The Gospel of John

The Strengthened Promise

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 48- 70

Genre:

Track: 048

Dictation Name: RR197AA50

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Year:

Let us worship God. Put on the whole armor of God that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of th devil. For we wrestle not against lfesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all, to stand. Let us pray.

Our Father we give thanks unto Thee that Thou hast enabled us by Thy grace to stand in the evil day, in the day of adversity, in the day of trials, in the day of temptation and difficulties. We thank Thee that by Thy grace we stand, we thank Thee that by Thy grace we are eternally Thine. We thank Thee that by Thy grace all Thy promises unto us are yea and amen. How great Thou art our God and we thank Thee. Bless us this day by Thy word and by Thy spirit, in Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture is John 14:15-31. The Strengthener Promised. The Strengthener Promised, John 14:15-31.

“If ye love me, keep my commandments.

16 And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever;

17 Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.

18 I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.

19 Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also.

20 At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.

21 He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.

22 Judas saith unto him, not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world?

23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

24 He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent me.

25 These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you.

26 But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

27 Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

28 Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I.

29 And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe.

30 Hereafter I will not talk much with you: for the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me.

31 But that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us go hence.”

In verse fifteen we have an emphatic statement. If ye love me keep my commandments. Many attempts have been made to alter the force of these words and to weaken them by implying that the commandments refer only to what Jesus said and not to the law, but since Jesus was God incarnate the I Am, every word of the Bible is His word. In reality, our text is forceful in that our Lord says if ye love me, you, keep my commandments, this is what you do if you love me. The modern mind especially has reduced love to a generalized feeling whereas our Lord declares that love is obedience. In marriage, family life and in religion our era has tried to break the connection of obedience to love but our Lord is a witness against this. I cannot begin to remember how many times I have heard a man or a woman who had been guilty of the most flagrant adulteries fight against any dissolution of the marriage saying but I love her or that I love him when the truth is love is obedience, it is faithfulness, it is not mere verbalization, it is not merely feeling, it is faithfulness, obedience. To those who obey Him our Lord promises:

“And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever;  Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.”

It is noteworthy that our Lord calls the Holy Spirit another Comforter or advocate. The original Comforter for the disciples is Jesus Himself. Because He will soon leave the disciples He sends them another Comforter, the Spirit, to comfort or in its older meaning to strengthen. They are not bystanders but they soon will become the main men of God’s kingdom on earth. As such they will need strengthening for their work. The Comforter or advocate is the Holy Spirit, He is our intercessor with the Father. We want the world to strengthen us but the source of our reinvigoration must be the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. He is the Spirit of truth as against the Spirit of error. In 1st John 5:6 we are told the spirit is truth. Because the fallen humanity of Adam rejects God, it rejects truth. Having submitted to the tempter’s premises fallen man believes that the essential element in truth is man’s autonomy and man’s power to determine for himself what is good and evil, law and morality and true or false. Jesus Christ must leave but the other strengthener will never leave them, He declares. Let me add that the word advocate or lawyer is also a translation of the word parakletos. He dwelleth or abideth with you. In the Holy Spirit we have a strengthener and a legal counsel who is with us forever. I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you. Our Lord does not leave His disciples without an advocate to strengthen them, moreover He promises to come to their aide, to be with them although not in the flesh. If we are not aware of His strengthening presence it is because we do not choose to know it because we want His presence in our way and our terms.

Yet a little while and the world seeth me no more but ye see me, because I live ye shall live also. After the ascension Jesus’ visible presence would be gone. His invisible presence would be with His faithful followers. Because He as the last Adam has destroyed the power of sin and death we share in His victory and we have everlasting life. At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father and ye in me and I in you. From Pentecost to the second coming ye shall know that I and my Father are one, the Father is in me and I am in the Father. You are in me as members of my new human race, one born again into righteousness or justice and life. I am in you as your new federal head, your greater Adam as your new and redeemed humanity. He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father and I will love Him and will manifest myself in Him. As Bishop Westcott noted:

“The verse is in part the converse of verse fifteen, their active obedience is seen to be the consequence of love. Here active obedience is the sign of the presence of love.”

It is a serious error to separate Jesus from the Old Testament. All three persons of the trinity are the sources of the whole of scripture. To limit Jesus Christ’s words to the ones in red, in red letter editions, is in effect to present another canon or rule within the canon of scripture and this is heresy. We see again very emphatically that love and obedience can no more be separated than faith and works. It is suicidal for the church to separate love and obedience or faith and works. In verse twenty two we have Judas not Iscariot ask Lord, how is it that Thou wilt manifest Thyself unto us and not unto the world? There are six men, by the way, in the New Testament bearing the name Judas. This one is a disciple, Judas the brother of James. He was apparently known also as Lebbaeus whose surname was Thaddeus. In bilingual countries having more than one name was common place, the apostle Thomas was also known as Didymus, a Hebrew name and a Greek name.

This Judas was baffled, like the other disciples he expected Jesus to become Israel’s messianic king, how could he avoid revealing His kingship to all peoples? Well given his presupposition his question was valid but wrong. Jesus answered saying if a man love me he will keep my words and my Father will love him and come unto him and make our abode with him. My kingdom, our Lord makes clear, is not of this world. It does not mean external power and coercion but regeneration and a submission of life and works. My kingdom is not of coercion but conversion, not revolution but regeneration He tells them. He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings and the word which he here is not mine but the Fathers which sent me. If ye love me keep my commandments, if ye do not love me you will pay no attention to my commandments. So our Lord bares and forbids any distinction between His word and the Father’s word, His commandments and the Fathers. Dividing the Old and New Testaments, the law and the gospel, love and law, faith and works and so on and on is contrary to the word of God. God is one, perfect and entire and His being and works cannot be divided. In our lives there can be a great gap between our profession of love and our obedience but it is sinful to project such a gap onto scripture and its world of thought. Now, in verses twenty five and twenty six our Lord makes clear to them that they shall soon have the supernatural help, the Holy Spirit, and He will enable them to remember what He has taught them and He will teach them all that is needful. The Holy Spirit will then be their teacher. This will not be an independent nor a further revelation, even as the Son teaches only what the Father chooses so the Spirit teaches the same.

So that all three persons of the Trinity speak the same word, the Father sends the Spirit and the Sprit confirms the word given by the Son who received it from the Father. Verse twenty seven is one of Scripture’s greatest statements, most beautiful, it is one that every believer should memorize by heart and repeat to themselves when they are at all troubled in spirit. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. The promised peace is one with God, it is Christ’s peace and it is He who gives it. Therefore we should be neither troubled nor afraid. Verse twenty eight begins with a rebuke to the disciples because they are troubled that He is leaving them. If you love me you would rejoice because I say I am going to Father. They are more concerned with losing Him then in His gain. Then our Lord adds for my Father is greater than I. The Arians use this statement often while neglecting or undermining those wherein our Lord identified His oneness with the Father. There is an economical subordination in the Trinity, that is of operation, but not an essential one, one of nature and of function. No subordination of being. Moreover in His incarnation the Son was both God and man and thus the focus was greater in that He was God and God alone. In substance God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are one. In verse twenty nine our Lord tells us that His instructions concerning His departure have as their purpose to prepare them for the event and to increase their faith by this foreknowledge. Henceforth, verse thirty, I will not talk much with you for the prince of this world cometh and have nothing in me. The prince or ruler of this world is Satan. This does not mean that He is earth’s king, simply the ruler over fallen men.

Because our Lord is the second Adam sinless and king of the universe in his own right there is nothing in Jesus’ person, history, life acts and thoughts over which Satan has an iota of control. His servants in the church of that day, they crucified the Christ but they cannot control Him or limit His absolute power. Then in verse thirty one:

“But that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us go hence.”

Now it’s a sad fact that some commentaries spend a great deal of time discussing what did arise let us go hence mean. Did they leave the upper room, well no because He went on for chapters fifteen through seventeen. Well did He lead them outside and then there stop and talk to them. Well the answer is we don’t know. There is no way we’re going to know, maybe they just got up from the table and sat elsewhere in the upper room, but what does it matter. The important thing is not to waste time on things on that which many do but on the substance.

What He said in verse thirty one is that He is obedient to the Father’s commandment specifically the cross. By this those who would know would recognize how totally the Son loved the Father. It was God’s love for His creation that governed the trinity’s redemptive work. Let us pray.

Our Father we thank Thee for Thy word. We thank Thee that the word has been spoken to us, the word of peace. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth give I unto you, let not your heart be troubled neither let it be afraid. Give us untroubled hearts oh Lord, hearts full of faith, grant that we may so walk day by day that indeed we do allow Thee to guide us. Bless us in Thy service, in Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

We have in this discourse so clear cut a statement of the fact that we cannot condone what has prevailed for almost two and a half centuries. Under the influence of Romanticism everything in the Bible was turned into an emotional meaning whereas the Biblical perspective is juridical, legal. The word forgive has a legal meaning, charges dropped because satisfaction has been rendered, or on one occasion, the word on the cross, charges deferred for the time being, Father forgive them for they know not what they do, defer the charges for the time being.

The word love is similar. Thou shalt love Thy neighbor as thyself, as I’ve pointed out on other occasions it means you respect your neighbor’s right to life, thou shalt not kill, his marriage, thou shalt not commit adultery, his property, thou shalt not steal, his reputation, thou do not bear false witness and so on. The bible makes it clear that these words in their primary reference are juridical. But with romanticism everything was reduced to an emotional content and it has meant an erosion that has destroyed the world of our time. Our attitude is if the emotion isn’t there then the obligation is destroyed. As though it depended on us and not on law. Or because we believe somebody has gained their wealth through theft we have the right to steal from him or to execute him. This is the kind of thing that we see all around us, the whole of reality reduced to emotional terms when the basic direction of biblical meaning is juridical. Yes?

[Question] Would you mind explaining a little more thoroughly when you say the Christ was the last Adam and at this particular time He destroyed the power of sin and that…

[Rushdoony] In first Corinthians 15 we are told that Christ is the last or second or final Adam. The first Adam sinned, his sin was to be as God and he ushered in death into the world. And all men were guilty before God and there was no way they could make atonement because they were condemned to death, they were guilty and they were and are capable of only tainted activities, sin is a part of everything they do. So God sent the second Adam, Jesus Christ, into the world to make atonement.

His nature is not one of sin of death because we are born as sinners and we die, we’re destined to die. But His nature was righteousness which is an old fashioned word for justice and He is life incarnate. By dying in our stead He paid the penalty. Now the idea of a vicarious substitute or sacrifice is somewhat alien to us but as recently as the civil war that type of thing prevailed in that if you were drafted to go to war you could buy a substitute and a great many people did. And the person who became the substitute was paid a sum of money and he figured I will get the pay as a soldier, I’ll get this money which I can leave with my family and I’ll hope that I will survive. Of course it meant that you did a lot of ducking instead of firing your gun because such soldiers sometimes developed into good fighters but a good deal of the time they were there to protect their investment. Now this is what Jesus Christ was, our substitute. He took upon Himself the death penalty. So that our Lord can say to us that we now have as our position the title to everlasting life. That death is not our destruction but our fulfillment, now we’re free from the world of sin and death and we are now in the world of justice and life. So this is what Christ does for us as our Adam, we are members of His body now, we share in His nature, not perfectly but our bent is no longer to sin and death but to life and justice. So that sin is offensive to us and everything in our being cries out for justice.

The world may pretend to like justice and it does because they know that’s what is respectable but what they really want is injustice because if there is injustice I can get away, it’s like the man on the jury when the guilt was obvious told someone who was holding out for conviction ‘look that fellow on trial could be my son’ who was a case of drug peddling and that was it, he wanted injustice because it could mean protection for his son and possibly for himself in some other area. So the world wants sin, injustice and therefore it loves death. We are told in Proverbs 8:36 all they that hate me love death, so the world while it talks about wanting good things only produces more and more evil. It may produce technology but technology does not mean moral improvement. Does that help?

[Question] Yes and He did not destroy the power over the ungodly, but just the elect.

[Rushdoony] That’s why the atonement is a limited atonement. He didn’t die to save all people, He died to save the elect. Otherwise sin and death would be removed from all men.

Any other questions or comments? Well if not let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father we thank Thee that Thou art our God and that Jesus Christ has come to be our federal head, our new Adam and that as members of His body, His new humanity, we share in His victory over sin and death and we are the people of life and righteousness. Make us strong In Thy service and resolute; make us more than conquerors in our Lord. And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, Amen.