John 14:1-14

Context

Jesus’ Parting Words to His Disciples

14:1 “Do not let your hearts be distressed.¹ You believe in God;² believe also in me. 14:2 There are many dwelling places³ in my Father’s house.⁴ Otherwise, I would have told you, because⁵ I am going away to make ready⁶ a place for you.⁷ 14:3 And if I go and make ready⁸ a place for you, I will come again and take you⁹ to be with me,¹⁰ so that where I am you may be too. 14:4 And you know the way where I am going.”¹¹

14:5 Thomas said,¹² “Lord, we don’t know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 14:6 Jesus replied,¹³ “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.¹⁴ No one comes to the Father except through me. 14:7 If you have known me, you will know my Father too.¹⁵ And from now on you do know him and have seen him.”

14:8 Philip said,¹⁶ “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be content.”¹⁷ 14:9 Jesus replied,¹⁸ “Have I been with you for so long, and you have not known¹⁹ me, Philip? The person who has seen me has seen the Father! How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 14:10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me?²⁰ The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own initiative,²¹ but the Father residing in me performs²² his miraculous deeds.²³ 14:11 Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me, but if you do not believe me,²⁴ believe because of the miraculous deeds²⁵ themselves. 14:12 I tell you the solemn truth,²⁶ the person who believes in me will perform²⁷ the miraculous deeds²⁸ that I am doing,²⁹ and will perform³⁰ greater deeds³¹ than these, because I am going to the Father. 14:13 And I will do whatever you ask in my name,³² so that the Father may be glorified³³ in the Son. 14:14 If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.

[14:1] ¹sn The same verb is used to describe Jesus’ own state in John 11:33, 12:27, and 13:21. Jesus is looking ahead to the events of the evening and the next day, his arrest, trials, crucifixion, and death, which will cause his disciples extreme emotional distress.

[14:1] ²tn Or “Believe in God.” The translation of the two uses of πιστεύετε (pisteuete) is difficult. Both may be either indicative or imperative, and as L. Morris points out (John [NICNT], 637), this results in a bewildering variety of possibilities. To complicate matters further, the first may be understood as a question: “Do you believe in God? Believe also in me.” Morris argues against the KJV translation which renders the first πιστεύετε as indicative and the second as imperative on the grounds that for the writer of the Fourth Gospel, faith in Jesus is inseparable from faith in God. But this is precisely the point that Jesus is addressing in context. He is about to undergo rejection by his own people as their Messiah. The disciples’ faith in him as Messiah and Lord would be cast into extreme doubt by these events, which the author makes clear were not at this time foreseen by the disciples. After the resurrection it is this identification between Jesus and the Father which needs to be reaffirmed (cf. John 20:24-29). Thus it seems best to take the first πιστεύετε as indicative and the second as imperative, producing the translation “You believe in God; believe also in me.”

[14:2] ³tn Many interpreters have associated μοναί (monai) with an Aramaic word that can refer to a stopping place or resting place for a traveler on a journey. This is similar to one of the meanings the word can have in secular Greek (Pausanius 10.31.7). Origen understood the use here to refer to stations on the road to God. This may well have been the understanding of the Latin translators who translated μονή (monh) by mansio, a stopping place. The English translation “mansions” can be traced back to Tyndale, but in Middle English the word simply meant “a dwelling place” (not necessarily large or imposing) with no connotation of being temporary. The interpretation put forward by Origen would have been well suited to Gnosticism, where the soul in its ascent passes through stages during which it is gradually purified of all that is material and therefore evil. It is much more likely that the word μονή should be related to its cognate verb μένω (menw), which is frequently used in the Fourth Gospel to refer to the permanence of relationship between Jesus and the Father and/or Jesus and the believer. Thus the idea of a permanent dwelling place, rather than a temporary stopping place, would be in view. Luther’s translation of μοναί by Wohnungen is very accurate here, as it has the connotation of a permanent residence.

[14:2] ⁴sn Most interpreters have understood the reference to my Father’s house as a reference to heaven, and the dwelling places (μονή, monh) as the permanent residences of believers there. This seems consistent with the vocabulary and the context, where in v. 3 Jesus speaks of coming again to take the disciples to himself. However, the phrase in my Father’s house was used previously in the Fourth Gospel in 2:16 to refer to the temple in Jerusalem. The author in 2:19-22 then reinterpreted the temple as Jesus’ body, which was to be destroyed in death and then rebuilt in resurrection after three days. Even more suggestive is the statement by Jesus in 8:35, “Now the slave does not remain (μένω, menw) in the household forever, but the son remains (μένω) forever.” If in the imagery of the Fourth Gospel the phrase in my Father’s house is ultimately a reference to Jesus’ body, the relationship of μονή to μένω suggests the permanent relationship of the believer to Jesus and the Father as an adopted son who remains in the household forever. In this case the “dwelling place” is “in” Jesus himself, where he is, whether in heaven or on earth. The statement in v. 3, “I will come again and receive you to myself,” then refers not just to the parousia, but also to Jesus’ postresurrection return to the disciples in his glorified state, when by virtue of his death on their behalf they may enter into union with him and with the Father as adopted sons. Needless to say, this bears numerous similarities to Pauline theology, especially the concepts of adoption as sons and being “in Christ” which are prominent in passages like Eph 1. It is also important to note, however, the emphasis in the Fourth Gospel itself on the present reality of eternal life (John 5:24, 7:38-39, etc.) and the possibility of worshiping the Father “in the Spirit and in truth” (John 4:21-24) in the present age. There is a sense in which it is possible to say that the future reality is present now. See further J. McCaffrey, The House With Many Rooms (AnBib 114).

[14:2] ⁵tc A number of important mss (Ì^66c א A B C* D K L W Ψ Ë¹³ 33 565 579 892 al lat) have ὅτι (Joti) here, while the majority lack it (Ì^66* C² Θ Ï). Should the ὅτι be included or omitted? The external evidence is significantly stronger for the longer reading. Most Alexandrian and Western mss favor inclusion (it is a little unusual for the Alexandrian to favor the longer reading), while most Byzantine mss favor omission (again, a little unusual). However, the reading of Ì^66*, which aligns with the Byzantine, needs to be given some value. At the same time, the scribe of this papyrus was known for freely omitting and adding words, and the fact that the ms was corrected discounts its testimony here. But because the shorter reading is out of character for the Byzantine text, the shorter reading (omitting the ὅτι) may well be authentic. Internally, the question comes down to whether the shorter reading is more difficult or not. And here, it loses the battle, for it seems to be a clarifying omission (so TCGNT 206). R. E. Brown is certainly right when he states: “all in all, the translation without ὅτι makes the best sense” (John [AB], 2:620). But this tacitly argues for the authenticity of the word. Thus, on both external and internal grounds, the ὅτι should be regarded as authentic.

[14:2] ⁶tn Or “to prepare.”

[14:2] ⁷tn Or “If not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?” What is the meaning of the last clause with or without the ὅτι? One of the questions that must be answered here is whether or not τόπος (topos) is to be equated with μονή (monh). In Rev 12:8 τόπος is used to refer to a place in heaven, which would suggest that the two are essentially equal here. Jesus is going ahead of believers to prepare a place for them, a permanent dwelling place in the Father’s house (see the note on this phrase in v. 2).

[14:3] ⁸tn Or “prepare.”

[14:3] ⁹tn Or “bring you.”

[14:3] ¹⁰tn Grk “to myself.”

[14:4] ¹¹tc Most mss (Ì^66* A C³ D Θ Ψ Ë^1,13 Ï lat sy sa) read “You know where I am going, and you know the way” (καὶ ὅπου [ἐγὼ] ὑπάγω οἴδατε καὶ τὴν ὁδόν οἴδατε, kai {opou egw Jupagw oidate kai thn Jodon oidate). The difference between this reading and the wording in NA²⁷ (supported by Ì^66c א B C* L Q W 33 579 pc) is the addition of καί before τὴν ὁδόν and οἴδατε after. Either assertion on the part of Jesus would be understandable: “you know the way where I am going” or “you know where I am going and you know the way,” although the shorter reading is a bit more awkward syntactically. In light of this, and in light of the expansion already at hand in v. 5, the longer reading appears to be a motivated reading. The shorter reading is thus preferred because of its superior external and internal evidence.

[14:5] ¹²tn Grk “said to him.”

[14:6] ¹³tn Grk “Jesus said to him.”

[14:6] ¹⁴tn Or “I am the way, even the truth and the life.”

[14:7] ¹⁵tc There is a difficult textual problem here: The statement reads either “If you have known (ἐγνώκατε, egnwkate) me, you will know (γνώσεσθε, gnwsesqe) my Father” or “If you had really known (ἐγνώκειτε, egnwkeite) me, you would have known (ἐγνώκειτε ἄν or ἂν ἤδειτε [egnwkeite an or an hdeite]) my Father.” The division of the external evidence is difficult, but can be laid out as follows: The mss that have the perfect ἐγνώκατε in the protasis (Ì⁶⁶ [א D* W] 579 pc it) also have, for the most part, the future indicative γνώσεσθε in the apodosis (Ì⁶⁶ א D W [579] pc sa bo), rendering Jesus’ statement as a first-class condition. The mss that have the pluperfect ἐγνώκειτε in the protasis (A B C D¹ L Θ Ψ Ë^1,13 33 Ï) also have, for the most part, a pluperfect in the apodosis (either ἂν ἤδειτε in B C* [L] Q Ψ 1 33 565 al, or ἐγνώκειτε ἄν in A C³ Θ Ë¹³ Ï), rendering Jesus’ statement a contrary-to-fact second-class condition. The external evidence slightly favors the first-class condition, since there is an Alexandrian-Western alliance supported by Ì⁶⁶. As well, the fact that the readings with a second-class condition utilize two different verbs with ἄν in different positions suggests that these readings are secondary. However, it could be argued that the second-class conditions are harder readings in that they speak negatively of the apostles (so K. Aland in TCGNT 207); in this case, the ἐγνώκειτε…ἐγνώκειτε ἄν reading should be given preference. Although a decision is difficult, the first-class condition is to be slightly preferred. In this case Jesus promises the disciples that, assuming they have known him, they will know the Father. Contextually this fits better with the following phrase (v. 7b) which asserts that “from the present time you know him and have seen him” (cf. John 1:18).

[14:8] ¹⁶tn Grk “said to him.”

[14:8] ¹⁷tn Or “and that is enough for us.”

[14:9] ¹⁸tn Grk “Jesus said to him.”

[14:9] ¹⁹tn Or “recognized.”

[14:10] ²⁰tn The mutual interrelationship of the Father and the Son (ἐγὼ ἐν τῷ πατρὶ καὶ ὁ πατὴρ ἐν ἐμοί ἐστιν, egw en tw patri kai Jo pathr en emoi estin) is something that Jesus expected even his opponents to recognize (cf. John 10:38). The question Jesus asks of Philip (οὐ πιστεύεις, ou pisteuei") expects the answer “yes.” Note that the following statement is addressed to all the disciples, however, because the plural pronoun (ὑμῖν, Jumin) is used. Jesus says that his teaching (the words he spoke to them all) did not originate from himself, but the Father, who permanently remains (μένων, menwn) in relationship with Jesus, performs his works. One would have expected “speaks his words” here rather than “performs his works”; many of the church fathers (e.g., Augustine and Chrysostom) identified the two by saying that Jesus’ words were works. But there is an implicit contrast in the next verse between words and works, and v. 12 seems to demand that the works are real works, not just words. It is probably best to see the two terms as related but not identical; there is a progression in the idea here. Both Jesus’ words (recall the Samaritans’ response in John 4:42) and Jesus’ works are revelatory of who he is, but as the next verse indicates, works have greater confirmatory power than words.

[14:10] ²¹tn Grk “I do not speak from myself.”

[14:10] ²²tn Or “does.”

[14:10] ²³tn Or “his mighty acts”; Grk “his works.”

[14:11] ²⁴tn The phrase “but if you do not believe me” contains an ellipsis; the Greek text reads Grk “but if not.” The ellipsis has been filled out (“but if [you do] not [believe me]…”) for the benefit of the modern English reader.

[14:11] ²⁵tn Grk “because of the works.”

[14:12] ²⁶tn Grk “Truly, truly, I say to you.”

[14:12] ²⁷tn Or “will do.”

[14:12] ²⁸tn Grk “the works.”

[14:12] ²⁹tn Or “that I do.”

[14:12] ³⁰tn Or “will do.”

[14:12] ³¹tn Grk “greater works.”

[14:13] ³²tn Grk “And whatever you ask in my name, I will do it.”

[14:13] ³³tn Or “may be praised” or “may be honored.”