Now, to draw the disciples from a mere Jewish place into this elevation of the Church of God, and by this to comfort them under a sense of His absence, is the Lord’s great purpose in the discourse which he holds with them in these chapters—the like to which never passed between the sons of men—the heart and mind of God had never before so largely and blessedly communicated their treasures to the desires and thoughts of his people, as now the Lord was doing. Most sacred moments of communion between heaven and earth were these!
At the beginning the Lord says, “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.” This at once gives them notice of another object of faith than what they as yet had. God, in the sense of these words, had been already known to Israel. The disciples, in their Jewish place, were already believers in God. The Lord here allows that, as lie had before asserted, speaking to the woman of Samaria; “We (i.e. Jews) know what we worship.” The Jews had God; their faith was not wrong, but only defective, and the Lord would now fill it out. He would now have them to know the Father through the Son—and the whole of this discourse with his disciples furthers this design. He speaks particularly of the Father, and promises the Comforter to make these things (the things of the Father and the Son) known to them.
This was the character of grace which this Gospel at the beginning intimated, when St. John wrote” As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God.” And this early notice of the value and power of the Son’s ministry is, in these chapters, largely unfolded. But while this is doing, we have several forms of Jewish ignorance brought out—necessarily so, I may say; for Israel did not stand in this knowledge, into which the Lord was now leading them. Thomas is ignorant of Christ’s departure and separation from this earth, and says, “Lord, we know not whither thou goest;” for Israel had been taught to say that Christ was to abide forever. Philip betrays his unacquaintedness with the Father; for it was not the knowledge of the Father in the Son that Israel had been led into. Judas wonders at any glory, but the manifested worldly glory of Messiah; for such was Israel’s hope. And they all stand amazed at the mystery of “the little while.” But out of these thoughts, the heavenly prophet is leading them. They had been already drawn out from the apostate nation, as God’s remnant accepting Jesus as Messiah come from God, but they had still to know the Son as come from the Father, who, while he was with them, had been showing them the Father, was now about to return to the Father, and would come again to take them home to the Father. These were the great things of His love which their divine prophet here reveals to them; but these were as yet strange things unto them. Truths however, they are, upon which all that is peculiar to the Church rests.
But the course of our Lord’s own thoughts through this conversation is only for a while interrupted by these defective Jewish thoughts of his disciples. His purpose was to elevate them to the sense of their calling as the Church of God, and thus to comfort them; and that purpose he steadily follows, however he may for a time have to rebuke their slowness of heart. Thus, in the interruption occasioned by Peter, (13: 33; 14: 1,) the Lord, in answering Peter, is called to contemplate and foretell his faithlessness, and denial of Him; but this does not turn out of their course the thoughts of kindness about him, and the rest of them, which the Lord was pursuing. “Let not your hearts be troubled,” says the gracious Master, immediately after forewarning Peter of his baseness. So, at the close of the conversation, he had to tell his too confident disciples, that the hour was then at hand when every one of them would go “to his own, and leave him alone;” and yet, without allowing an interruption of his flow of love towards them for a single moment, he at once resumes his own thoughts, saying to them, “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace—in the world ye shall have tribulation; but, be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”
And so, beloved, with his saints ever since. We may, through our own folly, have to listen to the “cock crowing”—to receive rebuke, go out, and weep; but the heart of Jesus does not repent of his purposed kindness toward us. His purpose is to save, and he will save; his purpose is to bless, and who shall hinder? He has not beheld iniquity in them. They are to have peace accomplished for them by his death, life brought to them by his resurrection, and glory to be hereafter theirs at his return. These are their blessings, and of these he tells them, in spite of all slowness of heart or unworthiness, for their comfort under the sense of his going away.
The works that Jesus did, in Matthew’s gospel, are owned to be those of the Son of David. (12: 23.) They are there as the seals of his Messiahship. But here the Lord offers them to his disciples as the seals of his Sonship of the Father. He would have them looked upon, not merely as tokens that he could order the kingdom of Israel, according to the promises of the prophets, (Isaiah 35:5,6,5Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. 6Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. (Isaiah 35:5‑6)) but as witnesses that he was the dispenser of the Father’s grace and power; for he says, “Believe me, that I am in the Father, and the Father in me, or else believe me for the very works’ sake.” And this is in full consistency with our gospel. And the “greater works,” which he immediately afterward promises that believers in him should do, were to be, as I judge, works of the same character, works that were to savor of the Father’s grace, such as the bringing poor condemned sinners into the liberty of the children of God. As Paul says, “In Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.” And so is it still sinners are still brought into the liberty of dear children. “I will not leave you orphans,” says the Lord in this place, “I will come to you; because I live, ye shall live also.” No orphanage for them, no lamentation from them as there was from Israel, that they were fatherless. (14: 18, Gr. Lamentations 5: 3.) The adoption of the saints during the orphanage of Israel, is here brought out by the Lord, in terms of deep and wondrous meaning. They were to know that “he was in the Father, and they in him, and he in them.” The Father is the holy burthen here.
And there is a little action of the Lord’s that I must notice. At the close of the 14th chapter he says, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you;” by this telling them, that ere he left this world he would leave his peace behind him—peace for them as sinners accomplished by his death. And after thus telling them of peace, he says, “Arise, let us go hence.” Upon which we may assume that they all rise from the paschal table, and walk forth toward the Mount of Olives; and then it is that he at once presents himself to them, as in resurrection, their life, the source of quickening power, saying, “I am the vine, and ye are the branches.”
There is a beauteous significancy in the whole of this action. He sits at the paschal table till peace had been pronounced, for on that table the pledges of their peace were at that moment spread; but as he rises from it, he tells them of the resurrection-life—life that they were, to know as in him, risen above the power of death, the true vine. And he tells them that there is no other life but this, saying, “If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered.” And having thus disclosed to them the only root of life, he shows them the joys and holy prerogatives of this life, teaching them that they were to have his own joy, the joy of the Son, fulfilled in them, and were also to enter into the dignity and grace of friendship with their Lord, and to assure themselves that his glory and their blessing were now but one interest; and moreover, that the Father’s great purpose was, to glorify the Son as this vine or head of life; that having planted it as the only witness of life in the earth, which is the scene of death, the Father would watch over it with the care and diligence of a husbandman. This the Lord here spews to be the Father’s present care, to have the vine in beauty and fruitfulness, to glorify Jesus as the HEAD OF LIFE, as by-and-by he will glorify him on the throne of glory as HEIR OF ALL THINGS. In old times, God’s eye, as her husbandman, was upon the land of Israel (Deuteronomy 11: 12), but now it is watching over this vine, which his own hand has planted.
All this told the disciples of exceeding riches of grace. But withal he tells them, that this union with him was to separate them from the world, this friendship with him was to expose them to the world’s hatred. The world was soon to express its full enmity to God, and then to them. The revelation of God in love, the revelation of the Father in and by the Son, was soon about to be fully refused by the world. This was hatred indeed, hatred “without a cause,” hatred for love. The cross of Christ was soon to present man’s fullest hatred, meeting God’s fullest love. Ignorant of the Father, it might be still zealous for God, and think to do God service by killing the children of the Father. For there may be zeal for the synagogue, yea, and for the God of the synagogue, with entire separation from the spirit of that dispensation which publishes riches of grace, and reveals the Father in the Son.
But this view of the sorrows which his saints might endure from the world, leads the Lord to exhibit the services of the promised Comforter in them and for them, still more blessedly. He tells them that the Comforter would stand for them against the world, convicting it of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment; but at the same time dwelling in them, the witness of their Father’s love and their Lord’s glory. This comfort he provides for them against the day of the world’s hatred.
And here let me observe, that the Spirit was now to be received of the Father. God had approved Jesus of Nazareth (Acts 2:2222Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know: (Acts 2:22)); but it was of the Father that the Holy Ghost was to be received, and he would approve his presence according to this. Look at the character of his presence in the church, immediately on his being given. (Acts 2) What an oil of gladness, what a spirit of liberty and largeness of heart, is he in the saints there! Jesus had received him in the ascended place, where he himself had been made full of joy with God’s countenance, and, giving him forth from such a place, he manifests himself here accordingly, imparting at once something of that joy of God’s countenance into which their Lord had entered. They gladly received the word, ate their bread with gladness, and praised God. And this joy could easily dry up other sources. They parted with what might have secured human delights and provided for natural desires. The Holy Ghost in them was joy, and liberty, and largeness of heart. It was the Spirit “of the Father.” It was the reflection on the saints here of that light which had fallen on Jesus in the holiest. The oil had run down from the beard to the skirts of the clothing.
Indeed, we can form but a poor idea of the value of such a dispensation as this, which the Comforter was now to bring, to a soul that had been under the spirit of bondage, and of fear gendered by the law. What thoughts of judgment to come were now bidden to depart! What fears of death were now to yield to the consciousness of present life in the Son of God! And what would all this be but anointing with an oil of gladness? And the disciples, by this discourse, were under training for this joy and liberty.
The schoolmaster was soon to give up his charge—his rod and his book of elements were now to be dispensed with, —and in this discourse the Son is leading the children on their way home to their Father from under such tutors and governors, and they are soon to reach the Father, that they might know, through the Holy Ghost, the liberty and joy of adoption.
Such was this interesting hour to the Church. The Holy Ghost, the witness of the Father and the Son, and thus the Spirit of adoption, was soon to be imparted, and they were now led forth from the school of the law to wait for it. With thoughts of the Father and of the Son, and of the Church’s interests in all their love, the Holy Ghost was now to fill the saints. And this accordingly he does in our dispensation. He tells us, as the Lord here promises he should, of the delight that the Father has in the Son, of his purpose to glorify him, and of our place in that delight and that glory. He takes of these things and the like, and shows them unto us.
Look at Genesis 24—a well-known and much enjoyed scripture. It sets forth the election of a Bride for the Son by the Father, but the place which the servant occupies in it is just the place of the Holy Ghost in the Church, ministering (as in divine grace) to the joys of the Son and the Church, in perfecting the purposes of the Father’s love. In that scene, the servant of Abraham tells Rebecca of the way in which God had prospered his master, what a favored and beloved one Isaac was, how he had been, “the child of old age,” and how Abraham had made him “ the heir of all his possessions.” Be discloses to her the counsels which Abraham had taken touching a wife for this much-loved son of his, and lets her see clearly her own election of God to fill that holy and honored place. And at last he puts upon her the pledges of this election and of Isaac’s love.
Nothing could be more touching and significant than the whole scene. Would that our hearts knew more of the power of all this, under the Holy Ghost, as Rebecca knew it under the hand of Abraham’s servant! It was because he had filled her with thoughts of Abraham and of Isaac, and of her own interest in them, that she was ready to go with this Stranger all alone across the desert. Her mind was formed by these thoughts; and she was prepared to say to her country, her kindred, and her father’s house, “I will go.” And the thoughts of our heavenly Father’s love, and our Isaac’s delight in us, can still give us holy separation from this defiled place where we dwell. Communion with the Father and the Son, through the Comforter, is the holy way of distinguishing the Church from the world. There may be the fear of a coming judgment working something of actual separation from it, or the pride of the Pharisee working religious separation from it; but the present knowledge of the Father’s love, and the hope of the coming glories of the Son, can alone work a divine separation from its course and its spirit.
The Father’s love, of which the Comforter testifies, is an immediate love., It is the love of God that has visited the world in the gift of his Son (see 3:16); but the moment this love of God is believed, and the message of reconciliation which it has sent forth is received, then are believers entitled, through riches of grace, to know the Father’s love, a love that is an immediate love, as the Lord here tells us (16: 26, 27). It is of this love of the Father, as the glory of the Son, that the Comforter tells us by the way homeward. He is our companion for all the journey, and this is his discourse with us. How did the servant, I doubt not (to return to the same chapter, Genesis 24), as he accompanied Rebecca across the desert, tell her further of his master, adding many things to what he had already told her in Mesopotamia; for he had been the confidant of his master, and had known him from the beginning. He knew his desire t for a son, and God’s promise and God’s faithfulness. He knew of Abraham’s victory over the kings, of his rescue of Lot, and meeting with Melchisedek. He knew of the covenant, the pledge of the inheritance. He knew of the dismission of Ishmael from the house, and of Isaac’s walk in it without a rival; —of the mystic journey up Mount Moriah; and of Isaac being thus alive from the dead. All this he knew, and all this doubtless he told her of, as they traveled on together, with these recollections and prospects delighting her, though her back was now turned, and turned forever, upon her country and her father’s house. And, beloved were we more consciously “on the way” with the Comforter, the way would to us in like manner be beguiled by his many tales of love and glory, whispering of the Father and of the Son to our inmost souls. Be it so with us, thy poor people, blessed Lord, more and more!
17 —After thus comforting them with the knowledge of their standing, as the family of the Father, and, as it were, making gracious amends to them for his own present absence from them, and the hatred they were to suffer from the world, the Lord again exhibits, in this chapter, one of his priestly services, as he had done in the 13th. But the services are different; both, however, together constituting a full presentation of his ways as our Advocate in the heavenly temple. In the 13th chapter, he had as it were, laid one hand on the defiled feet of his saints, here he lays the other hand on the throne of the Father—forming, thus, a chain of marvelous workmanship, reaching from God to sinners. In the 13th chapter, his body was girt, and he was stooping down towards our feet—here, his eyes are lifted up, and he is looking in the face of the Father. What that is asked for us, by one who thus fills up the whole distance between the bright throne of God, and our defiled feet, can be denied? All must be granted—such an one is heard always.
Thus we get the sufficiency and acceptance of the Advocate, and we may notice the order in which he makes his requests, and lays his claims before the Father.
First. —He makes request in behalf of the Father’s own glory. “Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee.” His first thought was upon the Father’s interest; as he had before taught his disciples, ere they presented their own desires and necessities, to say, “Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”
Life eternal the Lord lays in the Father’s hand; saying, “As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.” By this our Mediator bows to the truth of God, which Satan of old had traduced, and which man had questioned. (Genesis 3:44And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: (Genesis 3:4).) But He then adds, “and this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent,”—owning that life is now to be had only through redemption, that it is not the life of a creature merely, but of a ransomed creature, a life rescued for us from the power of death by the grace of the Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ the Savior.
Secondly. —He claims his own glory. “Glorify me with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” And this claim he grounds upon his having finished the work that had been given him to do, saying, “I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” For this was a work into which no blot had entered, in which, therefore, God could rest and be refreshed, as in his works of old; a work which the Father might behold and say of it, “it is all very good;” in which he might again find a Sabbath.
And this is the believer’s comfort, that he sees his salvation depending on a finished work, in which God, “smells a savor of rest.” At the beginning, on finishing the work of creation, God sanctified the seventh day, resting in full satisfaction in all that his hand had formed. But that rest man disturbed, so that God repented that he had made man on the earth. Again, in due time, the Lord provided for himself another rest, erecting a tabernacle in Canaan, and offering to Israel a place in that rest, giving them his Sabbath. (Ex. 31:1313Speak thou also unto the children of Israel, saying, Verily my sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you. (Exodus 31:13).) By the sword of Joshua, this rest in Canaan was first made good to Israel; (Joshua 21:44;2344And the Lord gave them rest round about, according to all that he sware unto their fathers: and there stood not a man of all their enemies before them; the Lord delivered all their enemies into their hand. (Joshua 21:44)
28So Joshua let the people depart, every man unto his inheritance. (Joshua 24:28). 1;) and then under the throne of Solomon. (1 Chronicles 22:99Behold, a son shall be born to thee, who shall be a man of rest; and I will give him rest from all his enemies round about: for his name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and quietness unto Israel in his days. (1 Chronicles 22:9).) But Israel, like Adam, disturbed this rest, the land did riot keep her Sabbath, for the wickedness of them that dwelt herein. (2 Chronicles 36:2121To fulfil the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath, to fulfil threescore and ten years. (2 Chronicles 36:21).) The blessed God has now found another and a sure rest, a rest which can never be lost or disturbed. In the work finished by the Lord Jesus Christ (and which the Lord here Presents to him) God again rests, as in his works of old, with fullest complacency. This finished work is altogether according to his mind. By the resurrection of Christ, the Father bath said of it, “Behold, it is very good.” It is his rest forever; lie has an abiding delight in it; his eyes and his heart are upon it continually. The work of Christ accomplished for sinners has given, God a rest. That is a thought full of blessing to the soul. And when faith sets a right value, that is, God’s value, on the blood, there is rest, God’s own rest, for the soul. But it is then that a saint or believing sinner begins his toil. The moment I rest as a sinner I begin my labor as a saint. The rest for the saint is a rest that remaineth; and therefore it is written, “Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of ‘unbelief.” The sinner rests now, the saint labors still, and will till the kingdom come.
Thirdly. —He prays for his people. He asks that they might be kept through the Father’s name, and sanctified through the Father’s truth, so that they might be one in the communion of the Son’s joy now; and he asks that they might be with him where he is, and there behold his glory, and be one with him in his glory hereafter. These are large requests. The divine Advocate would have all his saints one. (See ver. 11, 21.) But this oneness is not such, I judge, as it is commonly interpreted to be—a manifested ecclesiastical oneness. It is a oneness in personal knowledge of, and fellowship with, the Father and the Son—oneness in spirit, in the spirit of their minds, each of them having the spirit of adoption, which was the peculiar grace and power of that dispensation which he, the Son, was about to introduce. The desire is, that such a spirit might have its course in the hearts of each and all of the elect now to be gathered.
Has this failed? That could not be; and all the epistles witness to us that it has not. For there we find the saints in every place, whether Jew or Gentile, considered as kept by the Father in his own name; kept’ as sons, as “accepted in the Beloved,” as having the “spirit of adoption,” as being brought together “into the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God.” All such statements are assertions, that this desire of the great Advocate had been answered, each believer having the joy of the Son fulfilled in himself, and thus all of them one in the spirit of their minds. This desire does not, I assuredly judge, respect any ecclesiastical condition of things. That thought has led to many a human effort among the saints. They have condemned themselves for not realizing this prayer of the Lord by a manifestation of unity, and then taken means to bring this about. But I ask; is this prayer of the Lord made contingent on the energies of the saints? Is it not rather addressed to the Father, for what rested simply in the good pleasure and power and gift of the Father? Surely. It appealed to the Father, that he would keep the elect in his name, sanctify them by his truth, and impart to them the joy of the Son, so that each might have that joy fulfilled in himself.
This desire has been realized. The spirit of the Son is equally for each and all of the saints, and they are one in that spirit and in that joy. When the due season comes, we shall see the other desires of this chapter also made good. All who are to receive the testimony have not yet been called, nor has the glory yet shone out and been imparted to them, so that as yet the world has neither believed or known that the Father has sent the Son. (See ver. 21, 23.) The world as yet knows them not. (1 John 3:11Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. (1 John 3:1).) But in their season these requests will be answered. And so, in like manner, the vision of glory. (See ver. 24.) As far as we have gone in divine dispensations, the desires have been answered; the rest only wait for their season.
To us, however, beloved, it is most comforting to find that all these glorious desires for the saints our Lord grounds simply on this, that they had received the Son’s testimony about the Father, arid had believed surely in the Father’s love. “I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, arid have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.”
But how full of blessing it is, to see that we are presented before God simply as believing that love I How surely does it tell us that the pleasure of our God is this, that we should know him in love, know him as the Father, know him according to the words of him who has come from his bosom. This is joy and liberty. And it is indeed only as having seen God in love, seen the Father and heard the Father in Jesus, that makes us the family. It is not the graces that adorn us, or the services that we render, but simply that we know the Father. It is this which distinguishes the saint from the world, and gives him his standing, as here, in the presence of the Father. It is simply this, (as the Mediator here tells the Father about us,) that we have received His word, received the Son’s testimony of love brought from the Father’s bosom.
Thus, does the divine Advocate plead before the Throne. The Father’s glory, his own, and his peoples are all provided for and secured. And having thus poured forth the desires of his soul, he commits “the world,” the great enemy, to the notice of the righteous Father. “O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee.” For it had now proved itself to be a world that indeed knew not the Father, that hated him whom the Father had sent, and out of which the Lord was now sanctifying himself, and drawing his people. He does hot, however, call for judgment upon it; but leaves it (as something with which, as our Advocate, he had nothing to do) simply under the notice of the “righteous Father,” to whose judgment it belonged.
And it is merely as being ignorant of the Father that the Lord presents the world. He does not arraign her sins before the throne, but simply presents her as ignorant of the Father; as before, when presenting the Church, he did not speak of her graces or services, as we saw, but simply this, that she knew the Father. For as the knowledge of the Father makes the Church what she is, so this ignorance of the Father is that which makes the world what it is. The world is that which refuses to know God in love, so as to rejoice in him. It will make up its own pleasures, and draw from its own resources; it will have anything but the music, and the ring, and the fatted calf of the Father’s house. The world was formed by Satan in the garden of Eden. There the serpent beguiled the woman, and, being listened to and spoken with, he formed the human mind according to his own pattern. We have the history and character of this evil work in Genesis 3. God’s love and God’s word were traduced by the enemy—man believed the slander, and made God a liar. The lust of the flesh; the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, were planted in the soul as master-powers (ver. 6); and then conscience, and fear, and avoidance of God, became the condition into which man was cast. The man and the woman began to know that they were naked, and they hid themselves among the trees, retreating from the voice of God; and then from the covert, where they lay, they send forth excuses for themselves, and challenges of God. “The Serpent beguiled me, and I did eat,” says Eve: “The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat,” says Adam.
Such was man then, and such has the world been ever since. Man’s own lusts are ruling him, with fear of God, and desired distance from him; and the secret whisper of his soul is this, that all this mischief must lie at God’s own door.
From such a world the saints are in spirit and in calling delivered, and the world itself left, as here, for judgment. “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” The world had no place in Jesus. The prince of it came, and only drew from him the full witness of this, that he loved the Father, and would do as he had commanded. (14: 30, 31.) So the saints have left it they have come forth from their covert at the voice of the Son; they have heard of the Father’s love towards them; they have believed it, and have walked forth in the sunshine of it. The promise that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head drew Adam forth from behind the trees of the garden; though dead in sins, he believed this promise of life, and came forth accordingly, calling his wife “the mother of all living.” And so, as we have seen in this chapter, it is just the believing the message of love which the Son has brought to us from the bosom of the Father—it is just this, that makes the saints what they are—an election out of the dark and distant regions where the world dwells, and where the spirit of the world breathes. And it is, as we have also seen, the refusal to listen to this message of love that keeps the world still the world. “O righteous Father, the world bath not known thee.” For men have only to receive God’s word of reconciliation, to believe his love in the gift of his Son, and then to take their happy place in his family as his chosen ones, “accepted in the Beloved.”
Here the third section of our Gospel ends. It has shown us Jesus the Son of the Father, as our Advocate, doing his constant services for us: it has shown us also Jesus the Son of the Father, revealing the Father to the children. The blessed God had got himself a name, the name of “Jehovah,” by his signs and wonders in Egypt and in Israel (Jeremiah 32: 20); but now was he getting himself another name, a name of still richer grace, the name of “Father.” This name he gets in the person and by the work of the Son of his love; and the power of it is now made effectual in the hearts of the children by the Holy Ghost.
Lo, these are parts of thy ways, our God and Father; but how little a portion of Thee do our narrow souls understand and enjoy!
Part 4. Chapters 18-21
I have followed this Gospel in its order, down to the close of the 17th chapter, having distributed it so far into three principal sections;—the first, introducing our Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God, the Stranger from heaven, and giving us his action and reception in the world; the second, exhibiting him in his intercourses and controversies with Israel; the third, giving him to us in the bosom of his elect, instructing them in the mysteries of the heavenly Priesthood, and in their standing as the children of the Father. And now we have to consider the fourth and closing section, which gives us all that attended on his death and resurrection. May the entrance of the Lord’s words still give light, and bear with them to our souls a savor of that blessed One of whom they speak!
But while in labors like these, beloved, we seek to discover the order of the divine word, and are led to wonder at its depths, or admire its beauty, we should remember that it is the truth of the divine word we must chiefly consider. It is when the word comes with “much assurance” that it works “effectually” in us. It will not profit if not mixed with faith. Its power to gladden and to purify will depend on its being received as truth; and as we trace out and present to one another the beauties, the depths, and the wonders of the word, we should oft-times pause and say to our souls, as the angel said to the overwhelmed apostle who had seen the lovely visions, and heard the marvelous revelations, “These are the true sayings of God.”
The place in our gospel to which I have now arrived, presents our Lord Jesus Christ in his sufferings. But I may notice that it is not his sufferings that occupy him in this gospel. Throughout it, he appears to stand above the reproaches of the people, and the world’s rejection of him. So that when the last passover was approaching, though in the other gospels we see him with his mind full upon his being the Lamb that was chosen for it, saying to his disciples, “Ye know that after two days is the feast of the passover, and the Son of roan is betrayed to be crucified,” yet in our gospel it is not so. He goes up to Jerusalem at the time; but it is to seat himself in the midst of an elect household. (12: 1.) And so afterward; when he is alone with his disciples, he stands above his sorrows and the world still—he does not tell them of the Jews betraying him to the Gentiles, and of the Gentiles crucifying him—he does not speak of his being mocked, and scourged, and spit upon, as in the other gospels. All this is passed by the many things which the Son of man was to suffer at the hands of sinful men lie untold here. But, on the other hand, he assumes the hour of the power of darkness to be past; and as soon as we find him alone with his elect, he takes his place beyond that hour. (13: 1.) Gethsemane and Calvary are behind him, and he apprehends himself as having reached the hour, not of the garden, or of the cross, but of the Mount of Olives, the hour of his ascension; our evangelist saying, “Now when Jesus knew that his hour was come, that he should depart from this world unto the Father:” these words showing us plainly that his mind was not upon his suffering, but on the heaven of the Father that was beyond it. He spreads before them, not the memorials of his death here, but of his life in heaven, as we have seen; for he washes their feet after supper. And all his discourse with his beloved ones afterward (14-16) savored of this. It all assumed that his sorrow was past; that he had finished his course; that he had stood against the Prince of this world, and had conquered; that he had continued in the Father’s love, and that all was ripe for his being glorified. His words to them assumed this, and, on the ground of this, he strengthened them to conquer as he had conquered. Instead of telling them of his sorrows, his object is to comfort them in theirs. He gave them peace, and the promise of the Comforter, and of the glory that was to follow. And when, for a moment, as urged by their state of mind, he speaks of their all leaving him alone in the coming hour, it was not without this assurance, “And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.” And in like manner, when he was separating Judas from the rest, we read that “he was troubled in spirit;” but as soon as the traitor was gone, he rises at once to his own proper elevation, and says, “Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him.” Thus, if his soul pass through a groan or a trouble, it is but for a moment, and just to lead him into a fuller view of the glory that was beyond it all.
It is just the same as he descends into the deepest shades of his lonely way. Even here it is still strength that accompanies him throughout, and glory that appears before him throughout. And thus, whether in labor, in testimony, or in suffering, he is still in this gospel in his elevation as Son of God. He walks on in the consciousness of his dignity, he takes the cup as from the Father’s hand, and lays down his life of himself.
17, 19. —We may remember that in the 17 chapter we saw our Lord as the Advocate in the heavenly temple making his requests. From that place he now comes down to meet the hour of the power of darkness. In that chapter his heart and his eye had been full of his Father’s glory, of his own glory, and of the Church’s; and forth from all this, thus in spirit set before him, he comes out to endure the cross.
In the other gospels, he meets the cross after the strengthening that he had received from the angel in Gethsemane; but we have nothing of that scene here, for that was the passage of the Son of man through the anticipation of his agony, his soul being exceeding sorrowful even unto death, with the strength of God by an angel ministered to him. But here it is the Son of God descending as from heaven to meet the cross; and his passage through the whole of the hour of the power of darkness is taken in the strength of the Son of God. He seeks no companionship. In the other gospels we see him leading aside Peter, James, and John, if haply he might engage their sympathy to watch with him for an hour. But here there is none of this. He passes all along through the sorrow. The disciples, it is true, go with him into the garden, but he knows them there only as needing his protection, and not as yielding him any desired sympathy. “If ye seek me, let these go their way.” As the angel does not strengthen him in the garden, neither do his disciples stand with him there for any cause of his. He comes down as the Son of God from his own place on high, to walk (as far as man was concerned) alone to Calvary. Though his present path lay to the cross, it was still a path of none less than the Son of God. The lowliness of the Stranger from heaven is marked here as it had been all through this gospel.
And let me add, (a reflection that has occurred to me with much comfort,) that there is a greatness in God, in the sense of which we should much exercise our hearts. There is no straitness in him. The Psalmist appears to give himself to this thought in the 36 Psalm. All that he there sees in God, he sees in its proper divine greatness and excellency. His mercy is in the heavens, his faithfulness unto the clouds; His righteousness is like the great mountains, and his judgments like the deep; His preserving care so perfect, that the beasts as well as men are the objects of it; his lovingkindness so excellent, that the children of men hide themselves as under the shadow of his wings; his house is so stored with all good, that his people are abundantly satisfied with its fatness, and his pleasure for them so full, that they drink of them as of a river. All this is the greatness and magnificence of God, not only in himself, but in his ways and dealings with us. And, beloved, this is blessed truth to us. For our sins should be judged in the sense of this greatness. It is true, indeed, that sin is exceeding sinful. The least soil or stain upon God’s fair workmanship is full of horrid shapes in the eye of faith that calculates duly on God’s glory. A little hole dug in the wall is enough to shew a prophet great abominations. But when brought to stand, side by side, with the greatness of the grace that is in God our Savior, how does it appear? Where was the crimson sin of the adulteress? where the sins that had, as it were, grown old in the Samaritan woman? They may be searched for, but they cannot be found. They disappear in the presence of the grace that was to shine beside them. The ‘abounding grace rolled away the reproach forever. God, who taketh up the isles as a very little thing, and measures the waters in the hollow of his hand, takes away our sins far off “to a land of separation.” (Leviticus 16:2222And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness. (Leviticus 16:22).)
“I hear the accuser roar
Of ills that I have done;
I know them well, and thousands more—
Jehovah findeth none.”
(Continued from p. 150.)
(To be continued.)