Last Night: Having Loved His Own

It was just before the Passover Feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love. (John 13:1)

It's the last night before he's going to die. Jesus knew the time had come and he's dealing with a level of personal grief we can't really comprehend. He knows He's going to die. He knows He could opt out if he were to so choose. But he knows he won't.

His personal anguish, which we'll see displayed later on in the garden, is complicated by his concern for the people who have been following him over the past three years.

They're about to be left alone. He knows they'll be frightened. He knows they'll abandon him. And yet he knows they're his best hope for continuing his mission after he's gone.

Not only that, but he loves them as his own. In Jesus’ final prayer in John 17 he describes the disciples as "the people you gave me."

His concern in that upper room on this last night turns to helping them to understand how they should continue to be His disciples in the world after He is gone.

He wants them to understand the full extent of His love by understanding the reason for the sacrifice he's about to make. And he wants them to understand the full extent of his love by understanding how much he trusts them to take over the task of being the image of God in the world.

Jesus' last conversations with his disciples are important. He's telling them, and us, what he expects his disciples, and his church, to be like and look like after he is gone.

One of my favorite descriptions of the Church is Paul's in Ephesians 4. In his usual analytic fashion, the apostle lays out the detailed structure of what and how the Church is to operate.

In contrast, here in John 13 through 17, Jesus opens his heart to the disciples and passes his legacy over to them and to the church that will grow out of their mission.

On that last night, Jesus let the first disciples in on the plan. They didn't quite grasp it all there on that last night. They only began to figure it out when that Last Night was followed by the First Morning.

Perhaps the key thing Jesus says is found in chapter 14, verse 12: “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even grater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”

What “greater things”? How is that even possible?

What could anything we do be greater than what he did?

What could be greater than God becoming a man and reconciling people to him through teaching, servanthood, and sacrifice? How about God inhabiting thousands of men and women over thousands of years in order to reconcile man to Himself through the collection of diverse oddballs, obsessive goof-ups and opinionated knuckle-heads known as the Church.

Never underestimate the church. We are not like any other organization or corporation or club or special-interest group. We are tasked with continuing Jesus' work in this world and we've been given the most incredible tools with which to accomplish that work.