In the 14th chapter of John there is a very beautiful setting forth of the blessed hope. "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me." At first it sounds very peculiar that the Lord should here tell believing disciples to believe in Him. I do not think it means that they were merely to increase in their former faith. "Ye believe in God, believe also in Me." I take it that the force is this: You believe in God though you have not seen Him; believe in Me, who am going to become invisible to you. I, who have been your visible Master, your Teacher present in your midst, am going to leave the world. I am going, therefore, to enter a condition of invisibility as far as you are concerned, because I shall be no longer on earth, but in heaven.
This follows most simply and naturally from the words of the next verse—"In My Father's house are many mansions." It is not that the Lord was going to have done with His body; He will never do that to all eternity. In that sense, therefore, it will never be a question of absolute invisibility, but only relative—to those disciples, certainly so. And this is necessary for Christianity.
If I were asked to give in very few words one specific difference between Christianity and Judaism, I would say that Judaism was a religion of sight; Christianity, of faith. We walk not by sight, but by faith. Here then, now, to test the truth of it all, the Lord enters into that condition, but not by becoming a spirit. The Lord is not a spirit; He has a spiritual body. An angel is a spirit, but the Lord Jesus is not. "A spirit hath not flesh and bones."
We must not at all allow such a notion as that the Lord Jesus, in His risen condition, has not flesh and bones—of course He has. He has no longer a life in the blood, because this is a life in connection with earth, a life which lives by food, air, etc. The Lord is capable of taking food. He partook of a piece of honeycomb and a fish; but this was not because He required them, but because they required to learn that He was truly risen from the dead. His we know, is a spiritual body glorified in heaven. And so shall we be, but the Lord here speaks of our faith meanwhile. "Ye believe in God, believe also in Me." Although He had taken a body, and although He was to take that body after the resurrection, still He would be invisible by going to heaven. It is the Christian's faith contrasted with Jewish sight of the Messiah reigning visibly over the earth. "In My Father's house are many mansions." He was going thither.... "I go to prepare a place for you."