Four things,#####

There are four things about Jesus which this passage makes very clear.

(i) The loneliness of Jesus. He would be deserted and betrayed in his moment of greatest need left alone by his friends. Yet never alone, because God was with him. When you stand for what is right and everyone deserts you ,you are you are never alone for God stands with you. No good man is ever completely forsaken, for he is never forsaken by God.

(ii) The forgiveness of Jesus.  He loved them knowingly and forgivingly. He knew that his friends would abandon him, yet at the moment he did not condemn them. and afterwards he did not hold it against them. He loved men in all their weakness; saw them and loved them as they were. Love must be clear-sighted. If we idolize a person and think him faultless, we are doomed to disappointment. We must love him as he really is.

(iii) The sympathy of Jesus. One verse here at first sight seems out of place: “I have said this to you, that in me you may have peace.” The point is this—if Jesus had not foretold the weakness of the disciples, afterwards when they realized how they had failed him, might well have been driven to utter and absolute despair. It is as if he said: “I know what’s going to happen; you must not think that your disloyalty came as a shock to me; I knew it was coming; and it does not make any difference to my love. When you think about it afterwards, don’t despair.” Here is divine pity and divine forgiveness. Jesus was thinking, not of how men’s sin would hurt him, but of how it would hurt them. Sometimes it would make all the difference if we thought, not of how much someone has hurt us, but of how much the fact that they hurt us has driven them to regret and the sorrow of an aching heart.

(iv) The gift of Jesus—courage and conquest. Very soon something was going to be unanswerably proved to the disciples. They were going to see that the world could do its worst to Jesus and still not defeat him. And he says: “The victory which I will win can be your victory too. The world did its worst to me, and I emerged victorious. Life can do its worst to you, and you too can emerge victorious. We too can possess the courage and the conquest of the Cross.”