As we get closer to the cross, we see Christ encouraging His
disciples and also telling them how to live for Him. In the beginning of chapter 14 Christ tells them
this, “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe
in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it
were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a
place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for
you, I will come again and
receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be
also. And where I go you know, and the way
you know.”(vs 1-4) Christ tells that He
is going to prepare a place for them, this gives many of us an image of Christ up
in Heaven with a tool belt on and building a house, but what if I were to tell you
what He is saying is that He is going to the cross. That it is through His sacrifice on the cross
that He prepared a place for us in
Heaven. It is through Christ that we are
able to be welcomed into Heaven. Christ
tells them in verse six, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the
Father except through
Me.” That means that it is through
accepting the fact that Christ is the Son of God, coming into a new relationship
with God and living a life that is no-longer centered on your wants or needs
but the wants and desires of God.
Christ explains that He is the vine, and we are the branches
it is Him we are to live for. We are to
obey His word and abide in it. Chapter
fifteen verses nine through ten tells us, “As the Father loved Me, I also have
loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My
commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and
abide in His love.” We show God that we
love Him by being obedient to His word.
The relationship we have with God is to be one of love and
obedience. I know that there are people out
there saying that we can do whatever we want, that God’s love is so great that
all human kind is going to make it to heaven.
If that were the case why would Christ tell us all this, why go to
cross? We must come to the understanding
that we serve a God that demands our love and obedience. Christ then tells us that we are to love one
another as He loved us. He goes on to
remind us that the world is going to hate us.
Why is the world going to hate us? Because it first hated Him, if we are
following God and being obedient, and sharing with the world that sin does
exist then of course it is going to be upset with us. The world does not want to hear that it is
only through Christ that they are going to have a place in Heaven.
The
great news is that Christ is not just leaving us on our own, no He promised us
the helper. The helper being the Holy
Spirit, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit we are to come and know God even
better. Paul tells us in Ephesians two
verses 4-7 , “Once you were dead, doomed forever because of your many sins. “But
God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so very much, that even while we were dead because of our
sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s
special favor that you have been saved!) For he raised us from
the dead along with Christ, and we are seated with him in the heavenly
realms—all because we are one with Christ Jesus. And so God can always
point to us as examples of the incredible wealth of his favor and kindness
toward us, as shown in all he has done for us through Christ Jesus.” God doesn’t just leave us to fend for
ourselves but Gives us the Holy Spirit to Guide, direct and cleanse us of our
sins.
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