Insights into the Gospel of John: Chapter 14

By Lloyd Ellefson

We have fallen into the trap of believing that we are individuals - separate entities, unrelated to God and distinct from everyone else. This idea is emphasized in the promotion of abortion rights, women's rights, and male chauvinism. People think they have a right over their bodies, so they can do with them whatever they want. This thinking is caused by a delusion. It is gross error to see ourselves as individuals who are completely unrelated to God.

The truth is that we are not our own, and we can't do what we want to do. Whether we are aware of it or not, we are united to the truth of God manifested throughout the universe. This includes those who are living in the Adamic, earthy nature (in the consciousness of material things), and those who are in Christ (in whom we have the consciousness of spiritual things). Truth is infinite, for it has always existed! Jesus Christ is the truth and He existed before He manifested Himself in the form of humanity.

Since God is truth, He is the source of truth! Therefore truth has always been! It comes to us in Christ! Every new revelation of who He is, ascends us into higher realization of who He is! Each revelation is an ascension into God. Truth frees us from the error of our natural mind. Truth cannot be received through self-effort, nor can it be owned; it cannot be handled for it does not belong to the material or seen realm. We must not try to use it for our own advantage, because it belongs to our Lord.

Man finds it very difficult to subject himself to truth, for he does not see truth in its reality. He has the mistaken idea that if he subjects himself to truth, he will lose his individuality and be a pawn or robot in the hands of God. Since man thinks he can do as he pleases, subjection to truth would do away with his own will. This he objects to! He does not recognize the deception he is under. He thinks he can do things in his own right and initiative. He does not realize that he is either guided by the Spirit of God into life and understanding, or by his own mind into delusion and death - which is separation from God.

John chapters 14-17 are full of direct quotations of the teachings of Jesus. These reveal tremendous truths, but many are misunderstood! We need to be caught up in the eternal truth that is in Jesus Christ! The Holy Spirit is not an individual, and we cannot monopolize Him. The gifts of the Spirit are not to be used for personal honor and gain. Unless we are in subjection to the total plan of God, we will try to use these gifts for promoting ourselves, our ministry, and our individuality.

Jesus Christ was seen as an individual; He was not recognized as the exact representation of God - which He really was! When He was disrobed of His earthly form and released in the Spirit, He was recognized as the truth of God to everyone who believes. Now we are no longer to know Christ according to the flesh, nor are we to know people according to the flesh. Our relationship to people and our assessment of where they are living spiritually, should be determined by what we discern in the Spirit, not by what we see and hear with our senses. Many people hide behind a facade which looks like godliness, but it is really only a form of godliness. They have an outward form of peace, humility and piety, but it isn't real. They are pretending to be something they are not. So they are veritable hypocrites.

Christ was not that way; He never was a hypocrite! Whenever He was questioned, challenged or confronted, He responded in such a manner of forthrightness that people actually crucified Him because of what He said. He never robbed anyone; He never murdered or abused anyone. They wanted to crucify Him simply because His words and ideas revealed that He had a consciousness which was higher than theirs. This is also going to happen to us when the reproduction of the Christ is seen in us. Christ truly brings peace to us, but whether we experience an outward peace or a sword depends on the reception of the Christ in us by others.

"Do not let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me." (v.1) If we believe in God, we will also believe in Jesus, for He truly represented God. Our heart is to desire God! There is no love of God in natural man. Romans 3 and many Old Testament scriptures prove that man does not want God. Man was put in a state where he only wants himself.

God deals with the intentions and the thoughts of the heart. The heart and the mind are not the same. In Hebrews 4:12 it says that the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Since His word is spirit, it speaks to our spirit; it divides the soul and spirit of the spiritual man. I don't believe this ever occurs in the natural, Adamic humanity. Its body, soul and spirit are in unison because they conform to one another. We are not to look at ourselves nor at others from a natural viewpoint, for this is seeing ourselves according to the flesh.

Since we are new creatures, we have a new body, soul and spirit. If we wonder when we will receive our new body, we forget that we have been baptized into the body of Christ. By faith these things become real to us! By losing our natural identity we gain a spiritual identity. The loss of our natural identity is nothing compared to the wonderful spiritual identity that we gain!

In 2 Cor. 5:1 Paul said, "For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." Our body is mortal and will pass away. When it is gone, we still have a building from God, eternal in the heavens! I like that!

"In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you." (v.2) Jesus was preparing the disciples for His departure. He told them not to worry, but to be comforted by the fact that He was preparing a place for them in the Father's house! Man always wants God to prove Himself right before believing Him, and prove that the things He says are true. God wants man to have faith that He has something much better for him, and to believe that He is the truth.

The Greek word, here translated DWELLING PLACES, and MANSIONS in some translations, actually means ABODES. It is translated as ABODE in v. 23: "We will come in to him and make Our abode with him." There are many abiding places. I hope none of you will be disappointed to learn that there are no buildings, no mansions in the sky! Even the New Jerusalem, about which we read in Revelation 21 and 22, is not a city filled with mansions; it is really a bride - the bride of Christ. Christ comes into her, and fulfills or reproduces Himself in her. Galatians 4 teaches us that the Jerusalem above is a covenant; it replaces the old covenant of the law.

Jesus is the truth and He only spoke truth. So we can truly trust Him! He went to prepare a place for us in Himself, and a place for Himself in us!

"If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also." (v.3) He receives us to Himself - not to the physical Jesus, but as He is in the Spirit. It would be impossible to receive us to Himself in the physical! Receiving us to Himself means receiving us into the truth, the life, the true expression of God. This is where we are to live! We are to live in, and express the consciousness that Christ had. This consciousness gave Christ the power to overcome all temptations and to go through death. The consciousness of living with God, i.e., dwelling in the Spirit of God, gave Him the comfort of knowing that God was His source, His life, His protection, His everything!

This is the place He prepared for us, and this is where He wants us to live! This is where He was when He said, "Where I am, there you may be also." He was in that place while He was in a human body, speaking to them in the language of the day. Yet all the while He was living in the consciousness that His true life was in the Spirit of God! This was His testimony while on the earth. This is where He also wants us to be while we are in our human body! When we are conscious of the fact that God is our life and source of everything, and bear testimony to that, we will receive persecution. We can't please both men and God!

"`And you know the way where I am going.' Thomas said to Him, `Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?' Jesus said to him, `I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me.'" (vv.4-6) He revealed His spiritual identity by saying I am. The many "I am's" of Christ cannot be separated, for they are who He is. He IS the way, the truth, the life, the resurrection, the door, etc. Once we realize their meaning for us, they become part of our life!

Jesus said, "No man comes to the Father but through Me." We understand that no one can come to Christ except by the Father, and no one can come to the Father except by Christ. God is the beginning of all things, so He has to initiate the process. The law teaches us until Christ comes. Jesus addressed a humanity that was subjected to natural thinking; it was in the sleep of Adam. Humanity lived in the concepts of its carnal mind; it was only conscious of material things and how to acquire them.

Jesus prepared the disciples to receive a new teacher. God has a better teacher for us than the law could ever be. So we must be willing to put aside the ideas that we received from the law, and accept Christ, the better teacher! He teaches us that He has fulfilled the law, so the fulfillment does not depend upon our flesh, but upon the power of the Spirit! It thus makes God available and responsible. He alone is capable of doing this.

"If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him." (v.7) The disciples only saw Jesus from a natural point of view; they only saw Him on the human level. They heard His spiritual words but they did not understand them on their spiritual level. We also first receive the scriptures on the natural level. Although the words of the scriptures were inspired, they became letter after they were written, and the letter kills because life is in the Spirit! (2 Cor. 3:6) Words are only sound - it is the spirit or the life behind the sound that really makes the difference!

Some people get all caught up in addressing God correctly. Some emphasize that we shouldn't only say "Jesus", but we should say, "The Lord Jesus Christ". Others say we should say "Yahweh", while still others say we have to say "Father". However, our relationship with God is more important than the words we use in addressing Him. What is our relationship with the Father producing in us? Is it coming from the law or from the Holy Spirit? Had the Jews known God, they would have known Jesus, and would have had a relationship with Him. They certainly would not have taken issue with Him! They needed to accept His teaching on the human level so that they could accept it on the spiritual level.

Philip said to Him, `Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.' Jesus said to him, `Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, "Show us the Father?"'" (vv.8-9) The Jews could not see that. We need to realize that the Father is mirrored in Christ! Once we can understand that, we can receive the spiritual truth that Christ has made available to us.

In verse 10 Jesus said, "Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me?" This did not refer to His physical body. His thoughts, conception and reality of being were in the Father. He was speaking of a spiritual principle of life and law, and who God is. God is not a man, and His ways are not like man's. The spiritual man touches God's conception of things, and it is completely different from ours! God sees things in a totality of truth which encompasses the whole universe; His life is spiritual and fills the universe; His mind spans the universes. He cannot be limited to human form and thinking. We have tried to limit Him because we see everything as a form, and by making Him an individual or a human entity, we have limited Him in our thinking. We can't give God a form! Christ came to take this individualizing away from our mentality!

The disciples did not understand that God does not have a form. It's pathetic that we still retain God and Christ in a form; forms are formulated by our human mind. They see God and Jesus in a human form. This limits them; spirit has no limitations! Christ divested Himself of His physical form! In Hebrews 10:20 His flesh is called a veil. In order to see the Father in Him, we have to see the spiritual reality. Man cannot see beyond Christ's flesh, because the thoughts of his heart act as a veil, so he cannot see the Father in Christ. Christ unveiled the Father to us! When Christ is revealed (unveiled) to us, the Father is released (unveiled) from our fleshly conception.

Jesus said, "The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves." (vv.10b-11) Since the works of Christ cannot be accomplished by human power, they can only be performed by the Holy Spirit. They have to be accomplished by the power of God! By doing these wonderful works Jesus proved that the Father was in Him.

When Jesus talked about the Father, it bothered the Jews so much that they wanted to kill Him! They said they had no problem with His good works, but they thought He was blaspheming when He called God His Father. However God was fathering the thoughts of Jesus! This caused the Jews to hate Him. Even today many hate those whose thoughts are fathered by God!

"Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father." (v.12) I don't think these greater works consist of greater healings, or greater power over nature. If we were given that power without receiving a realization of who we are and where that power comes from, we would be like the seventy who were sent out and came back surprised and rejoicing that the demons were subject to them. Jesus didn't want their joy to be in their power over demons, but in having their names and their nature written in life.

Greater works are spiritual works as opposed to natural works. Bringing people forth into spirit, into relationship, and into an understanding in which God is their life and source of everything, is a greater work.

Christ walked with His disciples for three years or more, yet the disciples did not understand who He was. We know this because none of them followed Him to the cross. Peter denied Him and the rest ran away. They fulfilled the scripture that says when the Shepherd was struck, the sheep were scattered. All the disciples had declared their intention to be loyal to Jesus regardless of what happened, but when the crunch came, they left Him. This happened because they had not come into an identification with Christ! If we have truly come into a spiritual realization, we will not be scattered by the denials people make of Christ, and by their natural, carnal ideas of Jesus. We will remain in the presence of the One who is always being crucified in spirit in the world today.

"Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son." (v.13) We have been asking for material things in Jesus' name. For example, if we need a new car, we ask for it in Jesus' name. Yet Jesus told us not to take any thought for these things. If we seek first the kingdom of God, all these things will be added to us. Yet we pray for them because, as Paul said in Romans 8:26, we don't know how to pray. If we would believe that, we would realize that we don't know how to pray when confronted with a problem. Our problem is that we always attack the effect (the appearance of something) without getting at the cause or root of the problem. Since we don't understand the cause, we are not praying in the name or the nature and understanding that Christ had.

This shows us that we first have to listen to God before we pray. If we can hear what God is saying, even as Jesus did, we will know how to pray. God is answering and doing His works. When we exchange our ideas for God's true understanding, the need for begging is gone. This exchange has to take place in order to pray in Christ's name. There is no record of Jesus asking or begging God for earthly things for Himself, or wondering what He should eat, wear or do. Jesus wasn't worried about those things, for He did not have any inheritance in this world. Everything He did was for others.

So let's subject ourselves and our desires to God, asking Him to have His own way with us. As we trust Him to give us the solution to our natural problems, we will live according to the message He has entrusted to us. He has promised to do anything we ask in His name! Asking in His name means asking in the consciousness and the nature of Jesus Christ who has the anointing. He is the Anointed One! That is what His name means. He is no longer a physical man named Jesus Christ - He is God, Jehovah our Savior, the Anointed One or the Anointing.

If we think God has not done enough, we are thereby inferring that God is actually the problem. If He has not given us what we have asked, we so often keep on begging, instead of submitting ourselves and the whole situation to God. Let's remember that God has given us everything we need for righteousness and justification! (2 Peter 1:3).

Jesus said, "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments." (v.15) Loving Jesus does not mean loving Him as a physical man and because of His good deeds. We love Jesus Christ because He is the truth! If we love truth we will refuse to receive error! We will cling to Christ, our master. Loving truth will cause us to keep His commandments!

"I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper (Comforter), that He may be with you forever." (v 16) Jesus Christ, the One who walked alongside the disciples and did all these supernatural things, promised to give them the Helper, the Holy Spirit! He would bring them into a greater and deeper fellowship with Christ. He would give them a new sense of being by placing them in a spiritual dimension. This would be much better than the natural fellowship they were presently enjoying by having Him at their side. When Jesus said, "that He may be with you forever", it meant that this Helper would remain with them. Jesus would not remain with them forever in the form He was in. He was going away and giving Himself to them as the Spirit of truth. (2 Cor. 3:17) This is how He also gives Himself to us!

The world cannot receive truth, "because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you." (v.17) The world cannot accept the truth Jesus talked about; it can only receive natural, material, earthy truth. Since the world cannot receive spiritual truth, it cannot understand it. If we would only believe that there isn't any real truth in the world, it would help us in our Christian growth!

Have you ever thought about the fact that truth destroys everything which is against itself? Truth is the most destructive thing there is, because truth eliminates everything that is not truth. So if we let truth work in us, it will begin to eliminate everything that is against truth! The problem is that we like some of the things of the flesh which truth destroys. The flesh always opposes the truth; it is in contention with the Spirit. The flesh and the Spirit oppose each other. The Spirit of truth destroys the lie that resides in natural thinking. The world cannot receive the truth, because the lie is their truth. It cannot see Christ, for truth opposes their thinking.

"The world does not know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and He will be in you." That's a wonderful statement! The very anointing, the Christ that was in Jesus, was with them and would be in them. God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit. He became the Christ when He received the anointing; He then began to manifest the Christ.

Before He received the anointing He lived under the law for about thirty years, and didn't do any miracles. He was testifying to man under the law, for that is where His identification was. He appeared in Jerusalem and offered the sacrifices required by the law. But after He was baptized and anointed by the Holy Spirit, the law ceased to lord it over Him. No longer did it have any authority over Him, and no longer did He sacrifice according to the law.

He even said the Son of Man was Lord of the Sabbath. He also said that the Sabbath was made for man, but man was not made for the Sabbath. (Mk.2:27) Therefore the Sabbath should not rule over man! We are not to be slaves to days; we're to be lord over them. Instead of being in bondage to them, we are to rule them. Man is not to serve the day but to rule over it. This principle applies to both Jewish holy days and Christian holy days.

"But you know Him because He abides with you, and will be in you." When He comes into us, we will know Him. The disciples didn't really know who Jesus was! In spite of having the scriptures, the prophets, and the knowledge of the coming Messiah, they were still confused. Even after hearing all the wonderful teachings of Jesus, they did not know the Christ. They were only enlightened after the Spirit came and gave them the true meaning of what Jesus had spoken to them! It was then that they could write about Him.

"I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you." (v.18) He promised to come again! Does He still need to fulfill this promise, or has He already fulfilled it? To what time does this coming refer? Does this mean He will never come to anybody until He supposedly comes back in the flesh, as the church today fully expects? Does this mean we will never see Him as He is, but only as He was, i.e. as the disciples saw Him at that time - a person in the flesh? Seeing Him as He is, means to see Him in an identification with God in the Spirit, as One who has no form.

We know that Christ is omnipresent, so He can't really come and go except in our consciousness of Him. The only way He can really come to us is in the Spirit. His Spirit brings us spiritual truth and a spiritual consciousness - a true awareness, source and understanding of life - and a new relationship with God. That is why we cry "Abba Father" (not "Jesus, Jesus"), when the Spirit comes. The Spirit of the Son has come into us and He has identified us as being sons of God! A oneness has come to us, so we can pray "our Father".

God wants us to be in total subjection to the Spirit. Unless God is in us, we are nothing. If we deny who we really are, we live in error. We have to see that God is the source of all things. We are united with Him, but He is always the Head. We must not exalt ourselves by thinking we can crown Him Lord of lords. Our union with Him is manifested in our subjection to Him, even as Christ's oneness with the Father was demonstrated in His subjection.

His promise to come to us has become reality! "But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God." (Jn. 1:12-13) These are people who have been generated out of God. Since we have received Him, He must have come to us. In fact, He has come to us in a clearer expression of His nature than when He was on earth in the form of a human being! At that time He was restricted to one place, but now He is omnipresent! This is better for us! He now comes in a dimension where He can be with each of us all the time!

"After a little while the world will no longer see (behold) Me; but you will see Me; because I live, you will live also." (v.19) If we are of this world, our consciousness will be of this world - we will not see Jesus nor understand what He is saying. We will not see the difference between the world and creation; we won't understand that our present world is a system that was instituted by Satan in the garden. Satan brought about a disruption of the world - the world which God loved. There is another world, the world which is ruled by Satan, that we are not to love. If we love it, we make ourselves enemies of God, and the love of the Father is not in us. (James 4:4; 1 John 2:15)

The world has never seen Jesus since He was crucified. But He said, "YOU will see Me." We see a distinction here between the world and the believers! The world will not see Him again but the believers will. If Jesus would come again in the flesh, the world could see Him. But now when He comes in the Spirit, only those who are born of God can see Him. He comes to bring us the nature of the Son of God. Because He lives, we too shall live! Since He has given us life we can see Him spiritually, and this gives us a consciousness of His life in us!

"In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you." (v.20) Jesus and Philip had just had a little talk about seeing the Father. Philip wanted to see the Father with his natural eyes, but Jesus was not talking about a natural seeing, but about seeing the expression of the Father in Him. The coming of the Spirit would make these things clear to them and then they would understand His words, "I am in the Father and the Father is in Me and I am in you." He comes to be in us; He does not come to us physically, but in the Spirit!

"He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him, and will disclose Myself to him." Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, `Lord, what then has happened that You are going to disclose Yourself to us and not to the world?' Jesus answered and said to 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 abode with him.'" (vv.21-23)

In these verses we see a new dimension. In effect He was saying, "I am here as a natural person. I am not within you now. But I am going away, and I am coming back, and I'll be in you. Then you will know that the Father is in Me, and I am in the Father." The Father and Christ will be in us! We cannot have God without Christ, nor Christ without God. So when Christ comes (and we've seen Christ), we have seen the Father. This is speaking spiritually.

Philip was looking at Jesus in His physical form and thinking Jesus meant His physical form was the expression of God. That form had to be taken away before they could see Jesus spiritually - the way He is in reality. By seeing Him spiritually we can overcome our natural thinking (the world)! When He makes His abode in us, our natural thinking will be displaced by spiritual thinking.

"He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father's who sent Me." (v.24) We won't keep His sayings unless we love the truth, because they are truth! Loving Christ means loving the truth. We cannot separate truth from Christ, so we cannot love Him without loving truth.

Notice Christ's ONENESS with the Father! By subjecting ourselves to Him we participate in this oneness, this truth, this identification with God in Christ! We must not separate ourselves from God in our thinking and expect God to reveal Himself to us. It's only in union with Christ that the mystery of God is revealed to us.

Similarly, the things of the world are revealed to those who are in union with the world and one with material thinking. The world system is controlled by the lies of Satan. It lies in the wicked one, and is opposed to believers having the truth, for then he has lost his control over them. Believers live in a spiritual consciousness; it is a higher dimension - one of life and not of death!

"These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you. But the Helper (Comforter), the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you." (vv.25-26) Jesus made this wonderful statement while He was still with them physically!

Jesus has come back in the Spirit, and we do not expect Him to return in a physical body. Peter emphasized the fact that God had raised this man Jesus; He was not in the grave any more! His body was not suffering corruption! He said Jesus was fulfilling the typology of David, but there was a difference: David's grave was with them, and Jesus Christ's body was not deteriorating in the grave; it had never seen corruption! So Jesus' body returned to the Spirit that formed it. The Word of God had produced the body of Jesus, so the Word became flesh.

Because our natural bodies see corruption, they will return to the earth, as God said in Gen. 3:19. The physical body is not going to return to the Father because it is made of dust; it isn't made of heavenly material. The body of Christ was different; it was not of the earth because it did not see corruption, so it returned to God who formed it. Our true life is spiritual, so the spirit will return to the Lord. The life we have in Christ is going back to the Father. It cannot return to the earth because it didn't come from there.

In John 3:13 it says that the Son of Man was in heaven. This spiritual Man came down from heaven and was a spiritual image of God; He was the exact representation of the Father! The image of man through the flesh remains a natural image; it is not an entity in its own right. I wish we could really understand this! The image that was in Christ did not fall prey to natural ideas. He rejected them and brought us a spiritual image. Christ returned to the Father, to the spiritual image that He came from. His spiritual manifestation was veiled by the flesh. When the flesh was taken away, the Spirit went back to the Father.

In resurrection, our consciousness is raised out of the earth, so that it does not die with us. If we do not believe or repent, we will die in our sins. To sin means we are simply not believing Jesus Christ who is the truth, so we are missing the mark, and never really coming to the realization of who God is and who we are.

Jesus said, "The Spirit shall teach you all things." In 1 John 2:27 we read, "As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him." To hear Him, we have to understand on a spiritual level. He does not teach us about the law and sin and evil, about humanity and natural creation, etc., but about spiritual realities. God has given us a wonderful teacher in the Holy Spirit! He teaches us everything about Christ, about God, about ourselves, about creation, about the worlds, etc.! He satisfies us with His teaching! Let's believe what He says!

Spiritual realities can only be realized by the spiritual man. That is why the old humanity has to die. When we are resurrected into the life of the new humanity, into the image of God, we carry His image. "Just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear (or carry) the image of the heavenly." (1 Cor. 15:49)

"Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you..." (v.27) The peace of God is inward and permanent, but the world's peace is not true peace! Jeremiah wrote that although the prophets were saying, "Peace, peace", there was no peace. Similarly Paul wrote that when they were saying, "Peace and safety", destruction would come upon them suddenly.

After Christ's resurrection, He said to the disciples, "Peace be with you". That meant that their warfare was over. Our struggle is over because God has made us everything we are, and He wants us to walk in this knowledge. This produces greater growth in spiritual realities, for it separates us from the world and draws us to God. It brings us into a greater understanding, hope and security in God! Let us not desire the things of the earth once more; if we do, our carnal mind will again take over, and we will fall by the wayside.

"Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful." (v.27b) Isn't it wonderful that our hearts no longer need to be troubled or afraid? We should not allow ANYTHING to trouble our hearts or to cause us to be afraid! Why? Because these things are not in our hands. Our fears testify that we are relying upon our own power and ability. For instance, if we are afraid that we will fall into error through wrong teaching, or that we will be oppressed by an evil spirit, we are obviously trusting in ourselves; if we trust in God we will know that He is sufficient and able to take care of us! So do not be troubled; do not be afraid! Do not be afraid of wrong doctrine or of picking up a bad spirit. Do not be afraid of symptoms that come to your body. Do not be afraid of anything!

God wants us to know that He will not allow anything to destroy us or our faith. He wants to build our faith! But it needs to be tested. Obstacles, problems and adversity are trials; they are not coincidence, chance or accidents! God is in every situation in our lives, and He will not give us more than we can bear! All our temptations are common to man, and God always has a way of escape for us. So don't let your heart be troubled! God gives us an inner sufficiency which overcomes all of our problems. The solution may be contrary to our expectations, but it works!

All of God's intentions for us are good! Let us not be misled by the idea that God wants to hurt us, punish us, and destroy us. God would not do a thing like that! He builds us up; our justification is by faith! God does not make us work for our justification; we just have to believe Him! His peace does away with our troubles and fears!

"You heard that I said to you, `I go away, and I will come to you.' If you loved Me, you would have rejoiced because I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I." (v.28) Our part is to rejoice that Jesus went to the Father! We do not postpone our rejoicing for the future, nor do we wait for Him to come back to set everything right. Instead, we rejoice that He has gone to the Father. He is in the Father, and He and the Father are in us! What more could we ask for? Could a future heaven eclipse the Father? Could a new car, peace on this earth, or good health eclipse the Father?

Isn't it wonderful that He comes to us?! He went away physically so that He could come back spiritually and be INSIDE of us. This changes us inwardly. This is necessary, for from within the heart of man come evil thoughts, deceit, lies, fornication, revellings, etc. The greatest liar of all dwells in the human heart that is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. We have to know that the old heart will never change. God has given us a new heart with new desires, even as He said He would!

The battle is in the natural mind! Even though Jesus is in us, the adversary (the natural mind, the human heart) still attacks us. Error is the great adversary to the things of Christ. Error opposes the truth and is always antichrist.

Jesus promised the disciples that He would come back to them. This time He would come as He truly is! When we see Him in truth, we will become like Him! This is a PRESENT DAY happening; it is not an endtime message.

"Now I have told you before it happens, so that when it happens, you may believe." (v.29) This happened at Pentecost. We believe it and have experienced it! God is within us to help and encourage us! We can now encourage others to believe. As we see this, we will all work together and encourage one another in our faith!

"I will not speak much more with you, for the ruler of the world is coming, and he has nothing in Me." (v.30) Christ has no delusion, error, nor anything that is anti-God or anti-Christ in Him, and He is in us. There is no error in Jesus Christ! He sees error as it is, because He is the truth! Truth is the basis from which He operates, therefore the ruler of the world had nothing in Him. The Christ in us causes us to grow spiritually and righteously. No error can abide in us when we believe Christ, because there is no error in truth.

When we experience this conflict between truth and error, we have to identify with the Spirit of Christ who is the truth. This causes us to grow. As we identify with Christ, Satan will not find any point of contact in us, so he loses all power over us. He can't bring error to us because the truth is operating in us. He can't bring his darkness in, for when it hits the light, it is gone!

Jesus gave us many wonderful things to live by NOW! Living by His truth is a continuing NOW experience. Christ is NOW! His work in us is NOW! Before Christ can do something for us in the future, it has to enter the NOW realm! If we put His work into the future, it will remain there, for the future never arrives; it is constantly ahead of us. The idea that it is not available to us now is a delusion. Isn't it marvellous that God is NOW and Christ is NOW?! We are to walk and grow in this knowledge at this present time, simply because it is available for us NOW!

When Christ has His way in us, our understanding of life and our faith will be enriched! We've become new creatures and are being changed into His likeness! We have a peace the world does not have, so let us live in that peace! It is so easy to acknowledge that we have this peace, and then become disturbed by the things we hear. It is so easy to become unsettled, distressed and agitated over the condition the world is in, and all the terrible things which are happening daily! Jesus told us not to worry about all those things - they will continue to be.

The kingdom we live in is not of this world! The ruler of this world sifted Peter and entered Judas, but he did not find anything in Jesus Christ that he could latch onto! Jesus ordered Satan to get behind Him! Satan's opposition was focussed on Jesus Christ!

God purposed to generate a new humanity out of Christ. So when we are in Christ, we are in the Son of Man. This new humanity into which we have been placed, begins to receive spiritual truth - this is something the old humanity could not do. So let's walk in this newness of life!

"But so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me. Get up, let us go from here." (v.31) Let us also arise and walk out of the worldly concept of things, and embrace the spiritual realization of God. Then our heart will not be troubled, nor will it be afraid!

These are our instructions from Jesus. His words are spirit and are life, and they bring life to us! They take away our fear and cause us not to be troubled. God has no fear, so it cannot work in Him. Fear works in opposition to God, and God's Spirit in us will cause our fears to diminish and disappear!

God bless you! Amen.

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