Category: Jesus in the Upper Room

Understanding the Red Letters   Part 42

For the past several days, we have been sharing thoughts from the Sermon in the Upper Room.  Jesus’ last message to His disciples before His death lays the foundation for what life under the new covenant will look like.  And unlike the Sermon on the Mount, this message is pure new covenant.

One of the interesting things I find in Jesus’ upper room discourse is the lack of commandments.  This is one of the most significant differences between the two covenants, the old and the new.  The old covenant, the Law, was ALL about keeping the commandments.  The new covenant, on the other hand, is about who you are; a new creation, a child of God with an unbreakable connection to your heavenly Father.

A covenant is a promise.  And one of the promises of the new covenant is that you are a totally forgiven, fully accepted, and deeply loved child of God.

You see, when you know who you are as a reborn child of God, you know what to do.  You don’t need a list of commandments because grace is teaching you “to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age” (Titus 2:12).  Your new nature is guiding you.  And your new indwelling of Christ’s Spirit is empowering you.  Can I say it again?  When you know who you are, you know what to do.

Is doing what you know to do automatic?  No, it is a maturing process to live into your new identity; to live according to who you are.  And “Christ in you” is an endless supply of power to grow into who you are.  The key to how the “who you are” translates into the “knowing what to do” is recognizing the reality of Christ living in you; the power source for doing what needs to be done.

Now the Sermon in the Upper Room is not command-free.  It does contain one commandment.  Jesus calls it “a new commandment.”  I call it “a new commandment for a new covenant.”  “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (John 13:34).

The focus of the Sermon in the Upper Room is two-fold.  First, it is about who you are as a child of God.  You are “vine and branches” close with the Father.  And second, how we live.  We are to love one another.  And the sheer beauty of it all is that the who you are – complete with a new heart, new Spirit, new nature, new life, new self, new power, new identity, and new freedom – is the HOW you keep the commandment to love.  You love as God loves because of who you are; filled with the love of God because He lives in you.

Can you tell I love these upper room chapters in John’s gospel?  And I love this new covenant message.  And even from afar, I love you, my friends!

Understanding the Red Letters   Part 41

“O righteous Father, even though the world does not know You, I know You, and these know that You have sent Me.  I have made known to them Your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which You have loved Me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:24-26).

“That You have sent Me” (vs 25) is the most common phrase that Jesus uses in the book of John to identify Himself as the Son of God.  Believing that God sent Jesus.  Believing that He came to die in our place.  Believing that He rose again sealing our redemption.  This is how we cross over from death to life.  “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life” (John 5:24).  Here in John 17, Jesus acknowledges that His disciples believe.  “They know that You sent Me” (vs 25).  They now belong to Jesus and the Father.

Jesus’ final petition to the Father in this chapter of prayer is centered on the love of God.  This request goes to the very heart of God’s essence.  Love is not one of God’s attributes.  Love is His identity.  The apostle John simply writes it elsewhere as, “God is love” (I John 4:8).

What do we learn about God’s love in this passage?  “That the love with which You have loved Me may be in them, and I in them” (vs 26).  Jesus prays for God’s love to saturate us, to wash over and inside us.  And in this verse, we see the path of how this happens.  “I in them.”  Christ in us is the only way for the love of God to be in us.  We can’t find it on our own.  We can’t manufacture this love by will-power or trying harder.

Because God is love and His Spirit lives in us, it only stands to reason that God’s supernatural love lives in us also.  We are infused with His love.  Our role?  To let it out.  To let it flow.  To send love out into the world.  Then the world will know the loving embrace of the Father.

“I in them” (John 17:26).  Wow, what an ending!  In these last three words of Christ’s message to us in the upper room, we are back to the intimate connection we have with our Savior.  A union built on love; the love of the Father for His children.  We return that love and demonstrate it through our obedience to His commands.  And the beauty of this is that because of His dwelling in us, His commands are not burdensome.  They fit who we now are as children of the King.

The promise of “Christ in us” comes to us the moment we believe the gospel message of Jesus Christ.  When we believe that Jesus is indeed “the Way, the Truth, and the Life”, we begin to capture the fullness of all that Jesus promised in this beautiful message of John’s gospel.

Understanding the Red Letters   Part 40

“These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace.  In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

Peace – True peace is found in Jesus.  The words “in Me” send us ahead to Colossians 3:3, “For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”  Our life is hidden in Christ, you are complete in Christ, and it is “in Him” that we have true peace.

Tribulation – But the world seeks to shake us from this peace, this rest in Jesus.  Trouble attacks us from all sides in this fallen world.  We learned previously in these verses that the world system hates us.  We have an enemy, the devil, who seeks our destruction.  “Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (I Peter 5:8).  And we have an enemy within, our flesh, that tempts us toward the dead-end path of sin.

Courage – In the face of this tribulation … take courage!  Fear not!  Do not be afraid!  Courage is commended to us many many times by Jesus.  A familiar story in Matthew chapter 8 is Jesus and the disciples crossing the sea of Galilee during a furious storm.  Jesus is asleep in the boat as the waves threaten the lives of His followers.  They awaken the Lord with a cry, “Save us, Lord; we are perishing!”  Jesus answered them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” (Matthew 8:25-26).

True courage is totally powered by faith.  We can be bold.  We can be strong in the face of our enemies and in the face of the world’s tribulation because our faith is squarely upon Christ, our deliverer.

Overcome – The promise from Jesus as this chapter comes to a close is, “I have overcome the world.”  Christ has overcome.  Christ has defeated all of His enemies.  And our faith is our greatest weapon in “overcoming” with Christ.  “You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world … For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world – our faith” (I John 4:4, 5:4).  Faith brings the victory.

Understanding the Red Letters   Part 39

“This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.  Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.  You are My friends, if you do what I command you.  No longer do I call you slaves; for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you” (John 15:12-15).

Here Jesus repeats His commandment that we are to love one another.  And the standard for that love is “just as I have loved you.”  We are to love as Jesus loves.  Now, your first thought might be, “That is an impossible standard.”  Is it?  After all, in the truest sense, it is not you or I who are doing the loving.

A consistent theme in Jesus’ message here in the upper room has been, “I, Christ, will be in you.  The Helper, the Holy Spirit, is coming to dwell in you.”  When we love one another, who is doing the loving?  Christ is the one loving our brothers and sisters because Christ is living His resurrected life in us.  We have all we need inside to love “just as I have loved you.”

Jesus modeled love to the most sacrificial level possible.  He demonstrated the “greatest love” by giving His life for us; we who He now calls His friends.  Sacrificial love is at the heart of Jesus’ teaching throughout the gospels.  Loving our enemies.  Being generous to those who cannot pay us back.  Do not look for a return on your love investment.  Give your love away unattached to a condition.  This is sacrificial love.

In addition to laying down His life for us, His friends, Jesus also lives out His friendship with us by letting us in on His plans.  Jesus reminds us that the slave has no idea of what the master is doing.  But we are no longer slaves.  We are Jesus’ friends.  And He wants us to know what He is doing.

Let this idea sink in for a minute.  “ALL things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.”  How much is ALL things?  The scope of this is incredible.  All that Jesus has revealed in the gospels; all of His plans and promises that He explained were His way of telling His followers, now His friends, exactly what He is doing in the world.

Please take this to heart.  In Jesus – in His character, actions, and words – we have ALL we need to know about the Father.  There is no big mystery about God that is hidden that we somehow need to uncover; somehow need to figure out.  No, God in His generosity and love toward us has revealed everything about Himself that we need to know.

Are there mysteries about God still out there?  Of course, there are.  But absolutely none that we need to know in order to believe His gospel message and live the life He has chosen for us as His new creation, His beloved child.  Jesus has revealed to us everything we need to know about the Father.  Listen to the Son.

Understanding the Red Letters   Part 38

“Abide in Me, and I in you.  As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in Me.  I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:4-5).

“Abide in Me, and I in you” is a statement of fact, not a statement of options.  We, as true believers, are always abiding in Christ and He is always abiding in us.  We cannot choose to disconnect from the vine.  Only the farmer can remove a branch.  A branch cannot remove itself.  And God, the farmer, has promised to never cut us off from the vine.  “I give eternal life to them, and they shall never perish; and no one shall snatch them out of My hand” (John 10:28).  When you embraced the gospel of Jesus Christ, you became a child of God, a branch permanently attached to the True Vine.  A Vine who is living His life through the branch.

This hearkens to Galatians 2:20, “For I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me.”  Christ, the true vine, by virtue of our unbreakable connection to Him, is living His life through us.

This is why our passage can end with, “Apart from Me you can do nothing.”  Jesus did not say we will do less or not accomplish as much … no, He said we can do NOTHING apart from Him.  We will not bear little fruit apart from Him; we will bear NO fruit apart from Him.  Why?  Because Christ is our life.  Our life is no longer our own, a branch trying to live on its own.  We belong to Jesus, and praise be to God that Jesus is living His life through us.

So with Christ having secured our abiding, is there nothing for us to do?  What is our role in our abiding?  I think the best word to describe it is “cooperating”.  We can hinder the abiding.  We can hinder the fruit.  By asking us to continue to abide in Christ, Jesus is asking us to cooperate with what He is already doing in our heart.

There is a difference between producing fruit and bearing fruit.  God has already produced the fruit of the Spirit in us by giving us His Spirit.  We are not required to produce love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  They are already ours by virtue of the Spirit within.  But bearing fruit?  That is another story.

We have the choice to bear or show or demonstrate the fruit inside or suppress it in sin.  Paul makes the choice clear in Romans chapter 6.  “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.  For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace” (Romans 6:12-14).

The choice is ours.  Our abiding can never be taken away.  You are forever secure in Christ.  But your cooperation, your bearing the fruit of the Spirit, your loving one another, your serving one another, your walking in your righteous identity … is a choice that rests in your lap.  But it is a choice for good that you have the power to make, “For sin shall not be master over you!”  May you feel the literal life flow of being connected and cooperating with the True Vine.