18 "“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21 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.” 22 Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?”23 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.24 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.
25 “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. 26 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.27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.28 You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. 29 And now I have told you before it takes place, so that when it does take place you may believe. 30 I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me, 31 but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Rise, let us go from here."
John 14:18-31
The second great reality unfolded in these verses is that of fellowship with the Father and the Son. It is hardly possible to separate this from what has already been said of the indwelling of the Spirit, for it is the work of the Spirit, as we have seen, to take of the things of Christ and reveal them to us. Ultimately, therefore, to be filled with the Spirit is to learn to love Jesus more and more; and it is His office - and delight - to promote the intimate fellowship the believer has with the Father and the Son, as expressed in Jesus' words in 21 and 23. The secret intimacies of this fellowship are not easy to describe to those who have not experienced them. The love of the Father for His own in 21 is clearly something distinct from - and, we may say, deeper and fuller than - the love God has for the world, in this sense, that it is love responded to and returned. There is an experience of divine love which the world does not and cannot know, but which believers know when their hearts respond in love to the Father and to the Son. We sometimes sing
The love of Jesus, what it is None but His loved ones know
this captures the sense of Jesus' words here. In this connection, we may anticipate something said in chapter 17, where in the great intercessory prayer Jesus prays 'that the love wherewith Thou has loved Me may be in them and I in them'. The intimacy of love between the Father and the Son spoken of in these words is one of the most mysterious and awe-inspiring themes in all Scripture - it is this that believers are given to share - and we shall continue to think about it in tomorrow's Note.