Category: Jesus in the Upper Room

The Sermon in the Upper Room

Understanding the Red Letters   Part 28

On the night He was betrayed, Jesus Christ introduced us to a new covenant, a new arrangement, between God and man.  This new arrangement would be made available to us through the precious blood of Christ Himself.  “And in the same way Jesus took the cup after they had eaten, saying, ‘This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood’ “ (Luke 22:20).  Jesus followed up this proclamation with a beautiful message of what life under this new covenant would look like for you and me.

This upper room message, recorded in John chapters 13 through 17, is 100% new covenant.  It is 100% for you and me living under our new arrangement with God as His forgiven and beloved children.  This IS a Christian manifesto, if you will.  This IS where we turn to learn what life under the new covenant is like.

Jesus began his discourse with a new command 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.  By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35).  I have talked about this selfless love in several previous posts.  It is a love that is unconditional, without grievance, forgiving, welcoming, and gracious.  It is loving as Christ loves us.

What we will learn in Jesus’ upper room message is that we can only love this way because Christ is loving through us.  How?  By literally living His life through us.  Christ in us, His Holy Spirit in us, is a revolutionary and recurring theme in these chapters.  And it is a theme completely absent from the Sermon on the Mount.  The paramount, and might I say only, power to live the Christian life is the Spirit of Christ living in us.  The Sermon on the Mount does not include this vital good news of the gospel.

But Jesus’ upper room message does just that.  “And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper [the Holy Spirit], that He may be with you forever … you know Him because He abides with you, and will be in you” (John 14:16-17).  “In that day you shall know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you” (John 14:20).  “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 17:26).

And this is just the start.  There is so much more about our new covenant life in these chapters of John’s gospel.  Jesus now calls us His friends, not servants or slaves.  Jesus says that He will give us His glory.  Is it possible for us to be glorious?  I thought that word is only reserved for God.  Jesus says that we will do “greater works” that He did.  Again, how is that possible?  He also says it is to our advantage that He goes away.  I don’t see how that works.  Jesus says that if you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.  OK, now that is something that I can start to grasp.

In these chapters, Jesus promises us His peace, His fullness of joy, His power, His answers to our prayers, His friendship, His presence, and His life; a life that is supernatural at its core.

Jesus’ most complete and concise description of life under the new covenant is in John chapters 13 through 17.  And He answers all of our questions above and many more in these red letters.  We will cover several of these topics in the days ahead.

I have such a love for this message, that I wrote a book about these chapters from John’s gospel.  The book, Abiding in the Father’s Love, is available from Amazon.  Pick up a copy if you would like a more thorough discussion than we will be having here.  It will be an encouragement to you.  Click here for a link to the book.

Guarded by God’s Name and Power

11“And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to You.  Holy Father, keep them in Your name, which You have given Me, that they may be one, even as We are one.  12While I was with them, I kept them in Your name, which You have given Me.  I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.  13But now I am coming to You, and these things I speak in the world that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves” (John 17:11-13).

As we continue in Jesus’ John 17 prayer, we find Jesus preparing to leave this world.  While Jesus was in the world, He “guarded” the disciples so that none were lost (with the exception of Judas, who chose his own path of destruction).  In this prayer, Jesus now transfers His guardianship to the Father.  He asks the Father to “keep them in Your name.”  That is, to keep them with God’s power.

Throughout the Old Testament, the name of God is equated with the power of God.  “May the name of the God of Jacob protect you!” (Psalm 20:1).  “Through Your name we will trample down those who rise up against us” (Psalm 44:5).  “Save me, O God, by Your name, and vindicate me by Your power” (Psalm 54:1).  “Nevertheless He saved them for the sake of His name, that He might make His power known” (Psalm 106:8).  “Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth” (Psalm 124:8).  And one of my favorites, “The name of the LORD is a strong tower; the righteous runs into it and is safe” (Proverbs 18:10).

Jesus also prays that “they may be one”.  We will see this specific request of Jesus a few times in this prayer.  Our unity as believers is of great importance to the Savior.  I believe that is why the apostles emphasize over and over the unity of the body in their letters to the churches.  “With all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing forbearance to one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3).

This call for unity is very serious.  Division is deadly to the body of Christ.  Too often, we separate over points of theology or over what should be emphasized in a church’s mission or which personalities to line up behind.  But we all need, with our various gifts and personalities, to come under the authority of Christ’s prayer; His prayer that we would be one.  There is no greater aspiration in the church.  Our unity is a direct demonstration of our “loving one another”.

Earlier in the evening, Jesus said to His disciples, “These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full” (John 15:11).  Here in verse 13, Jesus prays to the Father requesting that their experience of His joy would indeed come to pass.  Christ’s joy IN YOU is Christ’s promise TO YOU and Christ’s prayer FOR YOU.  May you dwell in the answer to this prayer, and feel the overwhelming warmth of Christ’s joy in you.

-Excerpt from Abiding in the Father’s Love by Jay.  Click here to order a copy.  This book is a verse by verse look at Jesus’ last supper message where Jesus gives us a beautiful promise and preview of what life under the new covenant will look like.

Infused by the Love of God

“Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, may be with Me where I am, to see My glory that You have given Me because you loved Me before the foundation of the world.  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” (Jn 17:24-26).

“Be with Me where I am” (vs 24) harkens back to John chapter 14 where Jesus speaks of going to prepare a place for us so “that where I am, there you may be also” (Jn 14:3).  And in this place He has prepared for us, we will fully behold the glory of the Lamb, the glory of the Son of God, the glory of Jesus.  This journey to experience the glory of God begins with believing that the Father sent the Son.

“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” (Jn 5:24).  Here in John 17, Jesus acknowledges that His disciples believe.  “They know that You sent Me.”  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.  This apostle simply writes it elsewhere as, “God is love” (I Jn 4:8).

What do we learn about God’s love in this passage?  The Father loved the Son “before the foundation of the world” (vs 24).  God’s love is eternal.  And Jesus’ prayer is that this eternal, powerful, one-of-a-kind love will also inhabit His followers.

“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 and trying harder.

Because God is love and His Spirit lives in us, it only stands to reason the 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.

His Glory is Your Glory

“The glory that You have given Me, I have given to them, that they may be one even as We are one, I in them and You in Me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent Me and loved them even as You loved Me” (Jn 17:22-23).

If you read the verses above and thought, “Didn’t Jay just write about these verses last time?” you would not be far off.  Jesus’ words in this part of His prayer are almost identical to the verses just above that we wrote about last time.  As Jesus prays to the Father in John chapter 17, there is a repetitive pattern to His prayer.  I think this repetition is important.

Jesus is emphasizing these critical points: He and the Father are one.  He is offering that same oneness to us.  He is promising to be “I in them”; creating in us the experience of being one with the Father and with the Son.  And He is praying that this oneness will flow into our relationships with each other.

And in all of this, Jesus drives home the point that all of this oneness between us and the Godhead is invisible.  But we can make it visible to the world by how we practice unity in the Spirit as His followers.  When the world sees this oneness in us, it will show that Jesus was indeed sent by the Father.

Jesus also brings love into the picture.  Earlier in John chapter 13, Jesus revealed a new commandment that we love one another.  He even went so far to say that our love for each other would be another evidence that we belong to Jesus, that we are Christ followers.  Here we learn that our love for one another, our oneness in the Spirit all flow from the fact that God loves us just as He loves His Son.

In verse 22 above, Jesus adds a new dimension to His prayer, “The glory that You have given Me, I have given to them.”  I have to admit, I rarely associate the word “glory” with us.  I usually only equate glory with something about God.

So how does Jesus give us His glory?  By coming to live in us.  This fact alone makes you glorious.  The apostle Paul calls it, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col 1:27).  As I have said on many occasions … “You are not the Deity, but you contain the Deity!” (II Cor 4:7).  This makes you, even as you inhabit this planet in your earthen vessel, indeed glorious!

I like how Ted Dekker says it in his book, The Forgotten Way, when writing about these very verses.  “You carry the presence of the glorious One with and within you. Therefore you are, by association, glorious.  It is illogical to claim that Jesus lives within you and at the same time claim that you are not glorious.  When properly understood, there is no pride in that reality.  Just gratitude.”

One With the Father and the Son

“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You have sent Me” (Jn 17:20-21).

We saw last time that as the Father has sent the Son into the world, so the Son is sending His disciples into the world with a message of forgiveness in the name of Jesus.  As the disciples are being sent out, others will believe.  So here, Jesus’ prayer extends beyond the disciples to include us.  We are in the flow of those who have heard and believed the disciples testimony regarding the Christ.

And Jesus’ prayer for us, His body, is that we would be ONE.  This ONE is so so powerful.  Christ went so far in this verse to say that us being ONE will facilitate others coming to faith.  The world will believe that the Father sent the Son when they see the ONE in us.

But the ONE in us is not just our unity and getting along.  The ONE in us is seeing Jesus and the Father in us.  It is literally the Father and Son living in us.  Please hear this:  There is NO separation between you and the Father.  This verse clearly draws the picture that you are IN the Father and IN His Son (vs 21).  Likewise, as we learn elsewhere, the Father dwells IN us by the Holy Spirit.

As an aside, if you believe that you are somehow separated from the Father even after coming to faith, you will interpret the Bible and you will interpret your life through the lens of a broken or tentative relationship.  Faith in Jesus’s words says otherwise.  Your connection to the Father as His beloved child is rock solid.

Look again at the power in Jesus’ statement, “that they (meaning us) may all be one, just as you, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be in Us.”  It is an incredible connected life.  Christ in the Father.  The Father in the Son.  And we in Them.  Does the world see this?  Does the world see our indwelling by the Father and the Son?

I believe it can.  Christ promised that He would live His life through us (Gal 2:20).  When the world sees us as one with the Savior, they are seeing Christ.  They will not see “Christ in us” by us keeping the rules for pride’s sake, judging others, condemning our neighbors.  None of these will draw men to Jesus.  What will draw the world to Jesus?  Seeing us live out grace.  Seeing us live out Christ in us.  Seeing us live out the love, acceptance, and forgiveness message that Christ lived on this earth.  That oneness of Christ living His life in us is “so the world may believe that You have sent Me” (vs 21).

We are Christ’s light in the world.  Shine on, my friends.