Back stories are really important for us to understand the context of someone’s words. I love the musical Wicked because it provides a back story for the famous book and film The Wizard of Oz. If you have never seen it, the musical will totally change your perspective of the characters ‘Wicked Witch of the West’ and ‘Glinda the Good’.
As we look at more of Jesus’ words at the last supper it is important to understand the Biblical back story.
When we read through the first chapters of the Bible (Genesis 1-4) we see that God’s original intentions for humanity are for them to:
- Enjoy a close relationship with him (Genesis 3:8a)
- Benefit from his perfect wisdom to make life good (Genesis 2:15-17)
- Live in peace (Genesis 1:31)
But humans lost these wonderful blessings because of an unwillingness to trust God.
- Their relationship with God was broken (Genesis 3:23-24)
- Confusion reigns instead of wisdom (Genesis 4:8)
- Peace is lost and replaced by pain (Genesis 3:17-19)
Now we can come to Jesus’ words in John 14:22-27 and make more sense of them:
Now we can understand that Jesus is restoring God’s original intent for humanity. He is saying that we can live in this original intent. Jesus says that if we follow him, then we will experience ongoing relationship with God and experience the peace provided to us by the Spirit of God.
Jesus will soon pay the debt of all the world’s sins. This means anyone can turn to Jesus and find true life. If we want to live daily in that life that God wants us to have then we must:
1. Follow Jesus, his example and teaching
2. When we follow Jesus we experience closeness to our heavenly Father
3. We follow Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit and experience his peace
Finally, Jesus makes clear that we can experience this restoration and salvation now, but it will be in the midst of a broken world.
There would be no reason for Jesus to tell his disciples not to be afraid if all the world was going to be made good again.
Instead, we live as well watered and healthy trees in a desert landscape until God’s promise arrives to make all things new (Revelation 21:3-4)
