©Kris Gerbrandt
Chapter 14:18-26 (ESV) - “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. 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. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” Jesus answered him, “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. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me.”
“These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”
Question to consider: What did Jesus mean when He said He would not leave the disciples as orphans?
Up until this point, Jesus has used the term world as a reference to those outside of the nation of Israel— the Gentiles. As I’ve repeatedly driven home, the scripture divides all descendants of Adam and Eve into two kinds of people: those who are offspring of the woman, and those who are offspring of the serpent. The Jews considered themselves to be offspring of the woman and the Gentiles as offspring of the serpent even though scripture is more nuanced than that. The two types were instead divided up according to whether one had faith in God to fulfill His promise of redemption through an appointed seed from this holy line. Jesus was this appointed seed. All of the hope that had been passed down through the generations by faith found its fulfillment in Him.
Jesus didn’t marry and have children but those who receive His righteousness by faith become brothers and sisters of Christ and children of the Father. Because this holy line only continues through Him, Jesus now used the term world to refer to anyone who did not receive Him. This is why Jesus expressed that those who loved Him were loved by the Father, and those who didn’t were part of the world which in a little while would see Him no longer.
It must have been confusing to them that He would speak of “not leaving them as orphans” when He went away for a little while to the Father, and they would see Him again. All of that was to give them the knowledge ahead of time that He was about to be crucified and be resurrected on the third day. Eventually, they would understand all of this when the Holy Spirit came to them at Pentecost. Jesus only appeared after His resurrection to those in the early church, but according to the apostle Paul, these appearances were significant with one such appearance involving more than 500 people at once. (1 Corinthians 15:6)
People may object to the fact that Jesus didn’t go visit Pilate or the Jewish leaders after His resurrection, but as we learned through the raising of Lazarus, it would not have mattered to those who refused to listen to Moses and the Prophets. Rather than being visited by Christ before His ascension, they were visited by Christ in judgment in AD 70. If you went through my study in Acts, I pointed out that those who had Christ crucified were given a chance to repent when Peter and John healed a paralyzed man in Jesus’ name and proclaimed that He had ascended to the throne of God.
Today, we still have not been left as orphans. The Holy Spirit dwells within those who are baptized into Christ and still convicts the world of sin and calls people to repentance. Because Christ lives, we also will live and have hope in the resurrection of the dead.
Dear heavenly Father, thank You for adopting us as Your children through Christ. May Your Spirit daily conform us to His image and use us to call the world to repentance and faith. Amen.