Passion Week ~ The Upper Room ~ Part 6
In our last post, we continued to examine the final days of Yeshua’s life and ministry. This post continues to explore the events that may have occurred on Thursday.
Yeshua Promises the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit)
15 “If you love me, you will keep my commands; 16 and I will ask the Father, and He will give you another comforting Counselor like Me, the Spirit of Truth, to be with you forever.
Greek paraklêtos means “counselor, comforter, exhorter,” or “one called alongside.” There are two words in Greek for another – “allos“ (“another of the same kind”) and “eteros“ (“another, of a different kind”). Here the word is “allos“: a comforting counselor like Yeshua, namely, the Ruach HaKodesh.
17 The world cannot receive Him because it neither sees nor knows Him. You know Him because He is staying with you and will be united with you.
The Spirit of Truth, God’s Spirit, the Holy Spirit, … will be united with you. This is an amazing promise for a Jewish person to read because the Tanakh speaks of only a few persons as having the Holy Spirit “with” or “upon” them (among them Moshe and the seventy elders (Numbers 11:17–29), Gid’on (Judges 6:34), Yiftach (Jephthah in Judges 11:29), Shimshon (Judges 14:6), Sha’ul (1 Samuel 11:6), David (1 Samuel 16:13, Psalm 51:13(11)), and Sha’ul’s messengers (1 Samuel 19:20)), and even fewer as having the Holy Spirit “in” them Yosef (Genesis 41:38) and Betzal’el (Exodus 31:3).
18 I will not leave you orphans – I am coming to you. 19 In just a little while, the world will no longer see Me; but you will see Me. Because I live, you too will live.
When Yeshua says because I live, He is prophesying His appearances after His resurrection.
20 When that day comes, you will know that I am united with My Father, and you with Me, and I with you. 21 Whoever has My commands and keeps them is the one who loves Me, and the one who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to Him.”
Y’hudah Is Puzzled
22 Y’hudah (not the one from K’riot) said to Him, “What has happened, Lord, that you are about to reveal yourself to us and not to the world?” 23 Yeshua answered him, “If someone 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 Someone who doesn’t love me doesn’t keep my words—and the word you are hearing is not my own but that of the Father who sent me. [1]
This Judas (not Iscariot) is probably “Judas the son of James,” mentioned in Luke 6:16 and Acts 1:13, not Judas, the half-brother of Yeshua (Mattityahu 13:55; Mark 6:3). Make Our home with him recalls God’s dwelling among His people in the Tabernacle (Ex 25:8; 29:45; Lev 26:11–12) and the Temple (1 Kings 8:10–11; Acts 7:46–47), and points forward to the time when the Ruach would come at Shavu’ot (Pentecost) (Acts 2).
In our next, we continue to follow Yeshua into Yerushalayim for His Crucifixion by the end of the week and continue in The Upper Room.
Click here for the PDF version.
[1] Yochanan 14:16–24.
My Heart is for Israel 