More completely John 14. Christ is the object of faith; not with them. But He goes to prepare a place for them, and comes again to receive them to Himself, that where He is they may be. He has revealed the Father in Himself, and so they know where He is going, and the way. Then by the Comforter they know they are in Him, and He in them.
In obedience He manifests Himself to them when and as not to the world. His Father and He dwell with those that keep His word. Besides, for this He leaves peace with them; gives them His peace. They are not to be troubled and afraid. Then more particulars of detail are in it for them especially. Asking anything in His name they had it. The Comforter brought all things to their remembrance. Loving Him they would be glad He went to His Father. The Lord had now closed His present relationship with the disciples as a Remnant connected with the Jews, and gets up, and leaves that association: " Arise, let us go hence." Fatal word for Israel! He had shown it, anticipatively, in getting up from supper, in view of His priestly action in chapter 13; but He had not done it historically. Then He sat down again.
Hence in the following chapter (15) He declares that Israel is not the true vine at all. He is the True Vine, and the professing disciples (then the eleven) are the branches. But note here He states the general truth: “I am the true vine.... Every branch in me." Then He affirms a particular truth: “Already ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you." Thereafter He distinguishes them and the general truth, verses 3-5; clean disciples, verse 6, "If a man"; verse 7, "If ye"; and then, "My words abide in you," etc. Thus we get Christ, as the True Vine, supplanting Israel, as in Isa. 49, and then the Holy Ghost come when He was away. They had a testimony, and were to abide and continue. The Holy Ghost would bring down His own testimony from heaven, while (according to chapter 14) helping them also in theirs. This completes this part.
Chapter 17. He unfolds, as we have often seen, their whole place with the Father and with the world, and at last (v. 24) shows their true place in heaven, and the Father's love while we are here; but, note the word, sanctifies them through, not the, but Thy truth. It is the Father's truth they were to be sanctified by, that revelation of the heavenly state and what Christ is as Head of the new creation before the Father, what is conformed to the counsels of God as before the world, and the new glory in which Christ was with Him, His Father; theirs according to His own nature, and which is brought out in what is heavenly, as a system displayed before Him, according to those counsels.
Christ was this as a Man on earth, but it could not be received there. We enter into it as setting, through the revelation of the Holy Ghost, our affections on things above, where Christ sits at the right hand of God. This was before the world existed. So the promise of eternal life was given us in Christ Jesus before the world. It was manifested in Christ's Person in the world, if men could see it (so far as they did they saw and hated it). It is established in Christ now as Man at His Father's right hand; and will be in full display and result when the heavenly company are complete before God in heaven. Hence the world is always in opposition to the Father. We are not of the world, as Christ was not, but sanctified by this truth, the Father's truth.
All through this part of John the way in which this rejection of Christ has thrown the world in evident opposition to all that we are brought into, to the Father, is very remarkable. It is a rejected, outcast system; condemned; judged; never to see Christ as there in it, if connection had been possible. Again, the Holy Ghost is the testimony, because it is down here witness that Christ is rejected, and received by the Father. Such a view of Christianity makes a total opposition as to place and walk with all that connects it with this world. The striving of the Spirit in us is against the flesh, for it is simply evil (born of flesh; born of Spirit, spirit), but it is co-ordinate with the world; and so is law, which the Spirit sanctions, but supplants as the power of the new creation. But this by the by.
The point here is the world (grown up according to flesh) away from God, and the new creation, and to us, but really, in Christ, glory (who is also eternal life according to this) before ever the world was, and now rejected by the world, so as that the breach and contrast is irremediable, re-connection impossible; realized in Christ's Person, as Man entered into glory; brought to us in faith by the Holy Ghost sanctifying us thus (compare 2 Cor. 3), by the Father's truth fulfilled in the new creation, when we shall be taken into the glory, and like Him. This was before the world existed, and is the mind of God as to man, and what is to be in result in man, and all subordinated creation before Him. John 17 gives it fully.
Chapters 15 and 16 are dispensational dealings in time, conformable to it in respect of Israel, as of the old thing (also disowned), and Christians.
Chapter 14 shows us Christ's revelation of it when on earth, and the Spirit's showing us we are in Him where He is entered personally into it, and how far it is realized in obedient ones now.
Chapter 13. He maintains us in daily fitness and competency for it.
When Christ's death came in it was the judgment of this world. He was witnessed Son of God through Lazarus' resurrection into this world, and the Father glorified; Son of David in riding in; but when He is to take the place of Son of Man (which He was in Person) He sees He must take it (if man was to be thus brought in) by death, and so have Psa. 8 If Psa. 2 was in a certain sense possible when in flesh (not really so) this could not be. The corn of wheat must fall into the ground, and die. This He sees in all its gravity, but submits, and seeks the Father's glory, and then sees the judgment of this world, and its prince cast out; and He were thus the attractive center for man.
But this was at the basis of the matter. It is personally and dispensationally considered in chapters 14-16, and fully brought out, yet as to the disciples then, and us as in this world in chapter 17, or displayed in glory in it; only verse 24 makes us enter into the cloud to enjoy what was before the world in the glory of the Son loved then. This is brought into our hearts now. The heavenly character of what the Lord was leading them into has come far more forcibly before me as referring to, and connected with, what was before the world, and in opposition to what was in the world, and Judaism, too, than ever; not as a new principle, but as distinct in perception.