“We will make our home...”

April 27, 2021

14:1 – 15:17 Being in Jesus, just as Jesus is in the Father

Read John 14:22-24

It’s not surprising that the disciples struggled to understand what Jesus had just told them about the Holy Spirit coming and living within them (14:16-17). They were still expecting Jesus to reveal himself publicly as the Messiah (22). Even apart from that wrong expectation, the promise of a personal revelation and inner experience of God’s love given to believers through his Holy Spirit was a concept that they inevitably struggled to grasp. Even from our vantage point on this side of Pentecost, it still sounds incredible. Yet that’s exactly what Jesus intended for them and for all Christians.

Once again, Jesus emphasised that love for him and obedience to him are the essential characteristics of Christian living (23a; 14:21). And, as in that previous verse, he again emphasised that this will result in a profound encounter with the love of God. The personal nature of this could hardly be stated more emphatically, for the Father and the Son themselves “will come to them and make our home with them” (23b). The word home is the same Greek word used for rooms in 14:2; at the same time as Jesus prepares a home for Christians in heaven, he makes his own home with them on earth.

And not only with them but in them! His words here expand and explain “the Spirit… will be in you” (14:17) and this is what is promised to every Christian believer – a real and intimate relationship with Jesus through his Spirit (Rom.8:9,14-16). We don’t achieve that as a reward for loving and obeying him – it’s a gift. But the dynamic of living in the reality of that relationship is maintained by loving him, for only those who love him will want to obey him (24a). This was the Father’s pattern with Jesus, which he passes on to us too (24b).