INTRODUCTION

No portion of the Holy Scriptures reveals more fully and clearly the Lord’s final hours of fellowship with His disciples in “the Upper Room” than do chapters thirteen through seventeen of the Gospel of John, the chapters of John which record “the Upper Room Discourse of Jesus” and “the High-Priestly Prayer of Jesus.” In these chapters, we see Jesus, emptied of the independent use of His kingly attributes, engaged in “a towel ministry,” the ministry of a servant, loving His own, even “unto the end,” John 13:1.

The Upper Room Discourse is filled with drama and pathos. First, we see Jesus, the disciples’ Lord and Master, washing the disciples’ feet, giving them a never-to-be-forgotten lesson on love and humility, and then, sandwiched between Jesus’ announcement of His imminent betrayal by one of His disciples and His prediction of His denial by Peter, we read of the giving of “a new commandment,” a commandment to “love one another, as I have loved you,” a commandment designed to reunite the disciples after “they all forsook Him and fled.” The love demanded by this “new commandment” would not only bind their hearts together to carry out their new responsibilities in their leader’s (Christ’s) absence but it would also provide them with “the mark of discipleship” (the mark of love for one another has been the identifying mark of Jesus’ real disciples down through the centuries). In chapter fourteen, Jesus comforts the disciples in many ways, especially by promising them that He “will come again and receive you [believers] unto myself,” by encouraging them in His absence to ask anything they would in His name, believing that He would do it, and by promising them the soon coming of another Comforter who will abide with them forever. He then in chapters 14, and 16 gives the disciples a revelation of the person and the work of the Holy Spirit that is the Bible’s most complete revelation on these themes. In chapter 15, the revelation of Christ as the “true vine” is made. After the completion of “the Upper Room Discourse,” we have, in chapter seventeen, a record of “the High-Priestly Prayer of Jesus,” the subject of many great books on prayer.

One can readily see why our beloved friend, Rev. Roy E. Gingrich, pastor of Faith Bible Church, Memphis, Tennessee, and Professor of Bible at Mid-South Bible College, Memphis, Tennessee, devoted this commentary to such an exalted subject as the private ministry of Christ as it is recorded in John, chapters thirteen through seventeen. Few men are qualified to write on these sacred chapters but Mr. Gingrich’s qualifications are readily seen in this commentary, as we read his exegesis of difficult passages and his application of the exegetic truths to our lives today. Brother Roy Gingrich, as he is affectionately ...