In chapter fifteen He went on to tell His disciples that they should abide in Him, and that He would abide in them. They should make Him their home, and He would make them His home. This is a mutual abiding, a mutual home. You are His home, and He is your home. You take Him as your home, and He takes you as His home.
I believe we can all testify according to our daily experiences that we have the realization we are in the Lord, and the Lord is in us. Many times I have had this kind of sensation. Sometimes when I was on an airplane I realized I was not just on the plane, I was in Christ. While I was in Christ, He was in me. This kind of sensation comes spontaneously after you offer Christ as your sin offering and your trespass offering. Spontaneously you would sense that you are in Him, and He is in you. Eventually, you realize that Christ is not only your sin offering and your trespass offering, but also your abiding place. He becomes your abode. When you realize that He is your abode, you also realize that you are His abode. There is a kind of mutual abiding.
Then in chapter sixteen the Lord Jesus went on to say, “All that the Father has is Mine; therefore I said that He receives of Mine and shall disclose it to you” (v. 15). This means that whatever the Father has is embodied in the Son. Whatever the Son is, is realized through the Spirit. And whatever the Spirit is, is in us. This means that the Son is the embodiment of the Father, the Spirit is the realization of the Son, and we are the expression of the Triune God. The Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—is in us and we are His abode.
Chapter fourteen tells us that there are many abodes and one Father’s house. That means you and I can enter in and abide there. In chapter fourteen He also told us that He is the way. But this way is a life. This is why He is the way, and He is the life. If the Lord Jesus is not your life, you don’t have a way to enter into God the Father. The way for you to enter into God the Father is the Lord Jesus as your life. When you have the life, you have the way. This is mysterious.
But we can illustrate by the food you eat. All the food and the nourishment you eat does not enter into you as lifeless matter. If you eat a small rock, it simply passes through you without giving any nourishment. Nourishment is something of life. It is something that can enter into your cells and even into your fibers. Once you take food in, it is digested and assimilated into your blood and into your cells and even into your fibers. Eventually, what has been assimilated by you becomes you. If you eat a lot of fish, you become a composition of fish, or a constitution of fish. This is how we can say that the Triune God becomes us. You are what you eat.
So in chapter fourteen you have the abode, and you have the way to enter in. The abode is the Triune God, and the way to enter in is life. If you don’t have Christ as the life, you could never enter into the Father. But when you take Christ as your life, this life becomes the way for you to enter into the Father. So the Father becomes your abode, and eventually in chapter fifteen there is the mutual abiding with the mutual abode.
After these three chapters we come to chapter seventeen where the Lord Jesus prayed. Before we get into His prayer, I must point out that chapter seventeen is the incense altar. Chapters fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen are the actual tabernacle which 1:14 mentions. “The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.” But where is this tabernacle? It is in chapters fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen. The laver is in chapter thirteen and following this are three chapters which are a full description and a full portrait of the tabernacle. Now we are in the Triune God, which means we are in the tabernacle. We have passed by the showbread table, the lampstand, and the ark. Now we have arrived at our destination. Our destination within the tabernacle is the incense altar.