Jesus’ Farewell Discourse

Excerpt

To love Jesus is shown to involve keeping his words or commands. Here the focus is on the latter—If you love me, you will keep my commandments. A response of love for Jesus will result in obedience to his commands and at the same time that obedience will be an indicator of whether genuine love is present. Talking of Jesus’ farewell instructions as his commandments may well be meant to recall the Mosaic law as the summation of the divine commandments and to suggest Jesus’ teaching as the new norm for disciples. The commandments immediately in view are to wash one another’s feet (13:14–15) and to love one another (13:34), though the command to believe in Jesus (14:1) should not be ignored. In what follows those who love Jesus in this way are made a number of promises. The first is I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you for ever, the Spirit of truth. This constitutes the first occurrence in the narrative of the term παράκλητος as a designation of the Spirit. It will be found again in 14:26, 15:26 and 16:7. Its only other use in the New Testament is in 1 John 2:1, where it refers to Christ. More

Lincoln, Andrew T. The Gospel according to Saint John. London: Continuum, 2005. Print. Black’s New Testament Commentary.