Thus had the Lord guaranteed the solemn and withal cheering promise, that His proceeding to the Father was in no way to stem and dry up the mighty stream of gracious power in which He had wrought here below. The believer in Him was to do what He did, and yet greater things. This He now follows up and explains by the place given to that exercise of faith which issues in prayer, henceforth to have its fullest character in His name who had glorified the Father to the uttermost.
“And whatsoever ye shall ask [or beg] in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask [or beg] anything in my name, I will do it.” (Vers. 13, 14.) The disciples were thus to count on power that could not fail, if sought in His name; for Jesus was no mere man, whose departure must terminate what He used to do when present. Absent, He would prove Himself divine, and none the less interested in their petitions because He was risen from the dead. Whatever they might ask, He would do, that the Father might be glorified in the Son. And, not content with a broad assurance in verse 13, no matter what the difficulty, He repeats it in verse 14, as to any particular petition on their part, with a yet more emphatic pledge of His personal action.
But the Lord adds a great deal more, and of the deepest moment. “If ye love me, keep [or, ye will keep] my commandments; and I will ask my Father, and he will give you another Advocate, that he may be with you forever, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it beholdeth him not, nor knoweth him; but ye know him, because he abideth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you orphans, I am coming unto you. Yet a little, and the world beholdeth me no more; but ye behold me: because I live, ye also shall live.” (Vers. 15-19.) The way to show their affection and devotedness to their Master would be by obedience; for, whatever His grace, He does not disguise from them His authority. To obey His commandments, then, would prove their love far better than zeal in work or sorrow for His absence. For His absence, however serious in itself, is turned by God's goodness and wisdom, to better blessings and deeper ways for the saints, even as it furnishes the occasion for bringing out the bidden counsels of God to His own infinite glory in Christ. Their place was to obey His commandments, as they loved Him; whilst He would ask His Father, who would send them Another, a Paraclete or Advocate as He Himself had been, One who would undertake and carry through their cause, as a Roman patron of old did for his clients, or a modern solicitor does in his measure and sphere. “Comforter” seems too narrow a word, and separates the Spirit unduly from our Lord, who could hardly be so styled in John 2:1, where Paraclete is applied to His action on high, as here to the Holy Ghost's on earth.
Further, this other Advocate, given by the Father in answer to Christ, was not to be for a brief season, like the Savior here below. “He will give you another Advocate, that he may be with you forever.” This is a truth of the deepest consolation, but most solemn for Christendom. Who believes it? Certainly not those who boast of evangelical views, yet proclaim their unconscious unbelief by regular prayers at the beginning of every year, that God would pour out afresh His Holy Spirit on His children in their low estate. Is it meant that the self-complacent mass in Christendom, (which utters no such special petitions, but assumes that the Holy Ghost acts, necessarily and infallibly, through popes, or patriarchs, or kindred officials,) are more really believing? Far from it. They are inflated with pride, as if God sustains and sanctions their position, and utter blindness holds their eyes, so that they cannot see their state to be one of departure from God's will and truth and grace. But the opposite pole of an error may he also an error; and the assumption that the Holy Spirit directs Babylon, in her confusion of the world and the church, is not remedied by the practical denial of the abiding presence of the Spirit in the periodical petitions for a fresh outpouring on us.
It were well to ask for a single eye and a spirit of humiliation, that we might cease to do evil, and learn to do well, and this with a truly contrite heart, and a deep sense of whence we have fallen, and of Christ's speedy coming. It were well to judge ourselves by the word of God, not only in our individual walk, but in our corporate ways and worship, to see to it that we neither grieve nor quench the Spirit, to desire earnestly that we be strengthened with power by the Spirit in the inner man, if indeed we do not also need first to be enlightened of Him, so that we should know what is the hope of God's calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are our true wants, even where peace with God is enjoyed individually; for there is nothing in general so little, known to the Christian or the church, as what the Christian and the church really are; and how can the functions or duties be discharged where the relationship is ignored? Now all this turns on the great truths before us in these chapters of our Gospel, the absence of Christ from the world, to take His place as the risen Man in heaven, on the footing of redemption, and the presence of the Holy Ghost sent down to be with the saints forever. Faith, then, shows itself, not surely in imputing to Him failure in abiding, spite of our failure, and praying for a fresh outpouring, as if He had fled in disgust, and needed to be sent down again, but in separating from every evil condemned by the word, and doing the will of God as far as we learn it, counting on the assured presence of the Spirit according to the Savior's promise. Blessing and power follow obedience, even as the Lord puts it here. Nothing can be conceived more false morally than to abide in what we know to be wrong, waiting for power, and then obeying. Not so; more especially, too, as even this hollow excuse denies the distinctive privilege of the Christian, that he has the Spirit already in being a Christian. And so has the church of God; if not, it is some other church, not His, for only by the presence of the Spirit is the church, as such, always and in all things, responsible to he guided of Him, even “the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it beholdeth him not, nor knoweth him; but ye know him, because he abideth with you, and shall be in you.”
The Lord herein looked onward to the presence of the Holy Ghost with the saints, not only assuring them that it should be perpetual, but explaining why the world could have no portion in Him, whereas they might behold and know the Messiah objectively, though feebly and in vain for eternal life. But with the Spirit, as now given, what could the world have in common? He could but, by His presence with the saints outside the world, prove sin, righteousness, and judgment; but He is no object of sight or knowledge, and the world has no faith, or it would not be the world; whereas the saints, the Christians henceforth, would be characterized by knowing Him, invisible as He is, “because he abideth with you, and shall be in you.” Not that I think with Euthymius Zigabenus, that His abiding in Jesus who was among them is the meaning, but that, when given, He was to abide with them, instead of it brief sojourn like the Lord's, and that He should not only abide, but be in them, which Messiah, as such, could not be, however companying with them. It was to be a new, special, intimate presence of God in and with the saints, in contrast with the world which had rejected Christ; and there is no surer sign of, or preparation for, the final apostasy, in its complete form than that unbelieving departure from God which binds together the saints and the world, whether in a popish assumption of the Spirit's sanction, or in a Protestant unbelief of His presence, because of their experience of a name to live, with death around and within, which prompts them to cry for the Spirit as if He were gone, instead of quitting all that grieves Him, and hinders the manifestation of His gracious action.
But, said the Lord, “I will not leave you orphans, I am coming to you.” It is not here by His future advent, but by the gift of the Spirit. Thus would He comfort them in His own absence. “Yet a little, and the world beholdeth me no more, but ye behold me: because I live, ye also shall live.” Nothing could be more opposed to their thoughts of, and expectations from, the Messiah of Israel, seen by every eye, though in special nearness to His own people on earth. Now they were by the Holy Ghost to see Him whom the world had rejected and lost, and should see no more, save in judgment. And the saints should not behold Him only, but live of the selfsame life, having Christ living in them, as says the apostle Paul, or as the Lord here, Because I live, ye also shall live. Christ is their life, and this in resurrection-power, to which the future tense may point.