²⁶“In that day you will ask in My name, and I do not say to you that I will request of the Father on your behalf; ²⁷ for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came forth from the Father.

Hard to take, but maybe it is beginning to dawn on them—Jesus would no longer “pass on their requests” to God. The disciples had become used to the idea that Jesus had a special relationship with God, and that their access to the Father had something to do with Jesus. But with Jesus leaving them, He says they will now have direct access to God. And it’s not a matter of Jesus conveying their concerns to the Father – that will not be necessary. It is not that Jesus doesn’t want to intercede for them, or that they can never talk with Him again (for as we have shown before there is a legitimate place for praying to Jesus). It is just that they also have direct access to the Father now, just like Jesus has direct access.

There are many in the world who believe that Christians need to go through various intermediaries, like saints, or even the earthly mother of our Lord, Mary (calling her a mediatrix). The idea is that supposedly such holy individuals would be more likely heard by the heavenly Father than the rest of us average human beings. Some even feel that if Mary makes requests for us, the Lord would never deny His own mother. Such thinking is nonsense and besides having no basis at all in Scripture, completely dismisses the wonderful teaching of our Lord in the Upper Room. Followers of Christ have a direct love relationship with the Father. He loves us, and doesn’t need anyone else to intercede for us, He will hear us directly. We have a personal, instantaneous, ever-available audience with God.

In human relationships, when two people love each other, they do not require an intermediary to express their intimacies to each other. It may be that a girl in grade school might be embarrassed to express her affections to a boy and so she asks a friend to convey a “love” message for her. That is at best sophomore-ish. As followers of Christ, we can express our love to Him directly. To use a mediator would be an insult to our relationship with Him.

This doesn’t mean that Jesus is sidelined as though His role was simply to introduce us to the Father. Rather, it is that we have been brought into the same relationship of love with the Father that Jesus has with Him. The Father loves us because we have loved the Son. And since the Son comes from the Father, we therefore love the Father and He loves us. We have entered the community of love within the Trinity. What a blessed place to be!

Father and Son, I am absolutely privileged to be part of Your circle of love.