How Christ sustains me in the world during His absence. —JOHN
We are on the earth, and we belong to glory, and are going to it. We, therefore, require to know our Lord, and how He is present with us to help us in passing through the world, and also how He leads us into apprehension of our ultimate position in Him apart from and out of this world.
On the earth our hearts are necessarily “troubled” if He be absent, unless He fills up or supplies the absence: but this He does, and how He does so is detailed in John 14. Our Lord being absent, lost to sight, faith alone can connect us with Him; Divine faith, as we believe in God. If this be weak, all apprehension of Him, and what He is to us in His absence, must be weak. It is the connecting link, and therefore, we can understand how faith in the Lord Jesus is largely insisted on in the Epistles. The Spirit fills our souls in answer to it. (John 7) It is through believing on Him that His provision for me on the earth during His absence is made known to me. Now the first thing I learn is that He has prepared a place for me out of it. He has gone to the mansions of the Father, there to prepare a place for me This is a necessity of love; for if He who loves me so much be gone away, He must, in leaving me, reckon on having a place where He can have me with Himself. How reassuring therefore, to my heart to know that He has prepared a place for me; and that He will, without fail, come again and receive me unto Himself, that where He is, there I may be also. What a wonderful and effectual deliverance from the trials of the place I am in, to know that a place outside of it is prepared for me by Him who has so loved me! I can then connect myself in hope and feeling with my new and happy place, and dissociate myself accordingly from this place that I am in.
The next thing is, that He makes known to me the Father. “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” The sense of Almighty power and care is made known through Him to the soul; therefore, it is added, greater works than these shall he that believes in Him do, because he goes to the Father. The Father comprises supreme care and power. Christ makes Him known to the believing one walking on the earth, adding, in connection therewith the practical manner in which we learn it, “Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name (you would not ask in His name if you did not believe in Him) that will I do (power here I apprehend and not a mere gift) that the Father might be glorified in the Son.” If I pray to Him, He Himself, in reply, will work in me in order to assure my heart of the Father. The Father is thus glorified in the Son. Almighty care and protection are made known to me in this scene of difficulty where I am. In dependence on Him I shall know His power. If I ask anything in His name He will do it, though he be absent. If He be everything to me I shall know His power acting for me.
Then in verse 15, there is, I apprehend, a turn to us. He had been describing what He was to the believing one. Now, it is said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments;” and then he tells, of the service of the Comforter, who, when He comes, will make us know that He is in the Father, and we in Him, and He in us. What deep and wonderful resource for the heart in this sorrowful world! And then follows that He will manifest Himself unto me, if I love Him; for if I love Him I keep His commandments. Love is always obedient, if it be true, for it confides; and there is no confidence apart from esteem. He cannot manifest Himself if I do not keep His commandments. He could not keep company with the unholy and disobedient. But if I love Him I keep His words, even more than His commandments, and His Father will love me; and they will come into me, and make their abode with me. The society of those who entirely interest me, invest every circumstance around with interest peculiar to themselves, and their interest becomes mine. But when the greatness, and goodness, and light, and love, and care of God, in personal nearness and relationship, are made known to me, my heart must have abundant resource in the scene, however trying. And, therefore, it naturally follows that I have the Lord’s peace in it.
Christ’s love is perfect love. My past occupied Him. My place on earth and in heaven occupy Him. In chaps. 13, 16, He is occupied with the present, my course on earth; in 17, with the future, my present entrance into it while on earth. In Chapter 14, it is His provision for myself individually, in my own heart assuring me of a place prepared by Him, to which He will bring me, of the Father made known to me, the blessing of dependence, the Comforter, and, finally, the Father and Son abiding with me, their Society. While in Chapter 17, the Lord places us in the hands of the Father to keep us from the evil of the world, and in unity of mind, oneness in purpose and action, “that they may be one as we are,” sanctified as He is sanctified, reaching up to the desire of His heart to be with Him where He is, to behold His glory, and thus He concludes, I have declared thy name (as in Chapter 14), and I will declare it (as now) that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them. The Father’s love to Christ comprised present interest and future glory. That love which sustained Him in all His course of sorrow and trial down here, is the love which He would now declare unto us. He alone and apart from every one, fed on and rested in this love, while He walked here below. No one could bear Him company. It was a solitary, untrodden path in every way, but not so far as we are to know the love He knew, and He will be with us, for He adds, “and I in them.” The Father’s love to Christ comprised present interest and future glory.
May we understand and enjoy our inexhaustible resources in Him who has so loved us.
S.