John 14:1

The placement is almost unbearable when you notice it. The previous verse is Jesus telling Peter that before the cock crows he will have denied him three times. The chapter break we read is a later addition; in the original there is no gap. Peter has just been told the worst thing about himself, and the next words in the room are: don't let your heart be troubled.

So this is not general encouragement. It is said to a man who has just learned he is going to fail badly, publicly, within hours.

And nothing in it revises the prediction. Jesus does not soften it or suggest Peter might yet hold. The denial stands. What is offered alongside it is an instruction to believe, and the object of the believing is given twice: believe in God, believe also in me.

The grammar can be read as statement or command in both halves, and translators disagree. Either way the pairing is the striking part. He puts belief in himself alongside belief in God as though they were the same act, in a room of monotheistic Jews, on the night before his execution.

What this verse does not do is make the trouble unreasonable. Their hearts had every reason to be troubled and shortly would be. It tells them where to put the weight while that is true.