NOTES for Joh 14:15-31

Someone somewhere said: "Love is an instrument of knowledge." And in fact, what can we know about someone we do not love? Having turned away from a person, one cannot come into contact with him, cannot become closer to him, cannot understand him. The same is true when the matter concerns the knowledge of God. What can be known about Him without loving Him, without striving toward Him, is only dry and relative "scholasticism" about the fact that He is, supposedly, so great and strong and wise.

But truly to know Him, ("to know," in the language of Scripture, to be united with Him, to "abide in Him") is given only to the one who is ready to love. That is why Jesus says that He will reveal Himself not to the whole world, but only to the disciples, who will receive the Spirit of truth, revealing the Father to those who can understand Him, that is, love Him.

Another Comforter will remain with the disciples. It is not said that He will remain with everyone, most likely because those who reject the Son also reject the Spirit of Truth. One must accept Jesus, and then those who accept Him will be able to receive both the Father and the Spirit. Christ humbled Himself, but through His self-emptying we can attain the fullness of communion with God.

Christ promises the disciples that He will not leave them as orphans and that He will come again. Which coming does He mean—His Resurrection, the coming descent of the Holy Spirit, or the Second Coming? However these words are understood, He is near His faithful; He loves us and does not abandon us.

The sign of love—keeping the commandments—may seem too simple, and one can easily dismiss it as an expression of formal legalism. But depth begins at the surface. Observing basic rules is neither formalism nor mere discipline, but the pledge and first expression of a profound relationship with God that surpasses everything one could initially imagine.

The simplest things are the hardest to accept. The hardest question to answer is one that permits only two answers, “yes” or “no.” Nothing could be easier: one must decide who Jesus is. If the answer is, “He is the Messiah,” then, according to His words, everything that follows is simple. You love Him, you keep His word, and life becomes something literally unearthly. God the Creator, the Almighty, will make His dwelling within the one who loves the Son. The most uncomfortable thing here is the simplicity of the choice. You love or you do not love. You believe or you do not believe. You obey or you do not obey. It seems that I believe, yet I do not obey. What, then, does this mean? The one who loves necessarily obeys, so I do not love. And I cannot become a dwelling place? One could go on walking around this vicious circle, from which there appears to be only one human way out: since everything is so terrible and I can never fulfill the words of Jesus by my own strength, there is no point in trying. And immediately the answer comes. By our own human strength, of course, nothing will succeed. But the One who goes to the Cross for the salvation of every person will send the Comforter, who will bring to mind everything forgotten amid the bustle and raise everyone who keeps falling, even on level ground.

The conversation during the Last Supper is, in essence, devoted to one theme: the theme of the Kingdom. Before His death and the resurrection awaiting Him, the Savior wants to tell His disciples as much as possible about what awaits them. They understand Him entirely in human terms, in keeping with the popular messianic ideas characteristic of the age. One of the most important themes connected with the Kingdom was the theme of the Holy Spirit. This is understandable: God's breath permeates the Kingdom to its very furthest limits. This breath, properly speaking, constitutes the nature of the Kingdom, or rather what replaces nature in the Kingdom. Everything that becomes part of the Kingdom is permeated by it. All its residents share in it. The path of Jesus, which is ending on earth, continues in the Kingdom. And for His disciples and followers the Kingdom opens precisely as this breath of God, the breath of the Holy Spirit.

The disciples, however, are waiting for something else. They cannot understand: where is that messianic Kingdom, visible to each and every person, about which people say so much? When will it come? They are waiting for the beginning of a messianic uprising in which all of them will have to take part. They are waiting for the heavenly host, angelic legions that of course will appear at their Teacher's call, since for Him nothing is impossible. They do not understand why their Teacher is finally going to reveal Himself only to them alone, and not to the whole world. Does that mean there will be no Kingdom? Only a small circle of supporters and followers?

It was not yet clear to them that one cannot enter physically into the Kingdom their Teacher brought into the world, that one can be in its presence and not notice that presence. They will understand everything only after Pentecost. Then it will become clear to them that the Kingdom "not of this world" is so not because some special laws operate in it, but because its nature is different. Such a nature cannot be found in this world.

And this nature is determined precisely by God's breath, which only the one who wants and seeks can see. But such an understanding of the Kingdom will come to the apostles later. For now they are waiting for the kind of Kingdom they know about. And they are perplexed as they listen to the Teacher. But perplexity in itself does not hinder communion with Christ. Distrust does. Perplexity is a passing matter. The disciples did have trust in the Teacher. In spite of everything. It helped them survive everything that followed and live to see Pentecost.

The Holy Spirit will teach you all things, but He will also bring to your remembrance all things that Christ said. These words contain the answer to a frequently asked question: by what principle were the canonical Gospels selected, given that there were many more Gospel narratives? The words and episodes recorded by the four Evangelists were preserved precisely because the Holy Spirit did not allow them to be forgotten. Meanwhile, anyone even slightly familiar with the “apocryphal gospels” will agree that, although they use certain Gospel motifs, they belong to a different kind of literature.

As He departs, He leaves peace to the disciples, but emphasizes that His peace is unlike the peace familiar to people. Unfortunately, the peace usually established in human relationships can be defined only negatively, as a temporary absence of war and hostility, and therein lie its weakness and fragility. But the peace brought by Christ is equivalent to the authenticity of life. Beside it, every hostility looks like a dark crevice that the light has not yet reached.

When each person says the word "Comforter," he imagines something of his own, but there are also common features that can be identified. A comforter should relieve sadness and anguish, wipe away tears, pat one on the head, and say something pleasant. Is this how the Lord understands the word when He speaks of the Comforter?

We find nothing of the sort: the Comforter will teach everything and remind us of everything. Comfort appears before us as knowing, accepting, and taking in the words of Christ. Only in this does the Lord see for us the possibility of being comforted, of finding happiness and freedom.

The Russian translation of the Greek word "Parakletos" emphasizes only one meaning of this many-sided word. And we sometimes expect from the Holy Spirit first of all comfort in our sorrows. But let us notice that Jesus speaks of quite different works of the Spirit, related rather to other translations of His Name. A parakletos was an advocate in a court session who could suggest to the accused the right behavior and the right words. The fact that the Holy Spirit gives strength and words for witness to Christ is said in other places of the New Testament as well (see Matt. 10:19-20; John 15:26; Acts 1:8). But the Spirit not only puts words into the mouth; He brings love and truth into the heart, and precisely love and truth become the source of all our relationships and the driving force of all our actions. This happened with the apostles at Pentecost, and this will happen with us too if only we ask for it, because "the Father in heaven will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him" (Luke 11:13).

Speaking about the peace that is not from this world, Jesus calls His disciples not to be afraid. The issue, of course, is peace in the sense in which this word is used in Yahwism and Judaism, and later began to be used by Christians: peace as God's presence, or more precisely, as the effect of God's presence on human nature, which evokes in a person a sense of inner peace and rest. But the main thing is not the sensations, but the Presence itself. It was, of course, familiar to those seeking God even before the coming of Christ, especially to Yahwists, for God never abandoned His people.

But to be completely delivered from fear: that had never happened. Even those who seemed to stand firmly on the path of righteousness experienced fear. This is understandable: righteousness is not naturally characteristic of the human person. It is not a property or quality of fallen humanity; it is only a state in which one can abide, but which is easy to lose. In essence, a fallen person is righteous in spite of his nature. And in any case he has to oppose the evil and sin that he carries within himself. This means that fears too can find a place in the life of a righteous person. Until human nature is transformed fully and to the end, they cannot be finally removed.

One can only make sure that they do not determine the course of spiritual life and of life in general. But with the coming of Christ the situation changed: with Him the Kingdom entered the world. And this means the possibility of that very full and final transformation of human nature. And accordingly, deliverance from all fears connected with the fall, including the fear of death and the fear of what people consider supernatural, the two main fears of modern humanity. In the Kingdom there are no fears, and Jesus calls His disciples precisely there. After Himself.

During the Last Supper Jesus is constantly trying to convey one simple thought to His disciples: He is leaving, but life goes on. And not just life, but life in the Kingdom. More than that: His departure is connected with the process by which that very Kingdom is being established. The Kingdom's entry into the world and its unfolding in the world. He is leaving for the sake of accomplishing the very thing for which He came.

That is why He says to the disciples: if you really loved Me, you would rejoice at My departure. I am going to accomplish exactly what you say you are waiting for. But the apostles do not understand this. They do not understand what sort of Kingdom this is, whose King must leave in order for it to appear. Humanly speaking, it could not be understood. In this world things do not happen that way. Here everything is the opposite: if the king disappears, that means the kingdom is gone as well. A kingdom, after all, at least in the sense in which it was understood in antiquity, is first of all a king and subjects, not a territory.

Territory can be acquired. But if there is no king, then there definitely will be no kingdom, even if everything is fine with the territory. If for no other reason, then because without a king order will very quickly disappear. The disciples, of course, understood all this perfectly, and that is why they were perplexed by the strange behavior, as it seemed to them, of the Teacher. Instead of beginning the creation of the messianic Kingdom and taking at least some understandable and natural steps toward it, He appears to be preparing to go somewhere, to hide.

Why? The only reasonable explanation that could have occurred to the disciples was the thought that He wanted to gather more people before beginning the uprising. Maybe He has secret followers. Maybe He is going specifically to them, so that He can return with forces more impressive than the eleven people who were present. After all, there were many who sympathized with Him, and the meeting at the entrance to Jerusalem had been solemn.

In any case, when Jesus rose from the table and called the disciples to follow Him, they understood that something was about to happen. Maybe at last something would happen that, if it did not explain the matter, would at least give a hint at the solution. All the more because, for now, He seems to be calling them to follow Him, which means that whatever happens, they will in any case take part in what is going on. The apostles' trust in Jesus remained, despite their lack of understanding. And that is what matters most: it is enough to follow Christ, despite all perplexities.

Describing the Kingdom, Jesus turns to the image of a vineyard, a vine, traditional for Yahwism and Judaism. But into this traditional image He places a new meaning connected with the essence of the Kingdom that He brought into the world. Of course, there is also room here for the traditional understanding of the Kingdom as a place where only one will acts: the will of God, who created the world. It is no accident that Jesus says that the "prince of this world" "has nothing in Him": for the Kingdom He brought into the world does not exist according to the laws of this world, so that the "prince of this world" can have no power over it, even though the Kingdom, while abiding in our untransfigured world, constantly touches it.

But the image of the vine also becomes an image of relations within the Kingdom, where all are connected with one another and with Christ just as branches are on a vine. This bond is absolute, immediate, and organic: every branch is a continuation of the vine; if it is torn off, it dries up. All the branches live one life with the vine, fed with it by the same sap from one source. Evidently this is exactly how the inhabitants of the Kingdom are connected with one another and with Christ.

From this point of view, the Kingdom can be defined as a single space of relations linking all its inhabitants with one another, with Christ at the center. And it is precisely the fact of Christ's presence that makes the Kingdom the Kingdom. For in order for it to remain itself, such constancy of relations, such stability, is necessary as is unthinkable in the fallen world for the human will damaged by the fall. Only the will of the One who, being Man, remained untouched by sin can become the basis of the stable unity necessary as an indispensable condition for the existence of the Kingdom in our transfiguring, but not yet transfigured, world. This is what the Savior evidently has in mind when He says, "Without Me you can do nothing."

Of course, even in a fallen state a person can sometimes, with God's help, do something good. But to do anything at all for the Kingdom is possible only by being part of the Kingdom. And it is impossible to be part of it without spiritual unity with the One who constitutes its spiritual foundation, who is the spiritual core on which the Kingdom rests.

One end of this core is held by God, who raised His Son from the dead. At the other end are we, who consider ourselves Christians and try, as far as we can, to be Christians. And between us is the Kingdom, entering the world through us.

In the Last Conversation with the disciples, the Lord says two symmetrical things that mark the Christian's path. Like mileposts, these words stand on our road. "Whoever has My commandments," says the Lord, "is the one who loves Me." At the same time He says, "The one who loves Me will keep My commandments." If He had said only the first, it would have made Christianity a religion of law, in principle no different from the Old Covenant. If the Lord had said only the second, then our faith would have depended on elusive movements of the heart, which sinful humanity does not have the strength to control.

But precisely the paradoxical combination of these two, essentially opposite, statements places Christ Himself at the center and opens the possibility of salvation and life for everyone and always. Some of us are more inclined to try to fulfill the Lord's word, and through this we can come to know Him and love Him so that this love transforms the whole person. Others, by contrast, come to know Christ through the word, through the Church, or through any number of other paths, and for love of Him they begin in practical life to try to do what they had never even thought about before.

In the natural sciences there is a concept: a system with autocatalysis. These are systems in which two processes accelerate each other so that uncontrolled growth of the system begins. Explosive and chain reactions happen this way, for example. Combustion in active media happens this way... Perhaps what the Lord offers us is also a system with autocatalysis. Love for Jesus, the desire for communion and unity with Him, changes our life and moves us to fulfill His will. The experience of practical love for people, the experience of keeping the commandments, leads to the point where you can no longer live a single day without Jesus. And the result is autocatalytic, "uncontrolled" growth of the Kingdom of Heaven in your heart.

When telling His disciples about the Kingdom, Jesus describes it by the example of the relations between Himself and His Father, and also between Himself and His disciples. He says to the disciples: if you ask anything of the Father in My name, then I will do what you ask, and if you ask Me anything, I will do it. Thus, as we see, Jesus illustrates His own words that He is in the Father and the Father is in Him. In His presentation, the Kingdom turns out to be, first of all, a spiritual space, the space of the relations that unite Him with the Father and with all His disciples, uniting them in such a way that He becomes the Mediator between His disciples and the Father.

Perhaps this is exactly what Jesus means when He says that His Kingdom is "not of this world." Indeed, the only thing in us that does not depend in any way on the laws of our untransfigured world is our relation to someone or something, for it is determined exclusively by our will, which, unlike the body or the soul, remains free under any circumstances. And if the space of the Kingdom is precisely the space of our relations, then it truly can be completely independent of the laws of the world in which we live.

The only thing that can hinder this is our own fallen nature. After all, the fall became, first of all, the result of a wrong choice, an erroneous decision, and the consequence of such errors is above all the weakening of the will, which in a fallen person tends to submit to the very nature that, in a normal state, it should have governed. The only way out of this situation is the intervention of another will: also human, but not subject to original sin. For the spiritual space of the Kingdom, the will of the Messiah becomes just such a will. That is why He becomes the Mediator between God and His disciples and followers: without His will the Kingdom is impossible; it simply will not be the Kingdom of God in the true sense of the word.

Once the space of relations has been created, it is filled with the breath of God, thanks to which this space can spread wider and wider, including more and more hearts and saving more and more souls, right up to the moment when the Savior's return marks the completion of this process and the full triumph of the Kingdom that transfigures the world.

That the Lord loves us is a fact that requires no proof; He loves unconditionally, in a way none of us knows how to love. And naturally, when this love remains unanswered on our part, it brings Him no joy. He wants us to respond to His love, although everyone (both He and we) understands that by definition there can be no "worthy" response from us: our love is immeasurably less than His.

And yet He does not lower the bar. He does not say that He, God, must be respected, feared, obeyed, and so on. He says: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" (Matt 22:37, see Deut 6:5). The question is: how is this possible? How can we reach what He expects from us?

Today Christ Himself gives the answer. An unusual answer. We are used to perceiving rules and ordinances separately, and love and personal relationships separately. For us, say, even in family life these are most often two different areas. But today Jesus shows that this is not so: the one who keeps His commandments is the one who loves Him (see John 14:21).

That is how it is. Everything turns out to be very simple and at the same time very difficult, because loving Him is also a commandment. The result is a closed circle, and only God Himself, who promised that He would reveal Himself to us, helps us understand it. In this we place our hope: He will come to us and teach us everything (see John 14:26).