Preparing For When He Would Be Gone

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“All this I have told you so that you will not fall away.”

John 16:1

Here Jesus is referring to his previous teaching of the disciples, specifically to his teaching in the previous chapter in which he prepares his disciples for persecution to come. Jesus knows he will not always be with his disciples in the flesh, because he knows his time of self-sacrifice is coming. He is able to put that aside though to take time to prepare his followers for the trials they will face. In this action we see an important leadership trait being demonstrated, that of the enablement of others to continue on in their mission without the leader being present. It is more than succession planning. In fact in some ways it is not even remotely like succession planning as taught in leadership and business courses. For Christ this is not about making sure someone is in place to protect his legacy. You see Jesus isn’t just training replacements to continue his current work, he is training people to go beyond what he did without needing him to be physically present and doing the work. Now I realise that there is some semantics in play here, because in actual fact he is going to send the Holy Spirit to be with them, guide them and work collaboratively with them. However, the main point is Jesus will not be physically present with them and so the disciples will need to become the hands that carry out the work of the Lord in the flesh. Where Jesus would have reached out to heal now the disciples will need to reach out their hands and allow the Holy Spirit to use them to bring healing, where Jesus tore down and destroyed the works of evil, the disciples will need to act in collaboration with the Holy Spirit to destroy and tear down the works of evil.

Now unlike in the past this isn’t just a temporary arrangement (e.g. Luke 9:1-10), this will be an ongoing arrangement for the rest of their lives.

Jesus doesn’t want his followers to simply carry on his legacy though, no, in fact Jesus isn’t interested in legacies for himself. He came to set the past right, to return people to his Father, and so he is actually interested in creating a future for all people. He wants his disciple to create something new as his agents in this world, he has something for them to do that he has not yet done, in essence he wants them to build a church, as he said to Peter,

“And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”

Matthew 16:18

 At this point in the biblical account Jesus is already the disciples’ inspiration but he does not want to become their limitation, he is already their strength but he does not want to become their achilles heel. So he is passing on the responsibility of being the “face” of the work of God on earth to them. Unless Jesus went his disciples would not have stepped forward to be the primary deliverers of hope on earth, unless Jesus left the disciples could not have learnt to walk in the full extent of their authority as both children of God and followers of Christ. They had become followers of Christ already, now it was time for them to take up the authority that came with being children of God. So Christ was going, primarily to restore humanity to God, but a result of that restored relationship was the ability of people to connect with the Spirit of God, and so Christ was sending his Spirit to lead his disciples into truth through relationship with him. The Holy Spirit would allow the disciples, and the Christian church after them, to be the visible helping and healing hands of God on earth through the victorious power of Jesus’ redeeming blood. So Jesus said to them,

“I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.”

John 16:7