What are some of the things Christians want to be known for in the world? You can answer out loud—as a Christian what do you most want to be known for? (Allow responses)

There are lots of good things that we as Christians should want to be known for: kindness, generosity, patience, a firm commitment to a biblical world-view while being tolerant of those who have other worldviews, mercy, justice, faithfulness in marriage and other important relationships, pro-life, etc.—all good things! But the question that really matters is not what do we want to be known for as Christians; it’s what does Jesus want us to be known for as Christians?

And I’m arguing today that far and above all the good things we might want to be known for, Jesus most wants us to be known for loving Him. He’s not concerned primarily with you and I being able to persuade other people into the Christian faith through arguments and eloquence, though we should be passionate witnesses and able to speak articulately about our faith. And He’s not concerned primarily that others see us as kind, generous, patient or peace-loving people. As important as these and other traits are, of all the good impressions we might make on non-Christian people, the impression He most wants others to have when they encounter a Christian is, Man, this person really loves Jesus. I don’t agree with their beliefs; I don’t believe that Jesus is God’s Son or the Savior; I may be closing my door in their face as they offer me a Bible, I may even be in the process of cutting off their head, but I can’t deny that Jesus Christ is everything to him, to her, to them. This person—these people—they love Jesus!

Jesus says in v. 15, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” In English it sounds like commandment keeping is Jesus’ primary objective for His followers—it is! It sounds like the main impression Jesus wants His followers to make on the world is that we’re good commandment-keepers—and it is! But, as we saw a couple of weeks ago, we mustn’t miss what comes first in the verse: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Underlying and undergirding our commandment-keeping is the foundational principle of love for Jesus. “If you are loving me, you will keep my commandments.

When we keep Jesus’ commandments we outwardly demonstrate our inward love for God the Father and God the Son. And that’s great! But what else are we doing when we obey Jesus’ command to love our neighbors as ourselves by meeting their glaring need for a friend? What are we doing when we obey Jesus’ command to love one another by holding other Christians accountable to hate sin and live holy lives? What are we really doing when we obey Jesus’ command to care for the poor, pray for our enemies, and take the gospel to the hostile places and peoples of the world? More than just showcasing our love for Jesus who’s sent us into the world as His ambassadors, we showcase Jesus’ loving obedience of the Father who sent Him into the world as His ambassador. We don’t obey Jesus to make much of ourselves or our ministries; we obey to extend His love and ministry into the world, who came extending His Father’s love and ministry into the world. We mustn’t want the world to look at us and say, “What good Christians.” The demonstration of inward love by outward obedience doesn’t stop with us; our obedience points to Jesus’ obedience; and Jesus’ obedience points to the Father, as He says in v. 31, “I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father.”

Demonstrating our love for Jesus by obeying His commands was—and remains today—a huge responsibility for which Jesus’ disciples in every genera-tion need help! How many are the snags, the temptations, and obstacles; how many are the worldly enticements to comfort and cultural correctness that would hinder us from giving a faithful outward testimony of our inner love for Jesus! This is why Jesus told His first disciples in vv. 16-17, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.”  Now let’s unpack that statement.

“And I will ask the Father…” Though He’s equal to the Father in divine nature and value—just as much God as the Father—Jesus again glad-heartedly (not grudgingly) submits to the Father. He acknowledges the Father’s authority by pledging to ask the Father on behalf of the disciples for a Helper (or as some Bibles say, an “Advocate,” or “Counselor”). Notice Jesus’ statement in vv. 13-14 above: “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.”

He says in 16:24, “Until now you have asked nothing in my name.” Why was that? I don’t think they really knew what to ask for. Jesus the Healer, Storm-Calmer, Food-Multiplier, Water-Walker, Dead Raiser—Jesus the great Need-Meeter—was still with them. Furthermore, they’re still not fully aware or accepting of the gravity of the situation. Jesus is going to the cross, and will very soon be returning to the Father no longer to be with them physically. All their needs are met right now, but Jesus is preparing them for when they’ll need help, and all kinds of it. Help doing what? Help obeying His commands: to love one another, to pray, to preach, to persevere in hardships, to remember and record His words for future generations, to make and multiply disciples, to lead a growing gospel movement, to testify in the face of torture. One day the disciples will ask the Father for help in Jesus’ name, but not before Jesus asks on their behalf. And He’s not just asking for generic help; He’s asking for personal, divine help.

“I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper.” Why does Jesus call the Holy Spirit ‘Another Helper’? Do they already have a helper? Jesus has certainly been a helper to them, hasn’t He? He’s advocated for them, guided them, stirred them, motivated them, showed them the Father’s love, taught them, corrected them… By calling the Holy Spirit ‘another Helper’ Jesus is saying, ‘Look guys, the same kind of help I’ve been giving you visibly from the outside-in you can expect to continue receiving through the Spirit invisibly from the inside-out. You say, Well if I were one of the disciples I’d rather have a visible Jesus than an invisible Spirit. But look what Jesus says in v. 17: “The world can’t receive [Him], because it neither sees him nor knows him. [You don’t see Him either, but] you know Him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.” How do they know this Holy Spirit whom they can’t see? They know Him because they know Jesus whom they can see, and because there’s absolutely no difference between the heart, the intent, the personality, the love, the deity, and the mission of Jesus and the Holy Spirit (and the Father too for that matter). The only difference is that Jesus has a body and the Spirit doesn’t. The disciples may see it as a huge disadvantage now, but that difference will prove in a very short time to be to their greatest possible advantage. “He dwells with you,” Jesus says, “and will be in you!” This is the reality behind the apostle Paul’s famous declaration in Philippians 1:21, “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

The indwelling Spirit is the vital life-giving reality that empowers both Christian love and the obeying of Christ’s commands that demonstrates that love in the world—love both for God and for people. Listen closely to Jesus in vv. 18-21: “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me.” How are we supposed to see Jesus if the world can’t see Jesus? We ‘see’ him by faith through the indwelling Holy Spirit whom, as Jesus says in v. 17, ‘the world cannot receive because it neither sees nor knows him.’ Again, for the Christian, seeing is not believing; believing is seeing; believing comes before knowing. Our Savior has not abandoned us like unwanted orphans. He may be invisible to eyes of flesh but He is visible to eyes of faith. Paul says to the Ephesians,

“Because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”

Hearing Paul’s prayerful expansion on the inner-workings of the Spirit and faith, we can go back to John 14:19-20 and not be confused by Jesus’ words: “Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” You say, Wait a minute; who’s in who? Listen, don’t hurt yourself trying to untangle this! Jesus is in the Father; we’re in Jesus; and Jesus is in us—simple! And it’s all true and possible because of the powerful presence and work of our loving God, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not only how we have Jesus’ commands, as Jesus says in v. 21; He’s how we keep them! No longer chiseled in stone or printed on paper, Jesus’ commands are inscribed by the Holy Spirit on our hearts. And our obedience to those Holy Spirit-inscribed commands is the outer proof of our prior and continual love for Jesus.

              (READ vv. 18-21) Jesus uses the future tense in these verses because most of the disciples’ mission and ministry is still in front of them, and the power by which they will accomplish their mission and ministry has not yet been given to them. The day of Pentecost is still fifty days away; the Spirit hasn’t come yet. But that’s the day Jesus is talking about when He says, “Yet a little while…and you will see me,” and “He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” Jesus isn’t talking about His second coming; that’s v. 3: “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” Jesus will come again bodily, but here He’s talking about being manifested to and seen by the disciples through the Spirit. The other disciple Judas asks in v. 22, “Lord, how will you manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” And Jesus says, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” Notice the difference between this and v. 3?   In v. 3 Jesus says, “I will come and take you to myself…” Here Jesus says, ‘We (the Father and I) will come to those who love me and keep my word and we will make our home with them.’

So far we’ve looked a lot at the loving character of God the Father and God the Son, the love they share and the love in which we in-turn get to participate. But the way we get to participate in that inter-Trinitarian love is through the third Person of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit is the One who breathed on every prophet or apostle who ever spoke to or wrote Scripture for God’s people. He’s the One who raised Jesus from the dead. He’s the executive agent of Jesus in every miracle He ever performed. He’s God the Father’s agent of calling and drawing sinners to repentance and faith in Jesus. He is the agent of regeneration, or new birth. He is very God of very God; He is the breath of God; He seeks not His own glory but directs all His energies to the glorification of the Son, who directs all of His energies to the exaltation of the Father. He gladly does the Father and the Son’s bidding. And because He’s just as much God as the Father and Son, He’s just as loving! The Holy Spirit is a loving God; He loves God, and He loves us.

So, in conclusion, we need to ask: where’s the tension, the touchpoint, the connection between us and this text? How might we find ourselves in a similar position as the disciples? How might these words from Jesus be just as necessary to our faith and ministry as He intended them to be for theirs? Jesus’ promise, the presence, and the power of the loving Holy Spirit of God I believe give us four assurances that the original disciples desperately needed as well:

1. We’re not alone! One of the most debilitating deceptions in the Chris-tian’s life is the feeling of isolation from God. It can be triggered by a number of things: sin and the isolative shame that accompanies sin causing you to shrink back from others; grief and the feeling that God doesn’t care about your pain; outright spiritual warfare in which Satan tries to divert you from obedience by causing you to doubt God’s goodness. If you feel alone and isolated from God, step one is to remem-ber Jesus’ words, “I will not leave you as orphans,” and “I will manifest myself to you…come to you, and make my home with you,” and that He’s fulfilling those promises through the Spirit who dwells in you. Step two is to take the difficult step back into deep and meaningful Christian community where you can live out Jesus’ command to love others. The feeling of internal isolation from God is almost always linked to the reality of external isolation from other believers. Like the hot coals of a fire that cool and fade to grey when separated from each other, the Spirit glows hottest and brightest in Christians when we’re together.
2. We’re not our own! During His ministry Jesus freed a lot of people from demonic possession, but that doesn’t mean He doesn’t want people to be spiritually possessed! “You know Him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.” “In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” These are statements of spiritual possession. God owns all people by creation, but He owns Christians by occupation. If you’re in Christ, you’re occupied—possessed—by God’s Spirit. And knowing this ought to shape our aims, attitudes, and actions.
3. God can be known! A third assurance Jesus gives His disciples in this text is that the infinite and all-knowing God can be known by finite people like us. If God offers to make His home with you and in you, it seems right to conclude that He wants you to know Him—that He doesn’t intend to remain a complete mystery to you. We can never know God exhaustively, but we can know Him intimately. The disciples knew Jesus in person for a few years. Then they knew Him spiritually for a few decades. Now in heaven they know Him in ways they never could’ve imagined on earth; and they still have an eternity to get to know Him. Knowing an invisible God needn’t scare or overwhelm us. He’s taken the initiative by giving us faith through the Spirit; and if you have faith in Jesus through the Spirit, you’re further along than you might think. But remember, knowing God and loving God go hand-in-hand. To truly know God is to love God; and to truly love God is to show ourselves, other Christians, and the world that we love Him by obeying Him, which brings us to a fourth assurance. Not only are we not alone; not only are we not our own; not only can God be known, but…
4. Our love can be shown! “If you love me, you will keep my com-mandments.” “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me.” “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word.” “Whoever does not love me does not keep my words.” Woven into all these statements about loving Jesus and keeping His commandments is the context of a community of faith, and also the promise of the Holy Spirit. If as Christians we’re to have any hope of showing our love for Jesus to an unbelieving world, we dare not forget those two indispensable realities. Jesus has given us the Church as the primary context where our love for Him is to be demonstrated. And Jesus and the Father have given us the Holy Spirit as their co-divine agent empowering us to do just that.

Of all the impressions we might want to leave on the world as Christians, let’s labor hard in the Spirit’s power in the body of Christ to be most of all known for loving Jesus. If we’re diligent in this task we’ll leave some in the world scratching their heads, some shaking their heads, and some—Lord willing—bowing their heads.