The Upper Room on the Night Jesus Was Betrayed

I was reading the Upper Room discourse (John 14 – 17) the other day. I have read these words many times, but for some reason they penetrated my heart and mind in a new way. I thought I would extract some of the verses that I found especially powerful and, frankly, amazing and momentous (of utmost importance, of outstanding significance). If you are interested, here they are (I recommend reading all 4 chapters first) from the NIV translation. As you read, think how each of these verses would change your walk with Christ if you really believed they were for you, knew deep in your heart that they were true, and trusted in them.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in Me”. (14:1)

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me”. (14:6)

“Believe Me when I say that I am in my Father, and my Father is in Me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves”. (14:11)

“I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in Me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these”. (14; 12)

“I will do whatever you ask in My name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask Me for anything in My name, and I will do it”. (14: 13, 14)

“And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Counselor to be with you forever – the Spirit of Truth”. (14: 16, 17)

“But you know Him (the Spirit of Truth), for He lives with you and will be in you”. (14: 17)

“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you”. (14: 18)

“On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you”. (14: 20)

“But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you”. (14: 26)

“Peace I leave with you: My peace I give you. I do not give as the world gives. Do not let you hearts be troubled and do not be afraid”. (14: 27)

“Remain in Me, and I will remain in you” (15: 4)

“If a man remains in Me and I in him, he will bear much fruit”. (15: 5)

“If anyone does not remain in Me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers”. (15: 6)

“If you remain in Me and My words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be My disciples”. (15: 7, 8)

“Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command”. (15: 13)

“I have called you friends, for everything I have learned from my Father I have made known to you”. (15: 15)

“But when He, the Spirit of Truth, comes, He will guide you into all truth”. (16: 13)

“And He will tell you what is yet to come”. (16: 13)

“He will bring glory to Me by taking from what is Mine and making it known to you”. (16: 15)

“I tell you the truth, my Father will give you whatever you ask in My name. Until now you have not asked for anything in My name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete”. (16: 23, 24)

“I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given Me, for they are yours, and all you have is Mine. And glory has come to Me through them”. (17: 10)

“Holy Father, protect them by the power of Your name”. (17: 11)

“As you have sent Me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify Myself, that they too may be truly sanctified”. (17: 18, 19)

“I have given them the glory that you gave Me, that they may be one as We are one: I in them and You in Me”. (17: 22, 23)

“I have made You known to them, and will continue to make You known in order that the love you have for Me may be in them and that I Myself may be in them”. (17: 26)

(The main point of this post was to put these words of Jesus ‘out there’, into the world of e-space or whatever you call it. In the following paragraphs I have written about what some of these words mean to me. If you stop reading here, you will have gotten what I think is the most important point of the post).

Jesus, knowing what is about to happen that night and in the following days, begins this discourse in the upper room after the Passover meal and the washing of their feet with the admonition to not be troubled, to trust in Him and God. He is saying “you guys are going to see some stuff that will shock you, and maybe even make you doubt who I am. It will seem to you like the world is coming apart. Don’t worry; trust Me. I know what I am doing and you will too, after a while”. It has been ever so, throughout history. During difficult times we have been tempted to doubt His presence, His power, His goodness, and grace. But He says to us “don’t be troubled. Trust Me”.

Then Jesus goes on to tell the disciples (and us) who they are. He gives them commands, explains their relationship with Him and the Father, tells them what to expect going forward, and charges them with roles and responsibilities. But throughout this discourse runs the twin notions of power and authority. These are Kingdom principles describing and defining Kingdom men and women. These are words of comfort and these are words of outrageous power if we live and operate in ‘the name of Jesus’, connected to Him as ‘the vine is connected to the branch’. In other words, as we live, surrendered and submitted to Him, in the Kingdom of God.

Really? We will do even greater things than He has done”?: “whatever we ask in His name, He will do”?; “the Holy Spirit will be with me and will live in me”?; and the big one “Jesus is in the Father and Jesus is in me” (if a=b and b=c, then a=c); therefore the Father is in me also? I can’t really fully understand all the implications of these truths. All I know is that they say a lot about how Jesus sees us, how valuable we am to Him and to His mission to restore Creation. We really am the adopted sons and daughters —  joint heirs with Christ, as Paul tells us. Jesus is our Lord, He is our Savior, but He also calls use friend!

Really? Yes!!

There are two principles embedded in these verses that I want to describe in more detail. The first is “in My name”. The second is “in Christ”.

“In My name” does not mean attaching these words to my prayer or my actions (as in “we will go to wherever, do such and such, and say “it is in the name of Jesus”, with no further mention of Jesus or His Kingdom). No. Rather these words describe our relationship with Jesus, rooted in living and praying in His presence every day as we labor with Him in the Kingdom of God. These are Kingdom words. They mean that Jesus knows us, trusts us, and authorizes us to ask according to His will, His purpose, and to the glory of His Father. How do we know His will in any given situation? We ask Him through prayer, sitting in His presence, every day.

It is like a father who brings his son into the family business after the son graduates from college or is otherwise ready for the responsibility. The father changes the name of the business from ‘Jones Clothing Emporium’ to ‘Jones and Son Clothing Emporium’. The father empowers and authorizes the son to conduct business in the name of the father, knowing that the son will make the decisions that are in the best interests of the father and their business. And knowing that the son understands the business, its values and mission, so well, that everything the son does will line up with the business’ purposes.

By giving us the authority to pray in His name (this is huge) Jesus is saying “I trust that your requests will line up with My purposes and My will; you will not discredit My name or the name of My Father”. In other words, our requests will always have at their heart the restoration of God’s Creation for God’s glory – this generally means prayers for the restoration of another person (or people) back to an intimate, Kingdom-centered relationship with God through Jesus (restoration means that we pray, and His Spirit moves, to restore them, over time, to the same type of relationship Adam had with God in the Garden of Eden). Generally, we cannot pray these prayers if we are living primarily in the kingdom of self because in that kingdom our prayers (if we pray) are almost always for our glory, not God’s (although on the surface they might look like something God would want).

The other principle is “in Christ” expressed as ‘in Christ’, or as ‘Christ in me’ (“Christ in you, the hope of glory” – Colossians 1: 27), or “remain in Me”. What does this word ‘in’ mean in this context? A friend told me the other day that in Greek, the word ‘in’ implies ‘within the sphere of activity and presence’. So, “in Christ” means living within the sphere of Christ’s activity and presence. While the whole world is a sphere of Christ’s activity, as Paul uses the phrase it more specifically means the Kingdom of God – which is the immediate sphere where Christ is dwelling, acting, and moving and in which Kingdom men and women are intimately and dynamically interacting, connected to God and each other. ‘In Christ’ then means ‘in His Kingdom’. That is one meaning of ‘in Christ’; and as such ‘in Christ’ is a much more economical way of saying what Paul and Jesus mean than the paragraph I just wrote.

I think another meaning of “in Christ” is found in 1 Corinthians 2: 16 “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple, and that God’s Spirit lives in you”. OK, not exactly about us in Christ, but Christ in us. It gives us some added understanding of what someone in someone else means.

From the beginning of Israel’s journey, God wanted to dwell in the midst of His people in the Tent of Meeting, the Tabernacle, the Temple, and Jesus as the Temple (John 2: 21). Each of these places provided a physical habitation for the Shekinah glory of God – for God Himself – to dwell, rest, and reside among His people; right in the center of all they were doing. He was actually present in the tent, in the temple, in Jesus. In this place, where the glory of God dwelt, heaven broke into earth and Heaven and earth met. And now He is actually present in us, because we are the temple. Have you heard of the phrase ‘thin place’ (or something like that) indicating a place where the boundary between Heaven and earth is very thin? Well, the Temple, which is now in you, is not a ‘thin place’, it is a place without separation, it is filled with the ‘atmosphere’ of Heaven. God dwells within us in our spirits, our hearts, our minds, our bodies. He infuses us with His glory, given to us by Jesus. The glory of God, the outstreaming manifestation of His beauty, is carried by us into the world. This is what Jesus meant when He said ‘rivers of Living Water’ will flow from within you; we release the ‘atmosphere’ of Heaven, the Kingdom of God, into the world. Said in another way, like Abraham and Israel, we are called to bear the glory of God to the world.

There is a deep holiness here. A Holy God, by His Holy Spirit, lives in me in the same way that He lived in the Holy of Holies in the Temple in Jerusalem. Does He just move in when I accept Jesus as Lord? Do I have a say in this?

If I have sincerely accepted Jesus as Lord, with all that this acceptance means, then I guess, yes, Scripture is telling me that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit live in me as I live with Them in the Kingdom of God. They dwell in me in the same way that God dwelt in the Temple. But as I have said elsewhere, if I have accepted Jesus as savior but continue to live in the kingdom of self and have not chosen to enter the Kingdom of God, then, no, I am not the temple of God’s Spirit. I am a house open to the indwelling of other spirits whose purpose is to steal, kill, and destroy.

God and His Son live in me as I enter into and live in His Kingdom, as I live in the presence of Jesus. God still wants to be in the center; only this time it is in the center of our lives as we live in an intimate, restored relationship only made possible by the sacrifice of Jesus. And if I live in the kingdom of self, my ‘center’ is already occupied – by me.

Put all this together with the words of Jesus excerpted above from John 14 – 16, leavened by a repentant heart, and you have a dynamic, powerful, purposeful life in Christ; a Kingdom life. We are more than mere humans reacting to the events and surprises life throws at us each day; more than men and women with one eye on Jesus hoping that when this life is over we have behaved well enough to get eternal life. We are more than conquerors; we are ‘in Christ’, with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit ‘in us’. We have been invited to be partners, co-workers, co-laborers with God in this amazing, exciting journey. He has given us power and authority; and He has trusted us to use them well — for His purposes and the Father’s glory. Hallelujah!!

One final thought. Did this command and invitation of Jesus (because that is what I think it is) to “ask for anything in my name” and “I will do it” strike you as, well, unbelievable? There is permission, invitation, authority, and even urgency in this command. If I really can ask for whatever I want, as long as it is in the name of Jesus and according to His will, then I am more than a bystander, passively watching God unfold His Kingdom in the world. More on these thoughts later.