John 14:1 Commentary and Bible Study

This is the last night that Christ instructed his disciples, the apostles-to-be before his death on Calvary’s cross. And he is particularly focussing attention on things that they vitally need to understand and which they do not understand. Many of the things in this chapter, this 14th chapter, they have been told before, but there are some things that are entirely fresh, they will not understand instantly. Christ’s first lesson for them is the absolute necessity of faith. ‘Let not your heart be troubled’, or if we strictly follow the sense and the tense of the Greek – Let not your heart be troubled anymore. They are troubled because they think Christ is going away from them. Yes, to his death which they will just not take in. ‘Let not your heart be troubled’ anymore. Stop the troubled attitude. ‘Ye believe in God’, Almighty God, the Father, Lord of heaven and earth, ‘believe also in me.’ They must believe Christ knows what he is doing. They must believe literally the words that he has spoken to them. He is going to suffer and die, and rise again and take up his place with the Father in heaven, and they are to be his representatives. These verses in John’s Gospel are so well-organised. It sounds terribly patronising to say that – John was speaking, writing under the inspiration of God – but we have to appreciate the sense here, these verses are sequential and organised. They are logical, and what happens in that Upper Room is that first of all Christ lays out before them four vital points and lessons and exhortations, and they build one on the other. The first one, which is repeated in verse 11 and 12, is that faith must be exercised. There is the duty of belief.