But to return. The object and character of the Son's ministry on earth was to declare the Father, and to lay the foundation for this intercourse with the children of His adopting grace: the Holy Ghost as the Comforter came down to dwell with them and to be in them, of which these chapters treat. He had glorified the Father on earth and finished the work that was given Him to do. Founded on this fact Jesus said in John 17 “Now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” As to His own, He adds, “I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world;” and again, “I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.” Further, He says, “I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.” He stood between us and God, upon the question of our sins, confessing them and putting them away by the sacrifice of Himself. Here He stands as intercessor between us and the Father, touching His own glory; and the glory which had been given Him as Son of man—bringing us before the Father in love, upon the same ground He took for Himself in righteousness. Yea, more than this, He puts us into the Father's care, because He is about to leave the world: “Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.” The circles of the Father's glory through the Son—of the Son's glory with the Father—of the Holy Ghost's glory, as proceeding from the Father and the Son—and of the church's glory as the body and bride of Christ; the pillar and ground of the truth; the church of the living God (though not brought out in this gospel, yet consequent upon the Holy Ghost's presence on earth) are all complete. These describe the peculiarity and blessedness which is our portion, who are called out to take part and place with the departed One, while hidden in the heavens, till He comes to receive us to Himself.
Chapter 21 is another proof of the incapacity of the disciples, previous to the descent of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost, to connect themselves with Christ in resurrection—and the last one. They put themselves in relation to their former pursuits, as deserted and forsaken—left to their own resources as comfortless. “Peter saith to them, I go a fishing. They say unto him, We also go with thee. They went forth and entered into a ship immediately; and that night they caught nothing.” But He who had said “I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you,” appeared on the shore to take part with them, in their unsuccessful fishing; and to leave another proof behind Him, that as the risen Son of man (who had put them, in chapter 20, into relationship with His Father, and His God, and was Head over all things) He had also all things put under His feet, “all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beast of the field; the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the sea.” In the exercise of this title He said unto them, “Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find. They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it, for the multitude of fishes.”
They no longer ask of the “little while and ye shall not see me, and again a little while and ye shall see me, and because I go to the Father,” for the Lord had rejoined them, “having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.” They have passed out of their trouble and fear, though as yet, not at home with the risen one, who had afresh charged Himself with the care of His own, and all that concerned them; so when they were “come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread.” He has girded Himself anew and come forth from death and the grave to show Himself to them, and to serve them, in these new titles by resurrection, on his way up to the Father; and to His place on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens. The sorrow that filled their hearts when He left them has given place to satisfaction, though none of the disciples are at ease with Him, in these new ministries of His love, any more than when He girded Himself with the towel, to wash their feet; yet they “durst not ask him Who art thou? knowing that it was the Lord.” As the risen Son of man, Jesus has proved to them, that He is the Lord of the seas as well as of the earth on which He stood, and then “cometh and taketh bread and giveth them, and fish likewise.” This is now the third time that Jesus showed Himself to His disciples after that He was risen from the dead. They have seen the Lord and He has made Himself known to them in breaking of bread, and by the net full of great fishes, a hundred and fifty and three. “Part with me,” as Jesus said in chapter 13, was the object before Him, in regard to His own, when leaving the world to go to the Father; and the ways by which this fellowship has been formed and secured till He comes again to receive us to Himself (by the descent of the Holy Ghost, and His abiding presence as the Comforter, the Spirit of truth, and the glorifier of the Son, both by indwelling power for our communion, and by outward testimony to the world), have been the subjects of the intervening chapters. But there remained in chapter 21, for the Lord to take His place with Peter, as the Shepherd and Bishop of souls, by restoring that disciple who had denied Him, to the confidence of that love which was stronger than death, and which no denial could turn aside. Subjected to this searching care of the soul, piercing even to the dividing and discerning the thoughts and intents of the heart; another sorrow takes hold of this disciple, and he judges himself for not taking part with his Lord when blasphemously accused and condemned. Conscience and heart do their work, when Jesus said the third time, “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?” “Peter was grieved because be said unto him the third time Lovest thou me? and he said, Lord, thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I love thee.” It is in this character of “the shepherd and bishop of souls” that the departing Lord thus established Himself in grace; and it is this disciple, whose feet had been washed at the beginning, and whose soul had been restored at the close, who consistently speaks to us, in his epistles, of our Lord in these two offices. The confidence of Jesus in Peter, by this recovery under the Bishop's care of his soul, received an immediate proof by the Lord's saying to him, “Feed my lambs.” As the great Shepherd of the sheep, brought again from the dead by the God of peace, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, He said again, “Feed my sheep:” and the last chapter of Peter's first epistle is very full and complete, in the recognition of our Lord and himself in this responsibility as an under-shepherd, in view “of the crown of glory that fadeth not away.”
In every fresh relation in heaven with the Father, and on earth, as caring and feeding these “other sheep which are not of this fold” (see John 10:1616And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd. (John 10:16)), these disciples have part and place with their Lord; and these positions and their corresponding services, form the peculiarity (as we are tracing) of this present period marked by Christ's absence, and the descent of the Holy Ghost.
But there was yet one more proof, by which a disciple might have part with his Lord; and of this Jesus speaks to Peter, before He finally leaves the world for the Father's presence. “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not. This spake he, signifying by what death he should glorify God. And when he had spoken this, he saith unto him, Follow me.” What could unjealous love do, but set “His own” in the road He had Himself trodden down to death, as the new pathway by which a disciple could have part with his Lord—and in which glory on earth was to be reached, and God glorified by the laying down of life? Another disciple was standing by, whom Jesus loved, who also leaned on His breast at supper, and said, Lord, Which is he that betrayeth thee? Peter, seeing him, saith to Jesus, “Lord, and what shall this man do? Jesus saith to him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou me.” Here also is a last and crowning instance of the love of the Lord to “His own, which were in the world,” and of the character of the love, in which “He loved them unto the end.” He sets John in the ways of His own steps to wait for His coming—just as He had put Peter to follow Him in death—a death by which he should glorify God. Love, divine love, Christ's most perfect love, had identified His own with Himself in all that His departure out of the world to the Father would carry Him up to; and this love had set us to have part with Himself there in the springhead of life, everlasting life, and at the fountain of all blessing, the only source of righteousness, and joy, and peace. Himself is now the unfailing and untainted channel of supply to us, through whom these living waters flow, Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith and this same Christ too the hope of glory, the glory for which we wait. The Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, who dwelleth with us and is now in us, has become the living power in the new man, for this fellowship with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ into which we are thus called. Moreover this ministry is known and understood by us, inasmuch as it is we who are strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man and according to the riches of His glory. Under such operations of the Holy Ghost in us, what could be the corresponding effects in a disciple so inwrought but what we have just seen the Lord introduced Peter to by death—a death by which he should glorify God, and John by the patience and suffering in continuous life till the Lord came, a life by which he would tarry, if needs be for the glory of Christ? Peter knowing and calmly telling the church of God, “that shortly he must put off his tabernacle, as the Lord had shewed him,” and John writing to us as a “brother and companion in the tribulation and kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ.”
If we go on in our thoughts beyond the relation to disciples, in which the Holy Ghost thus works to bring out the resemblance to Christ in death, or in life; and consider the church and what we are, as members of Christ's body, of His flesh, and of His bones—such meditations would carry us beyond this Gospel, or even the Apostle John's writings, and beyond the subject of this paper.
There are three distinct ministries in the New Testament; one is the blessed ministry of the Son when on earth, which made known the Father and brought us into the place of adopted children that we might not be left below as orphans; the Son Himself going away to the Father's house, and the many mansions, to prepare a place for us; that we should not be left destitute and homeless.
The next ministry is that of the Holy Ghost by the apostles, gathering out the members of Christ into living union with the ascended Lord, and forming them into a body with the risen Head by the baptism of the Spirit, thus constituting the Church of the living God, the body and bride of Christ, the Lamb's wife.
The other ministry is “the revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave unto him to show unto his servants the things which must shortly come to pass,” and has to do with the kingdom, and with the holy Jerusalem, the city coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband, “having the glory of God.” It was with the first of these three glorious ministries and revelations we have had to do, as children with the Father, and what the Father's love in counsel and the loving and perfect work of the Son in death and resurrection opened out for us during a period like the present, when the world which cast Him out, if either sees Him, nor knows Him. May the Lord give us individually to prove how real and true an abode the Father and the Son have with us now, and with the family, by an obedience which is the element in which divine love lives and dwells! “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love, even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love.”
In conclusion, if these chapters in the Gospel of John, from chapter 13 onward, open out to “His own who are in the world” our new connections and relations with the Father, through the departed One, and by the living fellowship of the Holy Ghost, as the abiding Comforter, till the Lord comes to receive us to Himself, how immense must be their value!
If Satan's blinding power can be brought in anywhere, so as to obscure the light which so brightly shines; or close the eye against the knowledge of this glory, in the saints, we may surely expect his wiles and artifices would be directed here: and so they have been, and alas with too much success. Else how can it be accounted for, that the blessed hope of the Lord's coming and our gathering together unto Him, should have been for ages lost to His people? How else can it be understood that His own descent from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God, should almost by common consent be postponed to the last day; and that consequently our being caught up to meet Him (which depends upon His own descent into the air) should be also put off to the remotest point of time? The newborn hopes and expectations of His own were no longer to rest on the restoration of the kingdom to Israel according to Old Testament prophecy; but upon His departure to prepare a place for them in the Father's house; leaving them this assurance, “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also.” “If I will that he tarry till I come” is the only measure that a disciple who estimates everything respecting time and place by Christ, will consent to adopt as the rule of his faith, or the guide to his hope. But, thank God, the fact of the Lord's second coming as a present hope to the souls of His own, that they might not be left orphans, has been recovered to the church in this century—but how revived or restored, if it had not been lost? Many thousands, in various parts of christendom and the world, have also been awakened by the cry: “Behold, the Bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet him:” but how aroused, if they had not all slumbered and slept?
The withering power of Satan's craft has likewise settled upon and blighted as an understood and present fact, the descent of the Holy Ghost to dwell with the saints and to be in them.
His presence as a divine Person, has been reduced to a mere influence, and thus the great and distinguishing peculiarity of “the promise of the Father,” by the descent of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost upon the disciples, as the abiding Comforter, is as much out of mind as a fact, as the coming of the Lord has been as a hope. It is the Holy Ghost who has taken the place of Christ upon the earth in the midst of His own; and occupies the interval between the departure of the Son to the Father, and His coming again to receive us to Himself.
What a master-piece of the devil's policy was it, to wrest these facts and hopes which the love of Christ to His own had provided, that they should not be comfortless, and, by stripping the Lord's people of their unfailing resources in the heavens, and the Paraclete on earth, put them back into the very place of orphans How else can it be explained, that such multitudes of Christians are found praying for the Holy Ghost, in the forgetfulness that their responsibility is, “not to grieve the Holy Spirit of God, whereby they are sealed to the day of redemption?”
Certain consequences must follow these grave denials of the coming of the Lord as a present hope to His saints; and the personal presence of the Comforter, the Holy Ghost, during the absence of Christ, to dwell with us, and be in us; yea, and to carry out the counsels and purposes of God upon earth, respecting Christ and the church. These consequences have followed, and are equally a matter of confession and for a lamentation as when Jeremiah wept and said, “Remember, O Lord, what is come upon us, and consider, and behold our reproach. We are orphans and fatherless. We labor, and have no rest. We have given the band to the Egyptians, and to the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread. Princes are hanged up by their hand, and the faces of elders were not honored. The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us that we have sinned. Her Nazarites were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk; their visage is blacker than a coal, they are not known in the streets. The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, how are they esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of a potter!”
Besides the personal state which these quotations from Jeremiah so plainly and affectingly describe as suited to the present day; the particular revelation which was opened in the ministry of the Son, as we have seen, and continued by the Holy Ghost through the apostles, when the departed One took His place as the glorified Son of man, at the right hand of God in heaven has been obscured, if not lost to the Church. For example, a rejected Christ, rejected and cast out by the world, is not followed in the pathway that caused His rejection; nor is the departed One any longer the missing One, any more than the absent Lord, the expected One. On the contrary, “my Lord delayeth his coming” not only characterizes Christendom as the Lord prophesied; but the evil consequences have followed thickly amongst the fellow servants. In the lamentable forgetfulness or ignorance of their proper relations with the Father and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and to one another as the body and bride of Christ—as waiting for His coming, and the marriage of the Lamb: the enemy and the “evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God” have turned the thoughts back again to Egypt, and the providential mercies of God to be enjoyed in this world. How else can it be accounted for, that such multitudes have turned aside to ordinances and ritualistic observances; and the distance from God in which a worshipper must consciously find himself who is so employed?
Nor indeed is there any other alternative for a believer, a man in Christ, but to “grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” or else fall back on a previous economy and its religion, and become Judaistic, or in modern language a Ritualist. Though evangelicalism may escape this condemnation, by accepting Christ for worship and faith, and by a refusal of the shadows which served till He really came; yet the retrograde steps are equally plain, and for a lamentation upon another ground. How else can the practice of such be understood, in their organizations for the conversion of the world, and the restoration of the Church upon this earth; when they unhesitatingly turn back upon the Old Testament scriptures and the prophets to prove a good time coming, and find a warrant for their work? Solomon and his prosperity as a center on the earth, with all his might and glory, is accepted as the type for this corrupted Christianity; instead of Christ and the cross, and a present crucifixion to the world by it, in true loyalty of heart to the rejected Lord, and in a willing allegiance with the departed One, till His shout announces Him!
“I have given them thy word, and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world even as I am not of the world:” —what word was this?
It is of the greatest moment, for our communion and fellowship with the Father and the Son, as well as for our true guidance in service for to-day, to give the place and authority to the words of our Lord over us, to which He refers in John 17, “I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee:” —what words were these? And again as to the truth which came by Him, both as regards His present position to us, and ours to the Father, “Sanctify them through thy truth, thy word is truth: and for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified through the truth.” No, we are not left orphans, to eat the crumbs that fall from another's table; nor to, steal the earthly promises that belong to the people of Israel; on the contrary, it was said to the Hebrews, that “God had provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.”
“Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us; unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages.”
J. E. B.
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