I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.
The thought of Jesus leaving them must have created a sense of abandonment in the hearts of His followers. That’s why Jesus quickly informs them of His plan to continue to be with them.
With them representatively, through the presence of the Holy Spirit whom the Father would send - And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— the Spirit of truth.
Jesus will no longer be with them physically as before. Yet He will be with them through the presence of the Holy Spirit.
For He lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.
Here the Teacher promises to return. Not His great Second Coming at the end of the world, but His coming into their hearts through the Holy Spirit!
Amazingly, the coming of the Holy Spirit and the presence of Jesus will do more for His students than His physical presence accomplished. Through the work of the Holy Spirit, their hearts will be changed. They will begin to actually become more like their Teacher.
Referring to this greater work, Jesus said - I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.
What could possibly be greater than the many wonderful miracles Jesus did while with them?
How about changed hearts and lives by the power of Jesus and the Holy Spirit working in them?
Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.
Jesus came to show us the father, which he was able to do because of the unified relationship they had;" I am in the father and he is in me".Our goal and desire is to be like Jesus. Would we be so bold as to say; if you've seen me you've seen him? Richard Wurmbrand tells a story from his time in a prison hospital of a man who was a priest being asked what Jesus was like as a person. Wurmbrand tells of all the things this man did for and suffered for his fellow prisoners. Wurmbrand had done many of the same things as this priest had done but not to the same extent. He tells this story in responce to a young man whom he had been teaching asking him this same question. The priests answer, he says was " He's just like me". The young mans response to Wurmbrand: " If he's just like you then I love him". Is this not our goal and mission too?
ReplyDeleteGreat and comforting thoughts.
ReplyDeleteOur goal is to become just like Him.
Seems imposible - yet Jesus says He will be in us. He has given us the Holy Spirit, sent from the Father.
Unfortunately, we make defining the Holy Spirit and how He works in us harder than it should be.
When was the last time we simply sat and thought about the fact that as Christians we have the Holy Spirit within us, marking us as His children, leading us, guiding us, and convicting us?
What an incredible gift indeed!