no longer need Christ to ask the Father for us, we will be able to have a direct relationship with the Father in prayer. We will not need to be like the disciples, who in their immaturity asked Jesus to pass on their requests to God (Jn. 11:22). He sees our spirit anyway, He knows our need anyway; this knowledge doesn\'t depend on the Lord\'s mediation. The advocate, the Comforter, identifies with the one he helps, stands next to him, knowing his case fully. But as Christ is our advocate, so we should be to our brethren (&quot;comfort&quot; in 2 Cor. 2:7 is s.w. 1 Jn. 2:1). This doesn\'t necessarily mean that we interpret our brother\'s words to God, but rather than we pray for our brother, in our own words; we are with our brother, supporting him, knowing his weakness. So on one hand we have a direct relationship with the Father. On the other, the Lord Jesus is our vital, saving advocate with Him. I don\'t think these two aspects can be reconciled by re-translation or expositional juggling. The fact is, through what the Lord achieved, we theoretically don\'t need His mediation any longer. He was our High Priest to bring us to God on the cross. He no longer needs to enter into the Holiest Place (cp. heaven) to gain our atonement, for this He did once for all (Heb. 9:26). We should be able to pray with the earnest intensity of Elijah or Moses, who prayed without an intercessor, and were heard. But where we lack that intensity, the Lord Jesus holds up our feeble \'groanings\' before the Father. Likewise He is our \'advocate\', although theoretically a righteous man doesn\'t need an advocate. John almost writes as if \'Of course, you won\'t sin, but if very occasionally you do, Jesus can act as a powerful advocate for you\'. And yet in reality, He is acting in the advocate role for much of our sin-stricken lives.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4029','1','43','16','27','27','<p>16:27 <em>For the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved me, and have believed that I came from the Father</em>- The Comforter, the gift of the Spirit in their hearts, would enable them to have the same relationship with the Father which the Son enjoyed in His mortal life. This is the repeated request in the prayer of chapter 17. The Lord does not therefore need to persuade the Father to be loving and generous in response to us; He Himself and of Himself <em>loves us</em>. Our love of the Son is read by the Father as love of Him, because we believe that the Jesus we love is His Son, \'come from the Father\'. John later extends this logic, distilling it to mean that if we love the begetter we love also the begotten- and applies this to how therefore we cannot claim to love God but not love His spiritually begotten children (1 Jn. 4:1,2). &quot;The Father Himself loves you&quot; is a phrase we need to bear in our hearts always. We do not need the Lord to as it were get us on His right side; He Himself directly loves us, and all our brethren too.</p><p>The Lord\'s statement that &ldquo;You&hellip; have believed that I came out from God&rdquo; elicited agreement from the disciples: &ldquo;Yes, we believe that you came forth from God&rdquo;. But to that He responds in :32: &ldquo;Do you now believe? Behold, the hour comes, yes, is now come, when you shall be scattered, every man to his own home, and shall leave me alone&rdquo;. Although they didn&rsquo;t really fully believe, He said that they did. He wasn&rsquo;t so in love with them that He was blind to their failures. But He was all the same so positive about their practically non-existent faith. And what&rsquo;s more, He goes on to tell the Father His positive perspective on their faith: &ldquo;They&hellip;have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me&rdquo; (Jn. 17:8). But the Lord had only just been telling the disciples that they <em>didn&rsquo;t</em> really believe that He had come out from God&hellip; Yet He counted them as if they did, and reflected this to the Father in prayer. And this is surely how the Lord feels and speaks about us to the Father today. &nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4030','1','43','16','30','30','<p>16:30- see on Jn. 15:16-19.</p><p><em>Now we are sure that you know all things, and do not need anyone to question you. By this we believe you came from God</em>- They do not say to the effect that \'Ah, now we understand everything\'. They realized they did not, but were now satisfied that the Lord did understand and know all things. And here we have comfort to us in our questioning of Him; the comfort is not that we know the answers, but that there are answers, and He holds them. &quot;By this we believe you came from God&quot; may be reported as another example of a confessional formula; the hint is to readers and listeners to make the same confession in their hearts.</p><p>The words of the Lord Jesus were the words which He had \'heard\' from the Father. But this doesn\'t mean that He was a mere fax machine, relaying literal words which the Father whispered in His ear to a listening world. When the disciples finally grasped something of the real measure of Jesus, they gasped: &quot;You do not even need that a person ask you questions&quot; (Jn. 16:30). They had previously treated Jesus as a Rabbi, of whom questions were asked by his disciples and then cleverly answered by him. They finally perceived that here was more than a Jewish Rabbi. They came to that conclusion, they imply, not by asking Him questions comprised of words and hearing the cleverly ordered words that comprised His answers. The words He spoke and manifested were of an altogether higher quality and nature than mere lexical items strung together. Here was none other than the Son of God, the Word made flesh in person.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4031','1','43','16','31','31','<p>16:31- see on Jn. 17:6.</p><p><em>Jesus answered them: Do you now believe?</em>- This recalls how Joshua and Moses in their goodbye speeches questioned Israel as to whether their commitment was really what they claimed, and warning that after their death they would soon fall away. See on Mt. 28:10.</p><p>However, a fair translation, supported by NIV and Leon Morris (<em>John</em> p. 631) is: &quot;You now believe&quot;. In this case, He rejoiced at their faith despite knowing that they would be weak in faith (:32); in the same way as John\'s Gospel positively records all confession of faith in the Lord, despite noting how weak that faith was subsequently shown to be.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4032','1','43','16','32','32','<p>16:32- see on Jn. 10:5.</p><p><em>Behold, the hour comes, yes, has come, when you shall be scattered, every man to his own home, and you shall leave me alone; and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me</em>- The Lord&rsquo;s &lsquo;hour&rsquo; which was to come was His death (Jn. 2:4; 7:30; 8:20; 12:23,27; 13:1; 17:1; 19:27). The disciples scattered at the crucifixion, probably they came to see it and then scattered in fear after the first hour or so. But He was not left alone; for the Father was with Him there. Just as John began his Gospel by saying that &ldquo;the word was with God&quot;, with specific reference to the cross. See on Jn. 19:19 concerning the special presence of the Father with the Son on the cross.</p><p>Each of them ran off to their own little family, to safeguard their own petty little human possessions, and left Him alone; alone, when He most needed some human comfort and compassion, a wave from a friend in the crowd, a few silently&nbsp;mouthed words, a catching of the eye, perhaps even the courtesy of a brief hand-shake or clap on the shoulders before the 11 ran off into the night, the word \'thank-you\' called out as He stumbled along the Via Dolorosa. But nothing. They cleared off, they got out, every man to his own. And the pain of betrayal with a kiss by a man He was gracious enough to think of as His equal, with whom He had shared sweet fellowship (Ps. 55:13,14). And to hear Peter\'s cursing, perhaps cursing of Him; his denial that he\'d ever known the guy from Nazareth. And yet in the face of <em>all this</em>, the Lord went on: He laid down His life <em>for us</em>, we who betrayed Him, scattered from Him, hated Him, did Him to death in the most degrading and painful way our race knew how. In the face of rejection to the uttermost, He served us to the end, even to death, and even to the death of the cross.</p><p>The response of the disciples to the Lord\'s arrest was to flee; and at the time of His resurrection, which in faith they ought to have joyfully expected, they quite literally \'went fishing\'. The powerful point is made that the church was built upon the foundations of men weak in faith, who were openly discredited and who themselves, in the Gospel records, preached their own weakness. And yet they are the foundation stones of the new Jerusalem pictured in Revelation. This stands for all time as an encouragement to all in their weakness.</p><p>&quot;The Father is with me&quot; is recorded here in this context of weakness; for the Lord later cried from the cross that the Father had forsaken Him (Mt. 27:46). Perhaps this obvious tension is introduced here to show that human crisis of faith is not necessarily sinful, for the Lord experienced it.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4033','1','43','16','33','33','<p>16:33 <em>These things have I spoken to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good courage; I have overcome the world</em>- This promise of personal &quot;peace&quot; comes straight after the prediction of their collapse of faith and shameful abandonment of the Lord. &quot;Peace&quot; in the Bible usually refers to peace with God. He is saying that despite their failure, He had foreseen it and His death would deal with it, and the gift of the Spirit would involve the gift of peace in their hearts, despite their sin and weakness. They could therefore find peace with God despite their failure; and despite their tribulation in the Jewish world, particularly that which would come in the last days and AD70(Mk. 13:9), their peace with the Father and Son would make them courageous and strong in the face of all rejection by the Jewish world, in which they would have tribulation.</p><p>The Lord had &quot;overcome&quot; the Jewish world, and every form of this world; and He frequently uses the word in His letters to the churches in Rev. 2,3, encouraging us likewise to overcome. His spirit is to be ours. John too rather likes this word &quot;overcome&quot;, using it of how his converts had &quot;overcome the wicked one&quot; and the Jewish false teachers (1 Jn. 2:13,14; 4:4). &quot;The wicked one&quot; is therefore, in the first context, the Jewish world which the Lord overcame. This is why the terms &quot;satan&quot; and &quot;devil&quot; and other such titles are used about the Jewish world so often; see my chapter \'The Jewish Satan\' in <em>The Real Devil</em>, chapter 2.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4034','1','43','17','1','1','<p>17:1<i> These things spoke Jesus</i>- The idea is that after having given the discourse just recorded in the previous chapters, the Lord prayed this prayer. In discussing the Lord\'s teaching about the Comforter in chapters 14-16, we have noted that He speaks of this gift as He Himself, coming in the first instance to the disciples who had been with Him &quot;from the beginning&quot; and who were to convict the Jewish world of sin by their witness, in the strength of the Comforter; and yet we have also seen that the promised Comforter is essentially an internal strengthening given to all believers. These three themes are all summed up in the Lord\'s prayer of John 17. The prayer falls easily into the same three categories; prayer for Himself (:1-5), for the disciples (:6-19) and for all believers (:20-26).</p><p><i>And lifting up his eyes to Heaven, he said</i>- The significance of this is that the Lord has spoken of how the Comforter would enable believers in Him to have the same kind of relationship with the Father which He had enjoyed in His mortal life. And His prayer goes on to emphasize this. The fact He could pray to God in Heaven with no sense of barrier is a profound visual indicator of the totally open nature of that relationship; and His intention is that we share the same relationship with the Father as He did.</p><p>Indeed we must ask why the record of this prayer, the Lord\'s longest recorded prayer, this unique insight into His relationship with the Father, is placed at this point. Why do we not have transcripts of other, earlier prayers to the Father earlier in the account? I suggest it is because it follows on from the Lord\'s promise that through the presence of the Spirit, believers would share His relationship with the Father. And in this prayer, we see something of what that relationship involved.</p><p><i>Father, the hour comes. Glorify Your son, that the son may glorify you</i>- The coming of the predetermined hour for His death did not make the Lord fatalistic, merely submitting to the Father\'s will. Not the hour had come, He prayed to the Father. Our sense of God\'s utter sovereignty should lead to prayer and action, as it did with the Lord; rather than mere resignation to His will. The Lord was lifted up on the cross, and \'lifted up\' is the Hebrew idea for glorification. The Lord saw the whole process of death, resurrection and ascension as glorification; He did not break the process down into chronological segments, for He looked at it from outside time as we know it. It was by or for the glory of the Father that the Lord was raised from the dead (Rom. 6:4), so the glorification process includes both death and resurrection. The purpose of His glorification was for the Father\'s glory, and Paul alludes to this in teaching that the whole process of the Lord\'s humiliation and glorification was &quot;to the glory of God the Father&quot; (Phil. 2:11). The language and concepts simply cannot be fitted in to the Trinitarian paradigm.</p><p>The echoes of Deuteronomy in the Lord&rsquo;s goodbye speeches shouldn&rsquo;t be missed; for Moses at this time truly was a superb type of the Lord Jesus. Deuteronomy concludes with two songs of Moses, one addressed to the Father (Dt. 32), and the other to his people (Dt. 33). It is apparent that the Lord&rsquo;s final prayer in Jn. 17 is divisible into the same divisions- prayer to the Father, and concern for His people. It has been observed that the prayer of Jn. 17 is also almost like a hymn- divided into seven strophes of eight lines each. It would appear to be John&rsquo;s equivalent to the record in Mk. 14:26 of a hymn being sung at the end of the Last Supper.</p><p>The prayer is in some ways an expanded restatement of the model prayer. In it, the Lord asks for the Father&rsquo;s Name to be hallowed or glorified (Jn. 17:1,11,12); for His work or will to be done or finished (Jn. 17:4); for deliverance from the evil one (Jn. 17:15). The prayer of Jn. 17 can be divided into three units of about the same length (Jn. 17:1-8; 9-19; 20-26). Each has the theme of glory, of directly addressing the Father, and of the needs of God&rsquo;s people- all clearly taken from the model prayer.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4035','1','43','17','2','2','<p>17:2 <i>Even as You gave him authority over all flesh, so that he should give eternal life to all whom You have given him</i>- The connection between the universal authority of the Lord and the need to preach it is made in Jn. 17:2,3 AV: &ldquo;Thou hast given him power over all flesh, <i>that</i> he should give eternal life to men... and this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent&rdquo;. The great commission says that because He has power over all flesh, therefore we must preach Him to all flesh (Mt. 28:18,19). Jn. 17:2 says that because He has this power, He can give men eternal life through the knowledge of Him. But that giving of eternal life is through the process of our obedience to the great commission to go out and offer it to all flesh. The extent of our obedience to the preaching commission is the extent to which eternal life is given to men. Their eternal destiny is placed in our hands. The authority to save all men and women has been given to the Lord, but the extent to which this becomes reality depends upon our preaching it. And yet the gift of eternal life cannot be limited to the gift of immortality at the Lord\'s return; for throughout John, the gift of the life eternal is a present experience. The Lord gives us His life, through the gift of His Spirit into our spirit and living. It is this which we offer to &quot;all flesh&quot;, and it shall surely have its issue in the gift of immortality at His return.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4036','1','43','17','3','3','<p>17:3- see on Jn. 10:15; 1 Jn. 1:3.</p><p><i>And this is everlasting life, that they should know You, the only true God, and him whom You sent, Jesus Christ</i>- As noted on :2, the gift of eternal life refers not only to immortality at His return. The meaning of this idea in John is that we can live that eternal life now. And so He defines what it is to life eternal life now- it is a knowing of the Father and Son, using \'knowledge\' in the Hebraic sense of relationship with. The idea is not that if we have true academic, theological knowledge about the Father and Son, we shall get eternal life at the last day as a kind of reward for being so smart. That was the Rabbinic understanding; but the Lord turns it on its head, by saying that the knowledge of Father and Son, the life lived in relationship with them, is a gift, given right now, to those who believe (:2).</p><p>The Lord usually speaks of Himself in the third person- e.g. &ldquo;the son&rdquo;; but here in Jn. 17:3 He refers to Himself in prayer to the Father as &ldquo;Jesus Christ&rdquo;, as if He was consciously aware of how we would later see Him, and aware that His words were being recorded for us.</p><p>He will say to many in the last day that He has never known them, for they never knew Him- for all their pure doctrine and good works. Life eternal is about knowing God and Jesus (Jn. 17:3)- and the Greek word here doesn\'t mean to merely know in an academic sense, but to know intimately and personally in relationship. Only if we <i>really</i> see / perceive the Son will we be saved; &quot;you have seen me and yet believe not&quot; the Lord told the Jews, warning them that only those who see the Son <i>and</i> believe in Him will have eternal life (Jn. 6:36, 40). If we really know the Son then we will likewise know His love and sacrifice is enough to truly grant us the life eternal. If we truly see the Son and believe in Him, then we will know that we (will have) eternal life- because His grace, His love, His desire to save will be so clearly evident to us through the study and knowledge of His personality. If we know Him, we will be sure of our salvation; for we are living now the kind of life which we shall eternally live, the eternal life given right now to believers through the Spirit. We will be humbly confident that in the very, final end- we will be there. There is therefore the factual, doctrinal \'knowledge\' or \'seeing\' which by grace has been granted us. But beyond that there is the true seeing and believing into the Man Jesus, with the definite Hope which that brings. If we <i>truly</i> know Him we will count literally all else as loss (Phil. 3:8). We should not be in the faith, labouring towards the Kingdom, just so that we personally can have eternal life at the end of it. &quot;Eternal life&quot; in John\'s Gospel refers to knowing and understanding God now, rather than simply to infinity (Jn. 17:3; 1 Jn. 5:20).</p><p>The &quot;... know you&quot; is in the continuous tense. It speaks of relationship. It is simply not so that if we attain a set level of knowledge of God and His Son, then we shall be rewarded with immortality at the last day. The \'knowledge\' in view is ongoing, incremental, and therefore refers to a relationship. This point has been sadly missed by those who insist on teaching converts theology about God and Jesus, baptize them once they have attained a level of facility with it which the teacher sets, and then tells them to hold on to those understandings and hope to get immortality for it at the last day. This verse has tragically been misread to support such a view. But it teaches something quite different- to be knowing, in a continuous tense, is a gift from God; and is the definition of the gift of life eternal. That eternal knowing will of course continue eternally, throughout the Kingdom. As God is infinite, it will take eternity to get to know Him. Life eternal both then as now will be all about getting to know God and Jesus. David saw the Kingdom as a time of <i>enquiring</i> after God in His temple (Ps. 27:4). According to Jn. 17:3 and its various Old Testament foundations, to know God is to live for ever. Eternal life is all about knowing His Name. Hos. 6:2,3 LXX puts it like this: &quot;We shall rise from the dead and live in His presence, and have knowledge; we shall press forward to know the Lord&quot;. If we start knowing God now, and press ever forward to know His Name yet more... we have started the essence of the life which we will eternally live. And of course \'knowing the Lord\' involves a personal union with Christ, experience and relationship with Him, of which intellectual knowledge is only a part. For in John\'s Gospel, seeing, knowing and believing are related; &quot;he that has seen me has seen the Father&quot; (Jn. 14:7-9) is paralleled with &quot;If you believe in God, believe in me&quot; (Jn. 14:1). We start the process of knowing the Father\'s Name in this life; and in this sense we embark upon what will be for us by His grace the experience of the eternal life.</p><p>The new covenant promised that all God\'s people would know Him (Jer. 31:34; Heb. 8:11). By baptism into the Lord, that new covenant is made with all believers. The knowledge promised is therefore a gift, part of the covenant promise, the equivalent of the word to Abraham that &quot;I will be their God&quot;, in personal relationship / knowledge with each member of the seed. This promise of knowing God begins to be fulfilled when each believer is given that knowledge / relationship. It is not the case that on the basis of acquired theological knowledge, a believer receives some blessing. Rather is the knowledge of God a gift from Him to us, in the sense of relationship with Him, in which it is more significant to be known by Him rather than to know Him academically.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4037','1','43','17','4','4','<p>17:4 <i>I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You gave me to do</i>- The Lord sees His death and resurrection as His glorification of the Father (:1). And yet He knew that in essence, He had accomplished or finished that work during His mortal life. His final cry &quot;It is finished / accomplished&quot; was of course significant, but the essence of His sacrifice had been made in His personality and life amongst men before that. In 4:34 He spoke of His accomplishing the Father\'s work as still ongoing; and an example of it was in that context the saving of the Samaritan woman. His work was the Father\'s work, which was bringing men to faith and the experience now of eternal life. His life was the pattern for that eternal life, and now His life was at and end, He could say that He had completed that work.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4038','1','43','17','5','5','<p>17:5- see on Jn. 1:14.</p><p><i>And now Father, glorify me with Your own self with the glory which I had with You before the world was</i>-</p><p>The idea of \'apocalypse\' alludes to this Jewish idea of predestined things \'existing\' in Heaven with God; for \'apocalypse\' means literally an unveiling, a revealing of what is in Heaven. In this sense the believer at the resurrection will receive what was already laid up in store for him or her in Heaven (2 Cor. 5:1; Col. 1:5; Mt. 25:34). Because of this, Hebrew can use past tenses to speak of that which is future (e.g. Is. 5:13; 9:2,6,12; 10:28; 28:16; 34:2; Gen. 15:18 cp. Acts 7:5). Things can thus &quot;be&quot; before they are created: &quot;They are and were created&quot; (Rev. 4:11). And thus when the Lord Jesus speaks of the glory which He had with God from the beginning, there is no suggestion there that He therefore existed in glory from the beginning. He didn\'t ask for that glory to be restored to Him, as trinitarianism demands; instead He asked that the glory which He already had in the Divine purpose, be given to Him. Significantly, there is a Greek word which specifically refers to personal, literal pre-existence: <i>pro-uparchon</i>- and it\'s never used about the Lord Jesus.</p><p>To understand this verse, we must enquire what the Bible means when it speaks about &ldquo;glory&rdquo;. The glory of God was revealed to Moses at Sinai- and what he heard was the declaration of God&rsquo;s Name or character, that Yahweh is a God full of grace, mercy, truth, justice, judgment etc. (Ex. 33:19; 34:6,7). Jesus alludes to what happened at Sinai by saying that He has &ldquo;glorified you&hellip; manifested your name&rdquo; (Jn. 17:4,6) before the foundation of the Jewish world, which was at Sinai. Whenever those characteristics of God are recognized, manifested or openly shown, God is glorified. In this sense, God is the &ldquo;God of glory&rdquo; (Ps. 29:3 etc.). He is totally associated with His Name and characteristics- it&rsquo;s not that He just shows those particular attributes to men, but He Himself personally is someone quite different. He <i>is</i> His glory. And this is why Jn. 17:5 parallels His glory with God&rsquo;s very own &ldquo;self&rdquo;.</p><p>That glory of God was of course always with God, right at the beginning. He hasn&rsquo;t changed His essential characteristics over time. The God of the Old Testament is the same God as in the New Testament. As John begins his Gospel by saying in the prologue, the essential &ldquo;Word&rdquo;, <i>logos</i> of God, His essential plans, intentions, personality, was in the beginning with Him. It was &ldquo;made flesh&rdquo; in the person of Jesus (Jn. 1:14), in that the Lord Jesus in His life and especially in His death on the cross revealed all those attributes and plans of God in a concrete, visible form- to perfection.</p><p>The request of Jesus to be glorified is therefore asking for the Name / attributes / characteristics / glory / word of God to be openly revealed in Him. Surely He had in mind His resurrection, and the glorifying of God which would take place as a result of this being preached and believed in world-wide. <br />But in what sense was this the glory which Jesus had with God before the world was? The &ldquo;glory&rdquo; of God was revealed to Moses at Sinai in Ex. 34 as the declaration of His character, at the beginning of the Jewish world. In this sense, the Lord Jesus could speak of having in His mortal life &ldquo;that glory which was with the Father&rdquo; when the Jewish world came into existence at Sinai (Jn. 17:5 Ethiopic and Western Text). It was that same glory which, like Moses, He reflected to men. But according to 2 Cor. 3:18, the very experience of gazing upon the glory of His character will change us into a reflection of it. There is something transforming about the very personality of Jesus. And perhaps this is why we have such a psychological barrier to thinking about Him deeply. We know that it has the power to transform and intrude into our innermost darkness.<br />There is essentially only one glory- the glory of the Son is a reflection or manifestation of the glory of the Father. They may be seen as different glories only in the sense that the same glory is reflected from the Lord Jesus in His unique way; as a son reflects or articulates his father&rsquo;s personality, it&rsquo;s not a mirror personality, but it&rsquo;s the same essence. One star differs from another in glory, but they all reflect the same essential light of glory. The Lord Jesus sought only the glory of the Father (Jn. 7:18). He spoke of God&rsquo;s glory as being the Son&rsquo;s glory (Jn. 11:4). Thus Isaiah&rsquo;s vision of God&rsquo;s glory is interpreted by John as a prophecy of the Son&rsquo;s glory (Jn. 12:41).</p><p>The glory of God is His &ldquo;own self&rdquo;, His own personality and essence. This was with God of course from the ultimate beginning of all, and it was this glory which was manifested in both the death and glorification of the Lord Jesus (Jn. 17:5). The Old Testament title &ldquo;God of glory&rdquo; is applied to the Lord Jesus, &ldquo;the Lord of glory&rdquo; (1 Cor. 2:8; James 2:1). It is <i>God&rsquo;s</i> glory which radiates from the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 4:6). Jesus is the brightness of God&rsquo;s glory, because He is the express image of God&rsquo;s personality (Heb. 1:3). He received glory from God&rsquo;s glory (2 Pet. 1:17). God is the &ldquo;Father of glory&rdquo;, the prime source of the one true glory, that is reflected both in the Lord Jesus and in ourselves (Eph. 1:17). The intimate relation of the Father\'s glory with that of the Son is brought out in Jn. 13:31,32: &quot;Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him; and God shall glorify him in himself, and straightway shall he glorify him&quot;. &nbsp;</p><p>What all this exposition means in practice is this. There is only &ldquo;one glory&rdquo; of God. That glory refers to the essential &ldquo;self&rdquo;, the personality, characteristics, being etc. The Lord Jesus manifested that glory in His mortal life (Jn. 2:11). But He manifests it now that He has been &ldquo;glorified&rdquo;, and will manifest it in the future day of His glory. And the Lord was as in all things a pattern to us. We are bidden follow in His path to glory. We now in our personalities reflect and manifest the one glory of the Father, and our blessed Hope is glory in the future, to be glorified, to be persons who reflect and &lsquo;are&rsquo; that glory in a more intimate and complete sense than we are now, marred as we are by our human dysfunction, sin, and weakness of will against temptation. We now reflect that glory as in a dirty bronze mirror (2 Cor. 3:18). The outline of God&rsquo;s glory in the face of Jesus is only dimly reflected in us. But we are being changed, from glory to glory, the focus getting clearer all the time, until that great day when we meet Him and see Him face to face, with all that shall imply and result in. But my point in this context is that there is only one glory. That glory was with God from the beginning. The Lord Jesus was in the mind and plan of God from the beginning. It was God&rsquo;s original plan to resurrect and glorify and justify His Son. And in Jn. 17:5, the Lord is asking that this will happen.</p><p>The glory which the Lord Jesus had &ldquo;before the world was&rdquo; is connected with the way that He was &ldquo;foreordained before the foundation of the world&rdquo; (1 Pet. 1:20), the way God promised us eternal life (through His Son) before the world was (Tit. 1:2). 2 Tim. 1:9 speaks of us as being called to salvation in Christ &ldquo;before the world began&rdquo;, He &ldquo;chose us in Him before the foundation of the world&rdquo; (Eph. 1:4). In the same way as we didn&rsquo;t personally exist before the world began, neither did Christ. Indeed 1 Cor. 2:7 speaks of <i>us</i> having some form of glory with God &ldquo;before the world began&rdquo;. It&rsquo;s the idea of this &ldquo;one glory&rdquo; again- God&rsquo;s glory existed, and it was His plan to share it with His Son and with us; and He speaks of those things which are not as though they are, so certain are they of fulfilment (Rom. 4:17). In Jn. 17:5, the Lord Jesus is &lsquo;pleading the promise&rsquo; of these things. We have noted that the Lord speaks of His whole process of death, resurrection and ascension as one item- going to the Father, glorification. He doesn\'t break it down into chronological segments, and likewise His talk of glory before is spoken from the Divine perspective, outside the limitations which our kind of time places upon our language.</p><p>We need to remember that the Lord was speaking, and John was writing, against a Jewish background. The language of \'pre-existence\' was common in Jewish thinking and writing. To be \'with God\' didn\'t mean, in Jewish terms, to be up there in heaven with God literally. Mary had favour <i>para</i> God (Lk. 1:30) in the same way as Jesus had glory <i>para</i> God, but this doesn\'t mean she pre-existed or was in Heaven with God with her &quot;favour&quot;. The Torah supposedly pre-existed, everything on earth was a pattern of the pre-existing ideas of those things which were held in the plan and mind of God in Heaven. John 17:5 has reference to these things: &quot;And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed&quot;. The Talmud and Genesis Rabbah speak of the &quot;Throne of Glory&quot; pre-existing before the world existed. And the Lord Jesus seems to be alluding to that. The Jewish mind wouldn\'t have understood the Lord Jesus to be making any claim here to have bodily, physically existed before birth. Peter reflected Jewish thinking when he wrote (albeit under inspiration) that Jesus was &quot;foreknown&quot; before the foundation of the world (1 Pet. 1:20 ESV). Think through the implications of being &quot;foreknown&quot;- the Greek word used is the root of the English word \'prognosis\'. If God \'foreknew\' His Son, the Son was not literally existent next to Him at the time of being \'foreknown\'. Otherwise the language of \'foreknowing\' becomes meaningless. He goes on to say that the faithful were \'God\'s\' (:6), who were given to the Lord. This is another example of speaking of things which were not as though they were.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4039','1','43','17','6','6','<p>17:6 <i>I manifested Your Name to the men whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were and You gave them to me, and they have kept Your word</i>- The manifestation of the Name has echoes of the Angel manifesting the Name to Moses; here, the Lord is as the Angel, and the disciples are likened to Moses, which was a huge challenge to a mindset which considered Moses as the untouchable pinnacle of spirituality. But His manifestation of the Name was far greater than had happened then. We note that &quot;Name&quot; effectively means \'the whole person\', all they stand for, characteristics, history and essence of being. The manifestation of the Name in the person of the Lord was throughout His life, but it would come to an intense climax in His manifestation of it on the cross (:26). It was not made to the Jewish world, but to those who had come out of that world, rather like Moses going out of the congregation of Israel in order to behold the manifestation of the Name to him.</p><p>As noted on :5, the Lord is here speaking to the Father, and as such has His perspective on time and existence. He speaks of the men whom the Father had given Him, as if they had always existed. They were given to Him, just as &quot;the work&quot; was given Him (:4). That &quot;work&quot; was therefore the salvation of those given Him, those foreknown and predestined to that call. The men having been given out of the Jewish world recalls&nbsp;the Levites being &quot;given&quot; to Aaron / the priesthood out of&nbsp;Israel (Num. 3:9; 8:19; 18:6); at the time of the golden calf they &quot;observed your word, and kept your covenant&quot; (Dt. 33:9, cp. &quot;they have kept your word&quot;), as did the disciples. The relationship between Moses and the Levites was therefore that between the Lord and the disciples- a sense of thankfulness that at least a minority were faithful.</p><p>The idea of the manifestation of the Name recalls the prologue\'s statement in Jn. 1:14 that when the word of God was made flesh in the Son of God, we saw the glory of God. If &ldquo;The word&rdquo; which was made flesh is in fact a reference to the Name of God, then this becomes understandable. And so the <i>logos </i>of God, the Name of God, being with Him in the beginning and being Him in a sense, was revealed fully in the human person (&ldquo;flesh&rdquo;) of the Lord Jesus. The Lord said this in so many words: &ldquo;I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me&rdquo; (Jn. 17:6). John surely has this in mind when he comments that the word / Name became flesh, and we saw that glory, but others in &ldquo;the world&rdquo; didn&rsquo;t perceive it (Jn. 1:14).</p><p>&quot;They have kept your word&quot; is the Lord speaking positively to the Father about His followers, just as He does concerning us today. The Lord\'s High Priestly prayer of intercession in John 17 so called because of the way He speaks of \'sanctifying Himself\' reveals how positively He felt about the disciples- even though He knew and foretold that they were about to betray Him, deny Him and leave Him alone in His hour of greatest human need. His grace towards them here is quite profound. He describes them to His Father as those who &quot;have kept your word&quot;- referring to His own parable of the good ground, those who keep the word and bring forth fruit with patience (Lk. 8:15). Again, He tells His Father about them: &quot;They have believed that You did send me&quot; (Jn. 17:8). But He had just upbraided them for their <i>un</i>belief in Him (Jn. 16:31), and would do so again in a few days&rsquo; time (Mk. 16:14). Yet He presents His weak followers to the Father as so much better than they really were; and this is the same Lord who mediates for us today. Likewise, the Lord assures the Father that they were not &quot;of the Jewish world&quot; (Jn. 17:14,16), even though as we have shown in these studies, they were deeply influenced by the Jewish world around them. Perhaps the Lord looked ahead to the day when they would be spiritually stronger, and yet He presents the immature disciples to the Father from the perspective of how He hoped they would one day be. Thus He says that He has already &quot;sent them into the world&quot; (Jn. 17:18)- but this was only done by Him in its fullness <i>after</i> His resurrection. He speaks of how He was glorified in them before the Jewish world (Jn. 17:10)- when He knew Peter was about to deny Him and shame His whole cause and mission. But surely the Lord looked ahead to the hope He had in Peter and all of them, that they would go out into the world and glorify Him. Indeed, the whole prayer of Jn. 17 reveals how the Lord presented them to the Father as men who in many ways they simply were not. When they say &ldquo;We believe&hellip; that you came forth from God&rdquo;, He comments: &ldquo;Do you now believe?&rdquo; and predicts their scattering. Yet in prayer to the Father, He says that they did believe &ldquo;Surely&hellip; that I came out from thee&rdquo; (Jn. 17:8,25). Their faith was anything but &ldquo;sure&rdquo;. Likewise, we have shown above that they failed to really perceive His death, and thus failed to perceive the essence of <i>Him</i>. In the face of this tragedy, this frustration and pain, the Lord could calmly tell the Father: &ldquo;I am glorified <i>in them</i>&rdquo; (Jn. 17:10)- in they who understood so little, indeed who refused to understand. Even worse, the Lord had just been telling them that they didn&rsquo;t really love Him fully (Jn. 14:15,23,28). And yet He speaks to the Father of them as if they are <i>so</i> committed to Him.&nbsp;</p><p>The Lord&rsquo;s comment to the disciples that if they loved him, then they would &lsquo;keep his word&rsquo; (Jn. 14:15,21,23) implies their love was at best imperfect. Their keeping of His word and loving Him was certainly under question in Jn. 15:10. And yet He confidently represents them to the Father as those who had kept His word (Jn. 17:6). Perhaps by this He simply means that they loved Him and thereby the Father, rather than claiming any particular level of obedience for them.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4040','1','43','17','7','7','<p>17:7 <i>Now they know that all things, whatever You have given me, are from You</i>- As noted on :6, there was much they did not know / understand / believe, which is the sense of \'knowing\' in John. The Lord imputed more understanding and faith to them than they really had. The Last Supper discourse showed clearly enough that they didn\'t understand or &quot;know&quot; (Jn. 14:7,9; 16:5,18). Yet here, He uses the perfect tense of the verb \'to know\' when He says &quot;Now they have come to know...&quot; . It\'s almost as if He increasingly imputed things to them which were not yet so, as increasingly He faced up to the reality and implications of His death for them.&nbsp;The disciples didn&rsquo;t &ldquo;know&rdquo; the things the Lord spoke to them about His origin and purpose- they only &ldquo;knew&rdquo; them after the resurrection (Lk. 18:34; Jn. 10:6; 12:16; 13:7). Jn. 14:7,9 is plain: &ldquo;If you had known me&hellip; yet have you not known me&rdquo;, He tells the disciples. And yet He uses just that same Greek word in telling the Father that His men did &ldquo;know&rdquo; Him and His word (Jn. 17:7,8,25). He had faith and hope in their future maturity- they didn&rsquo;t then &ldquo;know&rdquo;, but they did in the future (Jn. 12:16; 13:7). The Lord had hope that &ldquo;In that day you shall know&rdquo; (Jn. 14:20). For there was no absolute guarantee that the eleven would come to &ldquo;know&rdquo; Him and His word, seeing they had freewill- Jesus had faith they would, and He expressed that faith and Hope to the Father so positively.</p><p>The things given the Son were the disciples (:6). Perhaps the sense is that they now realized and believed that they had been given to the Son by the Father, and were therefore \'with\' the Father.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4041','1','43','17','8','8','<p>17:8- see on Jn. 16:27; 17:6.</p><p><i>For the words which You gave me I have given to them, and they received them, and knew as a truth that I came forth from You; and they believed that You did send me</i>- The connection with the prologue is in the way that the Jewish world did not receive the Lord as a person, but the disciples did. &quot;He&quot; as a person is hereby paralleled with His words. <br />The Lord told the Father that He had given the disciples His words, &ldquo;and they have received them&rdquo; (Jn. 17:8). This is evident allusion to the editorial comment in Dt. 33:3 about how all Israel received God&rsquo;s words through Moses. Likewise &ldquo;I manifested thy name&hellip; they have kept thy word&rdquo; (Jn. 17:6,26) = &ldquo;I will proclaim the name of the Lord&hellip; they have observed thy word&rdquo; (Dt. 32:3; 33:9). One marvels at the way the Lord&rsquo;s mind linked together so much Scripture in the artless, seamless way in which He did.</p><p>Their \'receiving\' of the Lord\'s words should not be read as meaning that they reviewed all His recorded speech, as it were the \'red letter\' sections of the New Testament, and accepted them as true or reasonable. The prologue defines the disciples as those who received &quot;Him&quot; (1:12; 13:20). There is a common parallel between Him personally and His words (5:43; 12:48). His words are put for Him as a person, as noted elsewhere. They received not just His spoken words but all His &quot;fullness&quot;, the &quot;testimony&quot; of His person, His spirit (1:16; 3:33; 14:17). They received \'Him\' in the sense of allowing Him into their hearts and lives, allowing Him to fill them and abide in them. This is not quite the same as intellectual acceptance of words spoken as true and reasonable. Hence the same word is used about the receiving of the gift of the Spirit in the innermost being (7:39; 20:22; Acts 1:8; 1 Jn. 2:27).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4042','1','43','17','9','9','<p>17:9- see on 1 Tim. 2:2.</p><p><i>I pray for them. I pray not for the world, but for those whom You have given me; for they are Yours</i>- The disciples were given to the Lord out of the Jewish world, as the Levites were. As the Levites were God\'s (Num. 3:12,13,45; 8:14), so are the believers. The Levites represent us (Dt. 33:9); the relationship between Moses and the Levites represents that between the Lord and us. Moses\' thankfulness that they remained faithful during the golden calf crisis, that sense of being able to rely on them, will be reflected in the Lord\'s feelings toward the faithful. His statement that He prayed not for the Jewish world recalls the command to Jeremiah not to pray for the Jewish world of his day, for they had spurned multiple chances and now had to face judgment.</p><p>The Lord Jesus worked through individuals. His strategy was not so much to win the multitudes for His cause as to firmly found the faith of a few women and 12 men who would then take His message to the world. The men He chose were like us- impulsive, temperamental, easily offended, burdened with all the prejudices of their environment. Their mannerisms were probably awkward and their abilities limited. But He prayed for them, as we should for those converts the Lord grants us, &ldquo;not for the world&rdquo; perhaps, not <i>so much for the world as for</i> those few whom the Father had given Him out of the world. Everything depended upon them, for &ldquo;through their word&rdquo; the world was to believe (Jn. 17:6,9,20). With all the powers of the universe at His command, the Lord could have chosen a programme of mass recruitment. But He didn&rsquo;t. They were to follow Him, so that later they would become fishers of men on a larger scale than He chose then to work on&nbsp;(Mk. 1:17). They would later bear witness because they had been with Him from the beginning (Jn. 15:27). In the few years they were with Him, those men learnt of Him</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4043','1','43','17','10','10','<p>17:10- see on Jn. 17:6.</p><p><i>All things that are mine are Yours, and Yours are mine, and I am glorified in them</i>- His comment that &ldquo;I am glorified in them&rdquo; was evidently said in hope and faith that they would glorify Him- for before His death He &ldquo;was not yet glorified&rdquo; (Jn. 7:39). Indeed, Jn. 12:16 suggests that the disciples only &ldquo;glorified&rdquo; Him after the resurrection, once they remembered and understood His words and actions properly. It was through &ldquo;bearing much fruit&rdquo; that the disciples would glorify Him (Jn. 15:8)- and they evidently hadn&rsquo;t started doing that. Indeed, from when Jesus was arrested in Gethsemane, the Father was indeed glorified in Him- but not through the disciples, who ran away in denial of their Lord (Jn. 12:28; 13:31). And yet the Lord Jesus confidently asserts to His Father, to God Almighty, that He was glorified in the disciples (Jn. 17:10). As noted on :6, we see here how positive He was in prayer to the Father about His followers.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4044','1','43','17','11','11','<p>17:11&nbsp;<i>I am no more in the world; but these are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep them whom You have given me in Your Name, that they may be one, even as we are one</i>- As noted on 14:2,3, the going to the Father meant going to the cross. His presence with the Father meant that the Father would &quot;keep&quot; them just as the Lord had &quot;kept&quot; them whilst physically present with them (:12). This \'keeping\' was and is achieved through the gift of the Spirit, keeping hearts and minds faithful. Those begotten by the Spirit are thereby &quot;kept&quot; from the wicked one and sin generally (1 Jn. 5:18; 2 Thess. 3:3), &quot;preserved s.w. &quot;kept&quot; in Christ&quot; and from falling (Jude 1,24), kept by the Holy Spirit which dwells within us (2 Tim. 1:14). This \'keeping\' is part of a mutual relationship, for often we read of the need to \'keep\' the Lord\'s words.</p><p>There are many points of contact between the Lord as the seed of the woman in the garden of Gethsemane and Eve in the garden of Eden- e.g. &quot;Those whom you gave me&quot; recalls Adam\'s &quot;the woman which Thou gavest Me&quot; (caused me to be sinful in Your sight- as we did to Jesus on the cross in the same garden). Not least there is the contrast between the struggles against temptation which took place in the same garden.</p><p>1 Jn. 3:23 associates believing on the Name with loving each other; and in Jn. 17:11 Christ prays that God will keep us all as one <i>through His own Name</i>. So often God\'s Name is associated with unity. God\'s Name is connected with His being &quot;the Holy <i>One</i>&quot; (Is. 29:23; 47:4; 54:5; 57:15; 60:9; Ez. 39:7). God being the Holy <i>One</i> is a further statement of His unity. Of course, we are speaking of ideal things. False doctrine and practice, the uncertainty of knowing exactly who carries God\'s Name, these and many other limitations of our humanity make it hard to achieve the unity which this theory speaks of. But the unity we do achieve is a foretaste of the Kingdom; unless we <i>love</i> this idea of unity, we will find ourselves out of place in the Kingdom. &quot;In <i>that day</i> there shall be one Lord, and His Name one&quot; (Zech. 14:9). It may well be that Eph. 4:4-6 is alluding back to this verse; this passage inspires us to keep the unity of the Spirit, because here and now &quot;there is one body, and one Spirit... <i>one Lord</i> ...one baptism, one God&quot;; in other words, Paul is saying that the unity of the Kingdom, as spoken of in Zech. 14:9, must be found in the ecclesia of today. See on Jn. 5:23; Mk. 13:32. There are several connections between there being one Name of God- one set of principles with which He identifies Himself- and unity between believers. David bad his people exalt God\'s Name &quot;together&quot;, in unity (Ps. 34:3). The fact that there will be one Lord and His Name one in the future will inspire unity amongst the whole world. By being kept &quot;in the name&quot;, we are made one (Jn. 17:11)- by sharing in and developing that unique set of characteristics that comprise God\'s Name / personality, unity between us is enabled by the love, forgiveness, justice etc. which we will show.</p><p>The account of the tabernacle labours the point that the whole house of God, this huge but delicate structure, was held together by &quot;clasps of brass to couple the tent together, that it might be one&quot; (Ex. 36:18 and often). &quot;That it might be one&quot; is alluded to by the Lord when He prayed for His people, &quot;that they might be one&quot; (Jn. 17:11,21-23). The record of the tabernacle stresses how the system was based around a mass of boards, tenons, curtain couplings etc. God\'s dwelling place, His house, hangs together by millions of inter-personal connections. &quot;Out of church Christians&quot;, in the sense of those who think they can go it alone in splendid isolation, are totally missing the point. We are encouraged to see the allusion by realizing that &ldquo;Holy Father&hellip; righteous Father&rdquo; (Jn. 17:11,25) was a form of address which the Lord had in a sense lifted from Moses when he addresses God as &ldquo;righteous and holy&rdquo; (Dt. 32:4 LXX). &nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4045','1','43','17','12','12','<p>17:12 <i>While I was with them, I kept them in Your Name which You have given me, and I guarded them; and not one of them perished except the son of perdition, so that the scripture might be fulfilled</i>- As noted on :11, the \'keeping\' here refers to spiritual keeping in the Way and in all the things bound up in the Father\'s Name. The Lord had done this whilst physically with them, and now He was leaving them, He asks the Father to continue that keeping. His going to the Father meant the giving of the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, to the believers; and this was and is the means by which we are kept or guarded in the things of the Name. The only one the Lord had not \'kept\' or spiritually preserved was Judas. This of itself shows that the keeping in view is spiritual preservation, a matter of the heart; and this is therefore the arena of operation of the Father\'s keeping, guarding work, performed by the Spirit given into the hearts of believers.</p><p>The Hebraism \'the son of...\' referred to a person having the characteristics of what they were \'the son of\'. Judas acted like a condemned person, and so he was one. The fulfilment of Scripture may not simply refer to specific predictions about Judas the betrayer, such as Ps. 109:8. The upcoming fulfilment of the Old Testament scriptures was to be in the Lord\'s death, and the idea may therefore be that Judas chose to be as he did, but this was used in God\'s wider plan in order to fulfil the Scriptures in the Lord\'s death.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4046','1','43','17','13','13','<p>17:13 <i>Now I come to You; and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy made full in themselves</i>- The Lord was aware that His private prayer was being spoken publicly, out loud, and the disciples were listening and a transcript of it would be read by all generations afterwards. He spoke the prayer so publicly because He wanted them to see what His relationship with the Father was like, and to have that same relationship with the Father. He wanted them to have \'His joy\' in relationship with the Father experienced within them / us. The Lord\'s joy was in our salvation (Mt. 25:21,23), that spiritual being were born into the world of the new creation (16:21) and human repentance (Lk. 15:7). By receiving the spirit of the Lord Jesus, His mindset becomes ours. His joy becomes our joy (15:11). This explains the Lord\'s exhortation to ask in His name so that their joy might be fulfilled (16:24). This doesn\'t simply refer to the joy of receiving a request which has earlier been requested in prayer. The fullness of joy received means having the Lord\'s joy within us; having His Spirit / mind / value set. This means that the thing asked for was the Comforter, the mind of Christ, His Spirit, which included His joy; the mindset which rejoices in the things He rejoices in. And they are the things of human salvation and the glorification of the Father\'s Name.</p><p>The Lord had foreseen most aspects of His death: the handing over, the picking up of the cross, the carrying it, the being lifted up. In Lk. 15:5 the Lord spoke about how He as the good shepherd would carry the lost sheep on His shoulders, <i>rejoicing</i>. It is tempting to connect this with the way Christ spoke of His <i>joy</i> just hours before He was arrested. I am not suggesting there was <i>any</i> joy at all for the Lord in His carrying of the cross- not in the way we understand joy. But perhaps to Him, in His vocabulary, &quot;my joy&quot; meant something else; as for Him, \'eating\' meant not eating food but doing the Father\'s will (Jn. 4:34). Whatever &quot;rejoicing&rdquo;, &quot;my joy&quot; meant for the Lord, He had that sense as He carried the cross on His shoulder.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4047','1','43','17','14','14','<p>17:14 <i>I have given them Your word, and the world hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world</i>- The Lord\'s gift of &quot;Your word&quot; surely doesn\'t mean that He presented them with a copy of the Bible, as it were. &quot;I... give&quot; are words found on the Lord\'s lips in John concerning His gift of the Spirit (4:14), of Himself on the cross as the bread of life (6:51), His glory (:22) and of His &quot;example&quot; in Himself and the person He was (13:26). The gift He gave in the immediate context was of the Comforter (14:16,27). God\'s word was &quot;made flesh&quot; according to the prologue, in the person of Jesus (1:14). Again, as noted earlier in John, &quot;word&quot; refers not simply to the literal Bible, but the expression of all a person is. God\'s &quot;word&quot; to men was in His Son, and the Lord had given Himself to the believers.</p><p>The disciples don\'t record much of the opposition they personally received. But here the Lord tells the Father that the Jewish world &quot;hated&quot; the disciples; in fulfilment of His comment that the Jewish world would &quot;hate&quot; any who testified of its wickedness (7:7). John develops this idea in a pastoral context in saying that it is the world who hates the Lord\'s people, and any who hates his brother in Christ is therefore of the world (1 Jn. 2:9,11; 3:15; 4:20). This all implies that the community of believers to whom John wrote had hatred against their brethren, and this marked them out as being of the Jewish world and not in fact believers at all. And the same powerful logic must be applied to all hatred within the church.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4048','1','43','17','15','15','<p>17:15 <i>I do not pray that You should take them out from the world, but that You should keep them from the evil</i>- The association of &quot;evil&quot; with &quot;the world&quot; is clear. And in John, &quot;the world&quot; usually refers to the Jewish world. Clearly it was Judaism which was the source of &quot;evil&quot; for the early Christians, explaining why it is referred to as the great &quot;satan&quot; / adversary in the later New Testament. It&rsquo;s observable that the Lord Jesus Himself prayed most parts of His model prayer in His own life situations. &ldquo;Your will be done... Deliver us from evil&rdquo; (Mt. 6:13; Lk. 11:4) were repeated by Him in Gethsemane, when He asked for God&rsquo;s will to be done and not His, and yet He prayed that <i>the disciples</i> would be delivered from evil. It is as if He prays the &quot;Lord\'s prayer&quot; for them; &quot;keep them from the evil&quot;, although they should have been praying this for themselves. And there are times when we likewise almost have to pray prayers for others which they ought to be praying themselves.</p><p>The Lord reasoned that by remaining in the world, as He had been in the world, they could be the light of the world. He therefore speaks of the day when they shall be cast out of the synagogues (16:2), which was spoken of by some Rabbis as being cast out of the Jewish world. He wanted them to remain as long as they could, and here He prays that the Father will enable this to happen- that they should not be taken out of the Jewish world. We see here His complete lack of any \'guilt by association\' mentality.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4049','1','43','17','16','16','<p>17:16 <i>They are not of the world even as I am not of the world</i>- He Himself made the point that if His Kingdom- i.e. the people under His Kingship- were of this world, then they would fight for Him (18:36). And that is exactly what they tried to do in Gethsemane They acted then as if they were indeed &ldquo;of this world&rdquo; by trying to fight for Jesus physically. And yet the Lord saw through to their inner spirit, and presented this to the Father as their being actually not of this world. The Lord\'s Heavenly origins, being &quot;not of the world&quot;, are here imputed to His followers. His language of being from above and not from beneath therefore says nothing about any supposed personal pre-existence, or descent from Heaven to earth in some primitively literal sense. For all such language He applies here to His followers too.</p><p>To be &quot;of the world&quot; is later defined in 1 Jn. 2:16: &quot;For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the vain glory of life, is not of the Father but is of the world&quot;. The Jewish world in which John\'s Jewish converts lived, for all its apparent righteousness and sanctimony, was structured around the lusts of the flesh and pride.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4050','1','43','17','17','17','<p>17:17 <i>Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth</i>- The reference is to how the Levites were sanctified (1 Chron. 23:13 Heb.). The Levites were initially consecrated in God\'s eyes by their zeal to rid Israel of apostasy; this is what constituted them Yahweh\'s &quot;holy (sanctified) one&quot; (Dt. 33:8,9). They sanctified themselves to God, and He sanctified them. Through His allusions to this, the Lord was telling the disciples not to be frightened to stand alone from the Israelite community they knew; for it was deeply apostate. So often, the Lord is speaking of the development of a new Israel, with new Rabbis and Levites taken from the ranks of very ordinary and dysfunctional people who had believed in Him.</p><p>The teaching here is complemented and explained by :19: &quot;And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they may also be sanctified in truth&quot;. They were sanctified in Him; because the Lord was supremely sanctified, holy in character, He was fitted for Divine service <i>par excellence</i>. And all that was true of Him was to be true of those in Him, as Paul later develops. They were sanctified because they were in Him, the supremely sanctified One. So &quot;Sanctify them in the truth&quot; is parallel with being sanctified on account of being in Him. &quot;The truth&quot; is therefore a reference to Himself personally, as in 14:6. And that is confirmed by the statement: &quot;Your word is truth&quot;. The prologue is clear that the Divine word was the Lord Jesus personally, made flesh in Him. The &quot;word&quot; of God in His Son refers to all we have seen and known of Him in Christ. That is the ultimate &quot;truth&quot; by which we are to live. It is nothing but shoddy Biblical workmanship which superimposes the words &quot;Your word is truth&quot; over pictures of open Bibles. The Bible is indeed God\'s word and is true. But that is simply not in view here. God\'s word in John is clearly the Lord Jesus personally, who is &quot;the truth&quot;. If the Lord intended us here to understand God\'s word as the Scriptures which comprise the Bible, He surely would have used some other term apart from <i>logos</i>. And how can we be sanctified by a book, even an inspired one? It is simply not so that Bible reading of itself makes us sanctified. Verse 19 is quite clear that we are sanctified through being &quot;in Christ&quot;, on account of <i>His</i> sanctification.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('4051','1','43','17','18','18','<p>17:18 <i>As You sent me into the world, even so I send them into the world</i>- The Son was &ldquo;sanctified and sent into the world&rdquo; (Jn. 10:36). And yet we too are sanctified (Jn. 17:17,19), and likewise sent into the world (Mk. 16:15). The basis of our sanctification is our being in Christ (see on :17,19). The priestly service which is in view in the term \'sanctified\' is therefore that of taking the Gospel to the world. As the Lord was sent into the world, so He sends us into the world Jn. 14:12; 17:18; 20:21 - this is again John&rsquo;s equivalent of the great commission. God sent forth Christ to save the world, and likewise we are sent forth in witness (Gal. 4:4 cp. Mt. 9:38; 22:3; Acts 13:4). As He was sent into the world, so He sent us (Jn. 17:18).</p><p>We note again that the language of sending into the world is applied to us as well as to the Lord. It simply does not mean that He pre-existed and was somehow sent from Heaven down to earth in some metaphysical sense. For that is not how <i>we</i> are sent into the world.</p><p>&quot;The world&quot; in John often refers to the Jewish world. John is presenting the great commission in terms of going into the Jewish world as the Lord was sent into it. Whilst the great commission is universal in scope, we should not miss this initial intention- to go out and bring the Jewish world to faith in the One first sent to them with the Gospel.</p>');
