18 “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21 Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” 22 Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” 23 Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. 24 Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.”
We are still in the Upper Room in our series on the Gospel of John, and Jesus is bringing comfort to His disciples through what is known as His Farewell Discourse. Just as a reminder, they were upset by the news that Jesus was about to leave them, and so He makes a number of promises to them to reassure them that even though He would be no longer with them physically, He would be with them by the Holy Spirit, and in the passage we’re looking at today, Jesus makes a number of promises, including a remarkable statement in verse 19: “Because I live, you also will live.”
In verse 18 He says, “I will not leave you as orphans.” It is hard to think of anyone more vulnerable than an orphan, especially in those days. In the KJV Jesus says, “I will not leave you comfortless.” Here we are given an insight into the heart of compassion that God has for His people. In less than 24 hours, Jesus will have been tortured and brutally murdered, and He knew it. The cross was looming large, yet His priority was the welfare of His disciples. This, after all, was the reason He came into this world to die - to bring comfort, hope and ultimately, salvation for His own.
“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” Jesus promised to come to His disciples in their need. They needed to know that they would not wander around like lost orphans in the world once Jesus had left them. He had already promised that after going to heaven He would return for them, but until such time He would hear and answer their prayers and send the Holy Spirit, and now in verse 18 He says, “I will come to you.”
There are a number of ways to interpret Jesus’ statement here, and each of them is valid.
Firstly, Jesus can be understood here to be referring to His second coming, especially when we consider His words a little earlier in verse 3. “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” Our great hope and the firm promise Jesus has given to those who turn to Him in faith is the promise of eternity. He will come to us, and we will finally see Him one day. The apostle Paul writes about this promise in that great chapter on the resurrection of the dead in 1 Corinthians 15. “Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Corinthians 15:51-57)
Secondly, this promise of Jesus in John 14:18 is also fulfilled in the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, which Jesus spoke about in the preceding verses. “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. You know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.” (John 14:16-17)
The dramatic transformation we see in these frightened and upset disciples as they boldly proclaimed the Gospel after Pentecost is well documented, as Jesus remained in them and with them by the Holy Spirit in the early days of the Christian Church, and in a very real sense, His promise remains for us today. And we have the promise of eternity with God when Jesus will return for His bride, and He continues to empower His Church today, so in that sense, He has not left us as orphans, but has come to us too.
Most Biblical scholars though, when referring to Jesus’ words, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you,” in John 14:18, agree that because He was talking to the remaining eleven disciples in the Upper Room, that He was referring to His post-resurrection appearances. The next few days for these men were to be traumatic to say the least, and they needed to know that Jesus’ death and burial the next day would not be the end of the story.
During the 40 days between His resurrection and ascension, Jesus appeared to hundreds of His followers, as the truth of His victory over death became more real to those who believed in Him. Going back to 1 Corinthians 15, Paul writes, “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then He appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared also to me.” (1 Corinthians 15:3-8)
Now, during the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus, it would all begin to make sense to them, as they finally realised just what He had been talking about for the past three years. He had made many references to His resurrection, but now they finally got it, as we see with the two disciples He met on the Emmaus road. “They said to each other, ‘Did not our hearts burn within us while He talked to us on the road, while He opened to us the Scriptures?’ And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem. And they found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together, saying, ‘The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!’” (Luke 24:32-34)
The disciples would finally comprehend who He was in relation to the Father. Speaking to the disciples on Thursday night, and knowing that He would be arrested later and crucified the next day, Jesus looked ahead to Sunday morning when He said in verse 19, “You will see me.” The Greek word here for see in this verse is theoreo, which means literally, “You will perceive me.” So the disciples would not just see Jesus physically after the resurrection, but now they would perceive and understand the full implications of His triumphant resurrection.
We can only imagine how it must have been for them in those early days after Jesus rose from the grave. We know from the four Gospel accounts that He appeared to them many times, showing them His wounds and inviting them to touch Him. He even ate a meal with them to prove that He was really alive. “‘See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ And when He had said this, He showed them His hands and His feet. And while they still disbelieved for joy and were marvelling, He said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ They gave Him a piece of broiled fish, and He took it and ate before them.” (Luke 24:39–43)
And then of course, we have Thomas’ remarkable confession of faith, which we will look at in more detail when we reach chapter 20 on our journey through the Gospel of John. “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28)
John 14:19 is of particular importance in Jesus’ Farewell Discourse. “Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.”
Firstly, by saying “The world will see me no more,” Jesus is talking about salvation by faith. There is no Biblical record of the resurrected Christ ever appearing to non-believers. He only appeared to those who believed in Him, and this remains true today. To those who do not believe, to those who are lost and still in their sins, Jesus is at worst, a mythical figure who never really existed, or at best, a good moral teacher, but no more. It takes the gift of faith to see just who Jesus really is: The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
And secondly, when He says, “Because I live, you also will live,” He reinforces the truth of salvation by faith, by talking about the spiritual and physical resurrection of all who believe - the eleven men in the Upper Room that night, plus all of those who come to Him by faith, including each of us.
Because Jesus lives, and because He rose from the grave by the power of the Holy Spirit, He gives spiritual life that enabled His disciples and all who believe in Him to see Him with eyes of faith. “The world” who will no longer see Him is the non-believing world - those who reject Him as the Saviour who has come into the world, but as Jesus rose in resurrection life, He will raise us into resurrection glory, where we will receive glorified, imperishable resurrection bodies.
Again, we turn to 1 Corinthians 15. “What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, ‘The first man Adam became a living being;’ the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.” (1 Corinthians 15:42-45) The “last Adam” Paul writes about here is Jesus. He is the one who gives us life.
In John 6, Jesus fed the five thousand, after which He proclaimed Himself as the Bread of Life, and in verses 57-58 He said, “As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”
Jesus’ resurrection is our guarantee that because of the gift of believing faith, we will not suffer the eternal second death that John writes about in Revelation 20:14.
Again, it is easy for us to forget that because we know how the story ends, we have a better understanding of Jesus’ words to His disciples that night than they did. For now, they were just fearful and afraid of what the future held, especially having just been told that Jesus was about to leave them. Before Jesus appeared to them on Resurrection Sunday, they were hiding away from the religious leaders and the Roman soldiers. They were terrified that what had just happened to Jesus would happen to them too, so they had to know that because Jesus lived, so would they. They had yet to fully grasp the meaning of the cross, so they needed a spiritual resurrection of their own, and the same is true for each of us.
It is only when Jesus Christ grants us His resurrection life that we are able to understand the truth about Him and respond to Him in faith, trusting Him for our salvation. Once we come to a saving knowledge of Jesus, we are able to understand better the mysterious yet wonderful claims He made to His disciples, such as His words to Philip in the opening verses of John 14. “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does His works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.” (John 14:9-11)
It is only as Jesus grants us spiritual resurrection and the eyes and ears of faith that we can even begin to understand these words, let alone His teaching in the next chapter when He uses the analogy of the vine to teach that as we abide in Him, so He abides in us.
What all of this means is that even though the promises Jesus made to His disciples in John 14 was first made to them, they apply to us also. He said in verse 18, “I will come to you,” and He does this today through the Gospel message contained in the Bible and through the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
When Jesus calls us to new life and faith, we, just like the eleven, will begin to understand the truth of His words in verse 20. “In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.”
Our resurrection life begins “in that day,” the day of salvation when we turn to Christ in repentance and faith, and we are saved. Because He lives, we will live, or as Paul puts it in Ephesians 2:5, God “made us alive together with Christ.” Because God has granted us repentance and saving faith, we receive resurrection life, which means we will live and reign with Christ forever, beginning at the moment of our salvation.
Jesus continues in verse 21 by saying, “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me.”
This is the second time in John 14 that Jesus stressed the importance of obedience to His commands. He said in verse 15, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” The message is clear: One of the ways we express our love for Christ is by obedience to His word. The Scottish theologian Alexander Maclaren wrote, “There are two motives for keeping commandments - one because they are commanded, and one because we love Him that commands. The one is slavery and the other is liberty.” Authentic Christianity includes joyful obedience to Christ, rooted in love for Him. 1 John 5:3 says, “This is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.”
The second part of John 14:21 includes another promise from Jesus. “He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”
The word manifest in the Biblical sense means that Jesus will reveal Himself to us as we walk in obedience to Him. Our knowledge of Christ grows as our faith in Him grows. What Jesus is saying to us here is that He will respond to our obedience by making Himself increasingly real to us. This does not mean He will manifest or reveal Himself to us in bodily form. He is now seated in Heaven at the Father’s right hand, so He fulfills this particular promise to us by revealing Himself through the written word of Scripture and the Holy Spirit’s witness to us.
Four times in verses 21–24, Jesus mentions His Word or His commandments. In so doing He makes it clear that those who seek Him in Scripture will be given an increased knowledge of Him through His Word. Jesus’ primary means of revealing Himself to His obedient followers today is through the pages of Scripture. Everything we need to live a life of faith and obedience is contained in the Bible, and as we grow in our knowledge of and love for Him, He reveals His glory to us through the Word.
This is why the Bible is unique, because we are constantly learning more about God and more about ourselves as the Holy Spirit enlightens us through a deeper understanding of the Word. Paul explains it so well in Galatians 2:20 where he writes, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” He says that we live in the flesh, but at the same time we live by faith in Christ. This means we are able to bring glory to God in the so-called everyday routines of our lives.
We are able to love and serve God in our jobs, our hobbies and our family lives. Someone once said that you can even wash the dishes to the glory of the Lord.
In verse 22 John records a question asked by the disciple Judas. He also stresses that this was not Judas Iscariot, who had already left the Upper Room. We know from Mark’s Gospel that this particular disciple was also known as Thaddeus. “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” We have touched on the answer to this question already. Jesus reveals Himself to His own. He replies in verses 23 and 24, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.”
There are echoes here of His words in John 10:25-30. “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”
From before the foundation of the world, as Paul writes in Ephesians 1, God has chosen His people for Himself. Titus 2:14 says that Christ “gave Himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession who are zealous for good works.” (Titus 2:14).
Jesus has promised to be with His own for all of eternity. As He promised His disciples in the Upper Room, so He promises to each of us who turn to Him in faith - He will not leave us as orphans, but He will come to us by His Spirit, and one day He will physically return for His own to take us home to be with Him forever.
There are so many promises that Jesus makes to His own in the Farewell Discourse, and at the centre is His pledge in John 14:19. “Because I live, you also will live.” What this means is that not only will you live after you die, but He transforms your life here and now. At the end of Matthew’s Gospel we find what is known as the Great Commission, and Jesus ends it by saying, “Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)
That is His promise to you, if you have accepted His free gift of salvation, but if not, you need to hear Jesus’ warning in John 14:24. “Whoever does not love me does not keep my words.”
We are still living in the age of grace. There is still time to repent and turn to Christ, but time is running out. Remember, there are only two kinds of people in this world: Those who are in Christ and are saved, and those who are still in their sins and are lost. A hardened heart that consistently rejects the Gospel message will eventually come to a point of no return, until as Jesus says in verse 19, “The world will see me no more.”
The mercy of God is still available to you today, and if you would trust in Christ for your salvation, His promise in John 14:19 is for you: “Because I live, you also will live.”