Charles Ellicott Commentary John 14:1

"Let not your heart be troubled: believe in God, believe also in me." — John 14:1 (ASV)

Let not your heart be troubled.—The division of chapters is unfortunate, as it breaks the close connection between these words and those which have gone immediately before. The prophecy of St. Peter’s denial had followed upon the indication of Judas as the traitor, and upon the announcement of the Lord’s departure. These thoughts may well have brought troubled hearts. The Lord Himself had been troubled as the darkness drew on (John 12:27; John 13:21), and He calms the anxious thoughts that He reads in the souls of the disciples.

You believe in God, believe also in Me.—It is more natural to take both these clauses as imperative—Believe in God, believe also in Me. Our English version reads the first and last clauses of the verse as imperative, and the second as an indicative, but there is no good reason for doing so; and a sense more in harmony with the context is obtained by reading them all as imperatives.

As a matter of fact, the present trouble of the disciples' hearts arose from a lack of a true belief in God; and the command is to exercise a true belief, and to realise the presence of the Father, as manifested in the person of the Son.

There was a sense in which every Jew believed in God. That belief lay at the very foundation of the theocracy; but like all the axioms of creeds, it was accepted as a matter of course, and too often had no real power in life.

What our Lord here teaches the disciples is the reality of the Fatherhood of God as a living power, ever present with them and in them; and He teaches them that the love of God is revealed in the person of the Word made flesh. This faith is the simplest article of the Christian’s creed. We teach children to say, and we ourselves constantly say, “I believe in God the Father.” If we but fully grasped the meaning of what we say, the troubles of our hearts would be hushed to silence; and our religion would be a real power over the whole of life, and would also be, in a fullness in which it never has been, a real power over the life of the world.