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<p><em><a href='B:500 15:5'>Joh 15:5</a></em>&nbsp;<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 (<em><a href='B:560 4:16'>Eph 4:16</a></em>). 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&nbsp;<em>all&nbsp;</em>our brethren are no good. There’s a lot of goodness out there- those who give up lands, houses, parents etc. for the Lord’s sake&nbsp;<em>will</em>&nbsp;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. "Severed from me" is as AV "without Me", the same phrase as in Jn. 1:3, "without him", the Word made flesh, the Lord Jesus, "nothing was made / created". The connection is to demonstrate that spiritual fruit is in fact the creation of the Lord Jesus; for He is the vinedresser, on God's behalf. We cannot take a day off work in order to develop our love or our patience, there is no button on our head that we must press in order to change. The new creation, the fruit on the branches, is of His creation- although it requires our openness to His work.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 15:6'>Joh 15:6</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:470 13:6'>Mat 13:6</a></em>; <em><a href='B:730 14:10'>Rev 14:10</a></em>.</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&nbsp;<em>God</em>&nbsp;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 "withered" and would then have to be burnt (s:w. <em><a href='B:470 21:19'>Mat 21:19</a></em>). 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 (<em><a href='B:490 22:31'>Luk 22:31</a></em>).</p><p>But Israel then, as many today, are living out their own condemnation; they will be "thrown out" or s:w. "cast away" at the final judgment (<em><a href='B:470 13:48'>Mat 13:48</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 14:35'>Luk 14:35</a></em>) 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; The last day is the time of breaking off and burning; but Romans 11 says that the Jewish branches have already been broken off, and the Gentiles grafted in. However, Romans 11 speaks of an olive tree, not a fig tree. And a different word for "branch" is used. I suggest that the two teachings are not to be confused. Unless we conclude that Jewish branches were "broken off" ahead of time because they totally refused to be part of the true vine; but fruitless branches who are "in Christ" but fruitless, He works with; and they will only finally be cut off at the last day.  </p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 15:7'>Joh 15:7</a></em> My words- see on <em><a href='B:220 22:27-28'>Job 22:27-28</a></em>.</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 "words" 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 "the word made flesh", as the prologue states (<em><a href='B:500 1:14'>Joh 1:14</a></em>). 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&nbsp;<em>we</em>&nbsp;will, and it will be done. Yet only if we ask according to&nbsp;<em>God’s</em>&nbsp;will can we receive our requests (<em><a href='B:500 15:7'>Joh 15:7</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:690 5:14'>1Jn 5:14</a></em>). 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 (<em><a href='B:690 3:24'>1Jn 3:24</a></em>). 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 “united by faith with them that hear it” (<em><a href='B:650 4:2'>Heb 4:2</a></em> RVmg:). Through the medium of our response to God’s word, our will becomes united with his. Therefore the word was what directed and motivated David’s regular daily prayers (<em><a href='B:230 119:164'>Psa 119:164</a></em>); 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’s word (<em><a href='B:230 119:145'>Psa 119:145</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 119:173'>Psa 119:173</a></em>). He asks God to hear&nbsp;<em>his</em>&nbsp;voice in prayer, using the very same words with which he reflects upon how he heard&nbsp;<em>God’s</em>&nbsp;voice as it is in His written word. He even goes so far as to draw a parallel between God and his own “reins” or inner self- both of them “instruct me” (<em><a href='B:230 16:7'>Psa 16:7</a></em>). His inner self was so absorbed into the reality of God. He asks God to hear&nbsp;<em>his</em>&nbsp;voice in prayer, using the very same words with which he reflects upon how he heard&nbsp;<em>God’s</em>&nbsp;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&nbsp;<em>vice versa</em>. By this I mean that&nbsp;<em>our&nbsp;</em>will can become&nbsp;<em>His</em>&nbsp;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’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’s will.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 15:8'>Joh 15:8</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 12:23-26'>Joh 12:23-26</a></em>.</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 "orphans", 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 "fruit" in view is what Paul later terms "the fruit of the Spirit", 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 (<em><a href='B:500 17:10'>Joh 17:10</a></em>). By beholding and perceiving His glory on the cross, we glorify Him (<em><a href='B:500 17:24'>Joh 17:24</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:10'>Joh 17:10</a></em>). We may be correct to connect the Lord's theme of fruit on the vine with His comment at the last supper, that He would only drink the fruit of the vine with us at His return (Mt. 26:29). The harvest of the vine will therefore be at the Lord's return, even though we bring forth some fruit now; that is the time when Israel as the vine shall fill the face of the earth with fruit. Now, we are being pruned and cleansed towards that final harvest. And the Lord Jesus, presented in the parable of LK. 13 as the vinedresser of His people, will eternally enjoy the results of His labour.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 15:9'>Joh 15:9</a></em>&nbsp;<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 (<em><a href='B:690 3:24'>1Jn 3:24</a></em>); it is through the gift of the Spirit accepted within our hearts that His love is shed abroad within our hearts (<em><a href='B:520 5:5'>Rom 5:5</a></em>). 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 (<em><a href='B:690 3:14'>1Jn 3:14</a></em>). 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. "My love", the love of Christ, is consistently associated with His death. To abide in His love is to abide in a deep impression of the cross, to live always in the shadow of His death there for me, with all the certainty of salvation which this brings. "Abiding" is a major theme of John. It is his code for 'being a Christian'. The imagery of abiding in the vine, in contrast to Judas who went out into the darkness, suggests that believers are not "in" with the Lord Jesus for a few minutes and then "out" during sin, and then back "in" after repentance. The idea of "abiding" reflects how the Lord sees the overall spirit of a man's life; rather like the records of the kings of Judah give God's overall judgment of them as obedient or disobedient, and then we read their biographies- which feature many ups and downs of faith in the shorter term. For a branch doesn't drop on and off a vine, it remains part of it. Paul expresses the same idea in speaking of how we are brethren "in Christ", parts of His body. The Old Testament has the equivalent in the idea of being "in" or "out" of covenant relationship with Yahweh, also expressed in terms of being married to Him, or being within the Divine family. Membership in a family doesn't speak of being red hot enthusiastic about each other all the time; rather does the metaphor speak of abiding relationship and permanent identity. "Abiding" is therefore speaking of relationship. All this is one of the things symbolized in the bread and wine of the communion service; we thereby act out our abiding in Jesus and His abiding in us: "He that eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him" (Jn. 6:56). We are helped in achieving this experience of 'abiding' through the gift of the Spirit. The Lord spoke of how He was 'abiding' with them [AV "being yet present with you", Jn. 14:25], but His 'abiding' in the sense of His presence would be just as real for all believers through the Spirit. "Hereby we know that He abides in us, by the Spirit which He has given us" (1 Jn. 3:24; 4:13). Paul expresses this in terms of "Christ dwelling in" human hearts (Rom. 8:9,10; 2 Cor. 13:5; Eph. 3:17; Col. 1:27). But we are to dwell in Him, to abide in Him as He abides in us.    </p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 15:10'>Joh 15:10</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 17:6'>Joh 17:6</a></em>.</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 "commandments" 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. The idea is not that the Lord's love is conditional, waiting only for those who obey a long list of commandments. 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). 1 Jn. 2:10 says as much: "He that loves his brother abides...". "If we love one another, God abides in us" (1 Jn. 4:12).  "His commandments" and "the [singular] commandment" 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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 15:11'>Joh 15:11</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:690 1:4'>1Jn 1:4</a></em>.</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 "joy" 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.  Although as He spoke these words facing His death, His "joy" was hardly of a frivolous type, as the world thinks of "joy". As with "love", the Lord in His farewell discourses radically redefines love, joy and peace. He wished to give His spirit to us, so that His spirit might become ours; and thereby His joy would be within us. His "joy" 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 "no greater joy" (3 Jn. 4).

The language here in Jn. 15:11,14 speaks of the disciples as friends, who can now have fullness of joy. It clearly alludes to the earlier account of John the Baptist, "the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice; therefore this joy of mine is now full" (Jn. 3:29). Here we have further evidence that the disciples' coming to Jesus was thanks to John's work; many of them would have been John's followers. So the Lord is rejoicing that John's ministry had not been in vain.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 15:12'>Joh 15:12</a></em>&nbsp;<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 "commandments", plural. This in one 'word' is the essence of His message, His<em>&nbsp;logos</em>&nbsp;to men. We are to love each in on ongoing way, as Christ loved us in His death in that once-off act (<em><a href='B:500 15:12'>Joh 15:12</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 15:17'>Joh 15:17</a></em>). The combination of the present and aorist tenses of&nbsp;<em>agapan</em>&nbsp;‘to love’ in these verses proves the point. Thus our obedience&nbsp;<em>to</em>&nbsp;Christ in loving each other is exemplified by the obedience&nbsp;<em>of</em>&nbsp;Christ (:10). Quite simply, something done 2000 years ago really does affect us&nbsp;<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. “By his knowledge", by knowing Christ as He was there, we are made righteous (<em><a href='B:290 53:11'>Isa 53:11</a></em>). As Israel stood before Moses, they promised: “All the words which the Lord has spoken will we do". When Moses then sprinkled the blood of the covenant upon them- and this incident is quoted in Hebrews as prophetic of the Lord’s blood- they said the same but more strongly: “All the words which the Lord hath spoken will we do&nbsp;<em>and be obedient</em>" (<em><a href='B:20 24:3'>Exo 24:3</a></em>; <em><a href='B:20 24:7'>Exo 24:7</a></em>). It was as if their connection with the blood inspired obedience. Likewise the communication of God’s requirements was made from over the blood sprinkled mercy seat (<em><a href='B:20 25:22'>Exo 25:22</a></em>)- another foretaste of the blood of Christ. Quite simply, we can’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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 15:13'>Joh 15:13</a></em>&nbsp;<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 (<em><a href='B:520 5:8'>Rom 5:8</a></em>); He took the initiative in loving us through the death of the cross (<em><a href='B:690 4:10'>1Jn 4:10</a></em>; <em><a href='B:690 4:19'>1Jn 4:19</a></em>). We only love, because He first loved us. As noted on <em><a href='B:500 10:11'>Joh 10:11</a></em>, 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 "greater love" was in that He died for us whilst we were not actually His friends but enemies (<em><a href='B:520 5:10'>Rom 5:10</a></em> "when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son"). He&nbsp;<em>called us</em>&nbsp;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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 15:14'>Joh 15:14</a></em>&nbsp;<em>You are my friends, if you do the things which I command you</em>- For "friends", 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&nbsp;<em>first</em>&nbsp;loved us (<em><a href='B:690 4:19'>1Jn 4:19</a></em>); it was not that we loved God, but that He loved us in giving His Son (<em><a href='B:690 4:10'>1Jn 4:10</a></em>). The Lord has died for us, showing us that "no greater love" (: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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 15:15'>Joh 15:15</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 16:12'>Joh 16:12</a></em>.</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>- The servant simply does what he is told, without any particular insight into what the master does in the rest of his life, what his private life and thought is like. There are many allusions to the Rabbi-disciple relationship in the Lord's final words to the disciples, and here the allusion is to how disciples were servants of the rabbi. They were to be obedient to him, and to just obey his teaching- without 'knowing that he does'. That is the path of religion. But the Lord offers relationship, His word of teaching became flesh in Him, sharing with His servants what He really thinks, what His longer term agenda is, and who He really is. This is the path of spirituality and personal relationship. Professional distance between master and servant has been collapsed, although we are still His servants. But we are servants who are also His friends. And that friendship was not going to be on the basis of occasional contact; He was going away but would come again to His friends by living within them 24/7 through the gift of His Spirit- a friendship with an intimacy like no other.</p><p>As noted on :13, the uniquely "greater love" shown by the Lord was that He died for us when we were still enemies (<em><a href='B:520 5:10'>Rom 5:10</a></em>); but He&nbsp;<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 "no longer" 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 <em><a href='B:500 16:13'>Joh 16:13</a></em>, 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 (<em><a href='B:500 16:25'>Joh 16:25</a></em>). 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 (<em><a href='B:560 1:18'>Eph 1:18</a></em>; <em><a href='B:560 3:18-19'>Eph 3:18-19</a></em>). 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 "friend", He showed Abraham what He was going to do (<em><a href='B:10 18:17-19'>Gen 18:17-19</a></em>). But the things to be done here refer to the cross (see on <em><a href='B:500 16:13'>Joh 16:13</a></em>). To the Lord’s first hearers, a slave was defined by his or her obedience to the master’s commands. The Lord says that His followers are His friends, who do His commandments- but they’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’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 <em><a href='B:500 10:28'>Joh 10:28</a></em>.</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 (<em><a href='B:500 13:13'>Joh 13:13</a></em>). Earlier, He had rebuked them for calling Him “Lord” but not&nbsp;<em>doing</em>&nbsp;what He said (<em><a href='B:490 6:46'>Luk 6:46</a></em> - this is in a speech directed at the disciples- <em><a href='B:490 6:20'>Luk 6:20</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 6:27'>Luk 6:27</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 6:40'>Luk 6:40</a></em>). And yet He told others that His disciples&nbsp;<em>did</em>&nbsp;His word (<em><a href='B:490 8:21'>Luk 8:21</a></em>). He was so positive about them to others, even though they did not&nbsp;<em>do</em>&nbsp;the consequences of calling Him Lord e.g. washing each other’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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 15:16'>Joh 15:16</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:480 4:8'>Mar 4:8</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 14:12'>Joh 14:12</a></em>.</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 <em><a href='B:690 4:10'>1Jn 4:10</a></em>; <em><a href='B:690 4:19'>1Jn 4:19</a></em> - it is not that we loved God and He responded, but He loved us. It is not so much that we knew God, but that He knew us. It is not that 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. “You did not choose me, but I chose you… out of the world” (:16,19) corresponds to the oft repeated theme of Moses that God has chosen Israel “out of all peoples” (Dt. 7:6 RVmg.), by grace (Dt. 4:37; 10:15; 14:2). For as Israel were the failed vine, so we in Christ are the new vine which will be fruitful.</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&nbsp;<em>can't</em>&nbsp;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 (<em><a href='B:500 15:16'>Joh 15:16</a></em>). 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 "and" in Mark 15 A:V:)... that principle that&nbsp;<em>nothing else matters</em>&nbsp;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&nbsp;<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. "What does this mean? He tells us..." (<em><a href='B:500 16:17'>Joh 16:17</a></em>) 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&nbsp;<em>He&nbsp;</em>chose&nbsp;<em>them&nbsp;</em>to be His disciples (especially <em><a href='B:500 15:16-19'>Joh 15:16-19</a></em>)- whereas in Judaism, it was always disciples who chose a Rabbi: "Jesus chose the disciples, but the students of the rabbis almost always chose a teacher". 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: "You do not even need that a person ask you questions" (<em><a href='B:500 16:30'>Joh 16:30</a></em>). 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 “ordained Gk:&nbsp;<em>etheka</em>&nbsp;you”. C:K. Barrett shows that&nbsp;<em>etheka</em>&nbsp;reflects the Hebrew&nbsp;<em>samak</em>, and that the Lord’s phrase alludes to the ordination of a disciple as a Rabbi. Those guys must’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… were being ordained as Rabbis, by a man who’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…&nbsp;</p><p>“I have chosen you, and ordained you, that you should&nbsp;<em>go forth</em>&nbsp;and bring forth fruit... that whatsoever you shall ask of the&nbsp;<em>Father&nbsp;</em>in&nbsp;<em>my name</em>, he may give it you" is full of connection with the world-wide preaching commission; and in this context,&nbsp;<em>whatever</em>&nbsp;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 (<em><a href='B:710 1:4'>3Jn 1:4</a></em>). This is the branch and fruit abiding in the vine. In a more general sense, the fruit remains, in that all spiritual fruit abides eternally. This is another way of saying that we now live the eternal life, the kind of life which we shall eternally live. Righteousness, e.g. support of the poor, "abides for ever" (s.w. 2 Cor. 9:9). A man's works for the Lord "abide" even after judgment day (1 Cor. 3:14 "If any man's work abide which he has built thereon..."). Truly only what is done for Christ will last.   </p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 15:17'>Joh 15:17</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:560 1:5'>Eph 1:5</a></em>.</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 "things" 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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 15:18'>Joh 15:18</a></em>&nbsp;<em>If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you</em>- The "if..." 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 "if..." 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 (<em><a href='B:500 7:7'>Joh 7:7</a></em>). 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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 15:19'>Joh 15:19</a></em>&nbsp;<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 "out of" 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 (<em><a href='B:500 7:7'>Joh 7:7</a></em>). 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 John 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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 15:20'>Joh 15:20</a></em>&nbsp;<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 "my word" 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 (<em><a href='B:500 8:51-52'>Joh 8:51-52</a></em>), and the Father and Son making their dwelling in the heart of the hearer (<em><a href='B:500 14:23'>Joh 14:23</a></em>); this is the profound message we have for men:&nbsp;</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 15:21'>Joh 15:21</a></em>&nbsp;<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 (<em><a href='B:710 1:7'>3Jn 1:7</a></em>). Throughout this section, the Lord is speaking about the need to follow the great commission and preach forgiveness and repentance in His name (<em><a href='B:490 24:47'>Luk 24:47</a></em>). 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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 15:22'>Joh 15:22</a></em>&nbsp;<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 "excuse" about the Jewish leadership making a "pretence" of spirituality (<em><a href='B:470 23:14'>Mat 23:14</a></em>; <em><a href='B:480 12:40'>Mar 12:40</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 20:47'>Luk 20:47</a></em>). And this is John's version of that. He states specifically what the synoptic writers do not- that the "pretence" of external religion was in fact to cloak AV or hide their sin. The synoptics state that for a "pretence" 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 "sin". 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 (<em><a href='B:500 7:7'>Joh 7:7</a></em>) 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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 15:23'>Joh 15:23</a></em>&nbsp;<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 John 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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 15:24'>Joh 15:24</a></em>&nbsp;<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 "spoken" to them that they "had sin". His spoken words were paralleled with the works He did amongst them. As John especially makes clear, all those miracles were "signs", were a word to men. This confirms our earlier suggestion that the references to "my words" 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 "works" 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 (<em><a href='B:500 6:36'>Joh 6:36</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 9:41'>Joh 9:41</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 15:24'>Joh 15:24</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:500 14:7'>Joh 14:7</a></em>).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 15:25'>Joh 15:25</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:530 11:20'>1Co 11:20</a></em>.</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>- "Their law" 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. “They hated me without a cause" (<em><a href='B:230 35:19'>Psa 35:19</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 69:4'>Psa 69:4</a></em>) surely refers to their crucifixion of Him “without a cause" as reflected in the collapse of the legal case against Him. Their own law "their law" 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’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 "in Him", 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 "know Him", and Him in His time of crucifixion. And if we thus suffer with Him, we shall also live with Him, eternally.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 15:26'>Joh 15:26</a></em>&nbsp;<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, "And..." or "But...", 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&nbsp;<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&nbsp;<em>parakletos</em>&nbsp;/ 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 "testimony" 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: “Our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with much assurance”. The “assurance”, 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 <em><a href='B:530 2:3-5'>1Co 2:3-5</a></em>: “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”. &nbsp;</p><p>"He shall testify of me" 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 "Spirit" 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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 15:27'>Joh 15:27</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And you also shall testify, because you have been with me from the beginning</em>- This was exemplified in <em><a href='B:510 4:13'>Act 4:13</a></em>, where it was apparent from the nature of the disciples’ preaching that they “had been with Jesus”. 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’t... do we know Him, have we “been with” Him…?</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:1'>Joh 16:1</a></em>&nbsp;<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 "to prevent your faith from being shaken" or, literally, 'scandalized' (<em><a href='B:500 16:1'>Joh 16:1</a></em>). And yet He uses the same word to predict how "This night you will all be scandalized because of me" (<em><a href='B:470 26:31'>Mat 26:31</a></em>). 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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:2'>Joh 16:2</a></em>&nbsp;<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 (<em><a href='B:500 2:4'>Joh 2:4</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 7:30'>Joh 7:30</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 8:20-21'>Joh 8:20-21</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 12:23'>Joh 12:23</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 12:27'>Joh 12:27</a></em>). 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 (<em><a href='B:500 16:1-2'>Joh 16:1-2</a></em>). 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 ‘keeping the truth pure’, ‘doing the right thing’- but the Lord will judge the effect we had upon another’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&nbsp;<em>about</em>&nbsp;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 (<em><a href='B:500 9:22'>Joh 9:22</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 12:42'>Joh 12:42</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 16:2'>Joh 16:2</a></em>) and inventing many slanderous stories about Jesus, it was inevitable that those without a solid Biblical grounding in their faith would&nbsp;<em>react</em>&nbsp;rather than&nbsp;<em>Biblically respond&nbsp;</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 (<em><a href='B:500 16:2'>Joh 16:2</a></em>), turning the breaking of bread service into a drunken orgy (<em><a href='B:530 11:21'>1Co 11:21</a></em>), and turning prostitution within the ecclesia into a spiritual act (<em><a href='B:730 2:20'>Rev 2:20</a></em>). 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 (<em><a href='B:510 3:1'>Act 3:1</a></em>). Early ecclesial meetings were based upon the synagogue system (<em><a href='B:660 2:2'>Jas 2:2</a></em>). The Lord didn’t tell them to leave because they might catch some ‘guilt by association’. He knew that if they forthrightly preached the Truth, they would be excommunicated: “the time will come when they will expel you from their synagogues”, 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 (<em><a href='B:500 15:18-21'>Joh 15:18-21</a></em>). 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’s command in <em><a href='B:530 11:14'>1Co 11:14</a></em> that brethren do&nbsp;<em>not</em>&nbsp;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&nbsp;<em>had</em>&nbsp;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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:3'>Joh 16:3</a></em>&nbsp;<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 (<em><a href='B:510 13:27-28'>Act 13:27-28</a></em>). 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 (<em><a href='B:500 15:21'>Joh 15:21</a></em>). And yet on another level they&nbsp;<em>did&nbsp;</em>know the Son and Father, especially when they saw His death (<em><a href='B:500 8:28'>Joh 8:28</a></em>). Even the Centurion was convinced that "truly, this was the Son of God". And even before that, "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" (<em><a href='B:500 7:28'>Joh 7:28</a></em>). They knew, but chose not to know. And this was the psychological cause of their extreme anger.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:4'>Joh 16:4</a></em>&nbsp;<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 "things" 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 (<em><a href='B:500 17:12'>Joh 17:12</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 18:9'>Joh 18:9</a></em>). 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. "The time / hour comes" 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>&nbsp;their</em>&nbsp;sufferings, extending the idea that His Spirit<em>,&nbsp;</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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:5'>Joh 16:5</a></em>&nbsp;<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 <em><a href='B:500 13:36-38'>Joh 13:36-38</a></em>). 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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:6'>Joh 16:6</a></em>&nbsp;<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’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 (<em><a href='B:500 16:6'>Joh 16:6</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 16:20-22'>Joh 16:20-22</a></em>). In the analogy, the travailing woman is the disciples, and the new born child is the resurrected Jesus. For “then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord”. Their ‘sorrow’ 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 (<em><a href='B:500 16:6'>Joh 16:6</a></em>). Yet the Lord saw that deep underneath that sorrow, even though they didn’t perceive it themselves, they were actually yearning for His resurrection. This helps explain the slight mismatch in the metaphor; for "sorrow" 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 “ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full”, having just defined their future joy as the joy of seeing Him risen from the dead (<em><a href='B:500 16:24'>Joh 16:24</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 16:22'>Joh 16:22</a></em>). 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&nbsp;<em>would</em>&nbsp;have that joy which would come from asking to see Him risen from the dead. They didn’t ask for this, but they would still have the joy. Why? Because He perceived them to have ‘asked’ for what they didn’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’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 (<em><a href='B:290 37:22'>Isa 37:22</a></em>). And this Lord is our Lord today, interpreting our innermost, unarticulated desires as prayers to the Father (<em><a href='B:520 8:26-27'>Rom 8:26-27</a></em>). &nbsp;</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:7'>Joh 16:7</a></em>&nbsp;<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>- "It is expedient" is the very phrase used by Caiaphas in saying that it was expedient that the Lord die (<em><a href='B:500 11:50'>Joh 11:50</a></em>). 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>"I will send him to you" 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 <em><a href='B:500 8:29'>Joh 8:29</a></em> that "He that sent me is with me; the Father has not left me alone". 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 <em><a href='B:500 8:29'>Joh 8:29</a></em>, "not left alone... with me" 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 <em><a href='B:470 28:20'>Mat 28:20</a></em> comforts us that "I am with you always"; 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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:8'>Joh 16:8</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And he, when he comes, will convict the world in respect of sin and of righteousness and of judgment-&nbsp;</em>Just as the Lord convicted the world of sin (<em><a href='B:500 7:7'>Joh 7:7</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 15:22'>Joh 15:22</a></em>), 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 (<em><a href='B:500 15:26-27'>Joh 15:26-27</a></em>). The legal dimension to the word&nbsp;<em>parakletos</em>&nbsp;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 <em><a href='B:500 15:22'>Joh 15:22</a></em>.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:9'>Joh 16:9</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Of sin, because they do not believe in me-&nbsp;</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 <em><a href='B:500 15:22'>Joh 15:22</a></em>, 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 (<em><a href='B:500 15:22'>Joh 15:22</a></em>), and touches hearts.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:10'>Joh 16:10</a></em>&nbsp;<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 <em><a href='B:290 64:5'>Isa 64:5</a></em> 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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:11'>Joh 16:11</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Of judgment, because the prince of this world has been judged</em>- Just as "righteousness" 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 (<em><a href='B:500 7:24'>Joh 7:24</a></em>), 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>"The prince of this world" (sin, the devil?) was judged by the victory of the cross (<em><a href='B:500 16:11'>Joh 16:11</a></em>). 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&nbsp;<em>our</em>&nbsp;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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:12'>Joh 16:12</a></em>&nbsp;<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 (<em><a href='B:500 15:15'>Joh 15:15</a></em>); 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 (<em><a href='B:500 16:12'>Joh 16:12</a></em>). 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 <em><a href='B:500 1:14'>Joh 1:14</a></em> may be specifically referring to in speaking of how John himself beheld the glory of the word being made flesh.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:13'>Joh 16:13</a></em> -see on <em><a href='B:690 4:1'>1Jn 4:1</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 14:12'>Joh 14:12</a></em>.</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>"The Spirit of truth" is in reality "the spirit of Christ", making His presence near and real just as if He were literally with us. So "the truth" is again a reference to the Lord Jesus personally, the truth of Him who is "the truth", rather than a reference to the academic 'truth' of a particular set of theology. "All truth" would be going far too far if it refers to intellectual truth, for nobody could ever claim to have "all truth" in that sense. It makes little sense to talk of being "in" truth in the sense of theological truth. The language is far more appropriate to a person, the Lord Jesus.</p><p>"Guide" is the language of a Rabbi teaching or guiding his disciples by teaching (s:w. <em><a href='B:470 15:14'>Mat 15:14</a></em>; <em><a href='B:470 23:16'>Mat 23:16</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 6:39'>Luk 6:39</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 8:31'>Act 8:31</a></em>; <em><a href='B:520 2:19'>Rom 2:19</a></em>). The disciples were concerned that their Rabbi was leaving them and they would be without a teacher (see on <em><a href='B:500 14:18'>Joh 14:18</a></em>). The Lord is assuring them that His teaching presence would continue amongst them through the presence of the Spirit, the Comforter.</p><p>"He shall not speak from himself" recalls the Lord's claims that "I speak not from myself", but from what He heard from the Father (<em><a href='B:500 7:17'>Joh 7:17</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 8:28'>Joh 8:28</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 12:49'>Joh 12:49</a></em>). 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 "to come", 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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:14'>Joh 16:14</a></em>&nbsp;<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). "What is mine" 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 <em><a href='B:500 16:25'>Joh 16:25</a></em> 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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:15'>Joh 16:15</a></em>&nbsp;<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 "all things" 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&nbsp;<em>logos</em>&nbsp;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 "all things" to the Father; and the things of the Son, and thereby the "all things" of the Father, were to be declared to the believers by the Spirit.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:16'>Joh 16:16</a></em>&nbsp;<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 "little while" refers to the time remaining until His death (<em><a href='B:500 7:33'>Joh 7:33</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 13:33'>Joh 13:33</a></em>). The second "little while" 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 '"I go to the Father" refers elsewhere in John. The second "little while" 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’t refer to physically seeing Him, but rather to understanding and believing in Him (<em><a href='B:500 1:14'>Joh 1:14</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 1:29'>Joh 1:29</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 1:36'>Joh 1:36</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 1:50'>Joh 1:50</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 6:40'>Joh 6:40</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 12:21'>Joh 12:21</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 14:9'>Joh 14:9</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 14:19'>Joh 14:19</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:24'>Joh 17:24</a></em> etc:). The Lord surely meant: ‘Soon, you will no longer see / understand / believe me… but, in the end, you&nbsp;<em>will</em>&nbsp;understand / believe in me’. And John, the author or speaker of this Gospel record, was one of those being referred to. So he, and all the disciples, would’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>"If I go… 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" (<em><a href='B:500 14:3'>Joh 14:3</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 16:16'>Joh 16:16</a></em>). 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’s enigmatic words of <em><a href='B:500 16:16'>Joh 16:16</a></em> indicate just&nbsp;<em>how</em>&nbsp;close the Comforter was to make Him come to His people once He was in Heaven: “Yet a little while, and ye shall not see me&nbsp;<em>theoreo</em>, to physically see: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me&nbsp;<em>horai</em>, to know or understand, to spiritually 'see', because I go to the Father”. It could be argued,<em>&nbsp;contra</em>&nbsp;my position just stated, that the “little while” in each clause is one and the same. In “a little while” 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 ‘see’ Him in the sense that John usually speaks of in his Gospel. This ‘seeing’ of Jesus, this perception of Him, is effectively a ‘seeing’ of the Father.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:17'>Joh 16:17</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 15:16-19'>Joh 15:16-19</a></em>.</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 "little while".</p><p>There are two different words for "see" 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><p>The "little while" refers equally to the few hours to His death, the few days until they saw Him resurrected, and likewise a few days until His return when they and all His people would see Him. A few hours, a few days or a few millennia of years are all the same just a short moment, these periods are all called a "little while"; to teach us that there is no real difference between them in the context of eternity.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:18'>Joh 16:18</a></em>&nbsp;<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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:19'>Joh 16:19</a></em>&nbsp;<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&nbsp;<em>among themselves</em>&nbsp;for the answer to the paradox, rather than asking&nbsp;<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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:20'>Joh 16:20</a></em>&nbsp;<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 "a little while" 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 "sorrow" 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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:21'>Joh 16:21</a></em>&nbsp;<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 "remember" 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 <em><a href='B:290 26:16-21'>Isa 26:16-21</a></em> where we meet the ideas of a "little while", 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 "in pain as of a woman that travaileth" (<em><a href='B:290 13:8'>Isa 13:8</a></em>):&nbsp; Yet the faithful just before His coming would also be like a woman in travail (<em><a href='B:590 5:3'>1Th 5:3</a></em>), 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 (<em><a href='B:500 16:21'>Joh 16:21</a></em>). 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 <em><a href='B:290 65:23'>Isa 65:23</a></em>). 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: "The uncircumcised un-cut off man…shall be cut off" (<em><a href='B:10 17:14'>Gen 17:14</a></em>). See on <em><a href='B:470 3:11'>Mat 3:11</a></em>.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:22'>Joh 16:22</a></em>&nbsp;<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 (<em><a href='B:500 20:20'>Joh 20:20</a></em>). 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. "Your heart shall rejoice" is a direct quotation from <em><a href='B:290 66:14'>Isa 66:14</a></em> 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>"I will see you again" reads strangely; we would rather expect "You will see me again, so don't be sad". He sees us again, in that He comes to us. And He knows / sees us, as well as us seeing / knowing Him. <em><a href='B:550 4:9'>Gal 4:9</a></em> 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 (<em><a href='B:500 15:19'>Joh 15:19</a></em>).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:23'>Joh 16:23</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And in that day, you shall ask me no questions-&nbsp;</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 "that day" is a phrase commonly used to refer to the last day (<em><a href='B:620 1:12'>2Ti 1:12</a></em>; <em><a href='B:620 1:18'>2Ti 1:18</a></em> etc:). "That day" in essence comes to all who receive the Comforter, and thereby have the Lord's permanent presence. In <em><a href='B:690 2:18'>1Jn 2:18</a></em> 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>"Ask me no questions" can be translated "ask me nothing". 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 "in my name", 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 (<em><a href='B:690 2:20'>1Jn 2:20</a></em>). 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 (<em><a href='B:500 15:14-15'>Joh 15:14-15</a></em>), 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&nbsp;<em>His</em>&nbsp;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 (<em><a href='B:470 22:46'>Mat 22:46</a></em>). 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. "In my name" 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 (<em><a href='B:520 8:34'>Rom 8:34</a></em>; <em><a href='B:650 7:25'>Heb 7:25</a></em>), 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, "and Yahweh did according to the word of Moses" (<em><a href='B:20 8:12-13'>Exo 8:12-13</a></em>); 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 (<em><a href='B:500 16:23'>Joh 16:23</a></em>). 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. "Thou shalt also decree a thing (in prayer) and it shall be established unto thee" (<em><a href='B:220 22:28'>Job 22:28</a></em>). <em><a href='B:730 9:13'>Rev 9:13</a></em> portrays prayer as a command to the Angels. The prayer of command is to be found in the well known words of Psalms 122. “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem”, David exhorts. And the response made so much clearer when the Psalm is sung: “Peace be within thy walls… I will now say, Peace be within thee” (<em><a href='B:230 122:6-8'>Psa 122:6-8</a></em>). The way peace is ‘commanded’ 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 <em><a href='B:500 16:23'>Joh 16:23</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 16:26'>Joh 16:26</a></em>. “In that day of marvelling in the resurrected Lord, ye shall ask me nothing… if ye shall ask anything of the Father, he will give it you RV… in that day you shall ask in my name…”. What are we to make of all this talk of asking and not asking, in the ‘day’ 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 ‘perks’ in this life; and yet, wonder of wonders,&nbsp;<em>if</em>&nbsp;we shall ask, in His Name, we will receive. But we must ask whether the implications and wonder of the fact of the Lord’s resurrection have had such an effect upon us…?</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:24'>Joh 16:24</a></em>&nbsp;<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 (<em><a href='B:500 15:11'>Joh 15:11</a></em>). The Lord's joy was in our salvation (<em><a href='B:470 25:21'>Mat 25:21</a></em>; <em><a href='B:470 25:23'>Mat 25:23</a></em>), that spiritual being were born into the world of the new creation (<em><a href='B:500 16:21'>Joh 16:21</a></em>) and human repentance (<em><a href='B:490 15:7'>Luk 15:7</a></em>). 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 <em><a href='B:500 17:13'>Joh 17:13</a></em>.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:25'>Joh 16:25</a></em>&nbsp;<em>These things have I spoken to you in figurative language-&nbsp;</em>This explains why the Lord did not directly answer their question concerning what He meant by "a little while"; 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: “I shall shew you plainly of the Father" (<em><a href='B:500 16:25'>Joh 16:25</a></em>). See on <em><a href='B:500 19:19'>Joh 19:19</a></em>.</p><p>John’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. <em><a href='B:290 64:1-4'>Isa 64:1-4</a></em> had foretold: “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". This latter verse is quoted in 1 Corinthians 2 about how the “foolishness" 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 <em><a href='B:500 2:4'>Joh 2:4</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 4:21-23'>Joh 4:21-23</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 5:25-29'>Joh 5:25-29</a></em>, the hour that was to come is a reference to the cross. There, we see and hear the preaching / word of ‘which is’, Gk. the cross. There on the cross, there was no allegory. There we were shown plainly the Father. He went on: “Behold, the hour s:w. “time" 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" (<em><a href='B:500 16:32'>Joh 16:32</a></em>). 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 “the word was with God", with specific reference to the cross. Philip had just asked to be shown the Father, just as Moses had asked (<em><a href='B:500 14:9-10'>Joh 14:9-10</a></em>). And the Lord is saying that in the cross, they will see plainly of the Father. And perhaps therefore we are to understand <em><a href='B:500 17:24'>Joh 17:24</a></em> as meaning that Jesus prayed that the disciples would physically see and spiritually understand His cross: “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". “I am", “my glory", given by the Father, and the lamb slain from “the foundation of the world"... 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 (<em><a href='B:500 16:25'>Joh 16:25</a></em>)- when He had earlier spoken to the Jewish world in parables rather than plainly, because they did not understand (<em><a href='B:480 4:34'>Mar 4:34</a></em>). And yet the disciples got there in the end. He spoke to them in the end "plain words" (<em>parresia</em>), and this word is the watchword of the disciples' own witness to the world (<em><a href='B:510 2:29'>Act 2:29</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 4:13'>Act 4:13</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 4:29'>Act 4:29</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 4:31'>Act 4:31</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 28:31'>Act 28:31</a></em>). They spoke "plainly"&nbsp;<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&nbsp;<em>the people</em>&nbsp;in parables, He replies by explaining why He spoke&nbsp;<em>to them</em>&nbsp;in parables; and He drives the point home that it is to those “outside” that He speaks in parables (<em><a href='B:480 4:11'>Mar 4:11</a></em>). &nbsp;</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:26'>Joh 16:26</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:470 6:13'>Mat 6:13</a></em>; <em><a href='B:670 2:5'>1Pe 2:5</a></em>.</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 "in that day" 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 "in Christ", 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: "Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will&nbsp;<em>I</em>&nbsp;do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask&nbsp;<em>me</em>&nbsp;anything (being) in my name, that will I do (<em><a href='B:500 14:13-14'>Joh 14:13-14</a></em> RV)... If ye shall ask anything of&nbsp;<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" (<em><a href='B:500 16:23'>Joh 16:23</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 16:26'>Joh 16:26</a></em> 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 "the Father is with me... I am in the Father, and the Father is in me... the Father abiding in me doeth the works", 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 "in Christ's Name" 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 “in my name” could mean ‘in union with me’; yet Christ was at one with the Father. "He that searches the hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit" (<em><a href='B:520 8:27'>Rom 8:27</a></em>) 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 "through your prayers and the help of the spirit of Jesus" (<em><a href='B:570 1:19'>Phi 1:19</a></em> 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 <em><a href='B:520 8:6'>Rom 8:6</a></em>; <em><a href='B:520 8:27'>Rom 8:27</a></em> use the same phrase, “the mind of the spirit”, to describe firstly the mind of&nbsp;<em>our</em>&nbsp;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 (<em><a href='B:500 11:22'>Joh 11:22</a></em>). 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 ("comfort" in <em><a href='B:540 2:7'>2Co 2:7</a></em> is s:w. <em><a href='B:690 2:1'>1Jn 2:1</a></em>). 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 (<em><a href='B:650 9:26'>Heb 9:26</a></em>). 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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:27'>Joh 16:27</a></em>&nbsp;<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&nbsp;<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 (<em><a href='B:690 4:1-2'>1Jn 4:1-2</a></em>). "The Father Himself loves you" 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 “You… have believed that I came out from God” elicited agreement from the disciples: “Yes, we believe that you came forth from God”. But to that He responds in :32: “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”. Although they didn’t really fully believe, He said that they did. He wasn’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’s more, He goes on to tell the Father His positive perspective on their faith: “They…have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me” (<em><a href='B:500 17:8'>Joh 17:8</a></em>). But the Lord had only just been telling the disciples that they&nbsp;<em>didn’t</em>&nbsp;really believe that He had come out from God… 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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:30'>Joh 16:30</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 15:16-19'>Joh 15:16-19</a></em>.</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. "By this we believe you came from God" 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: "You do not even need that a person ask you questions" (<em><a href='B:500 16:30'>Joh 16:30</a></em>). 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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:31'>Joh 16:31</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 17:6'>Joh 17:6</a></em>.</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 <em><a href='B:470 28:10'>Mat 28:10</a></em>.</p><p>However, a fair translation, supported by NIV and Leon Morris (<em>John</em>&nbsp;p. 631) is: "You now believe". 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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:32'>Joh 16:32</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 10:5'>Joh 10:5</a></em>.</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’s ‘hour’ which was to come was His death (<em><a href='B:500 2:4'>Joh 2:4</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 7:30'>Joh 7:30</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 8:20'>Joh 8:20</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 12:23'>Joh 12:23</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 12:27'>Joh 12:27</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 13:1'>Joh 13:1</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:1'>Joh 17:1</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 19:27'>Joh 19:27</a></em>). 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 “the word was with God", with specific reference to the cross. See on <em><a href='B:500 19:19'>Joh 19:19</a></em> 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 (<em><a href='B:230 55:13-14'>Psa 55:13-14</a></em>). 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&nbsp;<em>all this</em>, the Lord went on: He laid down His life&nbsp;<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>"The Father is with me" is recorded here in this context of weakness; for the Lord later cried from the cross that the Father had forsaken Him (<em><a href='B:470 27:46'>Mat 27:46</a></em>). Perhaps this obvious tension is introduced here to show that human crisis of faith is not necessarily sinful, for the Lord experienced it.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 16:33'>Joh 16:33</a></em>&nbsp;<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 "peace" comes straight after the prediction of their collapse of faith and shameful abandonment of the Lord. "Peace" 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(<em><a href='B:480 13:9'>Mar 13:9</a></em>), 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 "overcome" the Jewish world, and every form of this world; and He frequently uses the word in His letters to the churches in Revelation 2, 3, encouraging us likewise to overcome. His spirit is to be ours. John too rather likes this word "overcome", using it of how his converts had "overcome the wicked one" and the Jewish false teachers (<em><a href='B:690 2:13-14'>1Jn 2:13-14</a></em>; <em><a href='B:690 4:4'>1Jn 4:4</a></em>). "The wicked one" is therefore, in the first context, the Jewish world which the Lord overcame. This is why the terms "satan" and "devil" and other such titles are used about the Jewish world so often; see my chapter 'The Jewish Satan' in&nbsp;<em>The Real Devil</em>, chapter 2.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 17:1'>Joh 17:1</a></em><em>&nbsp;These things spoke Jesus</em>- 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 "from the beginning" 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><em>And lifting up his eyes to Heaven, he said</em>- 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><em>Father, the hour comes. Glorify Your son, that the son may glorify you</em>- 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 (<em><a href='B:520 6:4'>Rom 6:4</a></em>), 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 "to the glory of God the Father" (<em><a href='B:570 2:11'>Phi 2:11</a></em>). The language and concepts simply cannot be fitted in to the Trinitarian paradigm. The Father is glorified in our response to the Lord's life and death. The request "Glorify Your Son" is therefore effectively a prayer for us to respond to the cross; for by glorifying the Son thereby, we glorify the Father. But clearly the Lord sensed that our response to His death, the effect of His death, could be as it were enhanced by God's blessing. And this is why we can legitimately pray at the breaking of bread for the Father's help to respond more deeply to His Son's death. For this will glorify the Son, and thereby glorify the Father. </p><p>The echoes of Deuteronomy in the Lord’s goodbye speeches shouldn’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 (Deuteronomy 32), and the other to his people (Deuteronomy 33). It is apparent that the Lord’s final prayer in John 17 is divisible into the same divisions- prayer to the Father, and concern for His people. It has been observed that the prayer of John 17 is also almost like a hymn- divided into seven strophes of eight lines each. It would appear to be John’s equivalent to the record in <em><a href='B:480 14:26'>Mar 14:26</a></em> 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’s Name to be hallowed or glorified (<em><a href='B:500 17:1'>Joh 17:1</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:11-12'>Joh 17:11-12</a></em>); for His work or will to be done or finished (<em><a href='B:500 17:4'>Joh 17:4</a></em>); for deliverance from the evil one (<em><a href='B:500 17:15'>Joh 17:15</a></em>). The prayer of John 17 can be divided into three units of about the same length (<em><a href='B:500 17:1-8'>Joh 17:1-8</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:9-19'>Joh 17:9-19</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:20-26'>Joh 17:20-26</a></em>). Each has the theme of glory, of directly addressing the Father, and of the needs of God’s people- all clearly taken from the model prayer.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 17:2'>Joh 17:2</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Even as You gave him authority over all flesh, so that he should give eternal life to all whom You have given him</em>- This continues the appeal made in :1; for the work of the cross to be blessed, so that as many as possible might receive eternal life because of His upcoming death. The connection between the universal authority of the Lord and the need to preach it is made in <em><a href='B:500 17:2-3'>Joh 17:2-3</a></em> AV: “Thou hast given him power over all flesh,&nbsp;<em>that</em>&nbsp;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”. The great commission says that because He has power over all flesh, therefore we must preach Him to all flesh (<em><a href='B:470 28:18-19'>Mat 28:18-19</a></em>). <em><a href='B:500 17:2'>Joh 17:2</a></em> 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 "all flesh", and it shall surely have its issue in the gift of immortality at His return.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 17:3'>Joh 17:3</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 10:15'>Joh 10:15</a></em>; <em><a href='B:690 1:3'>1Jn 1:3</a></em>.</p><p><em>And this is everlasting life, that they should know You, the only true God, and him whom You sent, Jesus Christ</em>- 1 Jn. 5:20 alludes here and applies this experience to the believing life right now, knowing and being "in" the true God: "the Son of God came, and has given us an understanding so that we truly know him that is true; and we are in him that is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life". 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. “the son”; but here in <em><a href='B:500 17:3'>Joh 17:3</a></em> He refers to Himself in prayer to the Father as “Jesus Christ”, 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 (<em><a href='B:500 17:3'>Joh 17:3</a></em>)- 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&nbsp;<em>really</em>&nbsp;see / perceive the Son will we be saved; "you have seen me and yet believe not" the Lord told the Jews, warning them that only those who see the Son&nbsp;<em>and</em>&nbsp;believe in Him will have eternal life (<em><a href='B:500 6:36'>Joh 6:36</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 6:40'>Joh 6:40</a></em>). 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&nbsp;<em>truly</em>&nbsp;know Him we will count literally all else as loss (<em><a href='B:570 3:8'>Phi 3:8</a></em>). 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. "Eternal life" in John's Gospel refers to knowing and understanding God now, rather than simply to infinity (<em><a href='B:500 17:3'>Joh 17:3</a></em>; <em><a href='B:690 5:20'>1Jn 5:20</a></em>).</p><p>The "... know you" 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&nbsp;<em>enquiring</em>&nbsp;after God in His temple (<em><a href='B:230 27:4'>Psa 27:4</a></em>). According to <em><a href='B:500 17:3'>Joh 17:3</a></em> and its various Old Testament foundations, to know God is to live for ever. Eternal life is all about knowing His Name. <em><a href='B:350 6:2-3'>Hos 6:2-3</a></em> LXX puts it like this: "We shall rise from the dead and live in His presence, and have knowledge; we shall press forward to know the Lord". 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; "he that has seen me has seen the Father" (<em><a href='B:500 14:7-9'>Joh 14:7-9</a></em>) is paralleled with "If you believe in God, believe in me" (<em><a href='B:500 14:1'>Joh 14:1</a></em>). 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 (<em><a href='B:300 31:34'>Jer 31:34</a></em>; <em><a href='B:650 8:11'>Heb 8:11</a></em>). 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 "I will be their God", 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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 17:4'>Joh 17:4</a></em>&nbsp;<em>I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You gave me to do</em>- This could be read as a conclusion by the Lord that He had in fact achieved God's intention with His disciples. As He says in :6, He had manifested God's Name to the men whom He had been given to work with. There were some amongst them who had glorified God; they had brought forth the fruit which in Jn. 15 He says means that God has been glorified. But 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 "It is finished / accomplished" was of course significant, but the essence of His sacrifice had been made in His personality and life amongst men before that. In <em><a href='B:500 4:34'>Joh 4:34</a></em> 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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 17:5'>Joh 17:5</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 1:14'>Joh 1:14</a></em>.</p><p><em>And now Father, glorify me with Your own self with the glory which I had with You before the world was</em>-</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 (<em><a href='B:540 5:1'>2Co 5:1</a></em>; <em><a href='B:580 1:5'>Col 1:5</a></em>; <em><a href='B:470 25:34'>Mat 25:34</a></em>). Because of this, Hebrew can use past tenses to speak of that which is future (e.g. <em><a href='B:290 5:13'>Isa 5:13</a></em>; <em><a href='B:290 9:2'>Isa 9:2</a></em>; <em><a href='B:290 9:6'>Isa 9:6</a></em>; <em><a href='B:290 9:12'>Isa 9:12</a></em>; <em><a href='B:290 10:28'>Isa 10:28</a></em>; <em><a href='B:290 28:16'>Isa 28:16</a></em>; <em><a href='B:290 34:2'>Isa 34:2</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 15:18'>Gen 15:18</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:510 7:5'>Act 7:5</a></em>). Things can thus "be" before they are created: "They are and were created" (<em><a href='B:730 4:11'>Rev 4:11</a></em>). 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:&nbsp;<em>pro-uparchon</em>- 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 “glory”. The glory of God was revealed to Moses at Sinai- and what he heard was the declaration of God’s Name or character, that Yahweh is a God full of grace, mercy, truth, justice, judgment etc. (<em><a href='B:20 33:19'>Exo 33:19</a></em>; <em><a href='B:20 34:6-7'>Exo 34:6-7</a></em>). Jesus alludes to what happened at Sinai by saying that He has “glorified you… manifested your name” (<em><a href='B:500 17:4'>Joh 17:4</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:6'>Joh 17:6</a></em>) 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 “God of glory” (<em><a href='B:230 29:3'>Psa 29:3</a></em> etc:). He is totally associated with His Name and characteristics- it’s not that He just shows those particular attributes to men, but He Himself personally is someone quite different. He&nbsp;<em>is</em>&nbsp;His glory. And this is why <em><a href='B:500 17:5'>Joh 17:5</a></em> parallels His glory with God’s very own “self”.</p><p>That glory of God was of course always with God, right at the beginning. He hasn’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 “Word”,&nbsp;<em>logos</em>&nbsp;of God, His essential plans, intentions, personality, was in the beginning with Him. It was “made flesh” in the person of Jesus (<em><a href='B:500 1:14'>Joh 1:14</a></em>), 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:&nbsp;<br/>But in what sense was this the glory which Jesus had with God before the world was? The “glory” of God was revealed to Moses at Sinai in Exodus 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 “that glory which was with the Father” when the Jewish world came into existence at Sinai (<em><a href='B:500 17:5'>Joh 17:5</a></em> Ethiopic and Western Text). It was that same glory which, like Moses, He reflected to men. But according to <em><a href='B:540 3:18'>2Co 3:18</a></em>, 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’s personality, it’s not a mirror personality, but it’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 (<em><a href='B:500 7:18'>Joh 7:18</a></em>). He spoke of God’s glory as being the Son’s glory (<em><a href='B:500 11:4'>Joh 11:4</a></em>). Thus Isaiah’s vision of God’s glory is interpreted by John as a prophecy of the Son’s glory (<em><a href='B:500 12:41'>Joh 12:41</a></em>).</p><p>The glory of God is His “own self”, 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 (<em><a href='B:500 17:5'>Joh 17:5</a></em>). The Old Testament title “God of glory” is applied to the Lord Jesus, “the Lord of glory” (<em><a href='B:530 2:8'>1Co 2:8</a></em>; <em><a href='B:660 2:1'>Jas 2:1</a></em>). It is&nbsp;<em>God’s</em>&nbsp;glory which radiates from the face of Jesus Christ (<em><a href='B:540 4:6'>2Co 4:6</a></em>). Jesus is the brightness of God’s glory, because He is the express image of God’s personality (<em><a href='B:650 1:3'>Heb 1:3</a></em>). He received glory from God’s glory (<em><a href='B:680 1:17'>2Pe 1:17</a></em>). God is the “Father of glory”, the prime source of the one true glory, that is reflected both in the Lord Jesus and in ourselves (<em><a href='B:560 1:17'>Eph 1:17</a></em>). The intimate relation of the Father's glory with that of the Son is brought out in <em><a href='B:500 13:31-32'>Joh 13:31-32</a></em>: "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". &nbsp;</p><p>What all this exposition means in practice is this. There is only “one glory” of God. That glory refers to the essential “self”, the personality, characteristics, being etc. The Lord Jesus manifested that glory in His mortal life (<em><a href='B:500 2:11'>Joh 2:11</a></em>). But He manifests it now that He has been “glorified”, 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 ‘are’ 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 (<em><a href='B:540 3:18'>2Co 3:18</a></em>). The outline of God’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’s original plan to resurrect and glorify and justify His Son. And in <em><a href='B:500 17:5'>Joh 17:5</a></em>, the Lord is asking that this will happen.</p><p>The glory which the Lord Jesus had “before the world was” is connected with the way that He was “foreordained before the foundation of the world” (<em><a href='B:670 1:20'>1Pe 1:20</a></em>), the way God promised us eternal life (through His Son) before the world was (<em><a href='B:630 1:2'>Tit 1:2</a></em>). <em><a href='B:620 1:9'>2Ti 1:9</a></em> speaks of us as being called to salvation in Christ “before the world began”, He “chose us in Him before the foundation of the world” (<em><a href='B:560 1:4'>Eph 1:4</a></em>). In the same way as we didn’t personally exist before the world began, neither did Christ. Indeed <em><a href='B:530 2:7'>1Co 2:7</a></em> speaks of&nbsp;<em>us</em>&nbsp;having some form of glory with God “before the world began”. It’s the idea of this “one glory” again- God’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 (<em><a href='B:520 4:17'>Rom 4:17</a></em>). In <em><a href='B:500 17:5'>Joh 17:5</a></em>, the Lord Jesus is ‘pleading the promise’ 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&nbsp;<em>para</em>&nbsp;God (<em><a href='B:490 1:30'>Luk 1:30</a></em>) in the same way as Jesus had glory&nbsp;<em>para</em>&nbsp;God, but this doesn't mean she pre-existed or was in Heaven with God with her "favour". 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. <em><a href='B:500 17:5'>Joh 17:5</a></em> has reference to these things: "And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed". The Talmud and Genesis Rabbah speak of the "Throne of Glory" 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 "foreknown" before the foundation of the world (<em><a href='B:670 1:20'>1Pe 1:20</a></em> ESV). Think through the implications of being "foreknown"- 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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 17:6'>Joh 17:6</a></em>&nbsp;<em>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</em>- The intention was that the Lord Jesus would manifest God to Israel ("that He should be made manifest to Israel", Jn. 1:31). He manifested the Father's glory through His words and miracles (Jn. 2:11 "manifested forth His glory"). But Israel didn't perceive this; His own brothers goaded Him to "manifest" Himself to the [Jewish] world (Jn. 7:4 s.w.). He was manifested to a small group of working men and a few questionable women. And that was success. The Lord in Jn. 17 is very confident that His mission has been succesful. This is why we sense the genuine distress in Him in Jn. 6 when He fears that even the disciples would go away from Him. We note that His manifestation of the Name, which was ultimately seen in His death on the cross (:26; "Herein was the love of God manifested to us, in that God has sent His only Son into the world", 1 Jn. 4:9 cp. Jn. 3:16), elicited men manifesting their deeds in confession before God (those who come to His light have their deeds "made manifest", Jn. 3:21; the works of God were made manifest within the healed blind man, Jn. 9:3). Hence the focus upon the cross at the breaking of bread naturally elicits self examination.   
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- As noted on :4, it was in this sense that the Lord felt that He had glorified God, in that He felt He had got the disciples to the point where they had glorified God. And yet He felt that despite knowing that in a few hours, or even less, they were going to abandon Him. Peter was to deny Him. But He looked beyond those surface level failings; just as He characterizes discipleship as "abiding" in Him, rather than perfection of following. He knew their overall heart position. And this is huge comfort to us in our failings. 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 "Name" 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. 
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, having been foreknown and kept in God's eternal purpose from before time, just as "the work" was given Him (:4). That "work" 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  the Levites being "given" to Aaron / the priesthood out of  Israel (Num. 3:9; 8:19; 18:6); at the time of the golden calf they "observed your word, and kept your covenant" (Dt. 33:9, cp. "they have kept your word"), 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.
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 “The word” which was made flesh is in fact a reference to the Name of God, then this becomes understandable. And so the logos 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 (“flesh”) of the Lord Jesus. The Lord said this in so many words: “I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me” (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 “the world” didn’t perceive it (Jn. 1:14). 
"They have kept your word" 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 "have kept your word"- 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: "They have believed that You did send me" (Jn. 17:8). But He had just upbraided them for their unbelief in Him (Jn. 16:31), and would do so again in a few days 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. This was not wishful thinking and excessive positivism on the Lord's part. He saw them as "abiding" in Him, meaning that He saw through their temporal lapses to their overall heart position. Likewise, the Lord assures the Father that they were not "of the [Jewish] world" (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 "sent them into the world" (Jn. 17:18)- but this was only done by Him in its fullness after 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 “We believe… that you came forth from God”, He comments: “Do you now believe?” and predicts their scattering. Yet in prayer to the Father, He says that they did believe “Surely… that I came out from thee” (Jn. 17:8,25). Their faith was anything but “sure”. Likewise, we have shown above that they failed to really perceive His death, and thus failed to perceive the essence of Him. In the face of this tragedy, this frustration and pain, the Lord could calmly tell the Father: “I am glorified in them” (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’t really love Him fully (Jn. 14:15,23,28). And yet He speaks to the Father of them as if they are so committed to Him. 
The Lord’s comment to the disciples that if they loved him, then they would ‘keep his word’ (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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 17:7'>Joh 17:7</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Now they know that all things, whatever You have given me, are from You</em>- 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 "know" (<em><a href='B:500 14:7'>Joh 14:7</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 14:9'>Joh 14:9</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 16:5'>Joh 16:5</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 16:18'>Joh 16:18</a></em>). Yet here, He uses the perfect tense of the verb 'to know' when He says "Now they have come to know..." . 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’t “know” the things the Lord spoke to them about His origin and purpose- they only “knew” them after the resurrection (<em><a href='B:490 18:34'>Luk 18:34</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 10:6'>Joh 10:6</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 12:16'>Joh 12:16</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 13:7'>Joh 13:7</a></em>). <em><a href='B:500 14:7'>Joh 14:7</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 14:9'>Joh 14:9</a></em> is plain: “If you had known me… yet have you not known me”, He tells the disciples. And yet He uses just that same Greek word in telling the Father that His men did “know” Him and His word (<em><a href='B:500 17:7-8'>Joh 17:7-8</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:25'>Joh 17:25</a></em>). He had faith and hope in their future maturity- they didn’t then “know”, but they did in the future (<em><a href='B:500 12:16'>Joh 12:16</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 13:7'>Joh 13:7</a></em>). The Lord had hope that “In that day you shall know” (<em><a href='B:500 14:20'>Joh 14:20</a></em>). For there was no absolute guarantee that the eleven would come to “know” 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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 17:8'>Joh 17:8</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 16:27'>Joh 16:27</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:6'>Joh 17:6</a></em>.</p><p><em>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</em>- 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. "He" as a person is hereby paralleled with His words:&nbsp;<br/>The Lord told the Father that He had given the disciples His words, “and they have received them” (<em><a href='B:500 17:8'>Joh 17:8</a></em>). This is evident allusion to the editorial comment in <em><a href='B:50 33:3'>Deu 33:3</a></em> about how all Israel received God’s words through Moses. Likewise “I manifested thy name… they have kept thy word” (<em><a href='B:500 17:6'>Joh 17:6</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:26'>Joh 17:26</a></em>) = “I will proclaim the name of the Lord… they have observed thy word” (<em><a href='B:50 32:3'>Deu 32:3</a></em>; <em><a href='B:50 33:9'>Deu 33:9</a></em>). One marvels at the way the Lord’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 "Him" (<em><a href='B:500 1:12'>Joh 1:12</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 13:20'>Joh 13:20</a></em>). There is a common parallel between Him personally and His words (<em><a href='B:500 5:43'>Joh 5:43</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 12:48'>Joh 12:48</a></em>). His words are put for Him as a person, as noted elsewhere. They received not just His spoken words but all His "fullness", the "testimony" of His person, His spirit (<em><a href='B:500 1:16'>Joh 1:16</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 3:33'>Joh 3:33</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 14:17'>Joh 14:17</a></em>). 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 (<em><a href='B:500 7:39'>Joh 7:39</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 20:22'>Joh 20:22</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 1:8'>Act 1:8</a></em>; <em><a href='B:690 2:27'>1Jn 2:27</a></em>).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 17:9'>Joh 17:9</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:610 2:2'>1Ti 2:2</a></em>.</p><p><em>I pray for them. I pray not for the world, but for those whom You have given me; for they are Yours</em>- TThe 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 "the Levites shall be mine"; 8:14), so are the believers. The Levites represent us (<em><a href='B:50 33:9'>Deu 33:9</a></em>); 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, “not for the world” perhaps, not&nbsp;<em>so much for the world as for</em>&nbsp;those few whom the Father had given Him out of the world. Everything depended upon them, for “through their word” the world was to believe (<em><a href='B:500 17:6'>Joh 17:6</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:9'>Joh 17:9</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:20'>Joh 17:20</a></em>). With all the powers of the universe at His command, the Lord could have chosen a programme of mass recruitment. But He didn’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;(<em><a href='B:480 1:17'>Mar 1:17</a></em>). They would later bear witness because they had been with Him from the beginning (<em><a href='B:500 15:27'>Joh 15:27</a></em>). In the few years they were with Him, those men learnt of Him</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 17:10'>Joh 17:10</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 17:6'>Joh 17:6</a></em>.</p><p><em>All things that are mine are Yours, and Yours are mine, and I am glorified in them</em>- His comment that “I am glorified in them” was evidently said in hope and faith that they would glorify Him- for before His death He “was not yet glorified” (<em><a href='B:500 7:39'>Joh 7:39</a></em>). Indeed, <em><a href='B:500 12:16'>Joh 12:16</a></em> suggests that the disciples only “glorified” Him after the resurrection, once they remembered and understood His words and actions properly. It was through “bearing much fruit” that the disciples would glorify Him (<em><a href='B:500 15:8'>Joh 15:8</a></em>)- and they evidently hadn’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 (<em><a href='B:500 12:28'>Joh 12:28</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 13:31'>Joh 13:31</a></em>). And yet the Lord Jesus confidently asserts to His Father, to God Almighty, that He was glorified in the disciples (<em><a href='B:500 17:10'>Joh 17:10</a></em>). As noted on :6, we see here how positive He was in prayer to the Father about His followers. "I am glorified in them" sounds like a proud father reflecting on his dutiful children. And He is the same kind of intercessor for us today, seeing us according to how far we "abide" in Him, rather than by our ups and downs of spiritual failure and success.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 17:11'>Joh 17:11</a></em>&nbsp;<em>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</em>- We are kept in the Name in the sense that the characteristics of the Yahweh Name are imputed to us. The disciples were weak. But they were counted as in the Name. And the Lord asks the Father to continue doing that. Clearly the connection is with the manifestation of the Name to Moses, a theme which runs throughout John 17. Part of that Name was that Yahweh 'keeps mercy for thousands' (Ex. 34:7; Dan. 9:4 "the great and dreadful God, who keeps covenant and loving kindness with those who love Him and keep His commandments"). As Aaron "put My Name upon the children of Israel" (Num. 6:27), so the Lord keeps us in the Father's Name. The Lord has reasoned with the Father that He has kept [imperfect, 'been keeping'] them in the Name. But now He is to die. He cannot go on interceding for them whilst dead. And so He asks the Father to Himself keep them in His Name- because the Lord knows that they are going to have a collapse of faith. He is asking the Father to as it accept His intercession for them ahead of time, and not to reject them in their forthcoming crisis of faith.  As noted on <em><a href='B:500 14:2-3'>Joh 14:2-3</a></em>, the going to the Father meant going to the cross. His presence with the Father meant that the Father would "keep" them just as the Lord had "kept" 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 "kept" from the wicked one and sin generally (<em><a href='B:690 5:18'>1Jn 5:18</a></em>; <em><a href='B:600 3:3'>2Th 3:3</a></em>), "preserved s:w. "kept" in Christ" and from falling (<em><a href='B:720 1:1'>Jud 1:1</a></em>; <em><a href='B:720 1:24'>Jud 1:24</a></em>), kept by the Holy Spirit which dwells within us (<em><a href='B:620 1:14'>2Ti 1:14</a></em>). 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. "Those whom you gave me" recalls Adam's "the woman which Thou gavest Me" (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><em><a href='B:690 3:23'>1Jn 3:23</a></em> associates believing on the Name with loving each other; and in <em><a href='B:500 17:11'>Joh 17:11</a></em> Christ prays that God will keep us all as one&nbsp;<em>through His own Name</em>. So often God’s Name is associated with unity. God’s Name is connected with His being "the Holy&nbsp;<em>One</em>" (<em><a href='B:290 29:23'>Isa 29:23</a></em>; <em><a href='B:290 47:4'>Isa 47:4</a></em>; <em><a href='B:290 54:5'>Isa 54:5</a></em>; <em><a href='B:290 57:15'>Isa 57:15</a></em>; <em><a href='B:290 60:9'>Isa 60:9</a></em>; <em><a href='B:330 39:7'>Eze 39:7</a></em>). God being the Holy&nbsp;<em>One</em>&nbsp;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&nbsp;<em>love</em>&nbsp;this idea of unity, we will find ourselves out of place in the Kingdom. "In&nbsp;<em>that day</em>&nbsp;there shall be one Lord, and His Name one" (<em><a href='B:450 14:9'>Zec 14:9</a></em>). It may well be that <em><a href='B:560 4:4-6'>Eph 4:4-6</a></em> is alluding back to this verse; this passage inspires us to keep the unity of the Spirit, because here and now "there is one body, and one Spirit…&nbsp;<em>one Lord</em>&nbsp;…one baptism, one God"; in other words, Paul is saying that the unity of the Kingdom, as spoken of in <em><a href='B:450 14:9'>Zec 14:9</a></em>, must be found in the ecclesia of today. See on <em><a href='B:500 5:23'>Joh 5:23</a></em>; <em><a href='B:480 13:32'>Mar 13:32</a></em>. 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 "together", in unity (<em><a href='B:230 34:3'>Psa 34:3</a></em>). 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 "in the name", we are made one (<em><a href='B:500 17:11'>Joh 17:11</a></em>)- 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 "clasps of brass to couple the tent together, that it might be one" (<em><a href='B:20 36:18'>Exo 36:18</a></em> and often). "That it might be one" is alluded to by the Lord when He prayed for His people, "that they might be one" (<em><a href='B:500 17:11'>Joh 17:11</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:21-23'>Joh 17:21-23</a></em>). 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. "Out of church Christians", 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 “Holy Father… righteous Father” (<em><a href='B:500 17:11'>Joh 17:11</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:25'>Joh 17:25</a></em>) was a form of address which the Lord had in a sense lifted from Moses when he addresses God as “righteous and holy” (<em><a href='B:50 32:4'>Deu 32:4</a></em> LXX). &nbsp;</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 17:12'>Joh 17:12</a></em>&nbsp;<em>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</em>- 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> Again we see how the Lord speaks so positively of His weak followers at that time. For all their weakness, He had "kept" them; although 1 Jn. 5:21 uses the word in urging "keep yourselves from idols". The side of human volition is always present. But we are to "keep" ourselves "by the Holy Spirit which dwells in us" (2 Tim. 1:14 s.w.). This is how the Lord does His part. But we are to be open to it. We are "kept by the power [spirit] of God through faith unto salvation" (1 Pet. 1:5). 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 <em><a href='B:230 109:8'>Psa 109:8</a></em>. 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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 17:13'>Joh 17:13</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Now I come to You; and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy made full in themselves</em>- 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 (<em><a href='B:470 25:21'>Mat 25:21</a></em>; <em><a href='B:470 25:23'>Mat 25:23</a></em>), that spiritual being were born into the world of the new creation (<em><a href='B:500 16:21'>Joh 16:21</a></em>) and human repentance (<em><a href='B:490 15:7'>Luk 15:7</a></em>). By receiving the spirit of the Lord Jesus, His mindset becomes ours. His joy becomes our joy (<em><a href='B:500 15:11'>Joh 15:11</a></em>). This explains the Lord's exhortation to ask in His name so that their joy might be fulfilled (<em><a href='B:500 16:24'>Joh 16:24</a></em>). 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 <em><a href='B:490 15:5'>Luk 15:5</a></em> the Lord spoke about how He as the good shepherd would carry the lost sheep on His shoulders,&nbsp;<em>rejoicing</em>. It is tempting to connect this with the way Christ spoke of His&nbsp;<em>joy</em>&nbsp;just hours before He was arrested. I am not suggesting there was&nbsp;<em>any</em>&nbsp;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, "my joy" meant something else; as for Him, 'eating' meant not eating food but doing the Father's will (<em><a href='B:500 4:34'>Joh 4:34</a></em>). Whatever "rejoicing”, "my joy" meant for the Lord, He had that sense as He carried the cross on His shoulder.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 17:14'>Joh 17:14</a></em>&nbsp;<em>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</em>- The Lord's gift of "Your word" surely doesn't mean that He presented them with a copy of the Bible, as it were. "I... give" are words found on the Lord's lips in John concerning His gift of the Spirit (<em><a href='B:500 4:14'>Joh 4:14</a></em>), of Himself on the cross as the bread of life (<em><a href='B:500 6:51'>Joh 6:51</a></em>), His glory (:22) and of His "example" in Himself and the person He was (<em><a href='B:500 13:26'>Joh 13:26</a></em>). The gift He gave in the immediate context was of the Comforter (<em><a href='B:500 14:16'>Joh 14:16</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 14:27'>Joh 14:27</a></em>). God’s word was "made flesh" according to the prologue, in the person of Jesus (<em><a href='B:500 1:14'>Joh 1:14</a></em>). Again, as noted earlier in John, "word" refers not simply to the literal Bible, but the expression of all a person is. God’s "word" 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 "hated" the disciples; in fulfilment of His comment that the Jewish world would "hate" any who testified of its wickedness (<em><a href='B:500 7:7'>Joh 7:7</a></em>). 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 (<em><a href='B:690 2:9'>1Jn 2:9</a></em>; <em><a href='B:690 2:11'>1Jn 2:11</a></em>; <em><a href='B:690 3:15'>1Jn 3:15</a></em>; <em><a href='B:690 4:20'>1Jn 4:20</a></em>). 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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 17:15'>Joh 17:15</a></em>&nbsp;<em>I do not pray that You should take them out from the world, but that You should keep them from the evil</em>- The association of "evil" with "the world" is clear. And in John, "the world" usually refers to the Jewish world. Clearly it was Judaism which was the source of "evil" for the early Christians, explaining why it is referred to as the great "satan" / adversary in the later New Testament. It’s observable that the Lord Jesus Himself prayed most parts of His model prayer in His own life situations. “Your will be done... Deliver us from evil” (<em><a href='B:470 6:13'>Mat 6:13</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 11:4'>Luk 11:4</a></em>) were repeated by Him in Gethsemane, when He asked for God’s will to be done and not His, and yet He prayed that&nbsp;<em>the disciples</em>&nbsp;would be delivered from evil. It is as if He prays the "Lord's prayer" for them; "keep them from the evil", 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 (<em><a href='B:500 16:2'>Joh 16:2</a></em>), 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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 17:16'>Joh 17:16</a></em>&nbsp;<em>They are not of the world even as I am not of the world</em>- 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 (<em><a href='B:500 18:36'>Joh 18:36</a></em>). And that is exactly what they tried to do in Gethsemane They acted then as if they were indeed “of this world” 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 "not of the world", 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 "of the world" is later defined in <em><a href='B:690 2:16'>1Jn 2:16</a></em>: "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". 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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 17:17'>Joh 17:17</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth</em>- The reference is to how the Levites were sanctified (<em><a href='B:130 23:13'>1Ch 23:13</a></em> 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 "holy (sanctified) one" (<em><a href='B:50 33:8-9'>Deu 33:8-9</a></em>). 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: "And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they may also be sanctified in truth". They were sanctified in Him; because the Lord was supremely sanctified, holy in character, He was fitted for Divine service&nbsp;<em>par excellence</em>. 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 "Sanctify them in the truth" is parallel with being sanctified on account of being in Him. "The truth" is therefore a reference to Himself personally, as in <em><a href='B:500 14:6'>Joh 14:6</a></em>. And that is confirmed by the statement: "Your word is truth". The prologue is clear that the Divine word was the Lord Jesus personally, made flesh in Him. The "word" of God in His Son refers to all we have seen and known of Him in Christ. That is the ultimate "truth" by which we are to live. It is nothing but shoddy Biblical workmanship which superimposes the words "Your word is truth" 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 "the truth". 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&nbsp;<em>logos</em>. 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 "in Christ", on account of&nbsp;<em>His</em>&nbsp;sanctification.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 17:18'>Joh 17:18</a></em>&nbsp;<em>As You sent me into the world, even so I send them into the world</em>- The Son was “sanctified and sent into the world” (<em><a href='B:500 10:36'>Joh 10:36</a></em>). And yet we too are sanctified (<em><a href='B:500 17:17'>Joh 17:17</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:19'>Joh 17:19</a></em>), and likewise sent into the world (<em><a href='B:480 16:15'>Mar 16:15</a></em>). 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 <em><a href='B:500 14:12'>Joh 14:12</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:18'>Joh 17:18</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 20:21'>Joh 20:21</a></em> - this is again John’s equivalent of the great commission. God sent forth Christ to save the world, and likewise we are sent forth in witness (<em><a href='B:550 4:4'>Gal 4:4</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:470 9:38'>Mat 9:38</a></em>; <em><a href='B:470 22:3'>Mat 22:3</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 13:4'>Act 13:4</a></em>). As He was sent into the world, so He sent us (<em><a href='B:500 17:18'>Joh 17:18</a></em>).</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&nbsp;<em>we</em>&nbsp;are sent into the world.</p><p>"The world" 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>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 17:19'>Joh 17:19</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they may also be sanctified in truth</em>- The Lord's death was the final act of sanctification in His holy life. If we venture to enquire how exactly He achieved what He did, what His motivations were... we are entering holy ground. But here He states that He did it "for their sakes", so that we might be sanctified in Him, "the truth" (see on :17,18). His vision, however, was that we would not simply be 'saved' but 'sanctified', which as explained on :17 is a clear allusion to priestly service. He sanctified Himself so that in Him, we would be sanctified- to do priestly service. And the service particularly in view, as noted on :18, was to be sent into the world to save others. We are therefore expected to be proactive in our response to Him. Quite simply, if we behold and believe the things of the cross, we will respond. Clearly the allusion is to the sanctification of the High Priest, that the other priests might be sanctified for service. The Lord's prayerful desire was that we should not be passive to His death, but rather take it as a means for us to be sanctified for active service. This is why there are so many allusions to the priesthood here. As the Levites "are mine", so the disciples are called 'God's'. As they were "given" to Aaron, so the sanctified disciples, sanctified through the cross, are to be "given" to the Lord to do His priestly work amongst men. As Aaron "put My Name upon the children of Israel" (Num. 6:27), so the Lord keeps us in the Father's Name.  </p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 17:20'>Joh 17:20</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Neither for these only do I pray, but for those also that believe in me through their word</em>- The word preached was in order that others like us "believe in me". The content of the word preached is therefore the Lord Jesus and belief into Him. He personally, and not solely the results of the salvation He achieved "the Kingdom of God", is to be the focus of the word preached. As noted on :18 and :19, the Lord has in view that the sanctification of the believers will be so that they can do priestly service- which is to take the Gospel to the world.</p><p>In the same way as John matches the more literal accounts of the birth of Jesus with a more spiritual interpretation in John 1, so he likewise refers to the great commission, expressing it in more spiritual terms throughout his gospel. I bring together here some comments that have been made elsewhere in this commentary, to show the number of allusions:<br/>- <em><a href='B:500 10:32'>Joh 10:32</a></em>: “If I be lifted up from RVmg. ‘out of’ the earth, will draw all men unto me”. Straight after the Lord’s death and resurrection the great commission was given, to bring all men unto Him and His cross.<br/>- God sanctified / consecrated the Lord Jesus and sent Him into the world (<em><a href='B:500 10:36'>Joh 10:36</a></em>). But this sanctification was through His death on the cross (<em><a href='B:500 17:19'>Joh 17:19</a></em>). The Lord was sanctified on the cross and sent into the world in the sense that we His people would be impelled by His cross to take Him into all the world:&nbsp;<em>We&nbsp;</em>would be sent into all the world in His Name:&nbsp;<br/><em>- As</em>&nbsp;the Lord was sent into the world, so He sends us into the world (<em><a href='B:500 14:12'>Joh 14:12</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:18'>Joh 17:18</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 20:21'>Joh 20:21</a></em>)- the very language of the great commission. Jesus ‘came down’ to this world in the sense that He was the word of the Father made flesh, and ‘all men’ saw the light of grace that was radiated from His very being. And that same word must be flesh in us, as it was in the Lord.<br/>- In <em><a href='B:500 12:23-26'>Joh 12:23-26</a></em>, the Lord foretold aspects of His coming sacrifice: “The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit spoken in the context of potential Gentile converts. He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it... if any man serve me, let him follow me”. Here the Lord goes on to assume 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 “bear much fruit”, and thus&nbsp;<em>glorify</em>&nbsp;God. And in this context He continues with words which can be read as John’s record of the great preaching commission: “I have chosen you... that ye should&nbsp;<em>go&nbsp;</em>cp. “Go ye into all the world..." and bring forth fruit” (<em><a href='B:500 15:8'>Joh 15:8</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 15:16'>Joh 15:16</a></em>). Clearly the Lord connected His bringing forth of “much fruit” through His death with the same “much fruit” being brought forth by the disciples’ 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:&nbsp;<br/>- The whole world is to know the Gospel because of the unity of the believers (<em><a href='B:500 17:18'>Joh 17:18</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:21'>Joh 17:21</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:23'>Joh 17:23</a></em>); and it follows that a situation will arise in which the extraordinary nature of true Christian solidarity over linguistic, ethnic, social and geographical lines will make a similar arresting, compelling witness as it did in the first century. The Lord had prophesied that His followers over time “shall become one flock” (<em><a href='B:500 10:16'>Joh 10:16</a></em> RV); they would be “perfected into one, that the world may know” (<em><a href='B:500 17:23'>Joh 17:23</a></em> RV). As the Gospel spreads world-wide in the last days, the unity of the believers will become all the more comprehensive, and this will of itself provoke yet more conversions. And once the fullness of unity is achieved, our communal way of life will have hastened the coming of the Lord (2 Peter 3):&nbsp;<br/>- Matthew and Mark record how the apostles were&nbsp;<em>sent&nbsp;</em>to preach the Gospel and baptize, for the&nbsp;<em>forgiveness</em>&nbsp;of sins (cp. <em><a href='B:510 2:38'>Act 2:38</a></em>). Luke records the Lord stating that the apostles knew that&nbsp;<em>forgiveness of sins</em>&nbsp;was to be preached from Jerusalem, and therefore they should be witnesses to this. I would suggest that John’s Gospel does in fact record the great commission, but in different and more spiritual words: “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you…If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven” (<em><a href='B:500 20:21'>Joh 20:21</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 20:23'>Joh 20:23</a></em> NIV). These words have always been problematic for me, especially that last phrase. Can God’s forgiveness really be limited by the forgiveness shown by fallible men? Yet if these words are taken as a record of the great commission to go and preach, and the ellipsis is filled in, things become clearer: ‘I am sending you to preach the Gospel and baptism of forgiveness; if you do this and men respond, then the Gospel you preach really does have the power to bring about forgiveness. But if you don’t fulfil the commission I give you to preach forgiveness, then the sins of your potential hearers will remain unforgiven’. Again, the forgiveness and salvation of others is made to depend upon our preaching of forgiveness. “Whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained” becomes the equivalent of “he that believeth not shall be damned”. Note that the Greek for ‘retain’ strictly means ‘to hold / bind’, and that for ‘remit’ means ‘to loose’. This has evident connection with <em><a href='B:470 16:19'>Mat 16:19</a></em>, where the keys of the Gospel of the Kingdom (which we all possess) have the power to bind and loose, i:e. to grant or not grant forgiveness. <em><a href='B:500 15:8'>Joh 15:8</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 15:16'>Joh 15:16</a></em> also has some reference to the great commission: “…so shall ye be my disciples…that&nbsp;<em>ye should go</em>&nbsp;into all the world and bear fruit, and that your fruit converts? should abide”. The eternal life of the converts is a fruit brought forth by the preacher’s obedience to his Lord’s commission. Likewise through the preaching of John, he turned men’s hearts- the idea of repentance, being brought about by the preacher (<em><a href='B:460 4:6'>Mal 4:6</a></em>).<br/>- “These are written “in this book” of John’s Gospel that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ…and that believing ye may have life in his name” (<em><a href='B:500 20:31'>Joh 20:31</a></em> RV)- belief, life, “in his name”, these are all references to the great commission. It’s as if John is saying that he fulfilled it by the writing and preaching of his Gospel record. John's equivalent to an appeal for baptism may be his concluding appeal to believe that Jesus is the Christ, and as a result of that belief, to receive life "in his name" - into which we are baptized.</p><p>John's record of the great commission is not merely found at the end of his gospel. When John records how the disciples were to proclaim "the word" to the world (<em><a href='B:500 17:20'>Joh 17:20</a></em>), he is surely intending connection to be made with how "the word" had likewise been made flesh in the Lord Jesus (<em><a href='B:500 1:14'>Joh 1:14</a></em>); and how it was that same " word" which Jesus had given to His men, just as His Father had manifested that word through Himself. Our witness is to be in our making flesh of the word in real life, just as it was in the Lord.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 17:21'>Joh 17:21</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 13:35'>Joh 13:35</a></em>.</p><p><em>That they may all be one, even as You, Father, are in me and I in You, that they may also be one in us; that the world may believe You did send me</em>- As noted on <em><a href='B:500 14:2-3'>Joh 14:2-3</a></em> and throughout the Comforter discourse, the Lord intended that the relationship He had with the Father ("where I am") would be experienced by all those who received His Spirit. The unity in view here is expressed in a slightly ambiguous way because it is two-fold. Unity between the believer and the Son and Father; and thereby unity between each other, between preacher and convert, and convert and convert. This would be achieved through being together "in us", as the Son and Father mutually indwelt each other. The source of this indwelling was the Spirit; <em><a href='B:690 4:13'>1Jn 4:13</a></em> alludes here: "Hereby we know that we abide in him and He in us, because He has given us of his Spirit". Those who resist the idea of the indwelling Spirit are invariably not at one with their brethren, and thereby not at one with the Father and Son. For it is through the mutual indwelling of the Spirit that He is in us and we in Him; and thereby we are all one with each other.</p><p>The laying down of the Shepherd's life was so that the flock might be one, in one fold (<em><a href='B:500 10:15-16'>Joh 10:15-16</a></em>). The offering of the blood of Christ was&nbsp;<em>so that</em>&nbsp;He might "make in himself... one new man" (<em><a href='B:560 2:15'>Eph 2:15</a></em>). Thus the theme of unity dominated the Lord's mind as He prepared for His death. "For their sakes I sanctify myself in the death of the cross... that they all may be one" (<em><a href='B:500 17:19'>Joh 17:19</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:21'>Joh 17:21</a></em>). The glory of God would be the source of this unity in Christ (<em><a href='B:500 17:22'>Joh 17:22</a></em>); and that Name and glory were declared supremely on the cross (<em><a href='B:500 12:28'>Joh 12:28</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:26'>Joh 17:26</a></em>). The grace, mercy, judgment of sin, the goodness and severity of God (<em><a href='B:20 34:5-7'>Exo 34:5-7</a></em>)... all these things, as demonstrated by the cross, bind men together. And thus in practice, both a too strict and also too loose attitude to doctrine and practice, an unbalanced understanding of the glory of God, will never bring unity.</p><p>This unique unity, the "unity of the Spirit", brought about by the indwelling of the Spirit (see on <em><a href='B:560 4:3'>Eph 4:3</a></em>), will be so compelling that the world, initially the Jewish world, would believe that the Father sent the Son. It would be apparent that this unity had been created by Jesus of Nazareth, who therefore was no ordinary man, but the One supremely sent by the Father. In this thought we see continued the many allusions in this section to the great commission. The sanctification of the Son, the indwelling of the Spirit, unity between us and with the Father... all this was to be harnessed in the work of winning others for His cause.</p><p>We naturally ask why, therefore, the world, both our world and the Jewish world of John's time, have not all believed. It could be that they do not believe simply because as with the witness of the Lord, they for the most part choose to disbelieve it and reject it, lest their lives be too disturbed. But it could be that the dysfunction of the church, which is characterized by its disunity rather than unity, has meant that the potential conversion of the world to Christ has not happened.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 17:22'>Joh 17:22</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And the glory which You have given me, I have given to them, that they may be one, even as we are one</em>- The glory given to Moses was nothing compared to that given to the Lord. By beholding that glory in the face of the Lord Jesus, it shines off from our faces too (<em><a href='B:540 3:18'>2Co 3:18</a></em>). The glory is potentially given, but it is only by beholding it in the face of the Lord that it becomes real for us. The faces of the disciples at that time, as they watched the Lord praying, were anything but glorious. They fled from Him, and went fishing instead of being enthused by His resurrection. But so much was made potentially available to them. The glory that would soon shine from the Lord's face when He was arrested was theirs, already.</p><p>"The glory" has associations with the Name declared at Sinai, and now even moreso in the person of God’s Son. Connect :6,8,22: "I have manifested Thy Name unto the men which Thou gavest Me... I have given unto them the words Thou gavest Me... the glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them". Indeed, so much was "given" to the believers by the Lord. He gave them the essence of Himself, His Spirit; the prologue says they were given "power to becomes the Sons of God" (<em><a href='B:500 1:12'>Joh 1:12</a></em>). The idea of the gift of glory is associated with the gift of the Spirit in&nbsp; <em><a href='B:560 3:14-18'>Eph 3:14-18</a></em> where the same words are used and again connected with unity between those who possess the Spirit: "I bow my knees to the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that He would&nbsp;<em>grant&nbsp;</em>"give" you, according to the riches of His&nbsp;<em>glory</em>, that you may be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man. That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, to the end that you would be rooted and grounded in love, that you might be able to comprehend with all the saints". The gift of glory therefore sums up everything- the very essence of the Father and Son, their word, their Spirit, the Name. The receipt of those things will issue in unity between us. In this sense the gift of "glory" is what enables our unity both with the Father and Son as well as with each other. Repeatedly, unity between believers is presented as reflecting the unity between the Father and Son which they experienced during the Lord's life. But the unity between God and the Lord Jesus wasn't a case of uniformity. We see in Gethsemane how the Father's will was not that of the Son ["not My will, but Yours..."]. Unity is not therefore a case of total collapsing of personal boundaries, nor is it unanimity of will. This dispels many unrealistic myths about what unity is. Those mythical, idealistic views of "unity" never come to observed reality anyway. But to put it crudely, Jesus is not God. Their unity is more profound than that; and likewise, unity between believers is deeper than simply adopting identical positions on issues. </p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 17:23'>Joh 17:23</a></em>&nbsp;<em>I in them and You in me, that they may be perfected into one, that the world may know You did send me and that You have loved them just as You loved me</em>- The unity envisaged was a process; the indwelling of the Father in the Son, and they in us, is by the Spirit (<em><a href='B:690 4:13'>1Jn 4:13</a></em>). But as noted earlier, we are progressively filled with the Spirit, it is not a one-time gift. And there is therefore this process of perfecting into one. It could be that once the believing community are truly filled with the Spirit and one with each other, that they will finally convince the Jewish world of the Father's love. John alludes here in later writing that love between believers is the sign of this perfecting process developing: "If we love one another, God dwells in us "I in them and you in me", and His love is perfected in us" (<em><a href='B:690 4:12'>1Jn 4:12</a></em>). It is not God’s love of itself must be perfected or matured; as we mature in love to each other, and thereby unity, His love is declared in an ongoing sense. The idea of our love being perfected and thereby the outcome of God’s love being perfected is quite a theme (<em><a href='B:690 2:5'>1Jn 2:5</a></em>; <em><a href='B:690 4:12'>1Jn 4:12</a></em>; <em><a href='B:690 4:17-18'>1Jn 4:17-18</a></em>).</p><p>We have suggested elsewhere that the great commission is repeated in John’s Gospel but in more spiritual language. The whole world is to know the Gospel because of the unity of the believers (<em><a href='B:500 17:18'>Joh 17:18</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:21'>Joh 17:21</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:23'>Joh 17:23</a></em>); and it follows that a situation will arise in which the extraordinary nature of true Christian solidarity over linguistic, ethnic, social and geographical lines will make a similar arresting, compelling witness as it did in the first century. The Lord had prophesied that His followers over time “shall become one flock” (<em><a href='B:500 10:16'>Joh 10:16</a></em> RV); they would be “perfected into one, that the world may know” (<em><a href='B:500 17:23'>Joh 17:23</a></em> RV). He surely hoped this would have become true in the first century. As the Gospel spreads world-wide in the last days, the unity of the believers will become all the more comprehensive, and this will of itself provoke yet more conversions. It could have been like this in the first century- for <em><a href='B:560 3:9'>Eph 3:9</a></em> speaks of how the unity of Jew and Gentile would “make all men see” the Gospel. This is the urgency of Paul’s appeal for unity in Ephesians- he knew that their unity was the intended witness to the world which the Lord had spoken of as the means of the fulfilment of the great commission in <em><a href='B:500 17:21-23'>Joh 17:21-23</a></em>. But sadly, Jew and Gentile went their separate ways in the early church, and the possibility of world-converting witness evaporated.</p><p>This almost uncanny sense of unity is referred to in <em><a href='B:560 4:3'>Eph 4:3</a></em> as "<em>the</em>&nbsp;unity"; although, as Paul shows, the&nbsp;<em>keeping</em>&nbsp;and experience of that unity is dependent upon our patience with each other and maintenance of “the one faith" (i:e. the unifying faith that gives rise to the one body). This unity is potentially powerful enough to convert the world. Through it, "the world may know", “the world may believe" (<em><a href='B:500 17:21'>Joh 17:21</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:23'>Joh 17:23</a></em>). And yet, in Johannine thought, "the world may know" was a result of the Lord's death (<em><a href='B:500 14:31'>Joh 14:31</a></em>), and yet also of the love that would be between His people (<em><a href='B:500 13:35'>Joh 13:35</a></em>). The Lord's death would potentially inspire such a love between His people that their resultant unity would let the world know the love of the Father and Son. Paul alludes to all this when he says that because of the new unity and fellowship between Jew and Gentile, "all men (would) see”, and even to the great princes and powers of this world would be made known by the united church "the manifold wisdom of God" (<em><a href='B:560 3:9-11'>Eph 3:9-11</a></em>). The miraculous Spirit gifts were given, Paul argues, to bring the Jewish and Gentile believers together, “for the perfecting (uniting) of the saints", into "a perfect man", a united body. And thus, once Jewish and Gentile differences were resolved within the ecclesia by the end of the first century, the gifts were withdrawn:&nbsp;</p><p>The Lord had prophesied that His followers over time “shall become one flock” (<em><a href='B:500 10:16'>Joh 10:16</a></em> RV); they would be “perfected into one, that the world may know” (<em><a href='B:500 17:23'>Joh 17:23</a></em> RV). He surely hoped this would have become true in the first century. And it could have been like this in the first century- for <em><a href='B:560 3:9'>Eph 3:9</a></em> speaks of how the unity of Jew and Gentile would “make all men see” the Gospel. This is the urgency of Paul’s appeal for unity in Ephesians- he knew that their unity was the intended witness to the world which the Lord had spoken of as the means of the fulfilment of the great commission in <em><a href='B:500 17:21-23'>Joh 17:21-23</a></em>. But sadly, Jew and Gentile went their separate ways in the early church, unity in the church broke up, and the possibility of world-converting witness evaporated. Seeing the great commission is to be powerfully obeyed in our last days, we simply&nbsp;<em>must&nbsp;</em>learn the lesson:&nbsp;</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 17:24'>Joh 17:24</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 7:34'>Joh 7:34</a></em>.</p><p><em>Father, I desire that they also whom You have given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which You have given me. For You loved me from before the foundation of the world</em>- The glory given before the foundation of the world (:5) is paralleled here with God’s love for His Son at that same time. These terms such as "glory" and "love" are all parallel, and do not require too much specific definition. To behold or perceive the Lord's glory, which was the Father's glory, was to "be where I am", which was the whole intention of His death. For He died so that His Spirit would be given to us, that where "I am" in His relationship with the Father, there we might be also (<em><a href='B:500 14:2-3'>Joh 14:2-3</a></em>). To be where He was meant to behold or perceive the glory; to perceive in Him, a 33 year old Palestinian Jew, of a certain blood type and plasma, son of a hairdresser from a Nazareth back street, covered in blood and spittle on a Roman cross, on a day in April, on a hill just outside Jerusalem, tormented by flies... the sublimest glory of God.</p><p>It could be that His request is therefore specifically that His disciples should be with Him at the cross- "I will that where I am, there they may also be" (<em><a href='B:500 17:24'>Joh 17:24</a></em> RV- hence John's emphasis that he really did behold Him there). He so wishes for us to at least try to stand with Him there and enter into it all. See on <em><a href='B:490 22:15'>Luk 22:15</a></em>. But more than physical presence, He desired that they would perceive the crucifixion as the manifestation of glory, after the pattern of the theophany of Exodus 34.</p><p>Love before the foundation of the world is a reference to the description of Moses as having been prepared in God’s plan from the beginning: “He prepared me Moses before the foundation of the world, that I should be the mediator of His covenant” (<em>Assumption of Moses</em>&nbsp;1:14). Once we appreciate this and other such allusions to popular Jewish belief about Moses, then the passages which appear to speak of personal pre-existence are easier to understand. The Jews didn’t believe that Moses personally pre-existed, but rather that he was there in the plan / purpose of God, and with the major role in that purpose, from before creation. The Lord was applying those beliefs and that language to Himself, showing that He was greater than Moses. But by doing so, He wasn’t implying that He personally pre-existed.</p><p>"That they may behold my glory" connects with the statement in the prologue that they&nbsp;<em>did</em>&nbsp;behold His glory, as if to say that the Lord's request here was indeed granted. His glory was especially manifested in His death. “Where I am" and His future glorification are linked into one and the same event, even though the glorification was not then apparent. This use of language is to be connected with the way John’s Gospel speaks several times of the hour coming, and yet having already come (<em><a href='B:500 4:23'>Joh 4:23</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 5:25'>Joh 5:25</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 16:32'>Joh 16:32</a></em>). I have suggested that all these references have application to the Lord’s death.</p><p>He tells the Father in prayer: “I will NEV "desire" that they… be with me” and yet elsewhere in the same prayer He says “I&nbsp;<em>pray</em>&nbsp;that…” (<em><a href='B:500 17:9'>Joh 17:9</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:15'>Joh 17:15</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:20'>Joh 17:20</a></em>). Our will is essentially our prayer, just as His will was His prayer. If our will is purely God’s will, we will receive answers to every prayer. And yet our will is not yet coincidental with His; even the will of the Son was not perfectly attuned to that of the Father (<em><a href='B:490 22:42'>Luk 22:42</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 5:30'>Joh 5:30</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 6:38'>Joh 6:38</a></em>), hence the unanswered prayer for immediate deliverance from the cross. Yet as we grow spiritually, the will of God will be more evident to us, and we will only ask for those things which are according to His will. And thus our experience of answered prayer will be better and better, which in turn will provide us with even more motivation for faith in prayer. The Lord Jesus is the great example in all this. The implications of our will becoming God’s will, of the sacrifice of our natural will, are enormous. Our will is the thing we cling to the most, and only give up at the very last. Our will alone is what we truly have, our dearest thing- and we are called to sacrifice it. I see in the OT significance of the blood poured out far more than merely our physical life force- rather does it further symbolize our essential will.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 17:25'>Joh 17:25</a></em>&nbsp;<em>O righteous Father, the world did not know You; but I knew You, and these knew that You sent me</em>- The Jewish world rejected the light of the person of Jesus, as stated in the prologue. By rejecting Him they rejected knowledge of / relationship with the Father. The Lord balances the idea of 'knowing God' with 'knowing that You sent Me'. He is aware that the disciples still have not fully known Him nor the Father (<em><a href='B:500 14:8-10'>Joh 14:8-10</a></em>). But He sees in their recognition that He was sent from God the potential for further development, into knowing the Father. His words here are therefore an indirect request, rather than a mere statement of fact. He wishes that through the Spirit, they would progress from knowing that He was sent from God, to fully knowing the Father. We recall how Nicodemus is presented as initially recognizing that the Lord was "from God", but coming to fuller faith through the experience of the cross:&nbsp;</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 17:26'>Joh 17:26</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And I declared to them Your Name, and will declare it, so that the love with which You loved me may be in them, and I in them</em>- The second declaration of the Name was in the cross. On <em><a href='B:500 19:19-22'>Joh 19:19-22</a></em> I note that the Name was particularly declared upon the cross, and that the title over the cross in Hebrew was comprised of four words, the first letter of each spelling the YHWH Name. All the words of God, the essence of His Name, were summed up in that death. "I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me... I have declared unto them thy name" (:8, 26). "I have proclaimed the name of the Lord" (<em><a href='B:50 32:3'>Deu 32:3</a></em> LXX) was surely in the Lord's mind; Moses did that just before his death. Particularly on the cross we see the very essence of love, which is at the core of the Name. Having loved His own, He loved us there unto the end, to the end of the very concept of love and beyond (<em><a href='B:500 13:1'>Joh 13:1</a></em>). He knew that in His death, He would shew "greater love" than any man had or could show. There He declared the Name and character of God, so that the love of God would be within us. "Hereby perceive we love, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren" (<em><a href='B:690 3:16'>1Jn 3:16</a></em> Gk:). The death of the cross was therefore the very definition of love; love is a crucifixion-love, a conscious doing of that which is against the grain of our nature. We&nbsp;<em>must therefore</em>&nbsp;respond by showing that love to our brethren. It is not an option. To be unloving is to deny the very essence of the cross of Christ.</p><p>The idea of indwelling love again alludes to the indwelling of the Spirit, which was given to us through the Lord's surrender to us of His spirit on the cross. It is through the Lord's indwelling of us in this way that we love one another as He loved us. This is why John's letters have so much to say about love, and about how hatred of our brethren is a sign that we are not spiritual, are not indwelt by the spirit of the Son.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:1'>Joh 18:1</a></em>&nbsp;<em>When Jesus had spoken these words, he went with his disciples over the brook Kidron, where there was a garden into which he and his disciples entered</em>- We have the impression that having offered Himself to the Father in speaking those words of prayer in chapter 17, the Lord now purposefully went forth "unto the Father". It was as if He had planned it all; He knew that Judas would guess that he would likely spend the night in that garden, and would be on the lookout for Him there to have Him arrested discreetly. And so He went to that very place. His life was not taken from Him, He gave it of Himself (<em><a href='B:500 10:18'>Joh 10:18</a></em>); the whole situation and timing of His death was brought about by His supreme perception of human psychology, and He thereby arranged the whole scene, getting the stage perfectly ready for the actors to walk on and act exactly as He had set them up to.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:2'>Joh 18:2</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Now Judas, the one who betrayed him, also knew the place. For Jesus often met there with his disciples</em>- As noted on :1, the Lord went there because He knew Judas would guess that He would go there to spend the night. And the Lord was right; Judas was hanging out there with a band of soldiers, guessing the Lord would go there. We note in passing that the Lord was unlike any other great teacher; He literally spent nights sleeping rough. Surely there were some who invited Him to stay at their place, and it would not have been impossible for them to have slept where they kept the last support or to have walked out to Bethany. But the Lord went to Gethsemane because He knew that Judas would guess He might go there.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:3'>Joh 18:3</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Judas along with a detachment of temple guards whom he had been given, and the servants of the chief priests, and the Pharisees, arrived there with lanterns and torches and weapons</em>- As noted on :1,2, Judas went there because he guessed that the Lord would spent the night sleeping rough there, rather than walk out to Bethany or stay with other sympathizers in Jerusalem. The Lord knew he would think like that, and went along with the plan which He Himself had set up. He was not overtaken by events and murdered; rather did He give His life just when and how He wished, setting up the entire situation which would enable Him to die as the Passover lambs were being slain, on that particular Passover, by crucifixion, at Romans hands but at the behest of the Jews, with the masses turned against Him as well as their leaders. As noted on the triumphal entry, this was why He set the crowds up to be bitterly disillusioned in Him by His inversion of all their values and expectations. Judas had prepared the men, on the off chance he would be right and the Lord would indeed go and sleep rough in Gethsemane that night. He must have been so glad his bet paid off, and the men with him would not have wasted their efforts; for a&nbsp;<em>speira&nbsp;</em>"detachment", was about 200 men, and some of the chief priests themselves were present (<em><a href='B:490 22:52'>Luk 22:52</a></em>). But he was fulfilling the exact plan of the Lord. Hence RV "Judas&nbsp;<em>therefore...</em>". It was all set up by the Lord. They came with lanterns and torches, despite the full moon of Passover, because they assumed He might hide somewhere in the Kidron ravine once He saw them coming. But the Lord went out and gave Himself over to them.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:4'>Joh 18:4</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus knowing all the things that must come upon him, went forward and said to them: Whom do you seek?</em>- As noted on :1-3, the Lord had set up the entire situation, and it was going exactly according to His plan. So it was knowing how His plan was going to work out that He went forward to surrender to them; we should not at all read this as any kind of fatalism and grim submission to inevitable events which were overtaking Him. Just as the ending of our lives, through illness or old age, is not to be met in this way, but rather as a conscious giving of life to the Father.</p><p>"Whom do you seek?" is again another question which jumps out of the record to challenge all hearers and readers; as if to say&nbsp; 'And whom do<em>&nbsp;you</em>&nbsp;seek?'. He knew they knew, and that they knew that He knew... So why ask the question? It was surely to elicit in them the words and understanding that 'We seek Jesus'. For these are the words the Gospel writers place on the lips of those who wished to believe in Him (<em><a href='B:470 28:5'>Mat 28:5</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 1:38'>Joh 1:38</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 20:15'>Joh 20:15</a></em>). The Lord's desire to witness to all men, to attempt to save even His persecutors, stands as all time a challenge to us to emulate in evangelism and by all means seeking to share the Gospel with all. Paul in his trials caught the spirit of all this, in attempting to even convert his judges:&nbsp;<br/>&nbsp;</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:5'>Joh 18:5</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:470 26:75'>Mat 26:75</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 18:17'>Joh 18:17</a></em>.</p><p><em>They answered him: Jesus of Nazareth-&nbsp;</em>As noted on :4, the Lord had elicited from them the statement 'We seek Jesus', which is associated with belief in Him. He was by all means seeking to convert them even at that dark hour.</p><p><em>Jesus said to them: I am he (Judas, the one who betrayed him, was standing with them)-&nbsp;</em>The Lord was a well-known public figure in Jerusalem. The way Judas kissed the Lord to identify Him to them may however indicate that some of these Roman soldiers were not aware of Him. "I am he" was clearly a reference to the Yahweh Name. He had put the position in their mouths: 'We seek Jesus'. And in answer to that search, He presented Himself as the fullness of God manifest in flesh.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:6'>Joh 18:6</a></em>&nbsp;<em>When he said to them: I am he, they drew back and fell to the ground</em>- His declaration of the Yahweh Name (see on :6) was accompanied by some kind of theophany, so that they fell to the ground, just as Saul did before the encounter with the glorified Jesus. To now arrest 'the man with the face of God' was going to be difficult for them; it would involve a wilful denial of the obvious.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:7'>Joh 18:7</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Again he asked them: Whom do you seek? And they said: Jesus of Nazareth-</em>&nbsp;As noted previously, the Lord was seeking to convert them, eliciting from them the statement that 'We seek Jesus', which is elsewhere found on the lips of believers in Him (<em><a href='B:470 28:5'>Mat 28:5</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 1:38'>Joh 1:38</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 20:15'>Joh 20:15</a></em>). But now they had seen His face flash with the glory of God, and had fallen to the ground before Him, He urged them not to do the apparently psychologically inevitable, but to stop in their tracks and continue seeking Him in truth. This desire to convert them, to help them even at that late stage to pull out of their nose dive to condemnation, reveals so much about the whole spirit of the Lord.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:8'>Joh 18:8</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus answered: I told you that I am he. If therefore you seek me, let these go their way</em>- So often we read that the Lord told the Jews that He was God’s Son, but they refused to believe. The same words are found in <em><a href='B:500 10:25'>Joh 10:25</a></em>: "I told you and you believed not". And so it was now; the Lord had told them, shown them through the theophany that "I am", but they refused to believe. He had set up a situation whereby they were going to do to Him what they knew was wrong, and they knew He realized that. And so He asks them for a small favour- to let the disciples go free. Again, His understanding of human psychology was magnificent. He so knew and knows us, and we can therefore in all ways be assured that His judgment will be just, and will take into total account every psychological nuance and factor when judging us.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:9'>Joh 18:9</a></em>&nbsp;<em>That the word might be fulfilled which he spoke: Of those whom you have given me I lost not one</em>- This suggests that the Lord's 'keeping' of the disciples in His lifetime was physical as well as spiritual (<em><a href='B:500 17:12'>Joh 17:12</a></em>), and this explains why when speaking about their forthcoming tribulation at the hands of the world, He assures them that His physical departure will not mean that He will not continue to "keep" them; see on <em><a href='B:500 16:4'>Joh 16:4</a></em>. For He would do so through the ministry of the Comforter, the advocate, the legal counsel for the defence.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:10'>Joh 18:10</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Simon Peter having a sword drew it, and struck the high priest's servant and cut off his right ear. Now the servant's name was Malchus</em>- The Lord knew that Peter had a sword / knife hidden in his garment when in Gethsemane. But He did nothing; He didn’t use His knowledge of Peter’s weakness to criticise him. He knew that the best way was to just let it be, and then the miracle of healing Malchus must have more than convinced Peter that the Lord’s men should not use the sword. For their Master had healed, not murdered, one of the men sent to arrest Him. The Lord perhaps knew what Peter would do, for it was not hard to guess, knowing his temperament. The healing of Malchus' ear was therefore planned; for usually the Lord did not address human need but only did His "works" as a witness to His Heavenly origins; John's Gospel records this several times. The miracle was therefore yet another desperate appeal to those arresting Him to not go ahead with their plan. They did so having witnessed directly the Lord's Divine authentication. They were totally culpable, although they would have later given the excuse that they had followed a multitude to do evil; for to break ranks at that stage was indeed difficult.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:11'>Joh 18:11</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus said to Peter: Put the sword into its sheath. The cup which the Father has given me, shall I not drink it?</em>- In prayer earlier, the Lord had totally accepted the cup, despite asking for it to be removed (<em><a href='B:470 26:39'>Mat 26:39</a></em>). So Peter's resistance to the idea of the Lord drinking the cup was in fact shared by the Lord, but He consented. We see here yet another of John's cameos of the Lord's utter humanity and connection with men:&nbsp; Peter had intended to kill Malchus, and only by dodging the blow aimed at his head did he survive, although the sword blow removed his ear. For all time we see that violent resistance to evil is not the Christian way.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:12'>Joh 18:12</a></em>&nbsp;<em>So the detachment of temple guards and their chief captain and the magistrates' attendants of the Jews seized Jesus and bound him</em>- The word for "detachment" could mean there were a few hundred armed men present; so Peter's attempt to murder Malchus was futile. But he may well have know Malchus, for John knew the high priest, whose personal servant Malchus was. It is not impossible that Peter aimed for him in particular to settle some old perceived score.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:13'>Joh 18:13</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And led him to Annas first. For he was father in law of Caiaphas, who was high priest that year</em>- All through the record, we see the Jews' disobedience to the law. A high priest was to be for life, and there were not to be joint high priests nor agreement they could have power just for a specific period. Likewise weapons were not to be carried at the time of the feasts, but these men were armed.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:14'>Joh 18:14</a></em><em>&nbsp;It was Caiaphas that had counselled the Jews that it was expedient that one man should die for the people</em>- The record in John places particular blame upon Caiaphas, who is called "the prince of this Jewish world", who had particular responsibility for the Lord's death. This statement placed here implies again that it was Caiaphas who was behind it all.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:15'>Joh 18:15</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Simon Peter followed Jesus-</em>&nbsp;The Lord had specifically told Peter that he could not follow Him (<em><a href='B:500 13:36'>Joh 13:36</a></em>). If Peter had given due weight to the Lord's words and not overrated his own strength, he would not have followed, and led himself into temptation too great for him. This basic tendency to assume we shall not give in to temptation is very much part of us as humans, and in the Biblical record we have so much encouragement to face up to the fact and humble ourselves in recognizing it.</p><p><em>And so did another disciple. Now that disciple was known to the high priest; and he entered with Jesus into the court of the high priest</em>- John, the disciple beloved by his Lord, brings out the apparent paradox- that he was ‘on friendly terms with the High Priest’, the great ‘satan’ of the early Christians, Caiaphas being presented as "the prince of this world" with especial responsibility for the Lord's death; and yet also ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’. When John knew full well that the Lord Jesus had taught that a man cannot be friends of both Him and of the persecuting world. Again we see the Gospel preachers / writers bringing out their own weakness as a platform upon which to appeal to other weak people to likewise believe as they had done. Quite how it was that John knew Caiaphas isn't clear; it could be that his family fishing business provided salt for the temple and therefore he knew Caiaphas from business dealings. If indeed Salome was John's mother and also the sister or relative of Mary the Lord's mother, then he may well have had priestly connections in the family.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:16'>Joh 18:16</a></em>&nbsp;<em>But Peter was standing outside the door. So the other disciple, who was known to the high priest, went out and spoke to the maid who kept watch at the door</em>- If John was known to the high priest and his servants, he would have been known as a disciple of Jesus. His identification with Peter as his friend was therefore a quite obvious invitation for everyone to assume that Peter was also a disciple of the Lord. And just a few hours ago, he had attempted to murder Malchus, who would have been known to all in the yard. Any denial from Peter about his association with the Lord, let alone claiming he had never heard of Him, was doomed to failure. If only he had not followed, accepting the Lord's warning of <em><a href='B:500 13:36'>Joh 13:36</a></em> that he could not follow Him yet, he would have gotten into the wretched situation he did. And we can retro analyse our own failings in just the same way:&nbsp;</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:17'>Joh 18:17</a></em>&nbsp;<em>The maid keeping watch at the door said to Peter: Are you also one of this man's disciples? He said: I am not</em>- Again the challenge comes out of the record to all hearers and readers: 'Are you one of this man's disciples?'. Although the Lord was not standing amongst them, all the talk was about "this man". Again we see His utter humanity. That the girl would speak like this is utterly credible and again reminds us that the Biblical record is true. These words were actually said, these things really happened.</p><p>The failure of Peter is effectively emphasized by the very structure of the Gospel accounts. John frames the interrogation of the Lord as happening alongside the interrogation of Peter. The Lord peerlessly and bravely witnesses to the Truth, and is condemned to death for it; whilst Peter flunks the issue time and again to save his own skin. Whilst the Lord unflinchingly declares His identity before the High Priest, Peter is presented as doing anything to deny his identity as a disciple. Peter's denials are presented by the records as if in slow motion, for the reader to gaze upon in detail. Peter's denial "I am not" is placed by John in purposeful juxtaposition to the Lord's brave self-identification in Gethsemane:&nbsp;<em>ego eimi</em>, "I am" (<em><a href='B:500 18:5'>Joh 18:5</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 18:17'>Joh 18:17</a></em>). And yet this 'setting up' of the leader of the early church as a failure was done&nbsp;<em>by</em>&nbsp;the early church writers, ultimately inspired as they were The Gospel writers were&nbsp;<em>glorying</em>&nbsp;in their weakness and their Lord's supremacy. They were standing up for their unity with Him by grace, but openly and pointedly proclaiming the vast mismatch between them and Him.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:18'>Joh 18:18</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:470 26:75'>Mat 26:75</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 22:32'>Luk 22:32</a></em>.</p><p><em>Now the servants and the officers were standing there, having made a fire of coals. For it was cold, and they were warming themselves; and Peter also was with them, standing and warming himself</em>- The extra information about the fire being of charcoal coals was in order to highlight the similarity with the Lord's later appearance to Peter, again by a charcoal fire, where the three denials are as it were undone by three asservations of loyalty. "The servants and the officers" refers to the very same group who had just arrested the Lord in the garden. In the full Passover moon, they would surely have discerned Peter, and known that it was he who had tried to murder Malchus their colleague. These background factors made Peter's attempts to deny the Lord all the more hopeless, just as hopeless as trying to defend the Lord against a few hundred armed men by trying to kill one of them. Peter is thereby presented as not simply hot-headed, but rather simple, not thinking through the obvious outcome of situations. And yet he, the one with simple loyalty and the sins of a simple man, was the one chosen to establish the Lord's church. The record thereby appeals to the simple, that the Lord's way and even responsibility in His church is for them too.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:19'>Joh 18:19</a></em>&nbsp;<em>The high priest asked Jesus about his disciples and his teaching</em>- The Lord knew that Peter was out there in the yard and would deny Him three times. And yet when asked about His disciples, He speaks so positively about them (see on :21). The legal ground for condemnation was the Lord's claims in relation to God and the destruction of the temple. These were all issues directly connected with Him personally rather than His disciples, who were in any case not present to answer for themselves. So it could be that the questioning about them was a way of humiliation before coming to the actual allegations. He had converted a rag tag band of fishermen and simple folk like Peter, who had now fled from the garden. He had made no disciples, apparently. And the masses had turned against Him because of His purposeful disappointment of their Messianic expectations in His parody of a triumphal entry into Jerusalem.</p><p>The cross is realistically intended to be lived out in daily experience. The record of the crucifixion and trials of the Lord are framed in language which would have been relevant to the first hearers of the Gospel as they too faced persecution and suffering for their faith. John's account of the interrogation of the Lord by the Jewish leaders, accusing Him of being a false prophet, was surely written in the way it was to provide encouragement to John's converts the "Johannine community" as theologians refer to it to see how their court appearances before the Jews were in fact a living out of their Lord's cross. They too were to 'speak openly to the world' and 'bear witness to the truth before the world', living out the cross in the way in which they responded to the great commission.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:20'>Joh 18:20</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus answered him: I have spoken openly to the world. I often taught in the synagogues and in the temple, where all the Jews come together, and have never spoken in secret</em>- Again we see how "the world" in John refers specifically to the Jewish world, "all the Jews". From what the Lord says here, He did not teach one thing in public and another more secretly to the disciples. He did not give them special knowledge which the masses were forbidden. As taught so often in John, the Lord was the open manifestation of truth to all; He was the light, shining in darkness. There was nothing "secret" about what He stood for. He likewise asks us to be a city set on a hill, which cannot be kept secret (<em><a href='B:470 5:14'>Mat 5:14</a></em>), being the light of the world as He was. Our witness to Him should likewise be open and direct; so much of the 'social Gospel' approach is indirect and amounts to doing the same good works done by unbelievers, without the direct and up front manifestation of the light which was characteristic of the Lord's witness.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:21'>Joh 18:21</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Why do you ask me? Ask those that have heard me what I spoke to them. Behold, these know the things which I said</em>- The Lord was rather critical of the disciples when speaking directly with them, especially concerning their lack of understanding and recall of His previous teachings. But in prayer to the Father in chapter 17 and now in talking about them to others, He is extremely positive about them; just as He is about us with all our weaknesses of understanding and behaviour. He states here that those who heard Him, His disciples (:19), could tell anyone what He had taught. He is setting up a parallel between His teaching and that of the disciples, knowing that soon they were to continue His teaching work in the world.</p><p>Peter would have reflected how his denial had been in spite of the fact that the Lord had prayed he wouldn’t do it- even though He foresaw that Peter would. Just a short time before the denials He had commented, probably in earshot of Peter and John, “ask those that have heard me, what I spake unto them”. Perhaps He nodded towards them both as He said it, to encourage them to speak up rather than slip further into the temptation of keeping quiet. He had used the same phrase earlier, just hours before: “These things have I spoken unto&nbsp;<em>you</em>” (<em><a href='B:500 16:33'>Joh 16:33</a></em>).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:22'>Joh 18:22</a></em><em>&nbsp;And when he had said this, one of the officers standing by struck Jesus with his hand, saying: Do you answer the high priest so?</em>- "Struck" is the word used in the LXX of the Messianic <em><a href='B:290 50:6'>Isa 50:6</a></em> "I gave my cheeks to blows". Perhaps, in the spirit of giving His life and not having it taken from Him, the Lord offered his cheek; although see on :23. This was totally unprovoked; perhaps the officer was over eager to ingratiate himself to the high priest. Or perhaps he was Malchus, or some other beneficiary of the Lord's healing work who wanted to demonstrate that he was not a secret Jesus sympathizer.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:23'>Joh 18:23</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus answered him: If I have spoken evil, testify of the evil, but if well, why do you hit me?</em>- The Lord did not literally 'turn the other cheek', as we might have expected if He intended us to take His words of <em><a href='B:470 5:39'>Mat 5:39</a></em> literally. His words were aimed at helping that officer come to believe in Him; to ask himself whether the Lord had ever at any time spoken evil. He wanted the man to realize that his behaviour in hitting Him was dictated by a desire to please others; the Lord was inviting the man thereby towards freedom in Him.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:24'>Joh 18:24</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Annas then sent him bound to Caiaphas the high priest</em>- The 'hearing' was very early in the morning; the appearance before Annas was a kind of pre-trial hearing, which was not required by any law. Presumably it was done in an attempt to give the impression of having done everything in a hyper correct legal sense. We see a theme in the record of the Jews being so careful to give an appearance of legal obedience whilst they were breaking the most major principles of both Divine and Roman law:&nbsp;</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:25'>Joh 18:25</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Now Simon Peter was standing and warming himself. They said to him: Are you also one of his disciples? He denied and said: I am not</em>- As noted on :17, His "I am not" compares unfavourably with the Lord's statement "I am", and shamelessly open declaration of Himself as He always had. The "also" could imply that the conversation had turned around others who were the Lord's disciples. John was known to the high priest, and presumably to his entourage, in that he had got the girl to allow Peter in to the compound. The talk would naturally have turned to how John was one of his disciples- and then quite naturally, to his friend Peter. As noted on :18, Peter displays quite some simple-mindedness in not seeing that denial was pointless and deeply unconvincing.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:26'>Joh 18:26</a></em>&nbsp;<em>One of the servants of the high priest, being a relative of him whose ear Peter cut off, said: Did I not see you in the garden with him?</em>- Caiaphas and his entourage were riddled with nepotism; there were not even 10,000 people living in Jerusalem, according to Joachim Jeremias, and many who worked in a certain sphere would have been surrounded with friends and relatives as co-workers. And again, Peter ought surely to have realized that he was now inside a locked compound with a crowd of people who were friends and relatives of the very crowd whom he had just confronted in the garden. His situation was hopeless, and as noted on :18, his basic intelligence cannot be highly rated in allowing himself into that situation. But from that simple man came the baptism of thousands and the establishment of the Lord's church.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:27'>Joh 18:27</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Peter denied again; and immediately the cock crew-&nbsp;&nbsp;</em>John’s account of Peter’s denial of the Lord is to me very beautifully crafted by him to reflect his own weakness, lest the focus be left purely upon the failure of Peter. He alone of the evangelists records how he knew a girl who kept the door to the High Priest’s palace, and how he was even known to the High Priest. He speaks to the girl, and she lets Peter in. Then, she recognizes Peter as one of the disciples, that he had been with Jesus, and he makes his shameful denial. But John’s point is clearly this: he, John, was known to the same girl, and to Caiaphas- but they never accused&nbsp;<em>him</em>&nbsp;of having been with Jesus. Because they sadly didn’t make the connection between John and Jesus. Yet when they saw Peter- they knew him as an upfront disciple of Jesus. And when Peter ran out in fear and shame, John remained in the High Priest’s palace- unrecognized and unknown as a disciple of Jesus. The door girl must have realized that John and Peter were connected- because John had asked her to let Peter in. But she never made the accusation that John also had been one of Jesus’ followers. In all this, John reveals his own shame at his lack of open association with the Lord. Significantly, <em><a href='B:510 4:13'>Act 4:13</a></em> records how the Jews later looked at Peter and John “and they took knowledge of them i:e. recognized them, as the girl had recognized Peter, that they both had been with Jesus”. This is the very language of those who accused Peter of having ‘been with Jesus’. John learnt his lesson, and came out more publicly, at Peter’s side, inspired by his equally repentant friend. It’s an altogether lovely picture, of two men who both failed, one publicly and the other privately, together side by side in their witness, coming out for the Lord.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:28'>Joh 18:28</a></em>&nbsp;<em>They lead Jesus from Caiaphas to the Praetorium; but it was early, and so they did not enter into the Praetorium, that they might not be defiled and might eat the Passover</em>- Again we see the extreme hypocrisy of men so caught up with legalistic obedience, whilst committing the worst crime of all time. "Early" is the term used technically of the fourth watch, 3-6 a:m. The appearance before Annas was clearly staged, a show trial if ever there was one. "In capital cases, sentence of condemnation could not be legally pronounced on the day of trial"; and many other such legal requirements were broken. The fear of defilement was through contact with the Gentile soldiers who were abusing the Lord. "That they... might eat the Passover" is surely proof enough that the last supper was a Passover-like meal, but not "the Passover" of the 14th Nissan. The Lord is portrayed as developing a new Israel, with a new priesthood and different central symbols; He was able to change and reinterpret the Passover with ease:&nbsp;</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:29'>Joh 18:29</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Pilate went out to them, and said: What accusation do you bring against this man?</em>- He went out to them as they would not go in to him lest they defile themselves. The inspired record hangs together with great credibility down to the finest details. Pilate faced the same problem as Paul's judges faced. It was simply not clear what this man's crime was.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:30'>Joh 18:30</a></em>&nbsp;<em>They answered and said to him: If this man were not an evildoer, we should not have delivered him up to you</em>- The Jews were careful not to be too specific, because they knew that they had no concrete case against the Lord. Peter lived the rest of his life under the deep impression of the events of this time, which occurred whilst he was denying his Lord. He uses the same word in <em><a href='B:670 2:12'>1Pe 2:12</a></em>: "Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honourable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation". "Visitation" is literally 'the day of looking at', using the same word as used about how the Lord turned and looked at Peter after his third denial. Peter's idea is that just as the Lord was falsely accused of being "an evildoer", so would all those in Him. His sufferings are therefore not to be viewed from a distance, but taken into our lives; our experiences result in our being connected with Him in His time of crisis. The Greek word for "evildoer" used here only occurs four other times in the New Testament, and all of them are in 1 Peter. Consciously or unconsciously, the things of the Lord's passion were in Peter's heart, as they should be in ours.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:31'>Joh 18:31</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Pilate replied to them: Take him yourselves and judge him according to your law. The Jews said to him: It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death</em>- Pilate is repeatedly presented here as on the back foot, and nervous about dealing with the Lord. He is portrayed in history as utterly conscienceless. And so he probably was- but the person of the Lord Jesus is such that it provokes the conscience of every person, even those who appear to have no religious interest nor conscience. The fact is, every human being has a conscience, because it is intrinsic to our being human. And as noted on <em><a href='B:500 15:22'>Joh 15:22</a></em>, our preaching of the Lord Jesus penetrates directly to that conscience. Pilate is a great example of this. The Jews had already judged the Lord as worthy of death, but their ability to execute people had been taken away from them, meaning that they had to pass over such cases to the Romans to decide, and to execute if they considered legitimate.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:32'>Joh 18:32</a></em>&nbsp;<em>That the word of Jesus might be fulfilled, which he spoke, signifying by what manner of death he should die</em>- The Lord designed to die by crucifixion and yet also at the hands of the Jews. He therefore arranged things so that the plan to kill Him, and the responsibility for it, was squarely with the Jews; and yet it was to be the Gentiles who put Him to death, and through crucifixion. He therefore set Himself up to be so hated by the Jews on account of their rejection of Him that they would desire to kill Him; and to effect that, they would have to hand Him over to the Romans, who would then kill Him by crucifixion. This was all the Lord's design, part of His wilful giving of His life and not having it taken from Him (<em><a href='B:500 10:18'>Joh 10:18</a></em>), not being overtaken by events, nor in that sense murdered. He was master of the entire situation from start to finish, arranging it all so that the players all exercised their own freewill, and did what they did despite His personal efforts to lead them to repentance.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:33'>Joh 18:33</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Pilate therefore went into the Praetorium and called Jesus, and said to him: Are you the King of the Jews?</em>-&nbsp; The Jews were seeking the death penalty on the basis that the Lord was setting Himself up as a king in opposition to Caesar. And yet according to their law, this was not a capital offence, in fact it was no crime at all. Their whole legal and logical case against the Lord had no consistency nor integrity at all.</p><p>The records are in fact written in such a way as to encourage us to re-live the crucifixion process as it were in slow motion. The record of the trials likewise is written in a way which encourages us to imagine it and live it out in our imaginations in slow motion. Donald Senior has pointed out how John's account of the trial scenes alternate between what is happening "inside" and "outside”:&nbsp;<br/>(1) "Outside" - The Jewish leaders hand Jesus over to Pilate, <em><a href='B:500 18:28-32'>Joh 18:28-32</a></em><br/>(2) "Inside" - Pilate interrogates Jesus, <em><a href='B:500 18:33-38'>Joh 18:33-38</a></em><br/>(3) "Outside" - Pilate declares Jesus innocent, <em><a href='B:500 18:38-40'>Joh 18:38-40</a></em><br/>(4) "Inside" - The Roman soldiers scourge and mock Jesus, <em><a href='B:500 19:1-3'>Joh 19:1-3</a></em><br/>(5) "Outside" - Pilate again declares Jesus not guilty, <em><a href='B:500 19:4-8'>Joh 19:4-8</a></em><br/>(6) "Inside" - Pilate interrogates Jesus, <em><a href='B:500 19:9-12'>Joh 19:9-12</a></em><br/>(7) "Outside" - Pilate delivers Jesus to crucifixion, <em><a href='B:500 19:13-16'>Joh 19:13-16</a></em>.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:34'>Joh 18:34</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus answered: Do you say this of yourself, or did others tell it to you concerning me?</em>- The Lord was interested in the conversion of even Pilate, just as Paul was for his judges. The Lord of course knew the answer to His question- Pilate was saying this because others had told him. And yet He wishes Pilate to genuinely ask himself the question in his own heart: 'Who really is this Jesus? Is He a King?'.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:35'>Joh 18:35</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Pilate answered: Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests delivered you to me. What have you done?</em>- Pilate avoids the question just as the Lord avoids Pilate's question. This is not a typical interaction between a judge and the accused. The Lord is taking the initiative and seeking by all means to persuade Pilate, who instead of pushing for an answer to his question about "Are you the King of the Jews?" moves on to another question. Perhaps he did not push for an answer because he knew in his own conscience that before him stood a true, Divine King. And he did not wish to dwell on the question 'Who are You?' because in his conscience he knew. Pilate distances himself from personal guilt in the matter by saying that it was the Jews who had delivered the Lord to him, and he was not a Jew and so had had no part in it. This protestation of innocence by an otherwise conscienceless man, even when he sat in the position of power, all indicates how the Lord was touching even his conscience.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:36'>Joh 18:36</a></em><em>&nbsp;Jesus answered: My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews, but my kingdom is not from here</em>- I suggested on :35 that Pilate was persuaded in his conscience that the Lord was indeed a Heavenly King, and he did not push for answer to his question about the Lord's kingship because in his heart, he knew the answer and wanted to move on. As a judge he had every right and necessity to not let the accused avoid a question. But he allows the Lord to not answer on that point. Perceiving this, the Lord now returns to this theme of His kingship, using His next opportunity to speak to return to it, even though what He says about it is not an answer to the question just addressed to Him "What have you done?". The fact He claimed to have a Kingdom was a sign that He considered Himself a King. But it was not a Kingdom in the secular sense, and was not characterized by fighting for Him. But His servants just&nbsp;<em>had</em>&nbsp;tried to fight, to this very end Thus He imputed righteousness to His men and was very positive about them to others.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:37'>Joh 18:37</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 15:27'>Joh 15:27</a></em>.</p><p><em>Pilate replied to him: Are you a king then? Jesus answered: You say that I am a king. To this end have I been born, and to this end I came into the world, that I should testify to the truth. Everyone that is of the truth hears my voice</em>- Pilate as a Roman procurator cannot let this claim to kingship go without comment. For Caesar was to be accepted as the only king in any form. Again we see the Lord as psychological master of the whole situation. Pilate had not stated that the Lord was a King; but He perceived that this was in fact what Pilate had come to believe. See on :31,33,36.</p><p>The Lord told Pilate in the context of His upcoming death that He had come into this world to bear witness to the truth- and this was the basis upon which His Kingdom stood. And the cross was the supreme witness and exhibition of the truth. The Lord personally was the truth, the light; His person was a testimony to truth. His Kingdom, the community who accepted Him as their King, were those heard His voice, who accepted the word which was Him as a person. In <em><a href='B:500 12:27'>Joh 12:27</a></em>, the cross is again “this cause" for which He came. His death was therefore a witness, a testimony, to the finest and ultimate Truth of God.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:38'>Joh 18:38</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Pilate said to him: What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again to the Jews, and said to them: I find no crime in him</em>- The famous question "What is truth?" is another example of how phrases are used in the gospel records which as it were jump off the page and confront all hearers or readers. We all must ask this question, and visually, we can perceive that the Lord standing in front of such a questioner was Himself the answer. For He is presented in John as "the truth". The implication could be that Pilate perceived this, for his rhetorical question is immediately followed by his conviction that there was "no crime in him". The conscienceless Pilate would have had no problem in agreeing to execute a troublemaker; for he is recorded as ordering the murder or random people for no good reason at all. But here he sees no crime in the Lord and is careful not to behave like this. Clearly, his conscience had been touched.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:39'>Joh 18:39</a></em>&nbsp;<em>But you have a custom, that I should release to you one prisoner at the Passover. Will you have me release to you the King of the Jews?</em>- Matthew and Mark make it clear that Pilate was surprised they did not want the Lord released, and he remonstrated with them as to how they could wish the Lord crucified when He had done nothing wrong (<em><a href='B:480 15:14'>Mar 15:14</a></em>). It seems that Pilate misjudged the mood of the masses; he assumed they were all pro-Jesus. He was not aware that the Lord's parody of the triumphal entry had dashed their Messianic hopes, and they were now very angry with Him. Pilate had assumed that this whole thing was just a matter of envy on the part of the priests (<em><a href='B:480 15:10'>Mar 15:10</a></em>). Pilate's offer to release the Lord was an attempt to drive a wedge between the masses and the Jewish leadership; but he failed to realize that the leadership had persuaded the masses and they were themselves disillusioned with the Lord.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 18:40'>Joh 18:40</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Therefore they cried out: Not this man but Barabbas (Now Barabbas was a bandit)</em>- Both Barabbas and the thieves are described with the same Greek word, translated "robber" (<em><a href='B:500 18:40'>Joh 18:40</a></em>; <em><a href='B:480 15:27'>Mar 15:27</a></em>). The Lord uses the same word when He points out that His persecutors were treating him as a "robber" (<em><a href='B:470 26:55'>Mat 26:55</a></em>; <em><a href='B:480 14:48'>Mar 14:48</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 22:52'>Luk 22:52</a></em>); He seems to be aware that what the experience He is going through is setting up Barabbas as a kind of inverse type of Himself, the true 'Son of the Father' (= 'Barabbas'). Those low, desperate men, the dregs of society, were types of us.</p><p>The crucified Christ is portrayed as King of criminals, King of the basest sort, enthroned between them, taking the place of their leader Barabbas, who ought to have been where the Lord was. Barabbas especially becomes a symbol of us all. According to Jewish tradition at the time (<em>Pesach</em>&nbsp;8:6) “They may slaughter the Passover lamb… for one whom they the authorities have promised to release from prison". The Passover amnesty freed a man justly condemned to death- on account of the death of the lamb. We can imagine the relief and joy and almost unbelief of Barabbas, as he watched or reflected upon the crucifixion of Jesus- that he who rightfully should have been there on the cross, was delivered from such a death because of the cross of Christ. The image of condemned prisoners being released due to the death of Messiah is an undoubted Old Testament figure for our redemption from slavery; those locked in the dark dungeon see great light, etc.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:1'>Joh 19:1</a></em>&nbsp;<em>So Pilate had Jesus scourged</em>- Having been flogged until the skin was left hanging in bloody shreds (Josephus), His clothes would have stuck to the skin. Taking the clothes off would have ripped some shreds away. The process of dressing and undressing would have done the same. And then the cross was laid on that bare back. It seems from the synoptics that Pilate did this in the hope this would placate the Jews and he would not need to crucify Him. Again we see the power of encounter with the Lord to touch the hardest conscience.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:2'>Joh 19:2</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And the soldiers platted a crown of thorns, and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple garment</em>- The thorns would have penetrated the scalp into the network of blood vessels there, producing a flow of blood onto the mock-kingly garment.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:3'>Joh 19:3</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And they came to him, and said: Hail, King of the Jews And they struck him with their hands</em>- Note the continuous tenses. The Lord's experiences of suffering are depicted as going on and on, as if in endless waves. When we get that sense in our far smaller sufferings, we are fellowshipping Him there and then. The striking was "upon the cheek", according to some texts. The otherwise strange paradox of <em><a href='B:400 5:1'>Mic 5:1</a></em> was fulfilling: "They shall strike the judge of Israel upon the cheek". He stood there as their judge; throughout all His sufferings and final death, He was in fact supremely in control, as their judge. For of this period He had stated: "Now is the judgment of this world", and He was the judge. See on :13.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:4'>Joh 19:4</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Pilate went out again to the Jews, and said: Look, I bring him out to you, so you may know that I find no crime in him</em>- Again we see the hard conscience of Pilate touched by the encounter with the Lord, putting this otherwise callous man on the back foot. Again we note that Pilate "went out... to the Jews", lest they be defiled by as it were coming in to a Gentile house; recall Peter's reticence at entering the home of Gentile Cornelius.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:5'>Joh 19:5</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple garment. And Pilate said to them: Behold the man</em>- This was indeed sarcasm; the Lord stood there as a pathetic and bedraggled figure. But Pilate said it not so much out of spite toward Him, but as a desperate attempt to again persuade the Jews that he had humiliated this man sufficiently, and there was no point in crucifying Him. Yet again we see the desperation provoked in that hard man's conscience. &nbsp;</p><p>The mocking “behold the man..." would have been seen by the Lord as a reference to <em><a href='B:450 6:12'>Zec 6:12</a></em>, where He is foreseen as a Priest crowned with silver and gold, introduced to Israel with the same phrase: “Behold the man...". The Lord would have taken encouragement that in the Father’s eyes, He was crowned there and then in glory, as He magnified His priestly office. But it would have seemed so, so different in the eyes of those mocking men. As Son of God, He was an intellectual genius without compare, and He applied His genius to the Father's word. He would have been conscious of all these links, and so much more. This way of His didn’t seem to leave Him in His time of dying. And His awareness would doubtless have been a tremendous encouragement to Him. God likewise can control our trials so that we take strength from them in accordance with our appreciation of His word.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:6'>Joh 19:6</a></em>&nbsp;<em>When the chief priests and the servants saw him, they cried out: Crucify him Crucify him Pilate said to them: Take him yourselves and crucify him. For I find no crime in him</em>- Pilate's repeated statement that he found no crime in the Lord was unwise from a secular point of view; for he was publicly going on record as saying he was authorizing the crucifixion of an innocent man. The only reason for saying this was because he was making a genuine protest of conscience. The Jews likewise had a conscience. The more Pilate drew their attention to His innocence, the louder and more insistently they cried for His crucifixion. This of itself indicates the unease of their own consciences. All concerned are presented as culpable, rather than just doing a job. We see here how submission to the crowd mentality, following a multitude to do evil, is still absolutely culpable before God. And in our similar situations we must be ever aware of this. For we like sheep go astray, led into sin by reason of our part in the herd... but we still go astray, and for those sins committed like sheep, the Lord had to die as He did.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:7'>Joh 19:7</a></em>&nbsp;<em>The Jews answered him: We have a law, and by that law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God</em>- The Mosaic death penalty for false prophets / teachers did not exactly correspond with the charge laid against the Lord, of being God’s Son. We note that their issue was not that He claimed to be God. If they felt they had any real evidence for that claim, they would have surely used it now. But even they realized, as Trinitarians ought&nbsp;to, that the Lord was not claiming that. He had clarified their claim to that effect in chapter 10, stating that no, He was only claiming to be the Son of God. And such terms could be used about men without being in the least blasphemous.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:8'>Joh 19:8</a></em>&nbsp;<em>When Pilate heard this he was even more afraid</em>- If this were any other case, Pilate would likely have shrugged or even laughed. Just another nutty person with delusions of grandeur. But the great fear that came upon him is indication that he subconsciously joined the dots and realized that this claim was indeed true. Yet again, we are encouraged that encounter with the Lord touches the consciences of the hearers. And we can therefore preach Him knowing that for all the apparent show of disinterest, we are touching people. And that is why people's body language changes distinctly when they are handed a tract about Him; if it were advertising something to buy, or a show at the local park, their body language is quite different.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:9'>Joh 19:9</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And he went back into the Praetorium, and said to Jesus: Where are you from? But Jesus gave him no answer</em>- Pilate took the Lord back inside, away from earshot of the Jews, to ask Him more about this "Son of God" claim; for it had touched his conscience. This question is strange. It leads nowhere really, if asked from a purely secular perspective. I suggest that the conscience of a man as hardened as Pilate was being touched, and he sensed that the Lord was indeed from God, or had Divine origins. Hence his question. The Lord's silence was because His whole personality was an answer to the question, for He had shown in His life and showed in His whole personality that He was God’s Son.</p><p>Because the Lord was so excluded from society (see on <em><a href='B:500 8:42'>Joh 8:42</a></em>), He would have been so focused upon His Heavenly Father. And that would have been felt and perceived. Reflect how the Centurion muttered: “Truly this was the Son of God”. The Lord’s creation of a new family was radical then; and it’s just as radical today. In passing, the Lord must have been so tempted to say that Joseph was his father. It would’ve made things&nbsp;<em>so&nbsp;</em>much easier for Him. Just as we are tempted to effectively deny our Heavenly Father, and act like we’re just the same as this world. According to the rabbinic writing&nbsp;<em>Qiddusin</em>&nbsp; <em><a href='B:500 4:2'>Joh 4:2</a></em>, a fatherless person must remain silent when asked “Where are you from”. And this is exactly what Jesus did when asked this very question here in <em><a href='B:500 19:9'>Joh 19:9</a></em>. This refusal to call Joseph His father cost Him His life. He refused to call Himself the son of Joseph. Indeed, E:P. Sanders makes the point that the fatherlessness of Jesus not only meant that He would not have been counted as a child of God or son of Abraham; because of these exclusions, He would have been put in the category of “a sinner”. If Joseph did indeed abandon Mary, she would have been classified as “a whore”, and Jesus would have been the “son of adultery”, putting Him in the same “sinner category”. In this we see a wonderful outworking of how God having a son resulted in that Son being counted as a sinner, even though He was not one. He was treated as “a sinner”, and thereby He came to know how we feel, who truly are sinners. &nbsp;</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:10'>Joh 19:10</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Pilate said to him: Why do you not speak to me? Do you not know that I have the power to release you and have the power to crucify you?</em>- Even on a secular level, the situation was such that actually Pilate did not have that power. He either capitulated totally to the Lord's cause, or allowed his supposed "power" to be overridden by the circumstance and manipulation from the Jews. And the Lord had precisely set up the whole situation, so that Pilate would have to crucify Him- although built into the whole game plan there was the genuine appeal to Pilate and the possibility that he would repent and become a Christian. We marvel at how it all worked out, remembering that this Lord is our Lord, and works in a similar way in our lives- directing and manipulating circumstance, whilst leaving the players concerned completely free to repent and come to Him. Those parts of our life path which we don't understand are simply the bits where His arrangement of things is so complex that it is beyond our comprehension. But the end result in view is our salvation.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:11'>Joh 19:11</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Jesus answered him: You would have no power against me unless it was given to you from above. So the man that delivered me to you has the greater sin-&nbsp;</em>As noted on :9, the Lord made no comment about who He was, for it was obvious. But He does respond to this issue of power:The one who delivered the Lord to Pilate was Caiaphas, and he here is credited with the greatest culpability for the crucifixion. This would explain why he is earlier spoken of as "the prince of this Jewish world", singled out for particular judgment. Although Judas betrayed / delivered / handed over the Lord to the Jews, it was Caiaphas who handed Him over to Pilate. The similarity of the language is to demonstrate that Caiaphas also handed over / betrayed the Lord, and was even more culpable than Judas. In this sense, the devil / satan, the great adversary to the Lord, Caiaphas and the system he represented, had used Judas as a tool. By making the point that Caiaphas had greater sin than Pilate, the Lord was as it were comforting Pilate; demonstrating that it was He and not Pilate who was in complete control of events.</p><p>The Lord was intensely intellectually conscious throughout His sufferings. His mind was evidently full of the word, He would have seen the symbolism of everything far more than we can, from the thorns in His mock crown, to the hyssop being associated with Him at the very end (the hyssop was the fulfilment of types in <em><a href='B:20 12:8'>Exo 12:8</a></em>; <em><a href='B:20 12:22'>Exo 12:22</a></em>; <em><a href='B:30 14:4'>Lev 14:4</a></em>; <em><a href='B:30 14:6'>Lev 14:6</a></em>; <em><a href='B:30 14:49-52'>Lev 14:49-52</a></em>; <em><a href='B:40 19:6'>Num 19:6</a></em>; <em><a href='B:40 19:18'>Num 19:18</a></em>). Often it is possible to see in His words allusions to even seven or eight OT passages, all in context, all relevant. Reflect how His response to Pilate “you would have no power against me" was a reference to the prophecy of Daniel 8, about Rome becoming mighty “but not by his own power". Or how His crucifixion “near to the city" (<em><a href='B:500 19:20'>Joh 19:20</a></em>) connected with Jerusalem thereby being guilty of His blood (<em><a href='B:50 21:3'>Deu 21:3</a></em>).</p><p>It is inevitable that to someone of His intellectual ability as the Son of God, to a man with His sense of justice and with His knowledge of the Jews and their Law, everything within Him would have cried out at the protracted injustices of His trials. He had the strong sense within Him at this time that He was hated without cause, that the Jews were "my enemies&nbsp;<em>wrongfully</em>" (<em><a href='B:230 69:4'>Psa 69:4</a></em>). "Are you come out as against a thief…? I sat daily with you teaching in the temple, and you laid no hold on me" (<em><a href='B:470 26:55'>Mat 26:55</a></em>). "Why do you ask me? Ask them which heard me... If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil: but if well, why do you smite me?" (<em><a href='B:500 18:21-23'>Joh 18:21-23</a></em>). All these indicate a keen sense of injustice. It must have welled up within Him when He saw the servant come with the bowl of water for Pilate to solemnly wash his hands in. Yet His response was one of almost concern for Pilate, lest he think that the guilt was&nbsp;<em>solely</em>&nbsp;on him (<em><a href='B:500 19:11'>Joh 19:11</a></em>; cp. His concern for Judas’ repentance, <em><a href='B:500 13:27'>Joh 13:27</a></em>). The Lord did not just passively resign Himself to it with the sense that all would have to be as all would have to be. He struggled with the injustice of it all. Some form of anger even arose, it would seem. This fact must have pushed Him towards that dread precipice of sin. His possession of human nature and the possibility of failure meant that there were times when He was much nearer sin than others. But He didn’t just keep away from the precipice, as He didn’t spare Himself from being tired and tested by the crowds and thereby drawn closer to the possibility of spiritual failure. He came into this world to show forth the Father's glory, and to do His will was His meat and drink. This hangs like a tapestry to the whole crucifixion event.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:12'>Joh 19:12</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Upon this, Pilate sought to release him-&nbsp;</em>The Lord had told him that he did indeed have "sin" over this matter, although Caiaphas had greater sin. And there was something in Pilate that didn’t want to sin or be held guilty by the power "from above" (:11) which was clearly involved in all this.</p><p><em>But the Jews cried out, saying: If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend. Everyone that makes himself a king speaks against Caesar</em>- On one hand, there was Pilate's desire not to sin or be held guilty before God. On the other, there was the manipulation of the crowd, the desire to retain office, and not offend our secular superiors. And that voice, as with so many, was more powerful than the voice of the&nbsp;<em>logos</em>&nbsp;of encounter with Jesus.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:13'>Joh 19:13</a></em>&nbsp;<em>When Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out, and sat down on the judgment seat at a place called The Pavement, but in Hebrew, Gabbatha</em>- The judgment seat of Christ is not a means by which the Father and Son gather information about us, consider it and then give a verdict. It will be for&nbsp;<em>our</em>&nbsp;benefit. Our behaviour is constantly analysed by them and 'judged'. The idea of sitting upon a judgment seat or giving judgment doesn't necessarily involve the idea of weighing up evidence. To 'judge' can mean simply to pronounce the final verdict, which the judge has long since known; not to weigh up evidence (consider <em><a href='B:470 7:2'>Mat 7:2</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 3:18'>Joh 3:18</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 5:22'>Joh 5:22</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 7:24'>Joh 7:24</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 7:51'>Joh 7:51</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 8:15-16'>Joh 8:15-16</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 8:26'>Joh 8:26</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 16:11'>Joh 16:11</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 18:31'>Joh 18:31</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 7:7'>Act 7:7</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 23:3'>Act 23:3</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 24:6'>Act 24:6</a></em> Gk:; <em><a href='B:520 2:12'>Rom 2:12</a></em>; <em><a href='B:520 3:7'>Rom 3:7</a></em>; <em><a href='B:530 11:31'>1Co 11:31</a></em>; <em><a href='B:600 2:12'>2Th 2:12</a></em>; <em><a href='B:650 10:30'>Heb 10:30</a></em>; <em><a href='B:650 13:4'>Heb 13:4</a></em>; <em><a href='B:670 4:6'>1Pe 4:6</a></em>; <em><a href='B:660 5:10'>Jas 5:10</a></em>; <em><a href='B:660 5:20'>Jas 5:20</a></em>). Herod sat on the judgment seat in order to make "an oration" to the people, supposedly on God’s behalf (<em><a href='B:510 12:21'>Act 12:21</a></em> RVmg:). It wasn't to weigh up any evidence- it was to make a statement. And thus it will be in the final judgment. Also, "judge" is often used in the sense of 'to condemn'- not to just consider evidence (e.g. <em><a href='B:470 7:2'>Mat 7:2</a></em>; <em><a href='B:520 3:7'>Rom 3:7</a></em>; <em><a href='B:600 2:17'>2Th 2:17</a></em>).</p><p>It is grammatically possible to read <em><a href='B:500 19:13'>Joh 19:13</a></em> as meaning that Pilate sat Him (Jesus) down on the judgment seat, on the pavement, replete with allusion to the sapphire pavement of Exodus 24. The Gospel of Peter <em><a href='B:500 3:7'>Joh 3:7</a></em> actually says this happened: “And they clothed him with purple and sat him on a chair of judgment, saying, Judge justly, King of Israel". See on <em><a href='B:670 2:23'>1Pe 2:23</a></em>. This would fit in with how it was as "the judge of Israel" at this time that the Lord was smitten on the cheek; see on :3. Now was "the judgment of this world", and the Lord was judge.</p><p>The whole account of the crucifixion in John shows how the Lord gave His life up of Himself; the Jews and Romans had no power to take it from Him, and throughout John’s accounts of the trials and crucifixion, it is apparent that it is the Lord and not His opponents who is in total control of the situation. Even though ‘the Jewish Devil’ is seen as a factor in Judas’ betrayal of Jesus (<em><a href='B:500 13:27'>Joh 13:27</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 13:30'>Joh 13:30</a></em>), it is clear that Jesus was delivered up s:w. ‘betrayed’ by the “determinate counsel will and foreknowledge of God” (<em><a href='B:510 2:23'>Act 2:23</a></em>). It wasn’t as if God fought a losing battle with a personal Satan in order to protect His Son from death. The way that the Lord Jesus is ‘sat down upon’ the Judgment Bench, as if He is the authentic judge (<em><a href='B:500 19:13'>Joh 19:13</a></em>), is an example of how the Lord Jesus is presented in John as being totally in control; His ‘lifting up’ on the cross is portrayed as a ‘lifting up’ in glory, enthroned as a King and Lord upon the cross. Likewise 'Gabbatha' means an elevated or lifted up place; the Lord there was lifted up too, that He might draw all believing eyes toward Him. Other examples of John bringing out this theme of the Lord being in control are to be found in the way He confronts His captors (<em><a href='B:500 18:4'>Joh 18:4</a></em>), questions His questioners (<em><a href='B:500 18:20-21'>Joh 18:20-21</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 18:23'>Joh 18:23</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 19:11'>Joh 19:11</a></em>), gets freedom for His followers (<em><a href='B:500 18:8'>Joh 18:8</a></em>), and makes those come out to arrest Him fall to the ground.</p><p>The mention that Jesus stood before Pilate “in a place that is called the Pavement" (<em><a href='B:500 19:13'>Joh 19:13</a></em>) reminds us of <em><a href='B:20 24:10'>Exo 24:10</a></em>, where Yahweh was enthroned in glory on another ‘pavement’ when the old covenant was made with Israel. The New Covenant was inaugurated with something similar. “In him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily" (<em><a href='B:580 2:9'>Col 2:9</a></em>) would have been easily perceived as an allusion to the way that Yahweh Himself as it were dwelt between the cherubim on the mercy seat (<em><a href='B:120 19:15'>2Ki 19:15</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 80:1'>Psa 80:1</a></em>). And yet the Lord Jesus in His death was the “place of propitiation" (<em><a href='B:650 2:17'>Heb 2:17</a></em>), the blood-sprinkled mercy seat. “There I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy-seat... of all things which I will give thee in commandment" (<em><a href='B:20 25:20-22'>Exo 25:20-22</a></em>). In the cross, God met with man and communed with us, commanding us the life we ought to lead through all the unspoken, unarticulated imperatives which there are within the blood of His Son. There in the person of Jesus nailed to the tree do we find the focus of God’s glory and self-revelation, and to this place we may come to seek redemption. See on <em><a href='B:500 19:19'>Joh 19:19</a></em>.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:14'>Joh 19:14</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Now it was the preparation of the Passover-&nbsp;</em>And indeed the Passover lamb was being prepared by these awful sufferings. The Lord's last supper was therefore a Passover-style meal, but not the Passover of 14 Nissan.</p><p><em>It was about the sixth hour, and he said to the Jews: Behold, your King</em>- Pilate really ought to have figured by now that if he wanted to keep his job and placate the Jews, he had to crucify the Lord. But still his desperate conscience tried to get the Lord released. He was indeed being sarcastic by presenting the bedraggled figure of Jesus as King of the Jews. He was desperately reasoning that they could hardly accept such a figure as their king. Their response of :15 is evidence that they considered Pilate's words as an attempt to get them to rethink their obsession with crucifying the Lord.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:15'>Joh 19:15</a></em>&nbsp;<em>They cried out: Away with him Away with him-</em>&nbsp;The Greek means literally 'to lift up'; again the Lord would have taken encouragement from the fact that effectively His crucifixion was a lifting up in glory, from God’s perspective. And He had used the same word in saying that His life was not to be taken "away" from Him, but He would give it of Himself (<em><a href='B:500 10:18'>Joh 10:18</a></em>). He was total master of the situation. And there are times when others may apparently have power over us, where we appear to be victims of a total collapse situation all around us, or circumstances are going to take us away, maybe from life itself. But if we are consciously giving our lives to the Lord, then we are not being swamped or taken away by circumstance, but like the Lord, remain masters of our life's path.</p><p><em>Crucify him Pilate said to them: Shall I crucify your King? The chief priests answered: We have no king but Caesar</em>- This recalls how Israel rejected God’s Kingship for that of a human king. This public statement of loyalty to Caesar was exactly what the orthodox Jews objected to making. But they made it now because of their utter obsession with destroying Him. Such obsessions, born out of a bad conscience, result in all principles being thrown to the wind.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:16'>Joh 19:16</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Therefore he delivered him to them to be crucified</em>- Pilate's guilt here is plainly stated, especially as he himself realized he had the power to release the Lord. He delivered Him "to their will" (<em><a href='B:490 23:25'>Luk 23:25</a></em>), tacitly accepting that their will was stronger than his; although all this happened according to the will of the Father and Son. The Gospels carefully omit any record of Pilate pronouncing a judgment of condemnation upon the Lord, as was required and usual. He did not do so because of the deep weight of conscience within him.</p><p>This handing over of the Lord to crucifixion was ultimately done by God, the "power" behind and through Pilate. There is an unmistakable Biblical link between the term "Son of God", the idea of God giving, and the death of the Lord Jesus. Whatever else this means, it clearly shows the pain to God in the death of His Son. Paul only uses "Son of God" 17 times- and every one is in connection with the death of the Lord. And often the usages occur together with the idea of God’s&nbsp;<em>giving</em>&nbsp;of His Son to die- "He who did not spare His own son but gave him up for us all" (<em><a href='B:520 8:32'>Rom 8:32</a></em>). This sheds light on the otherwise strange use of another idea by Paul- that Jesus was 'handed over' to death (<em><a href='B:520 4:25'>Rom 4:25</a></em>; <em><a href='B:550 2:20'>Gal 2:20</a></em>; <em><a href='B:560 5:2'>Eph 5:2</a></em>; <em><a href='B:560 5:25'>Eph 5:25</a></em>). It was the Father who ultimately 'handed over' His Son to death. The idea of God’s Son being&nbsp;<em>sent</em>&nbsp;to redeem us from sin is perhaps John's equivalent (<em><a href='B:690 1:7'>1Jn 1:7</a></em>; <em><a href='B:690 4:10'>1Jn 4:10</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 3:16'>Joh 3:16</a></em>). Jesus was the Son whom the Father sent "last of all" to receive fruit (<em><a href='B:480 12:6'>Mar 12:6</a></em>)- and it is reflection upon God’s giving of His Son on the cross which surely should produce fruit in us. For we can no longer live passively before such outgiving love and self-sacrificial pain. And we are invited to perhaps review our understanding of two passages in this light: "When the time had fully come, God sent forth His Son... to redeem" (<em><a href='B:550 4:4'>Gal 4:4</a></em>) and "God sending His son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for a sin offering condemned sin, in the flesh" (<em><a href='B:520 8:3'>Rom 8:3</a></em>). These verses would therefore speak specifically of what happened in the death of Christ on the cross, rather than of His birth. For it was in the cross rather than the virgin birth that we were redeemed and a sin offering made. It was on the cross that Jesus was above all in the exact likeness of sinful flesh, dying the death of a sinful criminal. The "likeness" of sinful flesh is explained by <em><a href='B:570 2:7'>Phi 2:7</a></em>, which uses the same word to describe how on the cross Jesus was made "in the likeness of men". We can now better understand why the Centurion was convicted by the sight of Christ's death to proclaim: "Truly this was the Son of God" (<em><a href='B:480 15:39'>Mar 15:39</a></em>).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:17'>Joh 19:17</a></em>&nbsp;<em>So they took Jesus, and he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called the place of a skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha</em>- They "took" or Gk. 'received' Him; but the prologue states that they received Him not (<em><a href='B:500 1:11'>Joh 1:11</a></em>).</p><p>Tradition has it that the victim had to hold their hands out to receive the stake, which they then had to carry. The Lord's prophecy of Peter's crucifixion thus describes it as Peter stretching out his hands and being led to his death (<em><a href='B:500 21:18'>Joh 21:18</a></em>). Yet the Lord emphasized in His teaching that we must&nbsp;<em>take up</em>&nbsp;the cross, as He did (<em><a href='B:480 8:34'>Mar 8:34</a></em>; <em><a href='B:480 10:21'>Mar 10:21</a></em>). This might just suggest that in line with the Lord's willing death, giving up of His life rather than it being taken from Him, He bent down and picked up the stake before the soldiers had the chance to offer it to Him. I imagine doing this in a deft manner. The deftness of the way He broke that bread apart and held the cup comes out in <em><a href='B:470 26:26'>Mat 26:26</a></em>. He knew what that breaking of bread was going to mean. His willingness would have been such a contrast to the unwilling hesitation of the thieves and other victims. The soldiers must have been blind indeed to still mock Him, despite all these indications that He was more than mere man. That piece of wood that was laid upon Him by the Father, however the Lord physically took it up, represented our sins, which were laid upon Him (<em><a href='B:290 53:6'>Isa 53:6</a></em>); your laziness to do your readings early this morning, my snap at the woman in the bus, his hatred of his mother in law... that piece of wood was the symbol of our sins, every one of them. This is what we brought upon Him. It was our laziness, our enmity, our foolishness,&nbsp;<em>our weak will</em>... that necessitated the death of Jesus in this terrible way. He went through with it all&nbsp;to make an end of sins" (<em><a href='B:340 9:26'>Dan 9:26</a></em>). Will we do our little bit in responding? The marks of His sufferings will be in Him eternally, and thereby we will be eternally reminded of the things we now only dimly appreciate (<em><a href='B:730 5:6'>Rev 5:6</a></em>; <em><a href='B:450 13:6'>Zec 13:6</a></em>). The walk from the courthouse to Golgotha was probably about 800m (half a mile). One of the soldiers would have carried the sign displaying the Lord's Name and crime. The thieves were probably counting the paces (maybe the crowd was chanting them?). You know how it is when doing a heavy task, 'Just three more boxes to lug upstairs... just two more... last one'. But the Lord was above this. Of that I'm sure. Doing any physically strenuous task that takes you to the end of your strength, there is that concentration on nothing else but the job in hand. Hauling a heavy box or load, especially in situations of compulsion or urgency, it becomes irrelevant if you bump into someone or crush a child's toy beneath your heavy feet. But the Lord rose above.</p><p>John's statement that "He went out, bearing the cross for Himself" as He walked to Golgotha is a real emphasis, seeing that it was&nbsp;<em>as</em>&nbsp;He came out that it was necessary for them to make Simon carry the cross. John takes a snapshot of that moment, and directs our concentration to the Lord at that moment, determined to carry it to the end, even though in fact He didn’t. It is this picture of following the Lord carrying&nbsp;<em>His</em>&nbsp;cross which the Lord had earlier asked us to make the model of our lives. We are left to assume that the two criminals followed Him in the procession. They were types of us, the humble and the proud, the selfless and the selfish, the two categories among those who have been asked to carry the cross and follow the Lord in His 'last walk'.</p><p>The word John uses for 'bearing' is translated (and used in the sense of) 'take up' in <em><a href='B:500 10:31'>Joh 10:31</a></em>. It was as if John saw as significant the Lord's willingness to take up the cross Himself, without waiting for it to be forced upon Him as it probably was on the other two. And there is a clear lesson for us, who fain would carry something of that cross. And yet the similarity of meaning within this word for 'taking up' and 'bearing / carrying' is further instructive. The Lord picked it up and was willing to carry it, but didn’t make it to the end of the 'last walk', through understandable human weakness. Amidst the evident challenge of the cross, there is interwoven comfort indeed (as there is in the Lord's eager and positive acceptance of the thief, Joseph and Nicodemus, and the wondrous slowness of the Father's punishment of those ever-so-evil men who did the Lord to death).</p><p>'Golgotha' meaning 'The place of the skull' or even ‘The skull of Goliath’ may well be the place near Jerusalem where David buried Goliath's skull (<em><a href='B:90 17:54'>1Sa 17:54</a></em>). "Ephes-Dammim", where David killed Goliath, meaning 'border of blood' suggests 'Aceldama', the "field of blood". Goliath coming out to make his challenges at morning and evening&nbsp;(<em><a href='B:90 17:16'>1Sa 17:16</a></em>) coincided with the daily sacrifices which should have been offered at those times, with their reminder of sin and the need for dedication to God. The thoughtful Israelite must surely have seen in Goliath a personification of sin which the daily sacrifices could do nothing to overcome.</p><p>“The crossbar was carried... weighing 34 to 57 kg:, was placed across the nape of the victim's neck and balanced along both shoulders. Usually the outstretched arms then were tied to the crossbar”. This means that the Lord would have had His shoulders bowed forward as He walked to Golgotha, with both His hands lifted up against His chest. He evidently foresaw this in some detail when He described His mission to man as a shepherd carrying His lost sheep on both shoulders. Let's forever forget the picture of a happy, quiet lamb snugly bobbling along on the shepherd's shoulders. We are surely meant to fill in the details in the parables. The sheep, his underside covered in faeces and mud, would have been terrified; in confusion he would have struggled with the saviour shepherd. To be carried on His shoulders would have been a strange experience; he would have struggled and been awkward, as the shepherd stumbled along, gripping both paws against His chest with His uplifted hands. This was exactly the Lord's physical image as He stumbled to the place of crucifixion. He evidently saw the cross as a symbol of us, His struggling and awkward lost sheep. And every step of the way along the Via Dolorosa, Yahweh's enemies reproached every stumbling footstep of His anointed (<em><a href='B:230 89:51'>Psa 89:51</a></em>). It was all this that made Him a true King and our unquestioned leader- for on His shoulders is to rest the authority of the Kingdom (<em><a href='B:290 9:5'>Isa 9:5</a></em>), because He bore His cross upon the same shoulders.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:18'>Joh 19:18</a></em>&nbsp;<em>There they crucified him, and with him two others, on either side one and Jesus between them</em>- He is presented as King of criminals of the basest kind; see on <em><a href='B:500 18:40'>Joh 18:40</a></em>.</p><p>John’s Gospel has many references to Moses, as catalogued elsewhere. When John records the death of the Lord with two men either side of Him, he seems to do so with his mind on the record of Moses praying with Aaron and Hur on each side of him (<em><a href='B:20 17:12'>Exo 17:12</a></em>). John’s account in English reads: “They crucified him, and with him two others, on either side one” (<em><a href='B:500 19:18'>Joh 19:18</a></em>). Karl Delitzsch translated the Greek New Testament into Hebrew, and the Hebrew phrase he chose to use here is identical with that in <em><a href='B:20 17:12'>Exo 17:12</a></em>. Perhaps this explains why John alone of the Gospel writers doesn’t mention that the two men on either side of the Lord were in fact criminals- he calls them “two others” (<em><a href='B:500 19:18'>Joh 19:18</a></em>) and “… the legs of the first and of the other” (<em><a href='B:500 19:32'>Joh 19:32</a></em>). Thus John may’ve chosen to highlight simply how there were two men on either side of the Lord, in order to bring out the connection with the Moses scene.</p><p>It makes a good exercise to read through one of the records, especially John 19, and make a list of the adjectives used. There are virtually none. Read a page of any human novelist or historian: the pages are cluttered with them. Hebrew is deficient in adjectives, and because of this it often uses 'Son of…' plus an abstract noun, instead of an adjective. Thus we read of a "son of peace" (<em><a href='B:490 10:5-6'>Luk 10:5-6</a></em>), or "a man of tongue" (<em><a href='B:230 140:11'>Psa 140:11</a></em> RVmg; AV "an evil speaker"). The Hebrew language so often reflects the character of God. And His artless self-expression is no clearer seen in the way He inspired the records of the death of His Son. The record of the death of God’s Son is something altogether beyond the use of devices as primitive as adjectives. The way in which the actual act of impaling is recorded as just a subordinate clause is perhaps the clearest illustration of this. The way Mary thinks the risen Lord is a gardener is another such. Or the weeping of the women, and Joseph, and Nicodemus (presumably this happened) when the body was taken from the cross, as the nails were taken out: this isn't recorded. Likewise, only Matthew records the suicide of Judas; the Father chose not to emphasize in the records that the man who did the worst a man has ever done or could ever do- to betray the peerless Son of God- actually went and took his own life (and even made a mess of doing that). If it were my son, I would have wanted to emphasize this. But the Almighty doesn't. In similar vein, it is almost incredible that there was no immediate judgment on the men who did the Son of God to death. The judgments of AD70 only came on the next generation. Those middle aged men who stood and derided the Saviour in His time of finest trial: they died, as far as we know, in their beds. And the Roman / Italian empire went on for a long time afterwards, even if God did in fact impute guilt to them for what their soldiers did. Another hallmark of God’s Hand in the record is that what to us are the most obvious OT prophecies are not quoted; e.g. <em><a href='B:290 53:7'>Isa 53:7</a></em>: "He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth". A human author would have made great capital from such detailed fulfilments. But not so the Almighty. Hebrew, along with all the Semitic languages, has no superlatives. God doesn’t need them. And the record of the cross is a classic example. The record of the resurrection reflects a similar culture. The actual resurrection isn’t ever described in marked contrast to how it is in the uninspired ‘gospels’. Instead we read of the impact of His resurrection upon His disciples.</p><p>The crucifixion of Christ was at 9 a:m. The text suggests there may have been a gap of minutes between them arriving at the place and the actual nailing. He would have willingly laid Himself down on the stake, whereas most victims had to be thrown down on the ground by the soldiers. He gave His life, it wasn't taken from Him. Likewise He&nbsp;<em>gave</em>&nbsp;His back to the smiters when they flogged Him; He gave His face to them when they spoke about pulling out His beard (<em><a href='B:290 50:6'>Isa 50:6</a></em>). Men usually clenched their fists to stop the nails being driven in, and apparently fingers were often broken by the soldiers to ease their task. Not a bone of the Lord was broken. We can imagine Him willingly opening His palms to the nails; as we, so far away from it all, should have something of a willing acceptance of what being in Him demands of us. It may be that He undressed Himself when they finally reached the place of crucifixion. In similar vein, early paintings of the flogging show the Lord standing there&nbsp;<em>not</em>&nbsp;tied to the flogging post, as victims usually were. As He lay there horizontal, His eyes would have been heavenwards, for the last time in His mortality. Perhaps He went through the business of thinking ‘this is the last time I'll do this... or that…’. How often He had lifted up His eyes to Heaven and prayed (<em><a href='B:500 11:41'>Joh 11:41</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:1'>Joh 17:1</a></em>). And now, this was the last time, except for the final raising of the head at His death. “While four soldiers held the prisoner, a Centurion placed the sharp five inch spike in the dead centre of the palm… four to five strokes would hammer the spike deep into the rough plank and a fifth turned it up so that the hand would not slip free" (C:M. Ward,&nbsp;<em>Treasury Of Praise</em>). If it is indeed so that a Centurion usually did the nailing, it is a wondrous testimony that it was the Centurion who could say later that “truly this was the Son of God". The very man who actually nailed the Son of God was not struck dead on the spot, as a human ‘deity’ would have done. God’s patient grace was extended, with the result that this man too came to faith:&nbsp;<br/>&nbsp;<br/>The sheer and utter reality of the crucifixion needs to be meditated upon just as much as the actual reality of the fact that Jesus actually existed. A Psalm foretold that Jesus at His death would be the song of the drunkards. Many Nazi exterminators took to drink. And it would seem almost inevitable that the soldiers who crucified Jesus went out drinking afterwards. Ernest Hemingway wrote a chilling fictional story of how those men went into a tavern late on that Friday evening. After drunkenly debating whether “Today is Friday", they decide that it really is Friday, and then tell how they nailed Him and lifted Him up. ''When the weight starts to pull on 'em, that's when it gets em... Ain't I seen em ? I seen plenty of 'em . I tell you, he was pretty good today". And that last phrase runs like a refrain through their drunken evening. Whether or not this is an accurate reconstruction isn't my point- we have a serious duty to seek to imagine what it might have been like. Both Nazi and Soviet executioners admit how vital it was to never look the man you were murdering in the face. It was why they put on a roughness which covered their real personalities. And the Lord’s executioners would have done the same. To look into His face, especially His eyes, dark with love and grief for His people, would have driven those men to either suicide or conversion. I imagine them stealing a look at His face, the face of this man who didn’t struggle with them but willingly laid Himself down on the wood. The cross struck an educated Greek as barbaric folly, a Roman citizen as sheer disgrace, and a Jew as God’s curse. Yet Jesus turned the sign of disgrace into a sign of victory. Through it, He announced a radical revaluation of all values. He made it a symbol for a brave life, without fear even in the face of fatal risks; through struggle, suffering, death, in firm trust and hope in the goal of true freedom, life, humanity, eternal life. The offence, the sheer scandal, was turned into an amazing experience of salvation, the way of the cross into a possible way of life. The risen Christ was and is just as much a living reality. Suetonius records that Claudius expelled Jewish Christians from Rome because they were agitated by one Chrestus; i:e. Jesus the Christ. Yet the historian speaks as if He was actually alive and actively present in person. In essence, He was. All the volumes of confused theology, the senseless theories about the Trinity. would all have been avoided if only men had had the faith to believe that the man Jesus who really died and rose, both never sinned and was also indeed the Son of God. And that His achievement of perfection in human flesh was real. Yes it takes faith- and all the wrong theology was only an excuse for a lack of such faith.</p><table><tr><td></p><p></td><td></td></tr></table><p>Several crucifixion victims have been unearthed. One was nailed with nails 18c:m. long (7 inches). A piece of acacia word seems to have been inserted between the nail head and the flesh:&nbsp;<em>Did the Lord cry out in initial pain and shock?</em>&nbsp;Probably, as far as I can reconstruct it; for He would have had all the physical reflex reactions of any man. But yet I also sense that He didn’t flinch as other men did. He came to offer His life, willingly; not grudgingly, resistantly give it up. He went through the panic of approaching the pain threshold. The nailing of the hands and feet just where the nerves were would have sent bolts of pain through the Lord's arms every time He moved or spoke. The pain would have been such that even with the eyelids closed, a penetrating red glare would have throbbed in the Lord’s vision. Hence the value and intensity of those words He did speak. The pulling up on the nails in the hands as the cross was lifted up would have been excruciating. The hands were nailed through the 'Destot gap', between the first and second row of wrist bones, touching an extra sensitive nerve which controls the movement of the thumb and signals receipt of pain. They would not have been nailed through the palms or the body would not have been supportable. It has been reconstructed that in order to breathe, the crucified would have had to pull up on his hands, lift the head for a breath, and then let the head subside. The sheer physical agony of it all cannot be minimized. Zenon Ziolkowski (<em>Spor O Calun</em>) discusses contemporary descriptions of the faces of the crucified, including Jehohanan the Zealot, whose crucifixion Josephus mentions. Their faces were renowned for being terribly distorted by pain. The Lord's face was marred more than that of any other, so much so that those who saw Him looked away (<em><a href='B:290 52:14'>Isa 52:14</a></em>). That prophecy may suggest that for the Lord, the crucifixion process hurt even more. We suggest later that He purposefully refused to take relief from pushing down on the 'seat', and thus died more painfully and quicker. Several of the unearthed victims were crucified on olive trees. So it was perhaps an olive tree which the Lord had to carry. He would have thought of this as He prayed among the olive trees of Gethsemane (perhaps they took it from that garden?). I would not have gone through with this. I would have chosen a lesser death and the achieving of a lesser salvation. I would have had more pity on myself. But the Lord of all did it&nbsp;<em>for me</em>, He became obedient&nbsp;<em>even</em>&nbsp;to death on a cross (<em><a href='B:570 2:8'>Phi 2:8</a></em>), as if He could have been obedient to a lesser death, but He chose this ultimately high level. I can only marvel at the Father's gentleness with us, that despite the ineffable trauma of death, the way He takes us is so much more gentle than how He allowed His only begotten to go.</p><p>Despite much prior meditation, there perhaps dawned on the Lord some 'physical' realizations as to the nature of His crucified position: the utter impossibility of making the slightest change of position, especially when tormented by flies, the fact that the hands and feet had been pierced in the most sensitive areas; the fact that the arms were arranged in such a way so that the weight of the body hung only on the muscles, not on the bones and tendons. The smell of blood would have brought forth yelping dogs, circling birds of prey, flying insects…an incessant barrage of annoyances, things to distract the Lord’s mind. As we too also face. He would have realized that the whole process was designed to produce tension in every part of the body. All His body, every part of it, in every aspect, had to suffer (and He would have realized the significance of this, and seen&nbsp;<em>all</em>&nbsp;of us as suffering with Him). The muscles were all hopelessly overworked, cramps due to the malcirculation of blood would have created an overwhelming desire to move. All victims would have writhed and wriggled within the few millimetres leeway which they had, to avoid a splinter pushing into the back lacerated from flogging... But my sense is that the Lord somehow didn’t do this. He didn’t push down on the footrests for relief, He didn’t take the pain killer, He didn’t ask for a drink until the end, when presumably the others accepted. Every muscle in the body would have become locked after two hours or so. Every part of His body suffered, symbolic of how through His sufferings He was able to identify with every member of His spiritual body- for "we are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones" (<em><a href='B:560 5:30'>Eph 5:30</a></em>). He had perhaps foreseen something of all this when He likened the killing of His body to the taking down of a tent / tabernacle- every bone and sinew, like every pole and canvass, had to be uprooted, 'taken down' (<em><a href='B:500 2:19'>Joh 2:19</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 2:21'>Joh 2:21</a></em>).</p><p>The moment of lifting the stake up vertical, probably amidst a renewed surge of abuse or cheering from the crowd, had been long foreseen and imagined by the Lord. "If, if I be&nbsp;<em>lifted up</em>..." (<em><a href='B:500 12:32'>Joh 12:32</a></em>). He foresaw the physical (and spiritual) details of the crucifixion process in such detail. Recall how He foresaw that moment of handing over to death. And yet still He asked for the cup to pass, still He panicked and felt forsaken. If the theory of the cross was so hard to actually live out in practice for the Lord, then how hard it must be for us. The Lord's descriptions of Himself as being 'lifted up' use a phrase which carried in Hebrew the idea of exaltation and glory. As He was lifted up physically, the ground swaying before His eyes, His mind fixed upon the Father and the forgiveness which He was making possible through His sacrifice, covered in blood and spittle, struggling for breath... He was 'lifted up' in glory and exaltation, to those who have open eyes to see and hearts to imagine and brains to comprehend.</p><p>Imagine yourself being crucified. Go through the stages in the process. The Lord invited us to do this when He asked us to figuratively crucify ourselves daily. Consider all the language of the sacrifices which pointed forward to the final, supreme act of the Lord: poured out, pierced, parted in pieces, beaten out; the rock smitten... and this is the process which we are going through, although the Father deals with us infinitely more gently than with His only Son.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:19'>Joh 19:19</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Pilate wrote a title and put it on the cross. And there was written: Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews</em>- Did Pilate write it in his own handwriting? Did they use the same ladder to place the inscription which Joseph later used to retrieve the body? Why do the records suggest that the inscription was placed after the stake had been erected? Was there initial resistance from the Jews? Was He impaled with the placard around His neck, and then the ladder was put up, and a soldier lifted it off and nailed it above His head? "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" written in Hebrew would have used words whose first letters created the sacred Name: YHWH. Perhaps this was why there was such opposition to it. "King of the Jews" would have been understood as a Messianic title. Either Pilate was sarcastic, or really believed it, or just wanted to provoke the Jews. In any case, somehow the Yahweh Name was linked with the Messiah: King of the Jews. The Name was declared in the Lord’s death, as He had foretold (<em><a href='B:500 17:26'>Joh 17:26</a></em>). Forgiveness of sins is through baptism into the Name (<em><a href='B:510 2:38'>Act 2:38</a></em>), as even in OT times forgiveness was for the sake of the Name (<em><a href='B:230 79:9'>Psa 79:9</a></em>). And yet through the cross and blood of Christ is forgiveness made possible. His blood and death therefore was the supreme declaration of God’s Name; through His cross the grace and forgiveness, love, salvation and judgment implicit in the Name was all enabled and revealed in practice. <em><a href='B:230 22:22'>Psa 22:22</a></em> prophesied that “I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the congregation&nbsp;<em>ekklesia</em>, LXX". It was to us His brethren that the Name was declared; in the eyes of an unbelieving world, this was just another crucified man, a failure, a wannabe who never made it. But to us, it is the declaration of the Name. It was and is done in the midst of the ecclesia, as if the whole church from that day to this beholds it all at first hand. And our response is to in turn “Declare his righteousness" (<em><a href='B:230 22:31'>Psa 22:31</a></em>), in response to seeing the Name declared, we declare to Him…in lives of love for the brethren. For the Name was declared, that the love that was between the Father and Son might be in us:&nbsp;</p><p>It is possible to argue that "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" written in Hebrew would require the use of words, the first letters of which created the word YHWH:</p><p>y Jesus- Yeshua<br/>h The Nazarene- Ha’Natzri cp. “the sect of ‘The Nazarene(s)’, <em><a href='B:510 24:5'>Act 24:5</a></em><br/>v and King- u’Melek<br/>h of the Jews- Ha’Yehudim<br/>giving the Yahweh Name:<br/>hvhy</p><p>This is why the Jews minded it so strongly when the title was put up. Pilate’s retort “What I have written I have written" may well have been an oblique reference to ‘I am that I am’. It was his attempt to have the last laugh with the Jews who had manipulated him into crucifying a man against whom there was no real charge. It was as if the Lord suffered as He did with a placard above Him which effectively said: 'This is Yahweh'. The Name was declared there, as the Lord had foreseen (<em><a href='B:500 17:26'>Joh 17:26</a></em>). The declaration of Yahweh’s Name to Moses in <em><a href='B:20 34:6'>Exo 34:6</a></em> thus becomes a foretaste of the Lord’s crucifixion. Some LXX versions render <em><a href='B:20 34:6'>Exo 34:6</a></em> as ‘Yahweh, Yahweh,&nbsp;<em>a man</em>&nbsp;full of mercy…’. In the crucifixion of the man Christ Jesus the essence of Yahweh was declared. And we, John says with reference to the cross, saw that glory, as it were cowering in the rock like Moses,&nbsp;<em>full</em>&nbsp;of grace and truth (<em><a href='B:500 1:14'>Joh 1:14</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:20 34:6'>Exo 34:6</a></em> RV).</p><p>There are other reasons for thinking that there was the supreme manifestation of Yahweh in the cross of His Son:<br/>·&nbsp; It has been observed that the blood of the Passover Lamb on the lintels of the doors at the Exodus, three sides of a square, would have recalled the two repeated letters of ‘Yahweh’ (see above panel), as if His Name was manifested in the blood of the slain lamb:&nbsp;<br/>·&nbsp; Yahweh laid on the Lord the iniquity of us all, as if He was present there when the soldiers laid the cross upon the Lord's shoulders (<em><a href='B:290 53:6'>Isa 53:6</a></em>):&nbsp;<br/>·&nbsp; Yahweh had prophesied of what He would achieve through the crucified Christ: “I am, I am: He that blots out thy transgressions" (<em><a href='B:290 43:25'>Isa 43:25</a></em> LXX). He declares His Name as being supremely demonstrated in His forgiveness of our sins through and in the Lord’s cross:&nbsp;<br/>·&nbsp; Jehovah-Jireh can mean “Yahweh will show Yah" (<em><a href='B:10 22:14'>Gen 22:14</a></em>), in eloquent prophecy of the crucifixion. There Yahweh was to be manifested supremely:&nbsp;<br/>·&nbsp; Paul speaks of how the cross of Christ should humble us, so that no flesh should glory in God’s presence (<em><a href='B:530 1:29'>1Co 1:29</a></em>); as if God’s presence is found in the cross, before which we cannot have any form of pride:&nbsp;<br/>·&nbsp; The LXX uses the word translated “propitiation" in the NT with reference to how God forgave / propitiated for Israel’s sins for His Name’s sake (<em><a href='B:20 32:14'>Exo 32:14</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 79:9'>Psa 79:9</a></em>). That propitiation was only for the sake of the Lord’s future death, which would be the propitiation God ultimately accepted. Having no past or future with Him, Yahweh could act as if His Son’s death had already occurred. But that death and forgiveness for “His name’s sake" were one and the same thing. The Son’s death was the expression of the Father’s Name:&nbsp;<br/>·&nbsp; There was a Jewish tradition that the only time when the Yahweh Name could be pronounced was by the High Priest, when he sprinkled the blood of Israel's atonement on the altar. The Name was expressed in that blood:&nbsp;<br/>·&nbsp; <em><a href='B:450 11:13'>Zec 11:13</a></em> speaks of Yahweh being priced at thirty shekels of silver by Israel. But these words are appropriated to the Lord in His time of betrayal. What men did to Him, they did to the Father:&nbsp;<br/>-The Red Heifer was to be slain before the face of the priest, "as he watches" (<em><a href='B:40 19:3-5'>Num 19:3-5</a></em> NIV), pointing forward to the Lord's slaughter in the personal presence of the Father.<br/>- The blood of the sin offering was to be sprinkled “before the LORD, before the veil" (<em><a href='B:30 4:6'>Lev 4:6</a></em>; <em><a href='B:30 4:17'>Lev 4:17</a></em>). Yet the veil was a symbol of the flesh of the Lord Jesus at the time of His dying. At the time of the sprinkling of blood when the sin offering was made, the veil the flesh of the Lord Jesus was identifiable with Yahweh Himself. The blood of the offerings was poured out “before Yahweh" (<em><a href='B:30 4:15'>Lev 4:15</a></em> etc:), pointing forward to how God Himself, from so physically far away, “came down" so that the blood shedding of His Son was done as it were in His presence. And who is to say that the theophany that afternoon, of earthquake and thick darkness, was not the personal presence of Yahweh, hovering above crucifixion hill? Over the mercy seat (a symbol of the Lord Jesus in Hebrews), between the cherubim where the blood was sprinkled, “there I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee" (<em><a href='B:20 25:22'>Exo 25:22</a></em>). There we see the essence of God, and there in the cross we hear the essential word and message of God made flesh:&nbsp;<br/>· The smitten rock was an evident type of the Lord’s smiting on the cross. And yet in Deuteronomy especially it is made clear that Israel were to understand Yahweh as their rock. And yet “that rock was Christ". God Himself said that he would stand upon the rock as it was smitten- presumably fulfilled by the Angel standing or hovering above / upon the rock, while Moses smote it. And yet again it is Yahweh who is described as smiting the rock in Psalms 78 and <em><a href='B:290 48:21'>Isa 48:21</a></em>. He was with Christ, directly identified with Him, at the very same time as He ‘smote’ Him.</p><p>See on <em><a href='B:470 26:65'>Mat 26:65</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 1:14'>Joh 1:14</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 3:14'>Joh 3:14</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 8:56'>Joh 8:56</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 13:37'>Joh 13:37</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 16:25'>Joh 16:25</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 16:32'>Joh 16:32</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 19:13'>Joh 19:13</a></em>; <em><a href='B:510 20:28'>Act 20:28</a></em>; <em><a href='B:540 5:20'>2Co 5:20</a></em>.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:20'>Joh 19:20</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 19:11'>Joh 19:11</a></em>.</p><p><em>This title many of the Jews read, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near to the city; and it was written in Hebrew, in Latin and in Greek</em>- As noted on :19, the Jews objected to the Hebrew title because the first letters of the four words used spelled the memorial Name, YHWH. The point is made here that crucifixion was public. If we are to die with the Lord, and share His cross, then our commitment to Him likewise must be public. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. The tendency in our age is to be secret Christians, showing sympathy for His cause from behind our screens. But the essence of Christianity is to make a public declaration as the Lord did; and John's Gospel has a theme of secret believers either turning back to their surrounding world, or coming out openly for the Lord.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:21'>Joh 19:21</a></em>&nbsp;<em>The chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate: Do not write, The King of the Jews; but that: He claimed, I am King of the Jews</em>- Pilate seems to have sincerely believed that the Lord was indeed Israel's king and Son of God; throughout <em><a href='B:500 19:1-15'>Joh 19:1-15</a></em> I have pointed out his struggle with his own conscience. This insistence of writing the title as he did was perhaps a rather pathetic attempt to make at least some statement of support for the Lord.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:22'>Joh 19:22</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Pilate answered: What I have written I have written</em>- As noted on :19, perhaps an allusion to the YHWH Name, 'I will be that I will be', which was spelled out by the first letters of the four Hebrew words used for the title.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:23'>Joh 19:23</a></em>&nbsp;<em>The soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also the coat. Now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout</em>- This was all prefigured in how Joseph lost his garment before he went into the pit and before he went to prison (<em><a href='B:10 39:13'>Gen 39:13</a></em>). Presumably there were many soldiers around. The temple guard which was seconded to the Jews (<em><a href='B:470 27:65'>Mat 27:65</a></em>) was doubtless there in full force, lest there be any attempt to save Jesus by the crowd or the disciples. And yet <em><a href='B:500 19:23'>Joh 19:23</a></em> suggests there were only four soldiers, each of whom received a part of His clothing. This must mean that there were four actually involved in the crucifixion: one for each hand and foot. He had signs of nails (plural) in His hands. We are left to meditate as to whether He was nailed hand over hand as tradition has it (which would have meant two very long nails were used); or both hands separately.</p><p>It is likely that the Lord was crucified naked, thereby sharing the shame of Adam's nakedness. The&nbsp;<em>shame</em>&nbsp;of the cross is stressed (<em><a href='B:650 11:26'>Heb 11:26</a></em>; <em><a href='B:650 12:2'>Heb 12:2</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 31:17'>Psa 31:17</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 69:6-7'>Psa 69:6-7</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 69:12'>Psa 69:12</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 69:19-20'>Psa 69:19-20</a></em>). And we are to share those sufferings. There&nbsp;<em>must</em>, therefore, be an open standing up for what we believe in the eyes of a hostile world. Preaching, in this sense, is for all of us. And if we dodge this, we put the Son of God to a naked shame; we re-crucify Him naked, we shame Him again (<em><a href='B:650 6:6'>Heb 6:6</a></em>). He was crucified naked, and the sun went in for three hours. He must have been cold, very cold (<em><a href='B:500 18:18'>Joh 18:18</a></em>). Artemidorus Daldianus (<em>Oneirokritika&nbsp;</em>2:53) confirms that the Romans usually crucified victims naked. Melito of Sardis, writing in the 2nd century, writes of “his body naked and not even deemed worthy of a clothing that it might not be seen. Therefore the heavenly lights turned away and the day darkened in order that he might be hidden who was denuded upon the cross" (<em>On the Pasch</em>&nbsp;97). The earliest portrayals of the crucified Jesus, on carved gems, feature Him naked.</p><p>There is reason to think that the Jews put the Lord to the maximum possible shame and pain; therefore they may well have crucified Him naked. T. Mommsen&nbsp;<em>The Digest Of Justinian&nbsp;</em>48:20:6 reports that “the garments that the condemned person is wearing may not be demanded by the torturers"- the fact that they gambled for His clothes shows that the Lord was yet again treated illegally (quite a feature of the records) and to the maximum level of abuse. We not only get this impression from the Biblical record, but from a passage in the Wisdom of Solomon (<em><a href='B:500 2:12-20'>Joh 2:12-20</a></em>) which would have been well known to them, and which has a surprising number of similarities to the Lord’s life amongst the Jews:<br/>“Let us lie in wait for the virtuous man, since he annoys us and opposes our way of life, reproaches us for our breaches of the law an accuses us of playing false…he claims to have knowledge of God, and calls himself a son of the Lord. Before us he stands, a reproof to our way of thinking, the very sight of him weighs our spirits down; His way of life is not like other men’s…in His opinion we are counterfeit... and boasts of having God as His father. let us see if what he says is true, let us observe what kind of end he himself will have. If the virtuous man is God’s son, God will take his part and rescue him from the clutches of his enemies<em>. Let us test him with cruelty and with torture, and thus explore this gentleness of His and put His endurance to the proof. Let us condemn him to a shameful death</em>&nbsp;since he will be looked after- we have his word for it".</p><p>Susan Garrett lists several Greek words and phrases found in the Gospel of Mark which are identical to those in this section of the Wisdom of Solomon. It would seem that Mark was aware of this passage in the Wisdom of Solomon, and sought to show how throughout the Lord's ministry, and especially in His death, the Jews were seeking to apply it to Him in the way they treated Him. See Susan Garrett,&nbsp;<em>The Temptations Of Jesus In Mark's Gospel</em>&nbsp;(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) p. 68.</p><p>The idea of the Lord being subjected to the maximum pain and mocking must, sadly, be applied to Seneca’s description of how some victims of crucifixion were nailed through their genitals (<em>Dialogi</em>&nbsp;6:20:3). In this sense the paradox of Isaiah 53 would have come true- through losing His ability to bring forth children, the Lord brought forth a huge multitude of spiritual children world-wide. It’s an honour to be one of them:&nbsp;<br/>There seems to have been something unusual about the Lord’s outer garment. The same Greek word&nbsp;<em>chiton</em>&nbsp;used in <em><a href='B:500 19:23-24'>Joh 19:23-24</a></em> is that used in the LXX of <em><a href='B:10 37:3'>Gen 37:3</a></em> to describe Joseph’s coat of many pieces. Josephus (<em>Antiquities</em>&nbsp;3:7:4,161) uses the word for the tunic of the High Priest, which was likewise not to be rent (<em><a href='B:30 21:10'>Lev 21:10</a></em>). The Lord in His time of dying is thus set up as High Priest, gaining forgiveness for His people, to ‘come out’ of the grave as on the day of Atonement, pronouncing the forgiveness gained, and bidding His people spread that good news world-wide.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:24'>Joh 19:24</a></em>&nbsp;<em>They said to each other, Let us not tear it but cast lots for it, to determine whose it shall be; that the scripture might be fulfilled, which said: They divided my garments among them, and for my robe they cast lots</em>- The robe was not to be torn,&nbsp;<em>schizein</em>. There was to be no schism in it. Ahijah tore his garment into twelve pieces to symbolize the division of Israel (<em><a href='B:110 11:30-31'>1Ki 11:30-31</a></em>). The Lord’s coat being unrent may therefore be another reflection of how His death brought about unity amongst His people (<em><a href='B:500 11:52'>Joh 11:52</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 17:21-22'>Joh 17:21-22</a></em>). Before Him, there, we simply cannot be divided amongst ourselves. Likewise the net through which the Lord gathers His people was unbroken (<em><a href='B:500 21:11'>Joh 21:11</a></em>). Note how all these references are in John- as if he perceived this theme of unity through the cross. Note the focus of the soldiers upon the dividing up of the clothes, whilst the Son of God played out the ultimate spiritual drama for human salvation just a metre or so away from them. And our pettiness is worked out all too often in sight of the same cross. As those miserable men argued over the clothes at the foot of the cross, so when Israel stood before the glory of Yahweh at Sinai, they still suffered “disputes" amongst themselves ( NIV cp. <em><a href='B:650 12:29'>Heb 12:29</a></em>). So pressing and important do human pettinesses appear, despite the awesomeness of that bigger picture to which we stand related.</p><p>The prophecy quoted is <em><a href='B:230 22:18'>Psa 22:18</a></em>, where the Psalmist speaks as if he is observing the parting of his garments before his own eyes. This had an incredibly accurate fulfilment in how the Lord from His impaled position was able to view this happening before Him.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:25'>Joh 19:25</a></em>&nbsp;<em>These things the soldiers did. There was standing by the cross of Jesus his mother and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene</em>-</p><p>The Torah required "two or three witnesses" (<em><a href='B:50 19:15'>Deu 19:15</a></em>); yet Roman law disallowed women as witnesses. Significantly, the Torah didn’t, although later Jewish law did. The records of the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus are carefully framed to show that there were always two or three witnesses present- and they are all&nbsp;<em>women</em>:</p><table><tr><td></p><p></td><td>Cross</td><td>Burial</td><td>Resurrection</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Matthew</td><td>Mary Magdalene, Mary mother of James and Joseph, Mother of the sons of Zebedee</td><td>Mary Magdalene, "the other Mary"</td><td>Mary Magdalene, "the other Mary"</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Mark</td><td>Mary Magdalene, Mary mother of James and Joses, Salome</td><td>Mary Magdalene, Mary mother of Joses</td><td>Mary Magdalene, Mary mother of James, Salome</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Luke</td><td></td><td></td><td>Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary mother of James</td><td></td></tr></table><p>The emphasis is surely deliberate- women, the ones who were&nbsp;<em>not</em>&nbsp;witnesses according to the world, were the very witnesses chosen by God to testify the key truths concerning His Son. And His same approach is seen today in His choices of and amongst us.</p><p>It is entirely possible that the sister of Jesus’ mother mentioned in the account of the crucifixion ("His mother’s sister") is to be identified with the woman named Salome mentioned in <em><a href='B:480 15:40'>Mar 15:40</a></em> and also with the woman identified as “the mother of the sons of Zebedee” mentioned in <em><a href='B:470 27:56'>Mat 27:56</a></em>. If so, and if John the Apostle is to be identified as the beloved disciple, then the reason for the omission of the second woman’s name becomes clear; she would have been John’s own mother, and he consistently omitted direct reference to himself or his brother James or any other members of his family in the fourth Gospel. Therefore "behold your mother" meant he was to reject&nbsp;<em>his</em>&nbsp;mother and take Mary as his mother, to alleviate the extent of her loss. Finally Mary came to see Jesus as Jesus, as the Son of God, and not just as her son. This was her conversion- to see Him for who He was, uncluttered by her own perceptions of Him, by the baggage of everything else. And so it can be with us in re-conversion. We each must face the reality of who Jesus really is, quite apart from all the baggage of how we were brought up to think of Him: the Sunday School Jesus, the Jesus of the apostate church, the Jesus we have come to imagine from our own human perceptions…must give way when we are finally confronted with who He really is. This line of thought is born out by a consideration of <em><a href='B:480 15:40-41'>Mar 15:40-41</a></em>: “There were also women beholding from afar: among whom were both Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the little and of Joses, and Salome; who, when he was in Galilee, followed him and ministered unto him: and many other women which came up with him unto Jerusalem”. Jesus had two brothers named James and Joses (<em><a href='B:470 13:55'>Mat 13:55</a></em>). If the principle of interpreting Scripture by Scripture means anything, then we can fairly safely assume that the Mary referred to here is Mary the mother of Jesus. It was perhaps due to the influence and experience of the cross that His brother James called himself “the little”, just as Saul changed his name to Paul, ‘the little one’, from likewise reflecting on the height of the Lord’s victory. So within the crowd of women, there were two women somehow separate from the rest- “among whom were both Mary Magdalene, and Mary”. Mary Magdalene was the bashful ex-hooker who was almost inevitably in love with Jesus. The other Mary was His mother. Understandably they forged a special bond with each other. Only Mary Magdalene had fully perceived the Lord’s upcoming death, hence her anointing of His body beforehand. And only His Mother had a perception approaching that of the Magdalene. It’s not surprising that the two of them were somehow separate from the other women. These women are described as following Him when He was in Galilee; and the mother of Jesus is specifically recorded as having done this, turning up at the Cana wedding uninvited, and then coming to the house where Jesus was preaching:&nbsp; The description of the women as ‘coming up’ (the idiom implies ‘to keep a feast’) with Him unto Jerusalem takes the mind back to Mary bringing Jesus up to Jerusalem at age 12. But my point is, that Mary is called now “the mother of James…and of Joses”. The same woman appears in <em><a href='B:480 16:1'>Mar 16:1</a></em>: “Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James…had bought sweet spices that they might come and anoint him”. Earlier in the Gospels, Mary is always “the mother of Jesus”. Now she is described as the mother of her other children. It seems to me that this is the equivalent of John recording how Mary was told by Jesus at the cross that she was no longer the mother of Jesus, He was no longer her son. The other writers reflect this by calling her at that time “Mary the mother of James” rather than the mother of Jesus. The way that Jesus appears first to Mary Magdalene rather than to His mother (<em><a href='B:480 16:9'>Mar 16:9</a></em>) is surely God’s confirmation of this break between Jesus and His earthly mother:&nbsp;</p><p>The whole structure of the records of the crucifixion are to emphasize how the cross is essentially about human response to it; nothing else elicits from humanity a response like the cross does. Mark’s account, for example, has 5 component parts. The third part, the centrepiece as it were, is the account of the actual death of the Lord; but it is surrounded by cameos of human response to it (consider <em><a href='B:480 15:22-27'>Mar 15:22-27</a></em>; <em><a href='B:480 15:28-32'>Mar 15:28-32</a></em>; the actual death of Jesus, <em><a href='B:480 15:33-37'>Mar 15:33-37</a></em>; then <em><a href='B:480 15:38-41'>Mar 15:38-41</a></em>; <em><a href='B:480 15:42-47'>Mar 15:42-47</a></em>). John’s record shows a similar pattern, based around 7 component parts: <em><a href='B:500 19:16-18'>Joh 19:16-18</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 19:19-22'>Joh 19:19-22</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 19:23-24'>Joh 19:23-24</a></em>; then the centrepiece of <em><a href='B:500 19:25-27'>Joh 19:25-27</a></em>; followed by <em><a href='B:500 19:28-30'>Joh 19:28-30</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 19:31-37'>Joh 19:31-37</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 19:38-42'>Joh 19:38-42</a></em>. But for John the centrepiece is Jesus addressing His mother, and giving her over to John’s charge. This for John was the quintessence of it all; that a man should leave His mother, that Mary loved Jesus to the end… and that he, John, was honoured to have been there and seen it all. John began his gospel by saying that the word was manifest and flesh and he saw it- and I take this as a reference to the Lord’s death. Through this, a new family of men and women would be created (<em><a href='B:500 1:12'>Joh 1:12</a></em>). See on <em><a href='B:490 23:48'>Luk 23:48</a></em>.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:26'>Joh 19:26</a></em>&nbsp;<em>When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing by, he said to his mother: Woman, behold your son</em>-&nbsp; Unearthed victims of crucifixion seem to have been impaled on stakes about 10 feet high. The cross would not have been as high as 'Christian' art usually represents it. The feet of the Lord would only have been about 4 feet above ground. His mother and aunty stood by the cross- the tragedy of His mother being there needs no comment. She would have seen the blood coming from the feet. Her head would have been parallel with His knees. His face marred more than the sons of men (<em><a href='B:290 52:14'>Isa 52:14</a></em>), sore from where His beard had been pulled off (<em><a href='B:290 50:6'>Isa 50:6</a></em>), teeth missing and loose, making His speech sound strange, fresh and dried blood mixing... and His mother there to behold and hear it all. She must have thought back, and surely He did too; for He was only a man. Mother around the house as a child, mending clothes, getting food, explaining things, telling Him about Simeon's prophecy, of how a sword would break her heart as well as his. This isn't just emotional speculation. <em><a href='B:230 22:9-10'>Psa 22:9-10</a></em> emphasizes the Lord's thoughts for His mother and His babyhood with her: "Thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou keptest me in safety (AVmg:- a reference to Herod's persecution) when I was on my mother's breasts. I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother's belly". The temptation would have been to go on and on. Was I too hard on her in Cana? How I must have stung her when I said "Behold&nbsp;<em>my mother</em>&nbsp;and my brethren" are these half-hearted, superficially interested people (<em><a href='B:470 12:49'>Mat 12:49</a></em>). She was the best mother I could have ever had. Like any man would think. And He was a man. Not a mere man, but a man. I wonder if He said those words of breakage, of severance, between Him and her, because these feelings welling up within Him were affecting His concentration on the Father.</p><p>"<em>But</em>&nbsp;there stood by the cross..." makes the connection between Mary and the clothes. It seems that initially, she wasn't there; He looked for comforters and found none (<em><a href='B:230 69:20'>Psa 69:20</a></em> - or does this imply that the oft mentioned spiritual difference between the Lord and His mother meant that He didn’t find comfort in her? Or she only came to the cross later?). His lovers, friends and kinsmen stood far off from Him (<em><a href='B:230 38:11'>Psa 38:11</a></em>), perhaps in a literal sense, perhaps far away from understanding Him. If Mary wasn't initially at the cross, John's connection between the dividing of the clothes and her being there would suggest that she had made the clothes. In any case, the four women at the cross are surely set up against the four soldiers there- who gambled over the clothes. Perhaps the other women had also had some input into the Lord’s clothing.</p><p>If indeed Mary and the few with her came from standing far off to stand by the cross, they were sharing the spirit of Joseph and Nicodemus: 'In the light of the cross, nothing, nothing, absolutely&nbsp;<em>nothing</em>&nbsp;really matters now. The shame, embarrassment nothing. We will stand for Him and His cause, come what may'.</p><p>I can only ponder the use of the imperfect in <em><a href='B:500 19:25'>Joh 19:25</a></em>: 'There were standing'&nbsp;<em>may</em>&nbsp;imply that Mary and the women came and went; sometimes they were there by the cross, sometimes afar off. Did they retreat from grief, or from a sense of their inadequacy, or from being driven off by the hostile crowd or soldiers, only to make their way stubbornly back? Tacitus records that no spectators of a crucifixion were allowed to show any sign of grief; this was taken as a sign of compliance with the sin of the victim. He records how some were even crucified for showing grief at a crucifixion. This was especially so in the context of leaders of revolutionary movements, which was the reason why Jesus was crucified. This would explain why the women stood afar off, and sometimes in moments of self-control came closer. Thus the Lord looked for comforters and found none, according to the spirit of prophecy in the Psalms. And yet His mother was also at the foot of the cross sometimes. For her to be there, so close to Him as she undoubtedly wished to be, and yet not to show emotion, appearing to the world to be another indifferent spectator; the torture of mind must be meditated upon. Any of these scenarios provides a link with the experience of all who would walk out against the wind of this world, and identify ourselves with the apparently hopeless cause of the crucified Christ. The RV of <em><a href='B:500 19:25'>Joh 19:25</a></em> brings out the tension between the soldiers standing there, and the fact that: “But there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother…". The “but…" signals, perhaps, the tension of the situation- for it was illegal to stand in sympathy by the cross of the victim. And there the soldiers were, especially in place to stop it happening, standing nearby…</p><p>John taking Mary to his own home&nbsp;<em>may</em>&nbsp;not mean that he took her away to his house in Jerusalem. In any case, John's physical home was in Galilee, not Jerusalem. "His own (home)" is used elsewhere to mean 'family' rather than a physical house. This would have involved Mary rejecting her other sons, and entering into John's family. Spiritual ties were to be closer than all other. This must be a powerful lesson, for it was taught in the Lord's final moments. Whether we understand that John took Mary away to his own home (and later returned, <em><a href='B:500 19:35'>Joh 19:35</a></em>), or that they both remained there to the end with the understanding that Mary was not now in the family of Jesus, the point is that the Lord separated Himself from His mother. The fact He did this last was a sign of how close He felt to her. She was the last aspect of His humanity which He had clung to. And at the bitter end, He knew that He must let go even, even, even of her. <em><a href='B:500 19:28'>Joh 19:28</a></em> speaks likewise as if the Lord’s relationship with His mother was the last part of His humanity which He had to complete / fulfil / finish. For it was “after this", i:e. His words to His mother, that He knew that “all was now finished".</p><p>And yet another construction is possible. It would seem that John&nbsp;<em>did</em>&nbsp;have a house in Jerusalem. Mary was John’s aunty, and so she was already in his ‘house’ in the sense of family. This might suggest that the Lord didn’t mean John was to accept Mary into the family, as they were already related. It is reasonable to conjecture that perhaps He sent her away to John's house, for&nbsp;<em>her</em>&nbsp;benefit. He didn’t want her to have to see the end. For me, if I had been in His situation, I would have preferred to die with her there. At least there was the one and only human being who knew for sure, and He knew she knew for sure, that He was the Son of God. She was the one, on earth, that He could be certain of. She had pondered all these things for 34 years. And He knew it. But if He sent her away for&nbsp;<em>her</em>&nbsp;benefit, we have yet another example of the Lord rejecting a legitimate comfort; as He rejected the pain killer, the footrests, the opportunity to drink before He asked for it …indeed, the cross itself was something which He chose when other forms of obedience to the Father’s will may have been equally possible.</p><p>The thoughts presented here concerning Mary offer several possibilities, not each of which can be what really happened; not least concerning the question of for how long she stood by the cross. But this, to my mind, doesn't matter. Each man, yes, each and every one of us, must go through the process of the cross in his own mind, and thereby be inspired. These are only thoughts to help on the way. The whole record is designed, it seems, to provoke reverent meditation. One can only, for example, meditate in a vague way on what Mary's feelings will be when she rises from the sleep of death to see her son. As we will recognize Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom, so surely she will have that sense that "this is my boy". Reflecting upon the Lord's relationship with His mother as He died leads us a little deeper into His tension and ineffable sadness which the cross crystallized. His soul was sorrowful unto death in Gethsemane, as if the stress alone nearly killed Him (<em><a href='B:480 14:34'>Mar 14:34</a></em>). "My soul is full of troubles, and my life (therefore) draweth nigh unto the grave" (<em><a href='B:230 88:3'>Psa 88:3</a></em>). <em><a href='B:290 53:10-12'>Isa 53:10-12</a></em> speaks of the fact that Christ's&nbsp;<em>soul</em>&nbsp;suffered as being the basis of our redemption; the mind contained within that spat upon head, as it hung on that tortured body; this was where our salvation was won. Death is the ultimately intense experience, and living a life dedicated to death would have had an intensifying effect upon the Lord's character and personality. Thus He jumped at His mother's request for wine as being a suggestion He should die there and then (<em><a href='B:500 2:4'>Joh 2:4</a></em>). So many men reached their most intense at the end of their lives: Moses spoke Deuteronomy, Paul and Peter wrote their finest letters then. And the Lord was matchlessly superb at His end. He reached a peak of spirituality at the end, to the point where He showed us, covered in blood and spittle and human rejection as He was, what the very essence of God really was. He declared the Name of Yahweh in the final moments of His death.</p><p>A mother always feels a mother to her child. That’s basic human fact. The way the Lord as it were ended that mother-child relationship with Mary thereby carries all the more pain with it. The way the Gospel records refer to Mary as the mother of others amongst her children, e.g. “Mary of James” (<em><a href='B:490 24:10'>Luk 24:10</a></em>) shows the Gospel writers paid tribute and respect to this break that had been made. Perhaps this explains why the brothers of Jesus, James and Jude, chose not to identify themselves as the brothers of Jesus- Jude calls himself the brother of James (<em><a href='B:720 1:1'>Jud 1:1</a></em>), and James identifies himself as a servant of Jesus (<em><a href='B:660 1:1'>Jas 1:1</a></em>). In this way they both reflected the way that human relationship to Jesus now meant nothing at all.</p><p>It’s been observed by many that what a man needs most as he dies… is not to face death alone. To have someone with him. The way the Lord sent Mary and John away from Him at the very end is profound in its reflection of His total selflessness, His deep thought for others rather than Himself. It also reflects how He more than any other man faced the ultimate human realities and issues which death exposes. He wilfully faced them alone, the supreme example of human bravery in the face of death. And He faced them fully, with no human cushion or literal or psychological anaesthesia to dilute the awful, crushing reality of it. Remember how He refused the painkiller. And through baptism and life in Him, we are asked to die with Him, to share something of His death, the type and nature of death which He had... in our daily lives. Little wonder we each seem to sense some essential, existential, quintessential… loneliness in our souls. Thus it must be for those who share in His death. I’m grateful to Cindy for a quote from a wise doctor, Kurt Eissler: “What you can really do for a person who is dying, is to die with him”. How inadvertently profound that thought becomes when applied to the death of our Lord, and to us as we imagine ourselves standing by and watching Him there. “What you can really do for a person who is dying, is to die with him”.</p><p>We are asked to fellowship the sufferings of the Son of God, to truly begin to enter into them. The least we can do is to meditate upon their different facets, and begin to realize that if the cross really does come before the crown, then we can expect a life which reflects, in principle at least, the same basic agonies. The relationship between the Lord and Mary brings home two crystal clear points: Firstly, the sheer human pain and pathos of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ and those near Him; and secondly, the way in which He had to sacrifice His closest human relationship for the sake of His devotion to God.</p><p>There is something ineffably, ineffably sad about the fact that the mother of Jesus was standing only a meter or so away from Him at the foot of the cross. Absolutely typical of the Biblical record, this fact is recorded by John almost in passing. This is in harmony with the way the whole crucifixion is described. Thus <em><a href='B:500 19:17-18'>Joh 19:17-18</a></em> seems to focus on the fact that Jesus bore His cross to a place called Golgotha; the fact that there they crucified Him is mentioned in an incidental sort of way. Mark likewise: "And when they had crucified him, they parted his garments..." (<em><a href='B:480 15:24'>Mar 15:24</a></em>). In similar vein the agony of flogging is almost bypassed in <em><a href='B:470 27:26'>Mat 27:26</a></em>: “and when he had scourged Jesus...".</p><p>Simeon had early prophesied Mary's feelings when he spoke of how her son would be “spoken against" and killed: "Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul&nbsp;<em>also</em>" (<em><a href='B:490 2:35'>Luk 2:35</a></em>). This means that the piercing of Christ's soul was felt by His mother at the same time. And so we picture that woman in her 50s at the cross, with a lifetime behind her of meditating upon God’s words, meditating upon the strange road her life had taken, a road travelled by no other woman, keeping&nbsp;<em>all</em>&nbsp;these things in her heart (<em><a href='B:490 2:19'>Luk 2:19</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 2:51'>Luk 2:51</a></em>; implying she didn’t open up to anyone), a lifetime characterized by a deep fascination with her firstborn son, but also characterized by a frustrating lack of understanding of Him, and no doubt an increasing sense of distance from His real soul. Recall how when Mary asked Jesus for wine at the feast, He saw in her mention of wine a symbol of His blood. She asked for wine, on a human level; and He responded: 'Woman, what have I to do with you, can't you see that the time for me to give my blood isn't yet?'. They were just on quite different levels. It seems almost certain that Christ was crucified naked. If we crucify him afresh (<em><a href='B:650 6:6'>Heb 6:6</a></em>), we put him to an "open" or naked (Gk:) shame. The association between shame and the crucifixion is stressed in Psalms 22 and Isaiah 53; and shame is elsewhere connected with nakedness.</p><p>We know that the Jews felt that Christ was the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier; this is recorded to this day in the Mishnah. They had earlier taunted Him about this (<em><a href='B:500 8:19'>Joh 8:19</a></em>). Translating into dynamic, modern English, it is not difficult to imagine the abuse they shouted at Him as He hung on the cross. Their mocking of His claim that God was His Father was doubtless related to this. And there can be no doubt that their scorn in this direction would have fallen upon Mary too. The sword that pierced Christ's soul on the cross was the sword of the abuse which was shouted at Him then (<em><a href='B:230 42:10'>Psa 42:10</a></em>); and the piercing of Christ's soul, Simeon had said, was the piercing of Mary's soul too. In other words, they were both really cut, pierced, by this mocking of the virgin birth. Neither of them were hard and indifferent to it. And the fact they both stood together at the cross and faced it together must have drawn them closer, and made their parting all the harder. She alone knew beyond doubt that God was Christ's father, even though the Lord had needed to rebuke her for being so carried away with the humdrum of life that she once referred to Joseph as His father (<em><a href='B:490 2:33'>Luk 2:33</a></em>). For everyone else, there must always have been that tendency to doubt. <em><a href='B:230 22:9-10'>Psa 22:9-10</a></em> were among Christ's thoughts as He hung there: "Thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother's breasts. I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother's belly". If dying men do indeed think back to their childhood, His thoughts would have been with His mother:&nbsp;<br/>She had sought Him&nbsp;<em>sorrowing</em>&nbsp;when He was 12, all her life she had been plagued by this problem of knowing He was righteous, the Son of God, her Saviour, and yet she didn’t fully understand Him. How deeply would the pain of all this hung over her as she watched Him in His time of dying. Doubtless she had (on the law of averages) lost other children, but this one was something special. She was a woman a real mother, and her special love for Jesus would have been noticed by the others. This probably had something to do with the fact that all her other children had rejected Christ as a "stranger", i:e. a Gentile; perhaps they too believed that this Jesus was the result of mum's early fling with a passing Roman soldier (<em><a href='B:230 69:8'>Psa 69:8</a></em>). Inevitably people would have commented to Mary: "He's a lovely boy, isn't he". And although one doesn't sense she was arrogant in any way, her motherly pride would have risen. For He was a lovely boy, ever growing in favour with men, rather than falling out of favour with some over the petty things of village life. Remember how we sense her motherly pride surfacing at the wedding in Cana. At the cross she would have recalled all this, recalled Him as a clinging 5 year old, being comforted by her in childhood illnesses, recalled making and mending His clothes- perhaps even the cloak the drunk soldiers were gambling over. And as she beheld Him there, covered in blood and spittle, annoyed by the endless flies, alone in the darkness, evidently thirsty, with her helpless to help beneath- surely her mind would have gone back 34 years to the words of the Angel: "He shall be great". "He shall be great". And then the mental panic to understand, the crying out within the soul, the pain of incomprehension of death.</p><p>There is a great sense of pathos in those words of Jesus: "Woman behold thy son". It sounded first of all as if Jesus was saying 'Well mum, look at me here'. But then she would have realized that this was not what He was saying. We can almost see Him nodding towards John. He was rejecting her as His mother in human terms, He was ceasing to be her son, He was trying to replace His sonship with that of an adopted son. The way He called her "Woman" rather than mother surely reflects the distance which there was between them, as He faced up to the fact that soon He would leave human nature, soon His human sonship would be ended. In passing, note how He addresses God at the end not as “Father" but “My God"- as if His sharing in our distance from God led Him to feel the same. Hence His awful loneliness and sense of having been forsaken or distanced from all those near to Him. "Behold thy mother …behold thy son" suggests Jesus was asking them to look at each other. Doubtless they were looking down at the ground at the time. We get the picture of them looking up and catching each other’s eye, then a brief silence, coming to understand what Jesus meant, and then from that hour, i:e. very soon afterwards, John&nbsp;<em>taking</em>&nbsp;Mary away. We are invited to imagine so much. The long, long discussions between them about Jesus, punctuated by long silences, as they kept that Passover, and as they lived together through the next years. Above all we see the pathos of them walking away, backs to Jesus, with Him perhaps watching them.</p><p>All this would have contributed to His sense of being forsaken. The disciples forsook Him (<em><a href='B:470 26:56'>Mat 26:56</a></em>), His mother had now left Him, and so the words of <em><a href='B:230 27:9-10'>Psa 27:9-10</a></em> started to come true: “Leave me not, neither forsake me, O God... when my father and my mother forsake me". All His scaffolding was being removed. He had leaned on His disciples (<em><a href='B:490 22:28'>Luk 22:28</a></em>), He had naturally leaned on His mother. Now they had forsaken Him. And now His mother had forsaken Him. And so He pleaded with His true Father not to leave Him. And hence the agony, the deep agony of <em><a href='B:470 27:46'>Mat 27:46</a></em>: "My God, my God, Why hast&nbsp;<em>thou</em>&nbsp;(this is where the emphasis should be) forsaken me?". The disciples' desertion is a major theme, especially in Mark 15 (written by Peter, the most guilty?). The young man followed, but then ran away; Peter followed, but then denied (<em><a href='B:480 14:51'>Mar 14:51</a></em>; <em><a href='B:480 14:54'>Mar 14:54</a></em>); all the disciples fled (:50); Joseph and Nicodemus denied Him (:64). By instinct, we humans want someone by our side in the hospital the night before the operation, in the nursing home as death looms near, or in any great moment of crisis. The Lord needed, desperately, His men with Him. Hence the hurt, undisguised, of “could you not watch with me one hour?".</p><p><em><a href='B:580 2:11-15'>Col 2:11-15</a></em> describe the crucifixion sufferings of Jesus as His 'circumcision'. The cross did something intimate and personal to Him. Through the process of His death, He 'put right off the body of his flesh' (RVmg:). He shed His humanity. The saying goodbye to His mother, the statement that she was no longer His mother but just a woman to Him, was, it would seem, the very last divesting of 'the body of his flesh'. It seems to me that such was His love of her, so strong was His human connection to her who gave Him His human connection, that the relationship with her was the hardest and in fact the final aspect of humanity which He 'put off' through the experience of crucifixion. And this is why, once He had done so, He died.</p><p>There cannot be any of us who are not touched by all this. We are asked to fellowship the sufferings of the Lord Jesus. What can we expect but a sense of pathos in our lives, broken and sacrificed relationships, the loss of the dearest of human love. There seems to be a growing group of believers in their 20s -50s, some happily married, well blessed with the things of this life, who seem to preach a gospel of happy-clappy belief, of tapping each other under the chin and speaking of how much joy and happiness their religion gives them. And those who don't experience this are made to feel spiritually inferior. Yet that ‘other’ group are, world-wide, growing into the majority of the body of Christ. A real meditation upon the cross of our Lord and the frequent exhortations by Him to share in it places all this in perspective. We must suffer with Him if we are to be glorified with Him in His Kingdom. The joy and peace of Christ which is now available is the joy and peace which He had in His life, a deep joy and peace from knowing that we are on the road to salvation. Know yourselves, brethren and sisters. Search your lives. If we are truly, truly trying to share the cross of Christ, if we are beginning to know the meaning of self-sacrifice, of love unto the end, we will know the spirit of Christ on that cross, "the lonely cry, the anguish keen". We will be able to share His mind, to know the fellowship of His spirit, of touching spirits with Him. And in that is joy and peace beyond our ability to describe.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:27'>Joh 19:27</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Then he said to the disciple: Behold, your mother And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home</em>- I take the comment that John therefore took her to his own home as meaning His own house, back in Jerusalem (<em><a href='B:500 19:27'>Joh 19:27</a></em>). The same construction is used in <em><a href='B:500 16:32'>Joh 16:32</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:510 21:6'>Act 21:6</a></em> as meaning house rather than family. “Took to” is a verb of motion as in <em><a href='B:500 6:21'>Joh 6:21</a></em>. His feelings for her were so strong, so passionate, that He saw it could distract Him. He wanted to stay on earth with her, and not go to His Heavenly Father. This accounts for His again using the rather distant term “Woman”, and telling her that now, He wasn’t her Son, John was now, and she wasn’t His mother, she must be John’s mother. And many a man has chosen to leave mother for the sake of the Father’s work, as Hannah sacrificed her dear Samuel, to be eternally bonded in the gracious Kingdom to come. And even if one has not done this in this form, there is scarcely a believer who has not had to make some heart wrenching break with family and loved ones for the Lord’s sake. Only His sake alone could inspire men and women in this way:&nbsp;</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:29'>Joh 19:29</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Nearby was a vessel full of vinegar. So they put a sponge full of the vinegar upon a hyssop stick, and held it to his mouth</em>- As noted on :28, the hyssop stick would not have been more than 50 cm. long at the most; so the Lord was not that high above the ground, contrary to the impression given by Catholic architecture, with crucifixes lifted far above the ground.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:31'>Joh 19:31</a></em>&nbsp;<em>The Jews, because it was the preparation day, and so that the bodies should not remain on the cross upon the Sabbath (for the day of that Sabbath was a high day), asked of Pilate that their legs be broken so that they might be taken away</em>- <em><a href='B:50 21:23'>Deu 21:23</a></em> forbad bodies of those accursed by God from hanging overnight. Again, we see their masking of their awful consciences by legalistic obedience to God’s laws and their own fences around those laws. This is what legalism is- a mask for a bad conscience over more fundamental failures. When hard line legalists are exposed as caught up in major sin, we should not be surprised. It is in fact to be expected that their legalism is but a cover for a guilty conscience in other areas.</p><p>John is at pains to point out that the Passover was coming on, as if he wishes us to be aware that the last supper was not the Passover, and the breaking of bread service was not the same as the Passover, but based upon it. He is ever seeking to show his Jewish readers that a new Israel, with new symbolisms and meanings, has been created. That Sabbath is here called "a high day", literally, 'the day of that Sabbath was great' (as in <em><a href='B:500 7:37'>Joh 7:37</a></em>). Perhaps here John is implying that the Lord's death made this the greatest Sabbath; and thereby removed the need for literal observance of it.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:32'>Joh 19:32</a></em> - see on :18.</p><p><em>Therefore the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other that was crucified with him-&nbsp;</em>The legs were broken so that the victim could no longer rest their weight on the&nbsp;<em>sedile</em>, the piece of wood protruding from the cross on which they could rest their weight in order to get temporary relief and yet prolong their sufferings. The strange reference to "the first and... the other" may invite us to consider that "the first" was the repentant thief.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:33'>Joh 19:33</a></em>&nbsp;<em>But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was dead already, they did not break his legs</em>- He was so evidently dead; it was absolutely plain to the world that the Lord had died. Any ideas of a swoon theory are stopped dead in their tracks by this. He was not even worth a hammer blow to the legs, because He was so evidently dead.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:34'>Joh 19:34</a></em>&nbsp;<em>However one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out of his side</em>- The great theme of John has been that the Lord died in order to give us His life, His Spirit. That life, that spirit, has been likened to water in the account of the Samaritan woman at the well in chapter 4, and also in <em><a href='B:500 7:38-39'>Joh 7:38-39</a></em>, where we learn that the Spirit was to be given at the Lord's glorification. His death was central to that, indeed His lifting up on the cross could be read as a lifting up in glory from God’s perspective. The life blood and water which flowed out from Him, having breathed His breath / spirit outward towards His misunderstanding and unspiritual disciples, all speaks of the gift of His life and spirit toward us. The gift of His life to us means that it lives within us, which is what is achieved by the gift of the Spirit to each believer. The connection is being made with the smitten rock out of which there flowed spring water for God’s people (<em><a href='B:20 17:6'>Exo 17:6</a></em>). The water in John chapters 4 and 7 represents the gift of the Spirit made possible by the Lord's death. His Spirit was Him; the Comforter passages have explained that the coming of the Spirit was effectively His coming to His people. This is why <em><a href='B:690 5:6'>1Jn 5:6</a></em> explains that the Lord Jesus personally came to the believers through the water and the blood. The fountain of water and blood, representing His Spirit and His life, represented Him personally coming to His people.</p><p>A connection of thought arises from the word "pierced”. Simeon had prophesied that a sword would pierce Mary's heart as it also pierced that of Christ her son (<em><a href='B:490 2:35'>Luk 2:35</a></em>). This is one reason for thinking that Mary may still have been at the cross when the Lord died. It could be that John took her to his home, arm round her shoulders as she wrestled with the desire to take one last motherly look back, and then returned himself to the cross; and then Mary crept back, almost hot on his heels, or perhaps choosing another route, and hiding somewhere in the crowd where neither her son nor John, her new son, would see her. To me, this has the ring of truth about it. Simeon's prophecy, as that sweet baby in cheap cloths lay cradled in his arms, seems to imply that&nbsp;<em>as&nbsp;</em>the Lord's heart was pierced, so would his mother's be. Are we to conclude from this that there was a heart-piercing groan within her, as she saw the spear head enter and the blood flow out? Each time they called out ‘Come down from the cross’, her heart must have been in her mouth. Would He? She had learnt the lesson of Cana, not to pressurize Him for convenient miracles; not to catch His eye as if to say ‘Go on, do it, for my sake’. But nonetheless, because she was only human, she would have hoped against hope. But now, the finality of death forced itself upon her. And her heart was pierced in that moment. Yet Yahweh Himself had prophesied, years before: "They shall look upon&nbsp;<em>me</em>&nbsp;whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for&nbsp;<em>him</em>... and shall be in bitterness for&nbsp;<em>him</em>" (<em><a href='B:450 12:10'>Zec 12:10</a></em>). The use of pronouns here seems to mean that God was in Christ on the cross, reconciling the world unto Himself (<em><a href='B:540 5:19'>2Co 5:19</a></em>). When the Son was pierced, so was the Father. And so at the moment of that sword-thrust, we see the connection of both parents with their suffering Son. As He was pierced, so were the Father and mother. Here we see the wonder and yet the tragedy of the Divine family. We have a very rare insight into the relationship between the Father and Mary. The notion of personal pre-existence and total Deity of Christ destroys this beauty and mystery. Indeed, the whole relationship between the Lord and His mother and Father is surpassingly beautiful, once His nature is correctly understood. There is so much one could speculate and yet dares not hardly think or say (e.g. whether the Lord appeared to His mother after the resurrection; what their relationship will be in the Kingdom).</p><p>The description of blood and water flowing has raised the question as to whether the Lord had been fasting, or had emptied His bowels in Gethsemane, before the crucifixion. It has been suggested that for this to have happened the Lord would have been pierced from the right hand side above the fifth rib, piercing the right auricle of the heart (from which the blood came) and also the pericardium, from where the serum came which appeared like water. However there are critics of these suggestions, which leaves the possibility that the flow of blood and water was in fact a miracle- hence John’s insistence that yes, he actually saw this happen. And he says that he records it so that we might believe. The implication is that meditation upon the cross is what inspires faith, as well as conviction of sin and repentance. The way the Lord’s blood flowed out from His heart is highly evocative of powerful lessons. He gave out from the very core and foundation of His being. We may serve God in good deeds, in writing books, in labouring for Him, without any real demand being made on our innermost self. The challenge of the cross is to give from the very centre and fountain of our life, our very selves, our person, our most vital soul.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:35'>Joh 19:35</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you may believe</em>- It is difficult to tell if a body is dead or not. But there was something about the Lord's corpse which somehow shone forth the message that He had given up His life. Do we not get the sense here of a man, even under inspiration, grasping for adequate words and finding there are none? This is an experience beyond the paradigm of verbal description. There are links between the concept of ‘truth’ and the cross. In <em><a href='B:230 60:4'>Psa 60:4</a></em> God’s Truth is displayed on the banner (s:w. “pole", on which the snake was lifted up). John struggled with words, even under inspiration, to get over to us the tremendous truth and reality of what he witnessed at the cross. God is the ultimate Truth, and the cross was the ultimate declaration of His Truth. John's speaking and writing up of his Gospel was his testimony; and the Comforter passages have stressed that the Spirit bears witness through our witness. In the account of the Lord's death, the Spirit is appealing to all who hear of it.</p><p>"That you may believe" predicates faith upon acceptance of the fact the Lord really died. It is by Him there that we believe in God (<em><a href='B:670 1:21'>1Pe 1:21</a></em>). Apologetics do not give faith, and in that sense they are largely a waste of time, and at best a poor crutch for faith. We are invited to look at the death of the Lord on the cross- and believe, believe all that is implied in it. This may be scoffed at as intellectually weak, what is called 'fideism'. But it is what the Bible teaches and it is simply true to observed experience. We either believe He died as He did, with all the Biblically recorded claims about the significance of that death- or we do not. If we do believe, and those who do not believe in it are struggling against their consciences, then all falls into place; we come to Biblical "faith":&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:36'>Joh 19:36</a></em>&nbsp;<em>For these things happened so that the scripture might be fulfilled: A bone of him shall not be broken-&nbsp;</em>The prophecy of <em><a href='B:230 34:20'>Psa 34:20</a></em> about not a bone of the Lord being broken is here&nbsp;clearly applied to Him. But the context is clearly about all of us- any righteous man. The preceding verse speaks of how the Lord delivers the righteous man out of all his tribulations- and this verse is applied to other believers apart from the Lord Jesus in <em><a href='B:510 12:11'>Act 12:11</a></em> and <em><a href='B:620 3:11-12'>2Ti 3:11-12</a></em>. The chilling fact is that we who are in the body of the Lord are indeed co-crucified with Him.</p><p>We are the Lord's body, of His flesh and bones (<em><a href='B:560 5:30'>Eph 5:30</a></em>). Crucifixion was designed to torture the bones; and yet none was broken. We suffer in Him, but shall not be finally broken. As the Passover lambs were being killed, the Lord died; and it was critical that not a bone of the Passover lambs be broken (<em><a href='B:20 12:46'>Exo 12:46</a></em>; <em><a href='B:40 9:12'>Num 9:12</a></em>). John seems so keen to point out that the Lord died as the Passover lamb, and Paul perceives this when stating that He is "our Passover" (<em><a href='B:530 5:7'>1Co 5:7</a></em>). For no bone of the Lord to be broken, the nails driven through His hands the Greek can refer to the arms or wrists too would not have been large, and would probably have been driven through the 'Destot gap', the set of nerves in between the large wrist bones. The pain would have been intense at that point. The rough hammering of the nails through that point would have paid no attention to detail; but those hammer blows were Divinely guided so that no bone broke. And this would have been even more amazingly guided for the nails driven through the feet not to break a bone. It was only by the Lord refusing to relieve the pain by pushing down on the&nbsp;<em>sedile&nbsp;</em>that He avoided breaking any bones.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:37'>Joh 19:37</a></em> - see on <em><a href='B:500 1:14'>Joh 1:14</a></em>.</p><p><em>And again another scripture says: They shall look on him whom they pierced</em>- The Lord's death was effectively Israel's judgment. The Jewish world was judged then by Him. 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 prophecy of <em><a href='B:450 12:10'>Zec 12:10</a></em> concerning looking on the pierced Messiah is quoted in <em><a href='B:730 1:7'>Rev 1:7</a></em> concerning the judgment seat; and yet in <em><a href='B:500 19:37'>Joh 19:37</a></em> concerning the cross. See on <em><a href='B:500 12:42'>Joh 12:42</a></em>. Looking on Him there is what they shall do in the condemnation of the last day. And standing before Him there, beholding Him, we know our judgment too; for He died for us who believe in Him, that whoever looks toward Him in faith shall be saved. It is as simple as that.</p><p>The death of the High Priest was paralleled with a man standing before the judgment for his crime in <em><a href='B:60 20:6'>Jos 20:6</a></em> RV. This surely prefigured how the Lord's death was and is effectively our judgment. Further connection between the cross and the judgment is found in considering <em><a href='B:450 12:10'>Zec 12:10</a></em>, which states that men would look upon the pierced (i:e. crucified) Saviour, and mourn in recognition of their own sinfulness. This verse is quoted as having fulfilment both at the crucifixion (<em><a href='B:500 19:37'>Joh 19:37</a></em>) and also at the final judgment (<em><a href='B:730 1:7'>Rev 1:7</a></em>). There is strong connection between these two events. And so it has been observed that the cross divided men into two categories: The repentant thief and the bitter one; the soldiers who mocked and the Centurion who believed; the Sanhedrin members who believed and those who mocked; the women who lamented but didn’t obey His word, and those whose weeping isn't recorded, but who stood and watched and thought; the people who beat their breasts in repentance, and those who mocked as to whether Elijah would come to save the Lord.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:38'>Joh 19:38</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And after these things Joseph of Arimathaea, being a disciple of Jesus (but secretly for fear of the Jews), asked of Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus; and Pilate gave him permission. Therefore he came and took his body away</em>- John's Gospel emphasizes how secret believers either turned back to the surrounding world, or were provoked by the cross to 'come out' in full faith. It is twice stressed that Joseph was on the Sanhedrin council. So was Nicodemus (<em><a href='B:500 3:2'>Joh 3:2</a></em>). Yet the whole council unanimously voted for the crucifixion (<em><a href='B:480 14:64'>Mar 14:64</a></em>). "The whole Sanhedrin" (<em><a href='B:480 15:1'>Mar 15:1</a></em> NIV) agreed the High Priests' plan of action. They&nbsp;<em>all</em>interrogated Him and “the whole multitude of them" led Jesus to Pilate (<em><a href='B:490 22:66'>Luk 22:66</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 22:70'>Luk 22:70</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 23:1'>Luk 23:1</a></em>). This is some emphasis. Joseph “was not in agreement" with them, we are told, but it seems this was a position held within his own conscience. It was only the actual cross which brought faith into the open. “You shall not be in agreement with the wicked as an unjust witness" (<em><a href='B:20 23:1'>Exo 23:1</a></em>) probably tore out his heart. It may be that these men weren't present and that the Jews broke their own law, that the death sentence must be unanimously agreed. However, I have an intuitive sense (and nothing more) that these men voted for the Lord's death; and that they went along with the discussion in which “all" the council were involved, as to which incidents in His life they could remember for which they could condemn Him (<em><a href='B:480 14:55'>Mar 14:55</a></em>). They may not have consented to what was done in their hearts, but they still went along with it all on the surface. <em><a href='B:510 13:28-29'>Act 13:28-29</a></em> is at pains, almost, to associate Joseph, Nicodemus and the rest of the Sanhedrin: "<em>They</em>&nbsp;have fulfilled them in condemning him. And though&nbsp;<em>they</em>&nbsp;found no cause of death in him, yet desired&nbsp;<em>they</em>&nbsp;Pilate that He should be slain…&nbsp;<em>they</em>&nbsp;took him down from the tree, and laid him in a sepulchre". The text records that they desired Pilate for the death of Jesus; but the very same Greek words are used to describe how Joseph desired Pilate to let him have the body of Jesus (<em><a href='B:470 27:58'>Mat 27:58</a></em>)- as if to show how Joseph openly undid his request for the crucifixion, by requesting the body. They were secret disciples, fearing the loss of standing among the Jews. It was only after the Lord's death that they came out in the open. It seems to me that they voted for the Son of God to die. But in His grace, the Father emphasizes in the record that Joseph was a good man, and a just; a disciple, although secretly. The grace of God shines through the whole record. Thus only Matthew speaks about the suicide of Judas; the other three records are silent. A human god would inevitably have stressed that the betrayer of His Son went out in shame and took his own life. But the God of all grace is higher than reflecting vindictiveness in His word.</p><p>If the Lord died at 3p:m. and sunset was at 6p:m:, there were only three hours for Joseph to find Pilate, gain a hearing, make his request, for Pilate to verify that the body was dead, and then for Nicodemus to buy the spices and for the burial to be done. Joseph and Nicodemus must have decided almost immediately what they were going to do. And the lesson for us: Beholding the cross makes us see what we ought to do, it becomes urgently apparent, and then we give our all, with the spirit of 'nothing else matters', to achieve it as far as we can. But we can enter into their thoughts: I wish I'd done more for Him while He was alive, and now, even now, because of the pressure of time, I just can't bury and honour this body as I'd like to. All these things are against me. The self-hate and loathing and regret would have arisen within them, mixed with that love and devotion to the Lord of all grace. And there would have been an earnest desire for God to accept what little they could do, with time, the surrounding world, the Jewish culture, the unchangeable past, and their own present natures, all militating against the height of devotion they fain would show.</p><p>The body was sometimes granted to very close relatives. Joseph is now showing his open affinity with this crucified man. At that time, he didn’t firmly believe in the resurrection. For sheer&nbsp;<em>love</em>&nbsp;of this crucified man, he was willing to sacrifice his standing in society, his economic position, risk his life, grovel before the hated Pilate to beg (Lk:), crave (Mk:) the body. This was something which only the close relatives of the crucified could presume to do. But he felt already that new relationship to the Lord, and whether or not He would ever be raised he wanted to show openly to the world his connection with Him, come what may. This was the effect of the Lord’s death upon him.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:39'>Joh 19:39</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And there came also Nicodemus, he who came to him at the first by night; but now he brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds 45kg weight</em>- Nicodemus and Joseph not only did something which placed them outside the religious and social elite of Israel. They humbled themselves in front of that cross. Joseph grovelled before Pilate for the body, he walked out into that no man's land between the crowd and the cross. Nicodemus bought 300 pounds of spices, far greater than the amount used at the most lavish royal burials of the time. The cost of this would have been colossal; equivalent to tens of thousands of dollars. And he did this on the spur of the moment; he bought it in the three hours between the Lord's death (3p:m:) and sunset (6p:m:). He didn’t count the cost, thinking that OK, he'd given up his place in the society and economy, and would now have to live frugally on what he had for the rest of his days. no. Like the widow, he gave what he had, his capital, which many would have more 'prudently' kept for the rainy days ahead. To realize such a huge sum he must have run around in those hours, selling all he had for ridiculous prices (something similar to scenes in&nbsp;<em>Schindler’s List</em>). The holiday was coming on, and nobody was really in the mood for business. His wife, family, friends, colleagues... would have considered crazy, But all the time, beating in his brain, would have been the sense: ‘Now, nothing,&nbsp;<em>nothing else&nbsp;</em>really matters at all’. It's been observed: “If the aloe and myrrh were in dried or powdered form, a whole row of sacks would be necessary to carry this weight, and Nicodemus must have had assistance to be able to transport the load. The transport would have been even more difficult if the substance was dissolved in wine, vinegar or oil". Remember the Feast was coming on. To marshal such labour would have been so difficult and attracted so much attention and consternation. The Roman&nbsp;<em>litra</em>&nbsp;or pound was about 12 ounces, so 100 pounds (<em><a href='B:500 19:39'>Joh 19:39</a></em>) would have been about 75 imperial pounds. Such a weight would fill a considerable space in the tomb, forming a mound which would smother the corpse. Such was their love. It was common for kings to have such large amounts of spices (e.g. <em><a href='B:300 34:5'>Jer 34:5</a></em>). Those men were showing their belief that Jesus truly was Lord and King for them. To believe Jesus is Lord and King is not something which we can painlessly or cheaply believe. It demands our all. And there is no reason to think that Joseph ‘got away with it’. The&nbsp;<em>Acts of Pilate</em>&nbsp;12 reports that the Jews became so hostile when they heard that Joseph had asked for Jesus’ body that they imprisoned him. It should be noted that Joseph didn’t do what he did for hope of a future reward. The cross itself was enough to motivate him to give all purely for love of the Lord Jesus; not for any future hope. It could be that the reference to how he “waited for the Kingdom of God" when he begged for the body (<em><a href='B:480 15:43'>Mar 15:43</a></em>) suggests that he had lost hope for the future Kingdom at that time, he had earlier waited for it, but now he simply lived life for love of Jesus. And this should be our attitude if we are for some reason denied the Kingdom ahead; that, simply, we love Jesus, and would give our lives for Him all the same, Kingdom or no Kingdom. We who are baptized into both the death&nbsp;<em>and burial</em>&nbsp;of the Lord have a like senseless grace and love lavished upon us too (<em><a href='B:520 6:3-4'>Rom 6:3-4</a></em>; <em><a href='B:580 2:10-12'>Col 2:10-12</a></em>). In passing, the question arises as to&nbsp;<em>why&nbsp;</em>Nicodemus bought such a huge amount of spices. Perhaps it is the nature of true devotion to behave in a humanly senseless way. Alternatively, the use of spices was to keep the body from decaying. It could be that he vaguely understood the promise of <em><a href='B:230 16:10'>Psa 16:10</a></em>, that the Lord’s body would not see corruption (cp. <em><a href='B:500 11:39'>Joh 11:39</a></em>), and thought that by his own extreme efforts he could bring this about. Despite his misunderstanding of that passage, his lack of faith and comprehension of the resurrection, all the same his devotion was accepted. There is significant extra-Biblical information about Nicodemus. Josephus mentions him as a distinguished man in&nbsp;<em>Wars of the Jews</em>&nbsp;II, 20 and IV, 3,9. He is mentioned in the Talmud&nbsp;<em>Gittin</em>&nbsp;56a as Nakdimon ben Gurion, one of the three richest nobles in Jerusalem. The Talmud also mentions a story about his daughter&nbsp;<em>Ketuboth&nbsp;</em>66a. It relates that one day when Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai was riding out of Jerusalem, he spoke to a poor young beggar woman, and discovered that she was Nicodemus’ daughter. He recalled that her father had lost his fortune, and had not practiced deeds of charity. This rather confirms our picture of Nicodemus. He did indeed lose his fortune, and his previous mean spiritedness was radically transformed by his experience of the outgiven life and love of Jesus. In the light of that, he gave away all. And the powerful impact of the cross of Christ can likewise banish all carefully calculated meanness from our hearts too, and concretely result in real generosity.</p><p>The life of radical grace is infectious. Mary’s lavish anointing of the Lord may well have been what inspired Nicodemus to so lavishly prepare the Lord’s body for burial. The vast quantities of spices he used was more than that used in the burials of some of the Caesars. He too must have bankrupted himself to anoint the Lord’s body. That two people did this within a week of each other is too close a similarity to be co-incidental. Surely the nature of Mary’s giving inspired that of Nicodemus. &nbsp;Paul likewise writes of how the generous commitments of the Corinthian ecclesias had “inspired very many” to generosity (<em><a href='B:540 9:2'>2Co 9:2</a></em>). And we too, in our abundant responses to God’s super-abundant grace, will inspire each other likewise.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:40'>Joh 19:40</a></em>&nbsp;<em>So they took the body of Jesus, and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as it is the custom of the Jews to bury</em>- As we will note in chapter 20, the way the linen cloths and napkin were found still wrapped neatly is significant. For the myrrh would have made the linen stick to the Lord's body like glue. He did not have to fight His way out of them, nor was He somehow extricated from them by sympathizers and the corpse removed. Rather His very emergence from those cloths was itself part of the miracle of resurrection. The surrounding customs involved removing body parts; and the Romans burnt their dead. Only the Jews buried the entire body.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:41'>Joh 19:41</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb wherein no one had lain</em>- Twice it is stressed that the tomb was near to where the Lord died (:42). Perhaps the Lord would have known that He would be buried there, and would have perhaps viewed the tomb from His elevated position on the cross. The Father provided encouragement to the Lord throughout His traumas, as He does to us in ours in ways great and small. The tomb had had no previous contact with a dead body, and so was ritually clean. This may be of no final consequence, because the Lord had been ritually defiled in about every way possible, but John maybe mentions this to try to make his Jewish audience as comfortable as possible. We too are to state truth as it is, but also be all things to all our hearers, as Paul was.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 19:42'>Joh 19:42</a></em>&nbsp;<em>There, because of the Jews' preparation day, they laid Jesus (for the tomb was nearby)</em>- See on :41. Again John emphasizes that the Passover was coming on and therefore the last supper had not been a Passover meal. He is writing to and for Jews who were ever tempted to remain or return to Judaism. His point is that feasts like Passover had had their total fulfilment in the Lord's death. The way John, as a Jew writing to and for Jews, speaks of "the Jews' preparation day", along with other references to "the Jews", shows the chasmic gulf which he felt there to be between Christianity and Judaism.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 20:1'>Joh 20:1</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb</em>- Mary came seeking the Lord early in the morning… and this inevitably takes our minds to some OT passages which speak of doing just this:</p><p>- &nbsp;“O God, thou&nbsp;<em>art</em>&nbsp;my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is;&nbsp;&nbsp; To see thy power and thy glory” (<em><a href='B:230 63:1-2'>Psa 63:1-2</a></em>). The resurrection of Jesus showed clearly both the power (<em><a href='B:540 13:4'>2Co 13:4</a></em>) and glory (<em><a href='B:520 6:4'>Rom 6:4</a></em>) of the Father. For Mary, life without her Lord was a dry and thirsty land. This was why she went to the grave early that morning. She was simply aching for Him. And she had well learnt the Lord’s teaching, that her brother’s resurrection had been associated with the glory of the Father (<em><a href='B:500 11:40'>Joh 11:40</a></em>). She went early to the tomb to seek the Father’s glory- so the allusion to Psalms 63 implies. She was the one person who had actually believed in advance the Lord’s teaching about resurrection. And yet even she was confused- half her brain perceived it all and believed it, and was rewarded by being the first to see the risen Lord; and yet another part of her brain was simply overcome with grief, believing that the gardener had somehow removed the body some place else. And our own highest heights of spiritual perception are likewise shrouded by such humanity too.<br/>- “I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find me” (<em><a href='B:240 8:17'>Pro 8:17</a></em>) is written in the first instance of wisdom. And yet the Lord Jesus has “wisdom” as one of His titles (<em><a href='B:470 12:42'>Mat 12:42</a></em>; <em><a href='B:530 1:24'>1Co 1:24</a></em>; <em><a href='B:530 1:30'>1Co 1:30</a></em>). Mary sat at the Lord’s feet to hear His wisdom; to her, she showed in practice what it means to comprehend Jesus as “the wisdom of God”. She anxiously heard His words. And thus she sought Him early…because she so wanted to hear His wisdom again. Of course, she loved Him. But that love was rooted in respect and almost an addiction to His wisdom. It was this that she loved about Him, and it was this which led her to the grave early. And it was this which led her to the honour of being the first to see the risen Jesus.<br/>- “Yea, in the way of thy judgments, O LORD, have we waited for thee; the desire of&nbsp;<em>our</em>&nbsp;soul&nbsp;<em>is</em>&nbsp;to thy name, and to the remembrance of thee. With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early” (<em><a href='B:290 26:8-9'>Isa 26:8-9</a></em>) makes the same connection between seeking the Lord early, and loving His words. &nbsp;</p><p>John’s record seems to reflect how he saw parallels between himself and Mary in their witness to the resurrection. They both “came to the tomb” (<em><a href='B:500 20:1'>Joh 20:1</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 20:4'>Joh 20:4</a></em>), stood outside, “stooped” and looked into the tomb (<em><a href='B:500 20:5'>Joh 20:5</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 20:11'>Joh 20:11</a></em>), “beheld… saw” (<em><a href='B:500 20:5'>Joh 20:5</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 20:12'>Joh 20:12</a></em>). Yet Mary was the first to see the risen Lord. The testimony of a woman didn’t count in the 1st century world, and yet God chose her to be the first witness. In doing so, He was teaching that the work of witness and the sheer power of what we are witnesses to can transform the most hesitant and inappropriate person into a preacher of the irrepressible good news, even with the whole world against them. It’s as if John is saying in his account of the Gospel that Mary was in some ways his pattern; he and her were to be connected. He wasn’t ashamed to thus identify himself with the witness of a woman. Psalms 68 is prophetic of the Lord’s death and resurrection. Verse 18 is specifically quoted in the New Testament about His ascension. Verse 11 predicts that: “The Lord gave the word: the women that publish the tidings are a great host”. This primarily concerns the publishing of the Lord’s resurrection, although the imagery is based upon the singing of Miriam and the women of Israel after the Red Sea deliverance. Clearly enough, women were to play a major part in the witness to the Lord’s resurrection. This was shown by the women being commanded to go tell their brethren that the Lord had risen indeed. And yet there is ample evidence that it was women who in practice were the more compelling preachers of the Gospel in the first century ecclesia. The simple fact is that God delegated to women the duty of witnessing to what was for Him the most momentous and meaningful act in all His creation- the raising of His Son from the dead. He was clearly making a point- that those whose witness this world may despise, are those He uses. And in this we can take endless personal encouragement, beset as we are by our own sense of inadequacy as preachers:&nbsp;<br/>John's record presents the resurrection through the eyes of Mary Magdalene. She went alone to the tomb while it was yet dark. This doesn't contradict the other accounts, which pick up the story at sunrise, when all the women were together there.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 20:2'>Joh 20:2</a></em>&nbsp;<em>She ran to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and said to them: They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him</em>-Mary Magdalene was the first believer to call Jesus “the Lord”- despite His repeated teaching that this was His true position. They had called Him “Lord and Master” but not&nbsp;<em>the&nbsp;</em>Lord. Her example soon spread to her less perceptive brethren- for they likewise soon were speaking of Him as “the Lord” (<em><a href='B:500 20:25'>Joh 20:25</a></em>; <em><a href='B:500 21:7'>Joh 21:7</a></em>). Although the resurrection made Him Lord and Christ (<em><a href='B:510 2:36'>Act 2:36</a></em>), yet to her, it was as if He was risen and glorified already. This is an indication to me that she did really believe He would rise, but her humanity, her grief, the intensity of the moment, led her to act and speak as if this wasn’t the case. Consider all the descriptions of Jesus as “the Lord” even during His ministry; so certain was He that He would indeed be made Lord and Christ- and realize, how the fact Mary Magdalene too called Him “Lord” before seeing the proof of His resurrection indicates that she shared this perception.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 20:3'>Joh 20:3</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Peter with the other disciple therefore went out and went to the tomb-&nbsp;</em>Given the disrespect of women as witnesses, we see a humility here in them not only taking her seriously, but running in response to her word (:4). They set an example for all church leaders, one which was all the more radical in their age.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 20:4'>Joh 20:4</a></em>&nbsp;<em>They ran there together, and the other disciple outran Peter and came first to the tomb</em>- Here we have another of the unusual usage of tenses which is characteristic of the Gospels. The imperfect here should be translated "they were running", inviting us to play Bible television with the narrative, seeing it unfolding before our eyes, seeing them running. John is displaying humility in recording that he outran Peter, running faster because he was perhaps younger or fitter; and yet going straight on to say that although he may have been faster in human terms, he was far slower than Peter in spiritual terms, for Peter was the first to enter the tomb and see the evidence for the Lord's resurrection (:5,6).</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 20:5'>Joh 20:5</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not enter</em>- Each of the Gospel writers reveals a sense of inadequacy about themselves or the disciples, this self-criticism, in different ways. The preaching of the twelve disciples is really an admission of their own weaknesses. For example, John mentions that when he and Peter arrived at the tomb, he John “did not go in”, but Peter did, and therefore believed before he did. We see here John’s gentle humility, and reflection in his own preaching of how he esteemed others better than himself, and of stronger faith. John says that “he saw and believed”, but goes straight on to say that he at that time did not understand that Jesus must rise from the dead (:8,9). He surely means that he&nbsp;<em>later</em>&nbsp;believed, but not right then.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 20:6'>Joh 20:6</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Simon Peter arrived behind him and entered into the tomb, and he saw the linen cloths lying there</em>- Peter and John went to the tomb after having first of all disbelieved Mary Magdalene (<em><a href='B:490 24:11'>Luk 24:11</a></em>). The state of the linen cloths was what provoked John's faith (:8); for it is John who notes the huge quantity of myrrh used to embalm the Lord's body, and "myrrh... glues linen to the body not less firmly than lead" (Leon Morris,&nbsp;<em>John</em>&nbsp;p. 736). The fact the cloths were neatly placed as they were was therefore a powerful evidence that the Lord had risen, and not been extricated from the cloths by any human effort.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 20:7'>Joh 20:7</a></em>&nbsp;<em>And the napkin that had been upon his head, not lying with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself-&nbsp;</em>As noted on :6, for napkin to be rolled up meant the body had miraculously come out of them; for the myrrh would have glued them to the body in such a way that a person reviving and fighting their way out of the wrappings would have torn them; and they were neatly rolled up, not torn.</p><p>It does us good to reflect soberly and deeply upon the events of the birth, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. To reconstruct in our own minds what really happened, that we might know Him the better. That on a day in April, on a Friday afternoon, on a hill outside Jerusalem, 1970 years ago…there really was a man lead out to crucifixion. And that three days later, in a dark tomb, a tightly wrapped body came to life, and in a microsecond was standing outside his burial garments. The only sound would have been of the graveclothes collapsing or subsiding as the support of the body inside them was removed. The napkin wrapped around His head (cp. <em><a href='B:500 11:44'>Joh 11:44</a></em>) would suddenly have become a crumpled turban. The clothes would have been like a discarded chrysalis from which the butterfly has emerged. John saw the linen clothes “lying”, but according to one authority the Greek word can apparently stand the translation “collapsed”. That John saw the clothes “lying” is repeated twice, and the first time it is placed in an emphatic position in the Greek sentence- ‘He saw, as they were lying or ‘collapsed’, the linen clothes’. John also records his deep impression that the head napkin was not with the other clothes, but by itself. Apparently it was normal practice to bind the body and the head in graveclothes, but not the neck. It could be that John is saying that he was most struck by the way there was a slight gap between the collapsed body bindings and the head napkin- the gap where the neck of Jesus had been. This head napkin was “wrapped together”, but here we can with fair confidence say that the Greek word means more ‘twirled’. The word aptly describes the rounded shape which the empty napkin still preserved. And so John saw the stone slab, the collapsed graveclothes, and the shell of the head cloth, with a gap between the two where the Lord’s neck had been. And John “saw this and believed”. Now of course it is possible to reconstruct the whole scene otherwise. What I am saying is that in our personal following of the Lord we love, we each&nbsp;need to try to reconstruct for ourselves how it would have been. The artless style of the inspired records encourage us in this- one only has to compare them against the fantastic Apocryphal Gospels, with their descriptions of Jesus bursting from the tomb in power and glory, to see in the most obvious terms what is inspired and what isn’t.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 20:8'>Joh 20:8</a></em>&nbsp;<em>Then the other disciple also entered, he who had arrived first to the tomb; and he saw and believed</em>- To see and believe is another challenge which comes out of the text to readers and hearers, to do just the same. To see with the eyes of faith, and believe. But John is credited with believing, when he did not yet understand the Biblical basis for the Lord's resurrection (:9), and his immediate return to his own home (:10) is presented as an action of unbelief when we compare this with <em><a href='B:500 16:31-32'>Joh 16:31-32</a></em>, remembering that John rarely repeats phrases in his record unless he intends us to connect them: "Jesus answered them: Do you now believe? Behold, the hour comes, yes, has come, when you shall be scattered, every man to his own home". So John may be saying that his faith was weak, it was momentary. And that would explain the odd phrase used in the Greek; for "believed" has no object as Greek grammar would require. It is not implied&nbsp;<em>what</em>&nbsp;he believed in; although that nuance cannot really come through in English translation.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 20:9'>Joh 20:9</a></em>&nbsp;<em>For as yet they did not understand the scripture that he must rise from the dead-&nbsp;</em>As noted on :8 and :9, this confirms the impression that John's 'belief' was momentary. However, a more generous interpretation is possible. It could be that John means to demonstrate here that faith in the risen Lord does not necessarily depend upon knowing or understanding the Old Testament texts which require Messiah's resurrection. For that requirement and implication is indeed there, but is hardly apparent to a casual reader or hearer; bearing in mind that most were illiterate and had no easy access to the scrolls. In this case, John would be appealing to Gentiles and illiterate Jews, the mass of first century society- and encouraging them that faith in the risen Christ is possible without any background of Old Testament theology and familiarity.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 20:10'>Joh 20:10</a></em>&nbsp;<em>So the disciples went away again to their own home</em>- As noted on :8, this is an allusion to <em><a href='B:500 16:31-32'>Joh 16:31-32</a></em>, which says the disciples would do this because they did not really believe. John is appealing for faith in the empty tomb but explaining how his initial faith was momentary, and not based upon a Biblical understanding of the necessity of the Lord's resurrection. By implication he is appealing to his audience to have a faith stronger than his had initially been; and this is a very powerful way to appeal for faith from an audience.</p>


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<p><em><a href='B:500 20:11'>Joh 20:11</a></em>&nbsp;<em>But Mary was standing outside the tomb weeping. So, as she wept, she stooped and looked into the tomb</em>- Mary “stood without”, and yet the same word is used in a rather negative context elsewhere in the Gospels: <em><a href='B:490 8:20'>Luk 8:20</a></em> Mary and His brethren standing without; <em><a href='B:490 13:25'>Luk 13:25</a></em> the rejected “stand without” with the door closed, seeking for their Lord; <em><a href='B:500 18:16'>Joh 18:16</a></em> Peter stood at the door without. It’s as if she was in the shoes of the rejected. And yet she is graciously accepted in a wonderful way by the risen Lord. And she is our representative. Her weeping likewise could be read negatively; for she ought to have gone to the tomb after three days with full faith and joy in expectation that the Lord had risen as He promised. Hence His question to her as to why she is weeping (:13,15):&nbsp;As noted earlier in this chapter, the Gospels are full of self-criticism of themselves as writers and their fellow disciples, stressing their weakness, and slow struggle towards the faith they now urged men and women to accept.</p>


