Conversation Points for John 14:15-21

Study Format:
1. What did you hear Jesus offering to you? To us? To the world?
2. What kind of resistance to Jesus did you hear?
3. What will you have to learn to resist or renounce in order to receive what Jesus is offering?

Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• O’Day notes that “commandments” (entolai), “word” (logos), and “words” (logoi) are all synonyms. Earlier in the Gospel Jesus often cited faithfulness to his word as the mark of belonging to him (5:38; 8:31, 37, 51; 12:47-48). Earlier in the Farewell Discourse, 13:34-35, Jesus established love as the sign of faithfulness to keeping Jesus’ commandments (“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”). Reading v. 15 and v. 21 as bookends on a thought establishes what it means to love Jesus. To love Jesus is to keep his commandments, to keep his commandments is to love Jesus.
• V. 16 is the first appearance of the word parakletos in John’s Gospel. There are many translations of this word, in the NRSV it is translated as “Advocate.” In other translations is it translated “Comforter” (King James Version), “Counselor” (New International Version), “Friend” (The Message), “Helper” (English Standard Version), and “Companion” (Common English Bible). The noun parakletos derives from the verb parakaleo, which has a wide range of meanings, thus the wide range of English translations. Among the meanings are “to exhort and encourage,” “to comfort and console,” “to call upon for help,” and “to appeal.” The noun form can mean “the one who exhorts,” “the one who comforts,” the one who helps,” and “the one who makes appeals on one’s behalf.” To solve this, some translations simply translate the word as “Paraclete,” rather than settle for one English noun, since the Greek audience would have heard the whole range of meanings in the one word.
• The modifier “another” in v. 16 seems to suggest that Jesus was also a Paraclete (cf 1 John 2:1, “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous;”). Paraclete then is not another name for the Holy Spirit, but a way of describing the functions of the Spirit. This deepens the concept of the oneness of God and Jesus, and now the Spirit, who all have the same functions, all share in the same work. This is made clearer in describing the Paraclete as the “Spirit of truth,” since in 14:6, Jesus made clear that he is truth.
• As has been a common theme throughout John’s Gospel, “knowing” the Paraclete is defined as the Paraclete abiding (meno, same as from John 1:14) with the community. The Paraclete ensures that relationship with Jesus and thus the Father does not end with Jesus’ death.
• V. 18 Jesus promised to come again. Orphan was a common metaphor for disciples left without their masters, but here it also draws deeply on the familial imagery Jesus used in 13:33 (“little children…”).
• V. 18-20 alludes to Jesus’ resurrection but it also alludes to the eschatological fulfillment of the promise. Time and space collapse in this promise.

Works Sourced:
O’Day, Gail. “The Gospel of John.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.