Jesus personally brings you into his circle of loving relationship — John 14:15–21

“If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.” John 14:15–21

Jesus personally brings you into his circle of loving relationship.

We began in John 14 last week, and we’re continuing in it this week. Last week, we learned primarily about the incredible claim Jesus made when he said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. We learned about how exclusive that claim is, and how it can come across as offensive to our culture that prizes relativism, each person having the right to their own truth. We explored how because Jesus revealed God to us in his person, his exclusive claim actually brings the most inclusive love to all people. Because if God hid himself so that only the brightest scientists or luckiest philosophers could discover him, that wouldn’t be very inclusive! But anyone can know and trust a person; even the youngest babies know and trust their parents’ voices. If that idea, of Jesus being the exclusive way to God is something that raises questions for you, I’d encourage you to give last week’s blog a read as a good starting point.

Now we’re moving on in John 14 to see how this claim affects the way we live out our lives. It’s clear that today’s reading is all about relationships. We hear about relationships between Jesus and the Father and the Spirit, relationships between Jesus and the disciples, and today we’ll especially focus on the relationship between Jesus and us and see how that reshapes the relationships between us and other people.

We’ve been in this worship series Difference Maker for almost a couple months now. We’ve seen how Jesus has made the difference in our lives in so many ways. Today, we’re going to see that the difference Jesus makes in our lives every single relationship that we have with others. What are the characteristics, what are the defining traits, of someone’s life who trusts that Jesus is the clearest way that God has revealed himself to humankind? They live in his circle of loving relationship.

I. Jesus loved as a person

Let’s set the scene in John 14. It’s the evening before Good Friday. The disciples and Jesus have finished the Passover meal that would come to be known as the Last Supper. And Jesus knew of course that it would be this, so he was treating it as a goodbye meal. He was telling the disciples that his relationship with them was going to be different from now on. He was saying, I will be with you only a little longer. He was giving them final instructions, like a new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so also you must love one another. He was sharing parting words. But the disciples were not comfortable with this; they were anxious and nervous and full of uncertainty. They had all kinds of anxious questions for Jesus, and Jesus responded with promises and more instructions.

And today’s reading continues that conversation. Jesus draws a circle with his words here. He begins and ends this portion with similar instructions. He says, If you love me, you will keep my commands. And then he closes with, whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. Loving Jesus and keeping his commands go hand in hand. So did you consider, what are Jesus’ commands? Well, he had just given a good summary of his commands a few minutes earlier: as I have loved you, so also you must love one another.

And this ties together beautifully with everything else Jesus has said to this point. Because Jesus came to be the way truth and life as a person. He revealed God to us in his person. And that not only makes him accessible to all people; it also gives his people a nuanced look at how God wants us to live. In the Old Testament, God handed down a list of 10 commands for his people to know which actions are godly and which aren’t. When God gave us Jesus, he doesn’t give less than those commands, he gives so much more. He reveals what the fulfilment of those commands look like when a real person really lives them in the real world. He faced real difficulties in real relationships, and he always responded perfectly. When we read the gospels and watch Jesus live his life, it’s like we’re interns and he’s the mentor, giving us more than book knowledge but providing an experiential guide for what it looks like to love one another as he loves. Because Jesus came as a person, he can lead us in this way. We can absorb the gospels so that we can know how Jesus loved others, and that’s how we must love one another.

But this circle that Jesus draws, that those who love him keep his commands, should also scare us to our bones. When you first start on a new job, and you follow your mentor around and can barely keep up, not able to do what they do, not even knowing oftentimes why they’re doing what they are, that’s also what you might when you follow Jesus’ mentorship as you read how he lived in the gospels. We look at our relationships, have we treated one another as Jesus treated people? When we face difficult situations, have we always put the needs of others before our own like Jesus has? Probably the opposite, we tend to get more self-centered when push comes to shove. When we compare how Jesus loved perfectly and how we have failed to love even half as deeply or half as often, we are right to get scared when we see this circle that Jesus draws. Whoever keeps my commands is the one who loves me. We look at how we have failed to do so, and we rightly wonder, are we in his circle?

But the circle Jesus draws in these verses is not empty. In fact it’s full of promises. In between the opening and closing verses, I count 12 promises. By the way, I counted 31 promises in the entire chapter of John 14, which makes this a great chapter to turn to whenever you are facing uncertainty in your life. 12 promises in our reading today, let’s look at two of them.

II. Jesus lives in us personally

First, Jesus gives you the promise of another advocate who will help you. Who is this advocate? Well, first of all, he’s another advocate. Jesus had been an advocate for the disciples, now he promises to send them another advocate, also called the Spirit or Truth. The Holy Spirit. Jesus promises that he will send the Holy Spirit to the disciples so that they can know truth from falsehood, the right paths from the wrong ones, what is the loving way to treat people from unloving ways. Jesus says that although he will visibly leave the disciples, he will give them another advocate who will be with them and even live in them. And the ultimate result of this, that has stuck with humankind down to today, is the New Testament. These disciples would go on to write about Jesus, and when they wrote about him, the Spirit of Truth guided their words so to record the truth about Jesus so that all people can have a relationship with him almost as if he were still here visibly.

Almost. We can come to know Jesus so well by reading the Bible. He can become our mentor. But even so, we can struggle to follow him when relationships get complicated in our life. Because of course, while Jesus was tempted in every possible way that humans are tempted in and was perfect throughout, he did not go through exactly what you go through. He did not live in Chicago in 2026. He was never cut off in traffic on Lake Shore Drive. He never balanced rent with taxes and student loans. He never faced the specific challenges with your co-worker.

But Jesus’ ability to love isn’t outdated, rather it’s translated to you. He gives you another promise, to be with you in another, closer, even more wonderful way. I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. What does this mean? That Jesus, who is in the Father, who is God, you are in him and he is in you? Theologians have marveled at this doctrine over the years. They call it the mystical union. It’s a union, somehow Jesus takes his close relationship with God, that he and God are a circle that overlaps perfectly and yet he and the Father and the Spirit are separate beings, and he brings that circle to you. He brings you into that close relationship. You are in me, and I am in you. You are unified with Jesus. But how does this happen, you ask? What part of me is still me and what part is God living in me? Jesus doesn’t specify. Hence the word mystical, which means spiritual mystery—the mechanics of this union are a mystery.

Jesus doesn’t feel the need to tell you exactly how this happens. But he does tell you how it works out. He comes to you in his Word, his Word written by those he gives his Spirit of Truth to, and he takes up residence in your heart. In you, God lives. And this is different the idea that is common in Eastern religions, that God is in all things. We heard Paul say in our first reading that all things live and move and have their being in God, that he is the one who gives life to everything. But this here is something more. This is the way in which Jesus brings himself into your heart so that you know him and know his commands and keep his commands because you love him. So these two promises of Jesus work together: he brings the Spirit of Truth to you in his Word. And he dwells in you as a result.

But, we say, why do I still fail to keep Jesus’ commands so often? Why do I struggle to know how Jesus would act in a certain situation or treat a certain relationship? If I have God living in my heart, who is perfect, why am I so far from perfect? And the answer is that we still have our sinful nature hanging onto us. We still have the pull of not loving Jesus above all but loving ourselves first. We still are tempted to care more for ourselves that for others around us, why we are still tempted to choose to use our time, our energy, our money for ourselves first before we look to others. And not just that we’re tempted, we so often fall into those temptations every day, don’t we. Those temptations that come from our heart and try to push loving Jesus out of it. That try to, ultimately, push us outside of Jesus’ circle entirely.

And this is why Jesus chose to save us in the way that he did. Jesus knows full well our bad streak of falling into temptations to self-love. Yet look how much love he still has for us! That’s why he’s here having this conversation with the disciples in John 14. He’s about to leave them visibly to save them and us. He’s about to go to the cross to erase those selfish actions that we’ve committed so that he can bring his perfection into our hearts. He takes away our sins and makes us righteous in God’s eyes in one fell swoop: he at once enters our hearts to take away our sins and enable us to live according to his commands. He came as a person to bring us into his circle of loving relationship with God, and now we can live in that circle by loving those around us.

Jesus brings all his capability to love. Because he lives in us, we no longer have to follow our heart’s default of doing the things that are best for us. Instead, we can look to his self-sacrificial example and actually carry it out in the relationships we have in this world. Because unlike a mentor at work, we will never graduate from Jesus. We will never get to the point when he cuts us loose. His Word will always be true, and he will always remain in us. We can live in the gospels, absorbing them until we know how Jesus deals in relationships like the back of our hand. We can know that Christ lives in us. Jesus personally keeps us in his circle of loving relationships to be loved by him and to love one another. And so when we face issues in our modern relationships, we can look to him in his Word, trust that he lives in us, so when sacrificial love is required of us, Jesus is already there—loving through us. The same Savior who welcomed you into his loving relationship with the Father and the Spirit is the Savior who wakes up with you tomorrow morning, supplying the love that he commands. And that is how imperfect people like us are capable of loving others in extraordinary ways.