This is a book about what you can’t see yet you know is real. It is about the spiritual unseen dimension. It is about the heart, not the physical one that beats so many times a minute but the internal unseen heart whose beat is spiritual. It’s measured more in beats of faith, trust, and belief. Its clock is divided into the seconds and minutes of choices and decisions that are made in the hourly circumstances of an unseen spiritual atmosphere. Jesus knew this and so what He emphasizes for His disciples in His last hours on earth are the things necessary to live in the unseen spiritual dimension For what is seen is temporary but what is unseen is eternal (2Cor.4:18).
The place, the time, the events and the atmosphere set the stage for the last words that Christ teaches before His crucifixion. They are the conditions in which He teaches about the unseen spiritual dimension. They appear in chapters 13-17 of John’s Gospel. They take place in a room set aside for Jesus and His disciples to celebrate the Passover meal and are continued on the road to Gethsemane. He elaborates on a number of themes apparently designed to encapsulate what He intends for them to embrace in the context of the meaning of the Passover and how He is the actual Passover sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. It is the disciples He will entrust with these teachings and it is the disciples He will commission as His Apostles to carry these teachings forth. He gives them the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven in order that they may understand when they pray Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven.
Put simply, chapters 13-17 are Jesus’ last shot at the disciples’ hearts. So if we pay attention to them, give them a thorough read and reread, the Holy Spirit will use them to build us for every moment we live. This does not mean we don’t need the rest of Scripture or that these stand above all other Scripture. This is not ‘a Canon within a Canon.’ What it does mean is that we can catch a glimpse of Jesus underlining what He has already given them of Himself that they need to carry on. He is giving them in word and action a clear picture of who He is and what is to be taught about Him and lived for Him so that the world can be restored to God. What an awesome task and a task passed on to us.
The context for these teachings begins with His dramatic entry into the Passover atmosphere surrounding Jerusalem. This atmosphere is a mixture of historic celebration, hopeful expectation, fear, intrigue and conspiracy. The news of His recent Lazarus miracle has the general population astir. Jerusalem is filled with people from all over. It is a tentative and sensitive time and the local leadership is quite aware that Jesus is not just another political threat. He is more, just what more they are not sure, thus their heightened anxiety. Something has to give and the leadership is afraid as they survey the potential unrest. Fear breeds intrigue, intrigue searches out companions and conspiracy is born. Groups that usually don’t communicate are drawn together in a pool of common anxiety to eliminate what they deem a challenge to their power base. Jn.12:47 records the behind-the-scenes activity, Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin.
Historically there is the attempt to lay the blame for Jesus’ suffering and death at the feet of the Jews. Blame is a tangent used to free one’s self from the responsibility of facing one’s own part in the deeper issues of human failure. While it is true that the conspiracy to kill Him was directed by a combination of leaders from Jewish religious, social and political groups it would be wrong to say the whole nation was in on the conspiracy.
This was more than just an ethnic sociological phenomenon of frightened leaders attempting to secure their power. You have to look more deeply into the situation. The very fact that there was fear a driven conspiracy at all points to a primary flaw in human nature that causes this kind of behavior. This is not a singularly Jewish flaw. It is a human flaw. Everyone is conspiratorial at heart because everyone, no one excluded, is a sinner and frightened ones at that when control gets out of hand. The deep issue is sin. Sin is the vulnerable flaw in human nature upon which the devil fixates. That is the point. That is the issue and that is why Jesus was killed.
The whole context of Jewish history is everyman’s history. Jewish history is a microcosm of all human history.