John 23 Chapter 16

[HKHaugan]

The context is still very real here. They're walking, Jesus is talking and the devil is stalking. Jesus and His disciples are walking through the darkness toward a historic valley of darkness surrounded by a world in darkness. The physical darkness being a copy and shadow of spiritual darkness of which the devil is prince. Yet the Light of the World, Jesus, is using words to convey His Light. They are words that lighten the darkness that surrounds them. They will be the substance of their future testimony, “...which you also must testify for you have been with me from the beginning (15:27).” Soon they will be engulfed in darkness; the devil's conspiracy mounting as they walk and his plan to wield his final weapon, death, and destroy Jesus on the Cross. When Jesus dies they will be consumed with fear that will swallow their conscious moments as they forget the Transfiguration and His light, His miracles, His power over storm and wind, His raising Lazarus and how He has touched their lives. Fear erases memory and saturates their consciousness. Survival in every next moment will be their only concern. Perhaps you can identify in your own experience the moment when survival, pain, tragedies and aloneness made you conscious only of making it through the moment.

It is in this movement through the darkness that He delivers the ultimate assurance of His presence that will internalize everything He has taught them to embrace about Him. He teaches them that the Light will be in them and they will know Him in their hearts. They will see within (realize), with their hearts, with their minds, with their spirits, that He is their personal way, truth and life. This will be the work of the Holy Spirit. But before He comes they will feel the depth of human aloneness and their only spirit will be fear.

So the place to start here is really with His last words before His amazing prayer to the Father. Remember right here, the Holy Spirit has not yet been given. It seems Jesus is saying that belief is not enough. It will take the Cross and Resurrection to get their attention and then the Holy Spirit will come to make sense out of it all not only with belief but with trust and faith as well.
Let's test that idea:
“You believe at last!” Jesus answered. “But a time is coming and has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home. You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me. I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world (16:31-33).” Taking heart is more than just surface belief based on physical presence and words. There will come the event when the Holy Spirit will work in their minds, hearts and spirits and the whole person will be one with Jesus.

Now we return to 16:1 to see the picture as Jesus is painting it. “All this I have told you so that you will not go astray.” This refers to how the world will react to both Him, His disciples and future believers. But it could include everything from 13:1 as well since just their gathering in His name will be sufficient evidence for persecution. He warns about extremists who will even kill them thinking they are serving God. He didn't tell them this at first because He was with them. The real test comes when He is not physically present. He is readying them for His spiritual presence which is where this chapter is the key to theirs and our future in Jesus. That key being the gift and work of the Holy Spirit.

What Jesus is bringing is an entirely new experience for humanity. It is a spiritual revolution freeing man from the internal bondage to sin and its self-centeredness, fear of social and emotional pressures, the intimidation of institutions and their impersonal treatment. The world was drowning in the tossing seas of its own self-indulgence, trapped in a net of extravagant misuse of its intellect, emotion and spiritual wandering.

What Jesus introduced so clearly in His humanity was the picture of a spiritual, personal and relational individual being directly in touch with the One God of Creation. He opened the truth of Gen.1:26 that every person is an image of God. He was the perfect image of God whose mission was to show how sin has taken that away but we can be restored to and through Him by faith. No state, no religion, no class, no national or ethnic definition could do that nor could they ever separate any individual from the God of the universe. Each person was and is important and significant to God and Jesus was the ultimate example, the One through whom this relationship was offered. The internalizing experience sealing this truth was the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit, who would soon come to each of them.

Think of it this way. A ship hits an iceberg, breaks into pieces and sinks into the dark ocean. Some of the broken pieces drift and scatter, others are caught in currents and washed onto different shores and the rest just end up on the bottom. Recovery teams are sent to gather what's left and others to determine what caused the tragedy. Another is sent to see if raising the main structure to the surface is possible.

If we talk about humanity, secular society, the world, we are looking at a shipwreck. But localize it in each of as individuals. In the same sense we can liken ourselves to shipwrecks. The Lord God sent recovery teams to determine and show the cause, gather the broken pieces and to raise the main structure to the surface. That's what the patriarchs, the prophets, the priesthood and kings were called to do. While they played their part they became the history that showed only the source, the Creator, the author of everything had to come Himself, expose the problem and be the One who would embrace the problem, sink to the bottom and then be raised to solve it.

We are persons with a mind, heart and spirit. That's the main structure but sin broke our structure into pieces and Jesus came to raise us and put us back together so that the world could be brought back to Him. Then, brought back to Him, we become part of the recovery team to continue the restoration process.

Vs.5-16 Now we come to the exciting teaching Jesus gives His disciples about the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of recovery and restoration. This is what He has been building up to. He is preparing them, igniting their expectation, their looking forward to the inner experience He has been demonstrating in His entire mission and ministry, the working light, the living water, the power and presence of His Spirit, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus. The Holy Spirit is the One who will not only bring Jesus into their hearts but He will be the guide, the Counselor, the empowerer of their hearts and minds initiating the motivation to share Jesus with the world around them.

“Now I'm going to Him who sent me, yet none of you asks “Where are you going?” He then points out they may not like the grief part but it is good for them that He is going away. Unless He does they won't have the 'Counselor.' It is the Holy Spirit who will be their inner Counselor with a very specific agenda. “When He comes He will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin, righteousness and judgment.”

The world is secular society, the spiritual void in which sin rules the atmosphere controlling the hearts of people. Guilt is native to the mindset that leaves God out of its deliberations. Guilt is the hidden force of self centered living. It is the force that drives the need to be right, perfect and error free while knowing that's impossible. “I don't care. I'm going to do it anyway no matter what happens” sums it up. Being right may just be the deepest need in the heart. Guilt is the force that rises inside and gathers momentum the harder we try to be right, think right and act right. Somewhere along the way we all think and act out desire whether it be physical, emotional or relational. The devil is its joyful companion and his spirits are the obedient fear driven goads he uses to activate it. The moral 'get-it-right' in us strives to overcome it and the harder we try the worse it gets. No one is free from its presence.

By sending the Holy Spirit, Jesus is lifting Himself up in the mind, heart and spirit of each of us to show specifically how and where guilt works and leaves its footprints in us.

Vs.8 opens up the territory of guilt. Guilt's conviction is specific. It has to do with sin, righteousness and judgment. Jesus spells it out:

“First, in regard to sin because men do not believe in me (vs.9).” This brings up the whole question of belief. When Jesus is presented is it in a way that allows a person latitude to compare themselves to Him? The whole issue of Jesus being the exact image of God and us being out-of-focus images that need re-imaging with Him as the focus is where we find our bearings. Sin is the spiritual source of fear and pride that fights any comparison with Him. When Adam and Eve began their self awareness program without God, the inevitable happened. They were like two people having lost their contact lenses coping the best they could, groping around on the ground hoping to find them and moping in fear, hiding, blame and individual aloneness. Coping, groping, hoping and moping characterize every generation since.

Groping through the mire of self pity people have denied the real problem of sin, taking responsibility for the self-indulging attitudes of the inner fear of not being right and the arrogance of pride that says we can get ourselves right without God. Jesus is the reality of a person who is right but people refuse to consider Him as a possible answer to their inner struggles with aloneness and its nagging fears. The refusal to entertain the idea of assessing Him as a way to be an open person is proof of the sin that clutches the heart and separates us from God. The gate that needs to be opened is to help recognize sin as the problem, Jesus as the forgiver and our willingness to share our experience of Him doing that.

“Second, in regard to righteousness because I am going to the Father where you can see me no longer (vs.10).” Righteousness is a 'sticky wicket' as the Brits say. It is usually a word associated with being and acting like you are morally superior as in 'self-righteous.'. In Scripture it is defined just the opposite early in Genesis when Abraham was considered righteous because he was a man who believed (Gen.15:6 then Paul in Rom.4:3). Righteousness is all about believing, trusting and having faith in Jesus. He is the way to the Father. He is the moral standard, the faith standard and the definition of what it means to be a child of God the Father. He is the measure of what it means to be a human being. But the main thing is the shift from the world's definitions to His definition. So it's not about how right and good we are but how right and good Jesus is. He is the only one able to join the Father personally which is why He said He was the way, the truth and the life (14:6). By faith in Him we are given the opportunity to have direct access to the Father. Faith is the new righteousness.

“Third, in regard to judgment because the prince of this world now stands condemned (vs.11).” Everything that stands against the person of Jesus in intellect, reason, emotion and spirit resides in the devil, the prince of this world. Jesus has named, exposed and shown the devil to be the enemy of every human being, of God and of being truly right. So every choice and decision made outside of the Word of God is a choice the devil has directed. There is no neutral field. As Jesus said, you are either for Him or against Him. This again shows that 100% of everything we do is motivated by what we can't see. How we employ our mind, where our attitudes rest and what motivates us are all choices made in the invisible dimension. Without Jesus the devil rules that dimension and claims the souls of those who reject the truth of who and what Jesus is. For Jesus the only option was to obey His Father's will to suffer death on the Cross and rise from the dead to rescue us from the atmosphere of sin and its evil that dominates the secular world, the world without God.

We stand convicted of guilt in regard to sin, righteousness and judgment but faith in Jesus releases us from the guilt we know inside is real. Though our memories may kick in from the pop-ups of past behavior, His forgiveness is the release when we take it all to Him. Guilt is removed the moment we capture the image of Jesus in our mind and receive His touch through the Holy Spirit. The feeling of guilt may remain for awhile but the reality of guilt is erased. That is the work He accomplished on the Cross for us.

Vs.12-16 Free from guilt we can concentrate on the Spirit of truth revealing more of the person of Jesus who is the truth. He does not have any agenda apart from the Father or Jesus. The Three are One and serve each other. The Holy Spirit speaks only what He hears from Jesus and tells what is to come. He brings glory to Jesus by bringing Him and all that belongs to the Father into the hearts of believers.

Vs.17-33 The disciples are confused when Jesus tells them He is going away. Again He reassures them that their grief at His departure will be short lived like the pain of a mother at child birth that turns into joy when that first cry of the emerging baby is heard. In that day you just have to ask the Father anything in His Name and it will be given. In His Name is the spiritual qualification for all requests. Being born again is being born spiritually to fulfill the goal of the re-spiritualization of the world in which we live our every day lives. It's how secular society is transformed. Changed hearts means changed motivation and action, changed lifestyles and setting eternal goals as opposed to looking to survive and please the moment.

Jesus repeats His promise that what we ask of God in His Name we will receive (vs.23). When we are guided by the Spirit our thoughts, emotions and spirit have a different long term view of the world and its people, God's view. The moment becomes an opportunity to see God in it, to follow the Lord's inspiration in that moment. Then in that and every next moment developing the spiritual eye to see, the spiritual ear to hear, the spiritual legs to move and the spiritual heart to share.

Now follow the thinking here:

Vs.25 “Though I have been speaking figuratively...” may very well reveal His most basic concern for the future of His disciples. They have heard Him teach in parables using visible examples to show spiritual reality and how He urged people to seek the spiritual truth behind what appears before them in everyday existence. It's the basic principle Jesus presents about being a disciple---think, evaluate and act spiritually. Thinking spiritually is believing in and being Jesus-conscious, seeing the spiritual in the physical, interpreting events from a spiritual perspective. Acting spiritually is trusting in and being Holy Spirit led. Living in that kind of faith is pleasing to God. It's not so much “What would Jesus do?' as it is 'What would please Jesus at this moment I'm in?' The fact is this, Jesus is present in our heart and wanting us to act in faith as He did in His every next moment on earth. That's what it means to take up our cross.

So we close where we started, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world (vs.33).”