How to love difficult people?

It was only a three-minute escape. Listening to my name being chanted over and over, louder and louder, with greater urgency, along with pounding on the door, you might imagine me to be a rock star.

But in reality, I’m the mother of a toddler who has decided he is only content when he is in my arms. My escape was merely a trip to the bathroom in which I took a deep breath behind the locked door before re-entering my world of diapers, blocks, and Daniel Tiger. And even though I love this little guy with all my heart, at times he can definitely be a difficult person to keep showing love to, especially in the midst of tantrums and tears.

Difficult People Are Everywhere

It probably isn’t hard for you to think of a difficult person in your own life. In our broken, sin-filled world, they are everywhere. The co-worker who is willing to do anything to get ahead, including taking credit for your ideas. The in-laws who always seem to be peering over your shoulder, critiquing your parenting skills, and offering “suggestions” for improvement. The child who knows exactly how to push your buttons to leave you exasperated and flustered again. The person in your ministry who is constantly complaining about your leadership, who thinks he has better ideas and communicates them with a sharp and biting tongue. The passive-aggressive friend who is kind one moment and gives you the cold shoulder the next. The list can go on and on.

So what do we do with these people? With constant strained relationships? Our natural tendency is to want to run the other way, to avoid them as much as possible. But is that what honors God in these hard situations?

Difficult People Have Been Around Forever

Moses was no stranger to leading a group of difficult people. Even after rescuing them out of slavery and leading them safely away from the Egyptians, the Israelites were not happy with him. Instead of being grateful for their new freedom and provision from God, they were shedding tears over the menu (Numbers 11:4–6), grumbling about not having water (Numbers 20:2–3), wishing they had died in Egypt and could choose another leader (Numbers 14:2–4). Even Moses’s own siblings were jealous of his leadership (Numbers 12:2) and complained to God about their brother and his Cushite wife.

Yet what amazes me about Moses is that he didn’t retaliate against this annoying group of people. He didn’t even defend himself against the harsh accusations. Instead, he demonstrated amazing humility and compassion on those he led, repeatedly interceding for them.

Moses pled with God to heal Miriam’s leprosy (Numbers 12:13). He begged God to forgive Israel’s unbelief when it was time to enter the Promised Land (Numbers 14:19). He lay prostrate before God, fasting forty days and nights after Aaron and the Israelites had made the golden calf to worship (Deuteronomy 9:13–18).

Admittedly, there were moments when the Israelites’ constant complaints drove Moses to the brink of despair (Exodus 5:22; Numbers 11:14–15), yet by God’s grace he persevered. And even at the very end of his life, he was still lovingly leading the disobedient Israelites.

Keep on Loving

Moses remained steadfast to his last days and made sure God had another leader in place to take over. He didn’t want his wandering sheep to be without a shepherd (Numbers 27:16–17). Moses never stopped loving them, even at their worst.

By God’s grace, we too can keep loving the difficult people God has placed in our lives. The easy thing is to cut the troublesome person out of your life when possible, or just avoid them at best.

But I suggest we are more like our patient and loving Savior when we bear with each other and seek to show mercy and kindness, no matter how we are treated.

Here are a six practical ways, among many others, to show love to a difficult person God has placed in your path.

1. Pray for your own heart.

Ask God to soften your heart towards this person, to put off anger and irritability, to put on meekness and kindness, to understand this person’s struggles and meet them with compassion (Colossians 3:12–14).

2. Pray for them.

Ask God to be at work in their hearts, drawing unbelievers to himself and sanctifying believers to become more like Jesus (Philippians 1:9–11).

3. Move toward them, not away from them.

Although our tendency is to want to steer clear of people with whom we have strained relationships, they are exactly the people we need to be intentionally moving toward. Find ways to engage them in conversation, meet them for coffee, send them a text.

4. Find specific ways to bless and encourage them.

Write them a note of appreciation. Buy them a book that has been an encouragement to you. Tell them you are praying for them.

5. Give them grace, just as God extends grace to you.

Remember God’s lavish grace poured out for your own daily sins. Ask God to help you bear with them, forgiving them, as he has forgiven you (Colossians 3:13).

6. Realize that you too could be the difficult person in someone else’s life!

You might not even realize that you are a thorn in the flesh for someone close to you. Don’t be oblivious to your own shortcomings and sins.

So when that child has you on the brink of tears, or you’ve just received a harsh and critical email about your ministry, or you’re confronted with that extended family member who drives you up the wall, ask God for grace not to run away, but to keep engaging in love that hard-to-love person.

God will be honored and our hearts will find deeper satisfaction as we seek to love people just as Christ loved us when we were his enemies.

Love Your neighbour

“Who is my neighbor?” a lawyer asked Jesus (Luke 10:29).

The lawyer had made the mistake of trying to catch the law’s author contradicting the law by asking how he should inherit eternal life. The author turned the tables by asking the lawyer what he thought the law said.

The lawyer then summarized the law in these two commands: We must love God with all we are (Deuteronomy 6:5) and love our neighbor as ourselves (Leviticus 19:18). The author agreed and said, “Do this, and you will live” (Luke 10:28).

But the author’s agreement pricked the lawyer’s conscience. So the lawyer sought to “justify himself” by asking, “Who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29). The author answered with the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30–37).

The Neighbor We Wouldn’t Choose

One observation from this application-rich parable is this: The neighbor we’re called to love is often not one we choose but one God chooses for us. In fact, this neighbor is often not one we would have chosen had not God done the choosing.

The Jew and the Samaritan wouldn’t have chosen the other as his neighbor. What made them neighbors was one man’s unchosen calamity and another man’s chosen compassion, but only in response to an unchosen, inconvenient, time-consuming, work-delaying, expensive need of another.

The shock of the parable is that God expects us to love needy strangers, even foreigners, as neighbors. But if this is true, how much more does he want us to love our actual, immediate neighbors, the ones we have to put up with regularly? Sometimes it is these neighbors we find most difficult to love. As G.K. Chesterton said,

We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbor. . . . [T]he old scriptural language showed so sharp a wisdom when [it] spoke, not of one’s duty towards humanity, but one’s duty towards one’s neighbor. The duty towards humanity may often take the form of some choice which is personal or even pleasurable. . . . But we have to love our neighbor because he is there — a much more alarming reason for a much more serious operation. He is the sample of humanity which is actually given us. (Heretics, chapter 14)

The idea of loving our neighbor is beautiful to think about so long as it remains an idealized, abstract concept. But the concrete reality of loving our neighbor, that all-too-real, exasperating person that we would not have chosen and might prefer to escape, strips the beauty away — or so we’re tempted to think. In truth, the beauty of idealized love is imaginary and the beauty of real love is revealed in the self-dying, unchosen call to love the sinner who “is actually given us.”

The Family We Didn’t Choose

Our very first neighbors are in our family. We don’t choose them; they are given to us. We are thrown together with them, warts and all, and called to love them, often with the kind of neighbor-love Jesus had in mind. Chesterton again:

It is exactly because our brother George is not interested in our religious difficulties, but is interested in the Trocadero Restaurant . . . [and] precisely because our uncle Henry does not approve of the theatrical ambitions of our sister Sarah that the family is like humanity. . . . Aunt Elizabeth is unreasonable, like mankind. Papa is excitable, like mankind. Our youngest brother is mischievous, like mankind. Grandpapa is stupid, like the world. (Ibid)

Many wouldn’t have chosen their families if the choice had been theirs. That’s why families are laboratories of neighbor-love, because families are a microcosm of the world.

The Community We’d Like to Un-Choose

If we are old enough and live in a region where we have options, we do choose our church community. But we don’t get to choose who else joins that community.

Invariably, after some time, our church community takes on similarities to our family. We must live with leaders who disappoint us and fellow members who see the world differently. Besides their irritating temperamental idiosyncrasies, they have different interests, ministry priorities, educational philosophies, and musical preferences than we do.

“Doing life” with them doesn’t end up looking or feeling like the community of our dreams — our idealized abstract concept. Perhaps we need a change, to find a different church where we can really thrive.

Perhaps. If the defects of the church community include things like ethical or doctrinal unfaithfulness, a change may be exactly what is needed for us to thrive.

But if our restlessness is due to the disillusionment of having to dealing with difficult, different people and defective programs, then perhaps the change we need is not in church community but in our willingness to love our neighbors, the ones God has given us to love.

This has always been God’s call on Christians. The early church was not all Acts 2:42–47. It was also Acts 6:1 and 1 Corinthians 11:17–22. Those first-generation churches were comprised of Jews and Gentiles, masters and slaves, rich and poor, people who preferred different leaders, people who strongly disagreed over nonessentials — people very much like the people in our church. It was hard doing life together then, like it is now (most likely it was harder then). That’s why we have 1 Corinthians 13 and Romans 12.

The distinguishing mark of the church has never been its utopic society but its members’ love for each other (John 13:35). And according to the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the glory of this love shines when it is costly and inconvenient.

“Go and Do Likewise”

If we ask with the lawyer, “Who is my neighbor?” we may not like Jesus’s answer. It may explode our dreams of love and community. Because instead of loving the neighbor we wanted, the soul-mate we would have chosen, Jesus may point us to the needy, different mess of a person in front of us — the one we feel like passing by — and say, “There is your neighbor.”

Perhaps he or she will be a stranger. But most likely he or she lives in our house, or on our street, or is a member of our church.

The parabolic Samaritan loved the wounded Jew as himself. And Jesus says to us what he said to the lawyer: “You go, and do likewise” (Luke 10:37).

How can we Define Humility?

In 1908, the British writer G. K. Chesterton described the embryo of today’s full-grown immature culture called postmodernism. One mark of its “vulgar relativism” (as Michael Novak calls it) is the hijacking of the word “arrogance” to refer to conviction and “humility” to refer to doubt. Chesterton saw it coming:

What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert — himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt — the Divine Reason. . . . The new skeptic is so humble that he doubts if he can even learn. . . . There is a real humility typical of our time; but it so happens that it’s practically a more poisonous humility than the wildest prostrations of the ascetic. . . . The old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which makes him stop working altogether. . . . We are on the road to producing a race of man too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. (Orthodoxy [Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1957], pp. 31–32)

We have seen it most recently in the resentment over Christians expressing the conviction that Jewish people (like everyone else) need to believe in Jesus to be saved. The most common response to this conviction is that Christians are arrogant. Modern-day humility would never cry, “Fire!” since the smoke might be vapor from the clothes dryer.

If humility is not compliance with the relativism of sophomoric skepticism, what is it? This question is important, since the Bible says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (1 Peter 5:5), and “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 14:11). God has told us at least five truths about humility.

1. Humility begins with a sense of subordination to God in Christ. “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master” (Matthew 10:24). “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God” (1 Peter 5:6).

2. Humility does not feel a right to better treatment than Jesus got. “If they have called the head of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign the members of his household!” (Matthew 10:25). Therefore humility does not return evil for evil. It is not life based on its perceived rights. “Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in his steps. . . . While suffering, he uttered no threats, but handed [his cause] over to him who judges righteously” (1 Peter 2:21–23).

3. Humility asserts truth not to bolster ego with control or with triumphs in debate, but as service to Christ and love to the adversary. “Love rejoices in the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6). “What I [Jesus] tell you in the darkness, speak in the light. . . . Do not fear” (Matthew 10:27–28). “We do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bond-servants for Jesus’s sake” (2 Corinthians 4:5).

4. Humility knows it is dependent on grace for all knowing and believing. “What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?” (1 Corinthians 4:7). “In humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls” (James 1:21).

5. Humility knows it is fallible, and so considers criticism and learns from it. But humility also knows that God has made provision for human conviction and that he calls us to persuade others. “We see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12). “A wise man is he who listens to counsel” (Proverbs 12:15). “Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men” (2 Corinthians 5:11).

Humbled under the mighty hand of God,

Be Careful the Pride may steal your Joy

Pride is perhaps the greatest evil that exists. It wreaks destruction at every level of human experience. It’s present in small irritations and in the collapse of great civilizations. Pride is the root of every sin and pollutes every otherwise righteous affection, motivation, and action.

While humility sees glory and wants to praise it, pride sees glory and wants to possess it. Pride turns ambition selfish, perverts sexual desire into unspeakable lusts, interprets net-worth as self-worth, infects the wound of grief and loss with the bacteria of bitterness, and twists competition into conquest.

To be proud is what it means to be fallen, whether angel or human. Pride is our most deadly enemy — it is what makes Satan deadly to us. And it is alive and active within us.

But Jesus came to deliver us from the power of pride and restore all the joy it steals. “Death to the tyrant pride!” is the great gospel battle cry of freedom.

The Killer of Our Happiness

To understand what pride is, we must understand what humility is. Humility is essentially the recognition of what is real, simply assessing things as they really are. To be fully humble is to fully trust God (Proverbs 3:5), the Truth (John 14:6;17:17), to govern according to his just ways and perfect work (Deuteronomy 32:4); to be content with what he gives us (Hebrews 13:5), knowing that “a person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven” (John 3:27).

Pride, then, is simply to think higher of ourselves, and therefore lower of others, than we ought to think (Romans 12:3). Oh so simple to define — and yet powerful to produce such hellish consequences. To be proud is to see the world through the lens of a lie.

In thinking ourselves far greater than we really are, we see truly great things far smaller than they really are. The lie of pride becomes a damned lie when we see God as smaller, and less important than he is. And in trying to make truly great things subservient to our false supremacy, pride shrinks our capacity to experience joy and wonder. In seeking to be gods and goddesses, we learn to only value what magnifies our glory or satisfies our appetites. We yawn at the Grand Canyon and fawn at the mirror.

“Pride makes us yawn at the Grand Canyon and fawn at the mirror.”

The damned lie of pride is that it promises us happiness through God-usurping self-exaltation, which turns out to be the very thing that kills our happiness. The more highly we think of ourselves, the smaller our capacity for wonder and worship over what is most worthy.

Only Children Enter the Kingdom

This is why Jesus said that only children would enter the kingdom of heaven.

At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:1–4)

Why do only childlike people enter the kingdom of heaven? Because only childlike people have the capacity to enjoy it.

Think about it like this: Children delight in going to a playground; adults chase delight in trying to possess their own “playground.” Children love to hear a great story; adults want to be impressively well-read. Children dance for joy at the thought of a doughnut; doughnut dancing is beneath the dignity of self-conscious adults. Children are easily absorbed in the greatness of something wonderful; adults are easily absorbed in wanting to be great.

“Proud ‘grown ups’ cannot be happy in heaven.”

Satan wants us to grow up and be like God. God, on the other hand, wants us to grow up and be like children. Listen to God. He knows that it requires humility to fully enjoy things for what they are. That’s why heaven is for children. Don’t listen to Satan. All he shows us is that proud “grown ups” cannot be happy in heaven.

Just Take the Next Humble Step

Jesus came into the world to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8). And the devil’s most destructive work was to turn humble, wonder-filled, happy creatures into proud, rebellious, miserable sin-slaves who think they can become gods and goddesses. On the cross Jesus purchased the reverse of this curse, to set us free from satanic pride and to restore our God-like joy and wonder.

This is why everything about the gospel is designed to expose our pride and force us to put it to death. God doesn’t humble us because, like some conceited tyrant, he takes pleasure in our groveling. He humbles us because he wants us to be happy and free — he wants us to reflect his image! God is perfectly humble; he sees all things — himself and everything else — exactly as they are. And he is the happiest being alive.

The only road for us proud sinners to travel to reach the promised land of joy and be the free children of God passes through the valley of humiliation. And it’s hard, and the trek requires real courage. Humbling ourselves often feels like death, but it really is not. It’s holy chemotherapy that kills the cancer of pride. “Whoever would save his life will lose it” (Luke 9:24) means losing the “pride of life” (1 John 2:16) in order to gain what is “truly life” (1 Timothy 6:19).

“The holy habit of humility is formed one honest step at a time.”

Yes, through humility Jesus is inviting us into a heaven of joy and wonder. And it’s a heaven that begins now. To travel this humble road to joy only requires taking the next step, the one right in front of us today. It’s that step that our pride doesn’t want us to take.

Go ahead and take it. You won’t regret it. The joy of humility will grow and the misery of pride will shrink as you do. The holy habit of humility is formed one honest step at a time.

The Symptoms of Pride

Pride will kill you. Forever. Pride is the sin most likely to keep you from crying out for a Savior. Those who think they are well will not look for a doctor.

As seriously dangerous as pride is, it’s equally hard to spot. When it comes to diagnosing our hearts, those of us who have the disease of pride have a challenging time identifying our sickness. Pride infects our eyesight, causing us to view ourselves through a lens that colors and distorts reality. Pride will paint even our ugliness in sin as beautiful and commendable.

We can’t conclude that we don’t struggle with pride because we don’t see pride in our hearts. The comfortable moments when I pat myself on the back for how well I am doing are the moments that should alarm me the most. I need to reach for the glasses of Christ-like humility, remembering that nothing good dwells in my flesh, and search my heart for secret pride and its symptoms.

In his essay on undetected pride, Jonathan Edwards points out seven sneaky symptoms of the infection of pride.

1. Fault-Finding

While pride causes us to filter out the evil we see in ourselves, it also causes us to filter out God’s goodness in others. We sift them, letting only their faults fall into our perception of them.

When I’m sitting in a sermon or studying a passage, it’s pride that prompts the terrible temptation to skip the Spirit’s surgery on my own heart and instead draft a mental blog post or plan a potential conversation for the people who “reallyneed to hear this.”

Edwards writes,

The spiritually proud person shows it in his finding fault with other saints. . . . The eminently humble Christian has so much to do at home and sees so much evil in his own that he is not apt to be very busy with other hearts.

2. A Harsh Spirit

Those who have the sickness of pride in their hearts speak of others’ sins with contempt, irritation, frustration, or judgment. Pride is crouching inside our belittling of the struggles of others. It’s cowering in our jokes about the ‘craziness’ of our spouse. It may even be lurking in the prayers we throw upward for our friends that are — subtly or not — tainted with exasperated irritation.

Again Edwards writes, “Christians who are but fellow-worms ought at least to treat one another with as much humility and gentleness as Christ treats them.”

3. Superficiality

When pride lives in our hearts, we’re far more concerned with others’ perceptions of us than the reality of our hearts. We fight the sins that have an impact on how others view us, and make peace with the ones that no one sees. We have great success in the areas of holiness that have highly visible accountability, but little concern for the disciplines that happen in secret.

4. Defensiveness

Those who stand in the strength of Christ’s righteousness alone find a confident hiding place from the attacks of men and Satan alike. True humility is notknocked off balance and thrown into a defensive posture by challenge or rebuke, but instead continues in doing good, entrusting the soul to our faithful Creator.

Edwards says, “For the humble Christian, the more the world is against him, the more silent and still he will be, unless it is in his prayer closet, and there he will not be still.”

5. Presumption Before God

Humility approaches God with humble assurance in Christ Jesus. If either the “humble” or the “assurance” are missing in that equation, our hearts very well might be infected with pride. Some of us have no shortage of boldness before God, but if we’re not careful, we can forget that he is God.

Edwards writes, “Some, in their great rejoicing before God, have not paid sufficient regard to that rule in Psalm 2:11 — ‘Worship the Lord with reverence, and rejoice with trembling.’”

Others of us feel no confidence before God. Which sounds like humility, but in reality it’s another symptom of pride. In those moments, we’re testifying that we believe our sins are greater than his grace. We doubt the power of Christ’s blood and we’re stuck staring at ourselves instead of Christ.

6. Desperation for Attention

Pride is hungry for attention, respect, and worship in all its forms.

Maybe it sounds like shameless boasting about ourselves. Maybe it’s being unable to say “no” to anyone because we need to be needed. Maybe it looks like obsessively thirsting for marriage — or fantasizing about a better marriage — because you’re hungry to be adored. Maybe it looks like being haunted by your desire for the right car or the right house or the right title at work: all because you seek the glory that comes from men, not God.

7. Neglecting Others

Pride prefers some people over others. It honors those who the world deems worthy of honor, giving more weight to their words, their wants, and their needs. There’s a thrill that goes through me when people with “power” acknowledge me. We consciously or unconsciously pass over the weak, the inconvenient, and the unattractive, because they don’t seem to offer us much.

Maybe more of us struggle with pride than we thought.

There’s good news for the prideful. Confession of pride signals the beginning of the end for pride. It indicates the war is already being waged. For only when the Spirit of God is moving, already humbling us, can we remove the lenses of pride from our eyes and see ourselves clearly, identifying the sickness and seeking the cure.

By God’s grace, we can turn once again to the glorious gospel in which we stand and make much of him even through identifying our pride in all its hiding places inside of us. Just as my concealed pride once moved me toward death, so the acknowledgement of my own pride moves me toward life by causing me to cling more fiercely to the righteousness of Christ.

Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting! (Psalm 139:23–24)

What did Jesus mean when he said; I am the Way, The Truth and the Life?

John 14:1-11,

“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. ² In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? ³ And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. ⁴ And you know the way to where I am going.” ⁵ Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” ⁶ Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. ⁷ If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” ⁸ Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” ⁹ Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? ¹⁰ Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. ¹¹ Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.”

The Gospel of John and this passage in particular is very practical. Very relevant to one of the most common struggles we have, namely, the tendency to have an unholy heart-turmoil. we saw in verse 21 that “Jesus was troubled in his spirit.” And I argued that there is, therefore, a holy turmoil of soul — a righteous unrest — caused by love, not unbelief.

But here in John 14:1 we meet an unholy heart-turmoil. “Let not your hearts be troubled.” This is a fretful failure to trust God fully for the problem we are facing. At first it may look like Jesus is addressing an anxiety that isn’t the one you’re dealing with. But hang on, because Jesus takes a surprising turn in this story.

Recalling This Gospel's Goal

You recall how this Gospel works. John tells us in John 20:31 what his goal for you is: “These are written so that you may believe (trust, be assured, treasure the reality) that Jesus is the Christ (the promise-fulfilling Messiah), the Son of God (the presence of God himself — God the Son — among us), and that by believing you may have life in his name.” And when he says “life” he means the connection with God’s life, through connection with Jesus. And that life includes the power not to have unholy turmoil of soul.

So what we encounter in this Gospel is the living God, the creator of the world, present among us humans, in our world in his Son — the infinitely loved, eternal, image and radiance of his essence — and through faith — through believing and receiving him for all that he is — we are connected to this on and through him to the Father, and so share in eternal, supernatural life, even now.

How Unholy Turmoil Is Overcome

And what Jesus does in today’s text, John 14:1–11, is show us how he and the Father team up to overcome our unholy turmoil of soul and give strength and peace to carry on in the sacrifices of love that we saw last week. And he does this by calling us to trust Jesus and the Father, and giving five reasons why we should. And between reason three and four Jesus takes the surprising turn in a direction that you may find more helpful than you thought.

So first notice that verse 1 and verse 11 — the first and last verses in the text — make the main point. Verse 1: “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God;believe also in me.” Verse 11: “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.”

So you can see what he is after: Belief. Faith. And this is the opposite of your hearts being troubled. Verse 1: Don’t be troubled: Trust me. Trust God. And twice in verse 11: “Believe me.” “Believe.” Trusting Jesus for who he really is, and trusting God, are included in each other. John 12:44, “Whoever believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent me.” We’ll see why that is before we are done. The point is: Don’t be troubled. Trust me, and in trusting me, trust God.

He had just told them at the last supper that he was going away (John 13:36). He had told them that they could not go with him. And he had told Peter he was going to deny Jesus before the night is over (John 13:38). In other words, I’m leaving you. And you’re not even able to make it through the night without me.This is ample reason for all of them at the table to be troubled.

And Jesus says in the next verse (ignore the chapter break) “Don’t be troubled.” Even Peter! That’s amazing. “Instead, trust me. Trust God.” And he is saying it to you now.

Five Reasons to Not Be Troubled, But Trust Jesus

The rest of this text (verses 2–10) is support for that exhortation. Why should they — and why should we — not be troubled? Why should we trust you in a situation like this? Or in our unique situation? Jesus now gives five reasons.

1. Don’t be troubled, but trust me, because my Father has many rooms in his house and each of you will have one.

Verse 2: “In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? ³ And if I go and prepare a place for you . . .” (John 14:2–3).

Pause there and let the first reason for faith sink in. God’s house is large. It has many rooms. He won’t run out of space. And, (see the end of verse 2) there is a place for you. "I go to prepare a place for you." The argument for trust is based on three things: First, this is God’s house, not his hotel. His children live with him in his house. Second, it is very spacious so that he never  runs out of room. And third, there is a room designed for each of the eleven, even Peter. And that means even you, if you trust him.

So, Peter, and all us other fragile saints who follow Jesus so imperfectly, don’t be let unholy turmoil rise in your heart. Trust Jesus. Trust God. You will have a place in his house — indeed in his household as his child. "To as many as received him, to them he gave power to become the children of God" (John 1:12).

Yes. I’m leaving. No. You can’t come with me now. Yes, you will be scattered this night when they strike the shepherd, and I will do this work alone. But don’t let your sorrow . . . Don’t let your fear . . . Don’t let your shame . . . produce an unholy turmoil in your soul. Let not your hearts be troubled. Trust me. Trust God. Why? There will be a place for you in my Father’s house, as my Father’s children, forever.

2. Don’t be troubled, but trust me, because I myself am going to make ready the place of dwelling with God.

Verses 2–3a: “In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? ³ And if I go and prepare a place for you . . .”

So two times Jesus says, “I go to prepare a place for you.” What does that mean? Does it mean that things in heaven are in disrepair? Does it mean that the sweetness of fellowship with God is a defective thing and in need of improvement? Does it mean that Jesus can say in Matthew 25:34, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world,” but that he can’t say, “the rooms have been prepared from the foundation of the world”?

I don’t think so. The house of God is not in disrepair. The sweetness of fellowship with God does not need improvement. And this dwelling near the heart of God has been in one sense designed and suitable for redeemed sinners from before the creation of the world. But there are two senses in which things are not yet ready as Jesus speaks.

The Way There Is Not Yet Prepared

One of these senses is this. What is not yet ready — not yet prepared — is the way to get your room in God’s presence. Sin has not been atoned for. And Jesus is the Lamb of God about to be slain (John 1:29, 36). The wrath of God, the condemnation, the curse of God, is still unsatisfied, and Jesus is about to become a curse for us (Galatians 3:13) and bear our condemnation (Romans 8:3) and endure the bruising of the Father (Isaiah 53:10). Death is yet to be defeated and Jesus is about to give his life and take it back again from the jaws of death (John 10:18).

Every obstacle between us and our room in the Father’s house is about to be removed in the next three days. That’s the first thing I think Jesus means when he says: I am going to prepare a place for you. I'm preparing it not in the sense that's it's defective but that the way there is not prepared.

I think Jesus confirms that he is thinking this way in verses 4–6,

“And you know the way to where I am going.” ⁵ Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”⁶ Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

In other words: I go to prepare a place for you. And as I go I become the way that you get there. I am the truth that you hold onto to get there. And I am the life — the eternal life that you will enjoy when you get there. When I say, “I go to prepare a place for you,” I mean: I open the way. And I am the way. I confirm the truth. And I am the truth. I purchase the life. And I am that life. 

In other words, Peter and the other disciples, and you and I, do not need to have an unholy turmoil of soul that we are imperfect, wrath-deserving, unworthy followers of Jesus. Our sin does not mean that our place in God’s household will be unavailable, or unsuitable. Because Jesus, this night, goes to purchase our forgiveness and become the way to the Father. He makes our room not only available, but suitable and certain for his redeemed sheep. So let not your hearts be troubled. Trust me.

But that is not all he means when he says “I go to prepare a place for you.” The third argument for why we should trust Jesus explains another meaning. There is a second sense in which things are not yet ready as Jesus speaks.

3. Don’t be troubled, but trust me, because I myself will be your dwelling, and I will get you there.

Verse 3: “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.”

I think this is one of the most important phrases in this passage: I will take you to myself. This shifts the focus from a place to a person. Where Jesus is, there is heaven. What is the essence of heaven? The immediate presence of Jesus. So when he says, “I go to prepare a place for you,” isn’t the essence of what he is saying: I go this night through death for you, and I go Easter Sunday morning out of death for you, so that I myself might be your living dwelling place.

I am your room in my Father’s house. And I am not yet prepared to receive you there. I must die. I must rise. I must be glorified. I must intercede for you. And when I have done that, then I will be ready. I will come and take you to myself.

He Won't Take Us to Heaven

Don’t use this passage of Scripture to show that where Jesus comes back at the Second Coming he will take you to heaven. It does not say that. It says, “I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” And where will he be when he comes? We will meet him in the air, and he will establish his reign on the earth. And so we will forever be with the Lord (1 Thessalonians 4:16–17).

What this text focuses on in the Second Coming is not a return to heaven but a reunion with Christ. “I will come again and will take you to myself.” Therefore, my beloved disciples, let not your heart be troubled. Trust. Trust me that I am coming for you. I will come. I will take you. And trust me because the dwelling I have prepared for you is my crucified, risen, and glorified self. Don’t be troubled, I will come and take you to myself.

Far Away Comforts?

You might feel at this point: Those comforts are wonderful. But they are so far away. At death or at the Second Coming. What is causing the unholy turmoil in my soul now is that I don’t know what’s best for my children. Or: my marriage is fragile and unaffectionate. Or: my health is failing. Or: I can’t stand my job. Or: I am so lonely. If Jesus doesn’t want my heart troubled now, is there some encouragement for faith closer than the second coming?

And here is where Jesus takes the surprising turn in the passage.

Look at what Philip says in verse 8: “Philip said to him, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.’” Not: Show us the Father someday. But now. We want to see the Father now. And if we do, that will be “enough”. That will be sufficient. It’s the same word Paul uses in 2 Corinthians 12:9, “My grace is sufficient for you.”Show us the Father now, and that will satisfy our troubled heart. Is God near now? Show us.

So the fourth argument Jesus gives us for trusting him is:

4. Don’t be troubled, but trust me, because the very Father, who has a place for you in his eternal presence, is with you now.

The emphasis of verses 7–11 is crystal clear. Six times Jesus says virtually the same thing: that he and the Father are so profoundly one, that his presence is the presence of the God the Father.

1.      Verse 7a: “If you had known me, you would have known my Father also.”

2.      Verse 7b: “From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

3.      Verse 9a in response to Philip's request to see the Father: Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip?”

4.      Verse 9b: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?

5.      Verse 10a “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?

6.      Verse 11a: “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.”

Therefore, Philip, is it enough? You said (verse 8), “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” I have showed you. He is here. As close to you as I am. Is it enough? Is it enough for you?

But you may respond to Jesus, "But you went away. You were there. And when you were there God was there. The Father was there in you. But now you’re gone."

Which brings us to one last argument for why our hearts should not be troubled. And this time he has you in mind very specifically, not just the apostles.

5. Don’t be troubled, but trust me, because I will be with you always, not just at my return.

How can that be? He has left. He is in heaven with the Father interceding for us at God’s right hand. To see this argument we need to drop down five verses after our text — to verses 16–18.

I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, ¹⁷ even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. ¹⁸ I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.

I will not leave you, I will come to you. When the Helper, the Holy Spirit, came, Jesus came. When it says at the end of verse 17, “He dwells with you, and will be in you,” he means, I am with you now physically. And I will be in you spiritually —when the Spirit comes. This is why Paul talks the way he does about the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit of Christ, and Christ himself. Listen to these amazing words from Romans 8:9–10,

You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10 But ifChrist is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.

Near You, You

That Spirit of God dwells in you. That is, the Spirit of Christ. That is, Christ! This is not the Second Coming — as glorious as that will be — this is now. He has gone away physically, precisely so that he can be near to all of his own, not just the 11. He has not left you as orphans. He has come to you.

He is right now more interested in, and more caring about, your parenting and marriage and singleness and failing health and job and loneliness than you can imagine. He did not come to us as an observer, but as a Helper.

Summary: Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled. . .

Therefore, you who trust the Lord Jesus:

1.      Let not your heart be troubled, because there’s a place for you in my Father’s house.

2.      Let not your heart be troubled, because Jesus prepared the place for you. He opened the way. He is the way.

3.      Let not your heart be troubled, because Jesus himself is your dwelling place and he will come and take you to himself.

4.      Let not your heart be troubled, because Jesus and the Father are one, so that if have Jesus you have the Father.

5.      Let not your heart be troubled, because Jesus has come in the Holy Spirit. He is with you now, and will be with you always, not as an observer, but a Helper.