From verse 14 the Lord pleads for another object on behalf of the disciples. He had entreated for them to be set in His love in presence of the Father; He now asks that they may have His place in presence of the world. As He had sought their association with Himself in the one case, so in the other He would have no less an association. There it was for His joy to be fulfilled in them; here it is for the Father's testimony in and by them; His place on earth, as in heaven.
“I have given them thy word; and the world hated them because they are not of the world, as I am not of the world. I do not ask that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them out of the evil. Of the world they are not, as I am not of the world.” (Vers. 14-16.)
It is not here as in verse 8 “the words” (ῥήματα) given of the Father to the Son which the Son had given to the disciples, the communications of love, whence they knew truly that He came from the Father, and believed to their joy that the Father sent Him. It is here the Father's “word” (λόγος), the expression of His mind. This, it was said already, they had kept. But the Lord resumes the notice of it in connection with testimony in the world which for Him was closed. In the world they were to be witnesses of Him, and the Father's word He has given them, and the world hated them, not for that word only, offensive as it is to the world, but because they, the disciples who had it, were not of the world even as their Master is not. This is the true measure of unworldliness, and it is intolerable in the world's eyes, and nowhere so much as in the religious world. For men on earth to know themselves possessors of eternal life sounds presumptuous to such as know not Christ and His work. But to add that they are not of the world the world will have to be intolerance. The truth is that nothing is so lowly as faith, and faith works by love, the very reverse of despising others or trusting in themselves that they are righteous. Christ is all to the believer, as He is to the Father; and as He is not of the world, so they are not. That they are not of the world depends on the former truth, that they are the Father's and given to the son, who manifested the Father's name to them and kept them in that name; as He besought that the Father would keep them still during His absence from the world. Christ in John is from the outset unknown to the world and rejected: they know not the Father and the Son. So it is with the children of God. “Therefore the world knoweth us not because it knew him not.” The breach is complete. “The world hated them,” as it hated both the Father and the Son.
Never had there been such a breach before. It was not so during God's dealings with Israel of old; nor yet in their ruin during the ensuing times of the Gentiles. Man was still under trial; and even while the Lord was here below, the character of His ministry was God in Him reconciling the world to Himself. But the world would none of Him, and is judged in its prince. And as man is now in the light of the cross pronounced lost, so is the saint crucified to the world and the world to him. They are not of the world, as Christ is not of the world. It is a fact, and not merely an obligation, though the firmest ground of obligation. They are not of the world, not merely they ought not to be; whilst if they are not, it is grievous inconsistency even to seem to be of the world. It is to be false to our relationship, for we are the Father's and given to the rejected Son who has done with the world; and if it be said that this is to bring in everlasting and heavenly relationships now, be it so: this is exactly what Christianity means in principle and practice. It is faith possessing Christ, who gives the believer His own place of relationship and acceptance on high as well as of testimony apart from and rejected by the world below; which he has to make good in words and ways, in spirit and conversation, whilst waiting for the Lord. Hence if going back to law or flesh, as in Galatia, was to fall from grace, no less thorough is the departure of the Christian when he seeks the world of which he is not. That the world improves for Christ or His own is as false as that the flesh can ameliorate. It is the light become darkness, and how great is that darkness! There may not be the reflex of the latter part of Rom. 1, but it answers to the beginning of 2 Tim. 3. It is the natural man knowing enough to forego what is shameless, and invested with a religious veil; it is the world essentially, occupying itself with the things of God in profession but in reality of the world, where common sense suffices for its service and its worship, and the mind of Christ would be altogether inapplicable. What a triumph to the enemy! It is just what we see in Christendom; and nothing irritates so much as the refusal so to walk, worship or serve. It does not matter how loudly you denounce or protest: if you join the world, they will not mind your words, and you are faithless to Christ. Nor does it matter how much grace and patience you show; if you keep apart as not of the world, you incur enmity and hatred, and contempt. A disciple is not above his Master; but everyone that is perfected shall be as his Master. To act as not of the world is felt to be its strongest condemnation; and no meekness or love can make it palatable. Nor does God intend that it should, for He means it as part of the testimony to His Son. And as the world neither receives nor understands the Father's word, so it hates those who have and act on that word.
Doubtless there is a moment when the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we the living who remain shall be caught up together with them in clouds to meet the Lord in the air, when He shall Himself with a shout, with archangel's voice, and with trump of God, descend from heaven; and thus we shall ever be with Him. But the Lord did not ask yet that the Father should thus take His own out of the world, but that He should keep them out of the evil. This He does by His grace through His word, as we shall see presently. Only the Lord, before He explains how the Father keeps the saints, reiterates in a new form so as to give greater emphasis, Of the world they are not, as I am not of the world. Nor is anything more speedily forgotten, unless the eye be fixed on Christ above, with continual vigilance as to our motives ways and ends, as well as unsparing self-judgment. It was of all moment to have it firm and clear that the world and the Christian have no common ground, and that Christ Himself, according to whose grace and for whose glory in communion with the Father we are here, is the pattern of our unworldliness. What separateness so absolute? or dependent on relationship to the Father so near, save only His, who is in the highest way its pattern? For the world in the sense here conveyed is that vast system which man has built up away from God in independence and self-reliance, and to the exclusion, not of His nominal honor, but of any real submission to His righteousness, His will, or His glory, which fully came out in the rejection and cross of His Son, who thereon reveals as wholly distinct in source, nature, character, and aim, those that the Father owns as His in the world, whose fellowship is indeed with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. Of the world they are not, as He is not. They are Christ's.
Now comes the formative power, as wholly new as above man, and not of God merely but of the Father. “Sanctify them by [or, in] the truth: thy word is truth. As thou didst send me forth into the world, I also sent them forth into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify thyself that they also may be sanctified in truth.” ( Vers. 17-19.)
It is impossible to overrate the importance of the Savior's words for His disciples; it is easy for men to misapprehend them, as those do who lower and narrow the word to separation for ministerial service. But He had at heart a more personal and intimate want, that the disciples should themselves be imbued with, formed and fashioned by, the truth. The law now sufficed not; not even in the most comprehensive sense, as embracing the prophets and the Psalms. For Christ was come, the Only-begotten who declared God otherwise unseen of any one. He revealed the Father, who would make a fresh and full yet permanent revelation, as we have it not only in Him but in the scriptures as a whole. The sanctification or setting apart was therefore as new as complete. It was to the Father that the Son spread His request for men who were none of them heathen but of the holy seed. Yet for such does He say, “Sanctify them by the truth.” The truth was revealed as it never was before. “Thy word,” the Father's word, “is truth.” Truths had been made known, never the truth till Jesus who is it. For He first, He only as an objective display, showed out every one, God, man, Satan even, and everything, heaven, earth, hell, and all things in them, as they really are, for His person (the Word made flesh) alone was competent to do it. His advent and redemption gave the suited occasion and needed object for the full revelation, as being Son of man and withal true God and eternal life. By the truth then, the Father's word, were the disciples to be sanctified. The Father revealed, not only in the Son personally but in His word detailedly, changed all for the soul. None but the Son, and the Son a man on earth, glorifying the Father perfectly in His life, glorifying God as such in His death, could furnish the adequate motive for the Father's love, object for His ways, center of His counsels or manifestation of His glory. Hence all is out and in perfection: testimony higher, deeper, fuller is looked for in vain, as those know who acknowledging the Son have the Father also and are not of the world.
Then comes their mission, which is drawn from the same unworldly source and is characterized by it. “As thou didst send me forth into the world, I also sent them forth into the world.” Moses disappears even as a pattern; so do the prophets. Even John the Baptist (and among those born of women was no prophet greater) was but man in mission from God; but he that is least in the kingdom is greater than he. He that cometh from above-from heaven-is above all. Such was Jesus; and as the Father sent forth Him, so He too sent those who then surrounded Him, their mission as new as the word which formed and furnished their souls. It flowed from One apart from the world and above it, who had been sent into it on an errand of infinite love to the Father's glory and was in spirit no more here but in heaven, whither He was actually going soon. It was thus the Son sent the disciples associated with Himself in heaven and charged with the Father's testimony to the world. Not of the world as He was not, they could be and were sent into it. Had they been of the world, they could not he sent into it; but, as taken out of it by grace in Christ, they were not of it.
This is fitly followed by another and crowning means of sanctification of which the Lord speaks. “And for their sakes I sanctify myself that they also may be sanctified in truth.” It is not the Father's word now as given to them here and revealing Him in every detail as the disciples needed, though inseparable from Christ's person as come into the world, where they too were sent. This was essential both for themselves and their work. But grace does more; and the Lord goes on to show how He is setting Himself apart on high, the Son as ever but model Man before the Father in heaven, so as to complete their sanctification in seeing Him thus in glory. Thus it is not only the truth brought out here in all its application, but the truth also in the glorified Christ as the suited object to animate and strengthen as well as transform, while we behold Him with unveiled face: God revealed in man, the Son of man; the Son of man now glorified by God in Himself, and this straightway, that the disciples might be sanctified “in truth,” both bearing on their nature and walk. For, without such an object above, the fullest demonstration of God's righteousness and power were lacking, and so too, one might add, of the Father's love and glory, as well as what was due to His own person foot only as divine but as man, and man glorified according to the counsels of God. And the disciples also needed His blessed person thus before them at God's right hand in order to fix and fill their affections, beside the word which perfectly reveals all the mind of God in grace. Thus it is not simply as incarnate that the Lord sanctifies Himself on their behalf,-nor yet as dying sacrificially, according to Chrysostom and Cyril of Alexandria, with a crowd of followers since their day, but as glorified, consequent on death and resurrection, that He becomes the pattern of His own. Beholding Him they are transformed into His image from glory to glory even as by the Lord the Spirit; and, when He shall be manifested, they are to be like Him, seeing Him as He is, and conformed to the image of the Son in resurrection glory. God Himself could give no other portion so blessed, when Christ shall be the firstborn among many brethren.