There cannot be a passage of deeper interest to our souls than John 13. The departure of our Lord out of this world is not exactly the cross; its agonies are not before us there, but His leaving the world to go to the Father. His departure from it necessarily involves His bringing us into a new atmosphere with new aims and objects. In Phil. 2:5-115Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: 6Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: 7But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: 8And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. 9Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: 10That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; 11And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:5‑11) we see the moral manner of His entering this world, I do not mean His birth; but here we see Him departing out of this world, having loved His own which were in the world to the end. And He was going to the place where He would love us to the end. When He was here, though there was nothing to point to Him outwardly, the moral grandeur of His Person attracted great crowds around Him.
When we think of where He came from and the utter contrast of everything this world presented to Him, we may well understand what joy it was to the soul of Jesus to depart out of this world unto the Father. He was the man of sorrows here, characterized by it, as He is the man of joy now. There will be one who is emphatically the man of sin. But Jesus was the man of sorrows. And we have entered little into the nature and reality of Christianity if we are not men of sorrow too, and therefore men of power and men of holy joy, having His joy fulfilled in ourselves. He never spoke of His own sorrows, He always felt for the sorrows of others, and He gives us His sympathy now. But here He had no sympathy, He turned to His Father. We shall not get on at all if we are dependent on the sympathies of the saints. We know, too, sometimes in our little measure what it is not to be understood, and that not by the world, but by the saints.
He did three things: He annulled Satan, that is, destroyed the power of Satan; He finished His work here according to the mind and thoughts of God; and He overcame the world. When He burst the bonds of death and rose from the grave and went up to God, it was as the Destroyer of the power of Satan, the Overcomer of the world, and the Glorifier of the Father. There are three steps in Philippians. He emptied Himself as God, then He humbled Himself as man and became obedient, obedient to God, unto death, even the death of the cross. Now we get the answer of God to all this. You remember that “wherefore.” It is as we see in Acts, where the apostle shows in his preaching that God was doing just the opposite to what they had done (Acts 2:23, 2423Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain: 24Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it. (Acts 2:23‑24)).
“Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name.”
In the name which He had when He entered this world, the name by which He was known among men, there is a mighty mystery, as there is in everything connected with Him. It means Jehovah the Savior; yet it was the name He had as a man. God has given Him His name in a new way, and beings in heaven and earth and under the earth bow at that name once despised on earth. It is in manhood that God gives it to Him. It says in Acts, “He hath made Him both Lord and Christ”; that is, in manhood. It says in Psa. 110, “The Lord said unto my Lord,” that is, the David’s Lord, “Sit Thou on My right hand, until I make Thy foes Thy footstool.” “Jehovah said unto my master.” It is a name used of men, and is the name of supreme authority and power with which Christ is invested, which we little enter into, though it affects us in every way in our lives, as in subjection to Him.
It indicates the place in which God has set Him, the glorious answer of God to what He did. He has seated Him at His own right hand, has made Him Lord, set Him over all the works of His hands, and has reconstituted Him Messiah in a heavenly way. It brings out the glory not only of God, but of the Father, that because of what He has done every tongue should confess Him Lord. He has a new name besides, and many other glories. He must have thought of the more than royal honors—it is a poor word—that awaited Him when He was leaving this world.
In John 14 we see the result—the place into which He brings us by leaving this world.
PARKSTONE. (May 22nd, 1881). From Words of Grace for the Household of Faith 1:249-251.