Manifested Love Pt 14: I Will Come
John 14:18-21 18I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. 21Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me.
Romans 5:3-11 3Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. 5For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be rendered powerless that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7because anyone who has died has been set free from sin. 8Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. 11In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
I Will Come To You
We should remember that this verse comes from Jesus’ teaching of his disciples on the night before his death on the Cross. Pentecost is still weeks away, so the Holy Spirit has not yet been poured out in power upon the disciples. Living on this side of Pentecost, we have a perspective those men didn’t have; it must have truly mystified them to hear Jesus say he would soon come to them. In spite of his teaching, they hadn’t really grasped that he was about to die and resurrect so to hear he would be coming to them must have seemed nonsensical.
From the human perspective death is final, and although we don’t usually attribute it to adults, when a parent dies one truly is left an orphan. In 1st Century society the most disenfranchised people in the culture were widows and orphans. It was a very male oriented culture and when the head of the household passed those left behind were extremely vulnerable if no one stepped in to care for them. The word ‘orphan’ then carried much baggage and images of destitution and even death burdened the mind of the 1st Century Jew. So, it is no small thing that Jesus said that he would come to them; it meant they would not be left unprotected or vulnerable when he left.
The World Will Not See Me
But this protection would be of a sort never seen before. As far as the world was concerned Jesus will have been dead and buried, never to be seen again. The disciples also had only a vague understanding that something was about to happen, couldn’t have understood that Jesus would resurrect but appear in human form to many people, and ultimately rise as the Cloud Rider. Nonetheless the disciples will see Jesus. How can this be? From the human perspective, Jesus will be gone! Here is the majesty in the giving of the Holy Spirit; we have seen that Father, Son, and Spirit are one; that each is a separate manifestation of the same unique One. So when the Holy Spirit magnificently manifested in the disciples at Pentecost, and when we accepted Jesus as our Savior on our great personal day of Salvation, it was Jesus Himself who, through the Person of the Holy Spirit, came to live in our hearts. Remember that when Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden it was the spirit which died, but when we accept Christ as Savior it is the Holy Spirit which makes our spirit come alive again. Because of His presence in our heart, our eyes are opened: We can now see spiritually; the cataract over our spiritual eye is removed, and we begin to understand the depth of Christ’s teachings. Have you ever read the same passage maybe 50 times and yet on the 51st some insight suddenly appears? This is the activity of the Holy Spirit make a Biblical truth more clear on a spiritual level.
You Will Live
It is no accident that the future tense is used here, and there is a delicate idea in view. When Jesus was walking the planet with his disciples, they were separate individuals in flesh and spirituality. After the coming of the Holy Spirit things have changed. While maintaining his human body, Jesus is also fully supernatural and so seems inaccessible to us. But with the coming of the Spirit in our heart Jesus is made manifest in us as already mentioned. Jesus is immutable, unchangeable, but we are not. But, and this is a wonderful ‘but’, Jesus changes us from the inside out. All of a sudden verses show new meaning, Scriptural truths are made real in our lives, our intimacy with our Savior daily becomes more intimate, and our desire to please him in everything we do becomes the driving force of our life. This is the new life: sin is no longer a daily expression, but an occasional weakness. Living for Jesus becomes the new daily expression.
What About Me?
The Romans passage is a good description at what happens. Even though we don’t feel it has sometimes, accepting Jesus as our Savior changes everything. Even though you maybe are not yet baptized, it does not mean a new live has not come to you. You are saved from the consequence of sin now and forever. Baptism is simply a physical experience demonstrating a supernatural truth. In the coming out of water, we are coming out of sin and into the new life in Jesus. As you read through the passage consider the progression of thought. Accepting Jesus as Savior inextricably leads to full and complete freedom from sin, this means that just as Father and Son have full and complete unity so will you with them. The realization that I have full intimacy with Jesus, the very One who put my atoms together, is enough to fill me with love and desire for him. I am astounded that the world has refused to accept this truth. But you, who have heard the call of Jesus to come into his embrace, are now positioned to enter into the greatest experience you will ever know. Go for it!