In John 15:8, Jesus told his disciples, “This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” 

Jesus had chosen his disciples for just that reason too, “to go and bear fruit,” verse 16 – fruit that would uniquely identify them as his disciples. So what kind of fruit did Jesus have in mind? He answered that in verse 8: it would be fruit in their lives that would bring glory to his Father. It would be “lasting fruit” too (16), so a disciple’s life would become a lifelong legacy to the Father’s greatness. 

Which sounds like a tall order for any disciple to fulfill, but Jesus explains how such fruit is produced. Using the analogy of a fruit producing vine, he said, “No branch can bear fruit by itself” (4). To bear fruit a branch has to remain attached to the main stem of the vine – to which Jesus then says in verse 5, “I am the vine; you’re the branches. To bear fruit, then, you must remain attached to me and I to you, because on its own a branch cannot produce anything.” 

So Jesus wasn’t saying, “Go to it lads, bear much fruit to the glory of the Father” – leaving it up to them to figure it out. That would be like asking branches on an apple tree to figure out how to produce apples on their own, without being connected to the tree. 

Instead, Jesus says, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, you can ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.” (7). This was a new world his disciples were entering, where the means of fulfilling what they’d been chosen for would be totally provided by Jesus – in both instruction by word and direct help. He’d already provided the instruction by word (3), but from now on he’d provide the direct help to fulfill it too. 

If, then, they wished for what he’d chosen them for – to bear fruit to the glory of the Father –  and they took that wish to Jesus, asking him to make it happen in their lives – he would guarantee an answer. So when Jesus says back in verse 4, “Remain in me, and I will remain in you,” it’s like a tree saying to its branches, “I exist to help you produce a ton of fruit. So stay attached and I’ll feed through whatever you need whenever you need it.” 

And in this way they could produce the kind of “Fruit that brings glory to the Father”….(next blog)

In John 14:10, Jesus said, “The words I say to you are not my own. Rather, it is the Father living in me, who is doing his work.” So the means by which the Father brought his “words” and “work” to life was by living in Jesus. 

So in asking the question, “How can Jesus be in us?” – we’re also faced with, “How was the Father in Jesus?” How was the Father able to convey his plan, his truth, wisdom, likeness, love, and everything else essential about himself in Jesus?

Jesus dropped a clue in Luke 4:18, when he said, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me.” So it wasn’t on Jesus’ initiative or willpower or wisdom that made his Father come to life and reality in him; it was purely the Spirit of the Lord doing it all in him. It was through the Spirit, therefore, that the Father was living in Jesus doing his work. 

It’s not surprising, then, that Jesus told his disciples in John 14:16, “I will ask the Father and he will give you another Counsellor – the Spirit of truth….who’ll live with you and in you (17)” – because, John 15:26, “When the Counsellor comes, whom I’ll send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me.” 

The Spirit, therefore, would do in the disciples’ lives what the Spirit had done in Jesus’ life. In Jesus’ life, the Spirit had brought the Father to life and reality in him. In the disciples’ lives, the Spirit would bring Jesus to life and reality in them.

They’d “know” the Holy Spirit was doing this in them too (14:17). The Spirit, for instance, would “remind them of everything Jesus had said and taught” (26). The Spirit would also “take from what is mine” (16:15) – like Jesus’ love for them (14:18), his eagerness to answer their needs (14), his peace (27), his joy (15:11), his knowledge (15), and the love of his Father too (14:21, 23) – “and make it known to you” (16:14). 

All these things happening to them would be clear evidence of Jesus in them. Because this is what the Holy Spirit was being given to them for, to guide them “into all the truth” about Jesus to “bring glory to him” in them (16:13-14). Which is why the Spirit would be “Bearing much fruit” in them too….(next blog) 

In John 17:26, Jesus prayed to his Father on behalf of his disciples “that I myself may be in them,” because this was how he could “continue making his Father known to them.” 

This would be different too, because up to this point Jesus had made his Father known by “the Father living in me doing his work” (14:10). Which is why the Father had sent Jesus as a human and given him “the Spirit without limit” (3:34), so that everything about himself would come to life and reality in his Son. The same thing would have happened if Adam and Eve had eaten off the Tree of Life; they too would have received the Spirit who would make God come to life in all his wisdom and love in their lives too. 

Because that’s what the Father had children for. In his love for Adam and Eve he would have filled them with himself, so that in them his wisdom and love would have come to life. And how do we know that?  Because that’s what he did in Jesus. In his love for Jesus, John 3:35, the Father “placed everything in Jesus’ hands,” so that everything about him as the Father would come to life and reality in his Son.

No wonder, then, that Jesus, having experienced the Father making his life and love visible and real in his own life, prayed for the same thing to happen in his disciples’ lives. In John 17:24 he prayed: “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory,” “the glory that you (Father) gave me” (22) – the “glory” being that “you loved me before the creation of the world” (24). 

This is what Jesus knew of his Father from eternal experience: it was his love. What Jesus wanted for his disciples, then, was experiencing in their lives the same love his Father had always had for him. That’s why Jesus wanted to “continue making his Father known in order that the love you (Father) have for me may be in them (too)” (26).

But how could the Father’s love for Jesus be “in” the disciples? Jesus answers that in the last part of verse 26 in his request to his Father “that I myself may be in them.” Because if he could be “in” his disciples, re-living the life of his Father’s love for him in them, then he could continue making the Father and his love known in their lives too. But “How can Jesus be in us?”….(next blog) 

What kind of miracles did Jesus have in mind in John 14:14, when he said to his disciples, “You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it”? His reply was: anything that “brings glory to the Father” (13). 

Because that was Jesus’ focus: it was the awesomeness, brilliance, majesty, love and wisdom of the Father, which Jesus had unique knowledge of since “No one (else) had ever seen God, but God the only Son who is at his Father’s side” (1:18). And “No one has ever gone up into the presence of God (either), except the One who came down from that Presence, the Son of Man” (3:13). 

So Jesus, with his unique knowledge of the Father, “came from heaven” (3:31) to “testify to what he’d seen and heard” of the Father (32) – having been the only human who’d personally heard the Father’s “words” (34) and experienced the Father’s “love” (35). 

It was Jesus’ job as a human, then, “to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work” (4:34), the aim of that work being us humans “worshipping the Father in spirit and in truth” (23) – “worship” meaning that the awesomeness, brilliance, majesty, love and wisdom of the Father would become our focus too. Because not only would the “truth” of what the Father is like hit us, so would the relationship we can have with him on the same “spirit” level that Jesus has with him.

So Jesus’ work was cut out for him, but he was given “the Spirit without limit” by the Father (3:34), so the Father could live his likeness and love in Jesus as a human (14:10-11) – and to such perfection that when Philip asked Jesus to “show us the Father” in John 14:8, Jesus could reply, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (9). Because being a perfect reflection of him was what the Father had sent Jesus to be.

At the end of his life Jesus could then say to his Father, “I have brought you glory on earth,” John 17:4, “by completing the work you gave me to do” – the work, that is, of “revealing you to those you gave me out of the world” (6).

Because that’s the miracle Jesus wanted most for his disciples. But how does he make that miracle happen in our lives today, when he isn’t here with us like he was with his disciples? He answered that in his request to his Father in the last part of verse 26: “That I myself may be in them”….(next blog)

The Father living in Jesus meant he was on call for Jesus every second of every day, the result of which in Jesus was a miracle-filled life that made the Father real to his disciples (John 14:8-11).

It was Jesus’ wish, then – when he left to be with his Father in John 14:28 – to be on call for his disciples to create miracle-filled lives in them that would continue to make the Father real. He put it to them in the form of a promise too: “I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father,” John 14:13. 

So Jesus is at the ready to do the kind of things in his disciples’ lives that make his Father real. Which is what he told his disciples in John 15:7-8, that “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be given you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” 

In his love for his Father, therefore, Jesus “bears much fruit” in his disciples’ lives. It’s what Jesus chose disciples for, “to go and bear fruit – fruit that will last,” knowing that “the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name” (16). Jesus knew his Father would be delighted in the fruit his disciples produced, and would show his delight by stamping his own guarantee on the disciples having a miracle-filled life.

Which would all come from Jesus’ disciples “showing” themselves to be his disciples (8), because that’s what the Father (as “the gardener” in verse 1) set up for the bearing of much fruit to happen. Like “branches” on a vine Jesus’ disciples could not produce any miracle-bearing fruit by themselves (4), so the Father provided them with Jesus to create the miracle-bearing fruit in them. Staying connected to Jesus, therefore, was how Jesus’ disciples would bear much fruit (5). And how we “show” we’re connected to him is by “his words remaining in us” (7) and “obeying his teaching” (14:23). 

Which is why Jesus asked the Father to give his disciples the Holy Spirit, because the Spirit teaches and reminds us of what Jesus taught (14:26). That connects us with Jesus who feeds through the miracle-bearing fruit in us that his Father delights in, that the Father himself then turns into concrete proof that he’s real. We can expect miracles in our lives to happen, then, but “What kind of miracles?”….(next blog)

The Father asked the impossible of Jesus, but made it possible by being united with him. Jesus described it in John 14:10, as “the Father living in me,” which created the understanding in his mind in verse 11 that “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” 

Jesus knew such a relationship with his Father existed because his Father made it real by “the miracles” Jesus was able to do (11), miracles that clearly showed Impossible things were being made possible in Jesus’ life because the Father was “doing (or living) his work” in him (10). It was an amazing experience for Jesus, and so powerful and loving that Jesus’ great wish was to have his disciples united with him in the same way and for the same purpose. 

Which explains why he looked forward to “going to the Father” (28), because he could ask the Father for the means to create that unity between himself and his disciples, so they too would “realize that I am in my Father, (but also) you are in me, and I am in you” (20). And they too would come to know such a relationship existed by the miracles he’d enable them to do as well – and even “greater” ones than he’d done (12). 

Jesus then told his disciples how all this would come about. It would be through the Holy Spirit “living with you and in you” (17). And they’d know it too, because the Spirit would unite them with him by focusing their minds on everything Jesus had taught (26), by giving them the love for Jesus to want to obey his teachings and the realization as to how much they were loved for doing so (21), the proof of which would be Jesus “showing himself” to them (21) through impossible things being made possible – real miracles happening in their lives that could only be explained by Jesus living and doing his work in them. Which, amazingly, they could ask him to do at any time, and he would answer (13-14). 

It would get the point across in John 15:9, that “As the Father has loved me so have I loved you.” So the unity Jesus had experienced with his Father would now be the unity his disciples could experience with him, starting with the realization in verse 16, that “You did not choose me, I chose you.” Their unity with Christ was all his doing, therefore, which meant that he would fulfill in them what he’d chosen and united them with him for, which was “to go and bear fruit – fruit that will last.” And we know from the lasting fruit produced in Jesus’ life by his Father being united with him that the impossible would become possible, the “evidence” of which, Jesus promised, would be “A miracle-filled life”….(next blog)

Jesus outlined in his own life what obedience to God looks like, and how we can obey God like he did – the ‘how’ part being primarily driven by love. It’s love that stirs us to obey.

Jesus got that across three times in John 14: first, in verse 15, “If you love me you will obey what I command,” then in verse 23, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching,” and again in verse 21, “Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me.”  So in asking the question: “How do we obey Jesus?” – the simple answer in Jesus’ own words is: “By loving me.”

It was the same in Jesus’ life too: in verse 31 it was because “I love the Father that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me.” So, how did Jesus obey his Father? By loving him. And that’s what he wants the whole world to realize (31), that the reason he obeyed God – and therefore the reason for any of us obeying God – is because of love. 

In John 14, then, Jesus made two points clear, that obeying God is top priority, but right up there with it is our reason and motive for obeying, which Jesus summarized rather nicely for us back in John 5:30 when he said, “I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.” So Jesus’ focus was on obeying what his Father had sent him to do, but his motive for doing so was purely to please him.

But where did that desire to please his Father come from in the first place? Jesus answered that back in John 14:10 when he said, “it is the Father living in me, who is doing his work.” It wasn’t on Jesus’ initiative that he came up with the love that motivated and enabled him to obey. It was the Father living his motives, his words, and his actions in him.

And the same goes for us, because Jesus goes on to say in verse 19, “Because I live, you also will live.” Jesus now does for us what his Father did for him. The Father sent Jesus to obey him in motive, word and action. Jesus sends us to do the same, which we’re able and motivated to  do because – like his Father did for him – Jesus lives his motives, his words and his actions in us. It’s because of him living in us that we can now live like him.

So how are we stirred by love to obey Jesus? Jesus answers that in verse 20: it’s because “I am in you” – or as Paul put it, we’re “United with Christ”….(next blog)

In John 17:18 Jesus prays to his Father, “As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.” So, just as the Father sent Jesus with a job to do here, Jesus has his share of people he’s been assigning a job to do here as well.

In verse 19, Jesus then clues us in to what his job was: “I sanctify myself that they too (the people he assigns) may be truly sanctified” as well. So the reason the Father sent Jesus into the world is the same reason for Jesus sending his disciples into the world, because in both cases it involves the word “sanctified,” meaning “being made holy,” or being made perfect. 

Jesus’ goal in his human life, therefore, was to be made perfect, because “once made perfect,” Hebrews 5:9, “he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.” His perfection, or sanctifying himself, therefore, would swing open the doors to eternal life – to those, that is “who obey him.” 

Because it’s obedience that sanctified him, and obedience that sanctifies us. Jesus “lived by every word that came from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4), and he remained “obedient to death” (Philippians 2:8). Every thought, word and action of his was geared to what he knew his Father wanted him to think, say and do, just as “we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).

But why such emphasis on obedience? Because as Jesus prayed to his Father back in John 17:17, “Sanctify them by the truth, your word is truth.” The basic “truth” of life is knowing and obeying what God says. And to get that point across Jesus willingly emptied himself of all his Godness so he could pattern that basic truth for us in his own life. 

The basic truth of his life being Hebrews 5:8, he “learned obedience.” By willingly subjecting himself to excruciating temptation and testing (2:10, 4:15), he learnt just how hard obeying God is. But he did it – and God rewarded him handsomely for it (Philippians 2:9-10). Jesus’ great wish, then, is that we now “learn obedience” so we too can be “truly sanctified” and perfected in readiness for joining him forever. 

Which for us involves learning to obey him (Hebrews 5:9). In which case, “How do we obey Jesus?”….(next blog)

In 1 Corinthians 1:30, Paul tells us “it’s because of God that we are in Christ Jesus.” And God’s reason for that is because Jesus “has become for us wisdom from God.” 

“In Jesus,” then, means God has made Jesus the source of his wisdom for us – “wisdom” being defined by Paul in that same verse as “righteousness, holiness and redemption.” Or, as one translation puts it, “right thinking, right living and a fresh start,” because it’s God’s intent to restore us back to what he meant humans to be. 

In Jesus, then, God is taking us back to the Garden of Eden to get it right this time, because the first time we got it terribly wrong, based on the serpent’s lie that the source of wisdom was in ourselves – in our own brain and ability – which got us thinking, “Who needs God telling us how to live, when we can figure things out for ourselves?”    

So God has given us lots of time to see how that works, with a movie-like script for visual impact in the nation of Israel from Moses to Jesus. Because when Israel thought they were wise enough to figure things out themselves, they always ended up in a terrible mess. But they also learnt that when they cried out to God to get them out of their terrible mess, he always responded by helping them get back to right thinking and right living, restoring the nation back to what he’d called them to be.

It got the lesson across that God was their source of wisdom, because brutal experience made it obvious that they weren’t. God then sent Jesus, who never made the mistake of thinking he had all he needed for right thinking and right living within himself. That’s because his rule of life was: “I am in the Father,” John 14:11, because “it’s the Father living in me who is doing his work” (10). 

What Jesus meant by being “in the Father,” then, was totally depending on his Father to be his source of right thinking and right living, especially since it was his Father’s work he’d been sent by the Father to do. 

Which clues us in to what being “in Jesus” means – that we now are totally depending on Jesus to become our source of right thinking and right living to fulfill the work he’s sent us to do. With that in mind, then, “What did Jesus send us to do?”….(next blog)

In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve believed the serpent’s lie that knowing good and evil would make them “like God,” Genesis 3:5, the best part of which would be the “wisdom they’d gain” (6), which they assumed would be enough to see them through whatever the future held. Wisdom, therefore – sourced totally from within themselves – would be relied on from that point on to how the impossible would become possible.

If, however, this truly was (and is) the means and solution to a utopian world free of evil, then why did God then prevent Adam and Eve from “eating off (the other tree in the garden), the tree of life,” which would have given them “life forever,” Genesis 3:22? 

We’ve all been learning the answer to that ever since, as we look back on a long and destructive trail through history of nations and empires always striving, always thinking they know best, always floundering as things go terribly wrong, always trying new things that never work, always creating collateral damage for the innocent, always creating upset, division, polarization and tribalism, and constantly having to lie and deceive to hide their errors – and all because they believed (and still believe) they have the wisdom and ability of gods to solve all, even to assuming to themselves the “god-like” right and authority to decide what is right and wrong, and justify enforcing it with “god-like” authority, crushing and censoring all who dare to disagree, challenge, expose or threaten them.

We’ve been learning by brutal experience, then, what happens when we rely on wisdom sourced from within ourselves. But, fortunately, into our unending mess God has provided the knowledge and the means to making the impossible possible, including total restoration of the planet and damaged lives repaired. 

World peace is included in that too, because it was in Jesus’ promise in John 16:33 – of making possible the peace that we’ve never been able to attain – he dropped a vital clue. And in only two words too: “in me” – “so that in me you may have peace.” And that, according to Jesus, is how the impossible becomes possible. 

It’s not sourced at all from within ourselves; it is purely sourced in Jesus, Which begs the question – “What does ‘in Jesus’ mean?”….(next blog)