That inside air was getting a bit thick for Judas. Love's tender
pleading unyielded to makes breathing difficult.

Again Jesus begins talking in the cleared air. The hour had full come.
The character of the Son of Man would now be revealed,[111] and in being
revealed God's character would also be understood, and God Himself would
show what _He_ thought of Jesus by His personal recognition and
acknowledgment of Him, and He would do it at once. The clock is striking
the hour. Now He was going away. They would not understand.[112]

Then Jesus strikes the great key-note of their future conduct as He
goes on. _The_ thing is this: _love one another_. This is the badge He
gives them to wear. It will always identify them as His very own. Peter
picks up the one bit he understands, and is told that he cannot yet
follow in the tremendous experience lying just ahead for Jesus, but some
day he can, and will. And then to Peter's blundering self-confidence
comes a plain tender reminder of his weakness.[113] So that wondrous
fourteenth chapter that Christendom loves begins back in the thirteenth.

And Jesus goes quietly on as they still linger about the table.[114] He
had been sorely troubled,[115] but He would have them not troubled by
their doubtings regarding Himself. It is true that they were outcasts
with Him, from their national home, but He would provide them a home,
and a better one. They did believe in God. They should believe Him just
as implicitly. This is the warp into which is woven the whole fabric of
that evening's talk. The whole talk is a plea for their trusting loving
acceptance of Himself as fully as of God. This word "_believe_" changes
its outer shape three times during that evening, making four words in
all, but it's always the same thing underneath.

So now the teaching goes on in freest exchange of question and answer.
What a picture of how we may talk everything out with our Lord and get
fully answered. Thomas' question helps Jesus to turn them away from
thinking of a roadway of clay and sand to a Man. Philip's helps Him to
insist on the presence of the Father in a distinctive sense within this
Man so familiarly talking with them. And then four times over He rings
out that word _believe_.

Then by a subtle turn He changes the word, though not the thing, to help
them understand better: "If ye _love_ Me."[116] That puts the thing at
once up on the _heart_ level. Believing is a thing of the heart. Their
heads