That which is called for on the part of the disciple is love: If you love me, you will obey what I command, or, more literally, “you will keep my commands”. This statement is not so much a promise that the one who loves him will keep his commands as it is a definition of love itself. Jesus is referring not only to his ethical instructions, but to the whole of his teaching, including his way of life. Accordingly, the Gospel of Saint John will instruct his disciples later, saying, “Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did”. Now the hallmark of Jesus’ “ways,” his “walk,” was complete dependence on and obedience to the Father, only doing and speaking what he received from the Father. Such a life is itself an expression of love, since love, for John, is the laying down of one’s life. Thus Jesus himself has modeled the life of love he describes here in terms of obedience. Love, like faith, is the engagement of the whole person, especially the person’s will. Faith and love unite disciples to God and take them up into God’s work, but these “greater things” will require God’s own resources. So Jesus promises that I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever. In John the functions of the Counselor are mainly “teaching, revealing and interpreting Jesus to the disciples”. John speaks of the Counselor in relation to the Father, the Son, the disciples and the world. The Father is the source of the Counselor, and Jesus is the one who sends the Holy Spirit by asking the Father to send him.
The various terms used to Holy Spirit, such as Counselor, Advocate and Comforter, get at different aspects of what he accomplishes through his presence. The Holy Spirit is called “the Spirit of truth”, which may help explain why the world does not see or know him, since the world is neither holy nor of the truth. His dwelling is with the believers, for he is in them and is known by them. By his presence with the disciples, not with the world, and by his witness to Jesus who was rejected by the world, the Holy Spirit judges the world through the believers. As the divine presence among believers the Holy Spirit enables them to be God’s presence in the world. He is with them and in them glorifying Jesus by revealing the truth about him to believers. In this way, the community, by the presence of the Holy Spirit, bears witness to Jesus and thus continues Jesus’ own mission of judgment and life-giving.
Jesus then ties this teaching together by repeating his description of the disciples of whom all of this will be true: Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. This union is not simply a matter of shared ideas or feelings but of shared life. The love is reciprocal: He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him. This verse does not deny the love God has for all his creatures, but rather speaks of the fulfillment of that love in a qualitatively new way for those who are in the Son. Believers are those who “have entered into the same reciprocity of love that unites the Father and the Son”.
Jesus says that he himself will love such a disciple and will show himself to him or her. Thus, Jesus himself will remain in personal contact with his disciples. He may be departing, but he will remain in relationship with them although the relationship will exist in a new form. The showing he mentions could refer to his resurrection appearances, but the shift from the plural to the singular suggests more is intended. The reference to resurrection presence slides over into a reference to the ongoing presence mediated by the Spirit.