There is a passage in John 16 which ought to speak plainly to our hearts, as showing to us how jealous the Lord Jesus is lest we should fail to enter on the full enjoyment of our privileges and place.
The manner and intimacy of His own relationship to the Father are what we are called to share, anything short of that it would not suit his love to give us. But the heart is slow to enter into all His love has made over to us, a sense of our own unworthiness helps to keep us further off in spirit than He would have us, and so long have we been trained in unbelief and distrust of God, that it takes line upon line and precept upon precept before the fullness of His love begins to be measured or estimated aright by us.
But if we are dull learners, He is a patient teacher, and if we read how slow of heart to believe His little flock were in the days of His flesh, and know ourselves the counterpart of them; we know too that the ways that gave character to the yesterday of His life on earth still characterize the today of His life in heaven and will do so forever: He is the same.
Little as they understood the full truth of His person, yet it was a comparatively easy thing for the disciples to enjoy according to their measure their nearness to Him. But when He spoke to them of the Father it was another matter. It called for more faith and spiritual intelligence than they possessed, and hence in chapter 14. He had to tell them that He was in the Father and the Father in Him, so that those who had seen Him had seen the Father; besides this He was the way to the Father, no man could come to the Father but by Him.
But there was a danger still to be guarded against, and so His thoughtful love would anticipate the mistakes His loved ones would be likely to make and prevent them.
The danger was lest they should not use the liberty He had brought them into, and instead of using Him as the way to the Father, should put Him in between them and the Father; and this would not do.
There is a sense in which we apprehend, as having taken part in flesh and blood, the Lord Jesus to be nearer to us than the Father. The grace in which he came down to our level, as far as outward circumstances went, not morally of course, has made Him in a sense nearer to us, and it is more easy for us to find ourselves free in His presence, who, though he might have been exempt from them all, has shared our sorrows and our trials in this evil world. And this is surely as it ought to be.
But still redemption brings us to God. He suffered the just for the unjust, to bring us to God. His bearing our sorrows and carrying our infirmities and coming thus to us in grace, was a different thing, though a part of the same display of love, from His bearing our sins in His own body on the tree. Redemption gives us a place with God. If we would measure it we must do so in His own way, as no other could be the true measure, who tells us that, “As My Father hath loved me so have I loved you,” and “That the world may know that Thou (the Father) hast loved them as Thou hast loved Me.” In Ephesians 2 we read, “But now in Him, ye, who sometimes are afar off, are made nigh by the blood of Christ; “and again, “Through Him we both (Jew and Gentile) have access by one Spirit to the Father;” and again in 3:12 “In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of Him.”
Now it is just, this we often fail to realize, and therefore the Lord’s words in this 16 chapter. He had been with them and they had gone to Him for everything, but He was going away by the cross to the Father; a little while and they should see Him no more. The world would rejoice to have got rid of one whose presence troubled it, but it would be their sorrow to lose their kind and gracious Master. But He would see them again and their hearts should rejoice; and so He did. If death and the grave hid Him from their eight and dashed all their hopes to the ground, His resurrection from the dead showed how He was conqueror over all, and that for them; and so we read, then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord.” We know how the hearts that had found their object in Himself would have kept Him here, but His answer to Mary, who was foremost in devoted attention to His person was a gentle reproof of the little knowledge of the mind of God she had, “Touch me not! (or perhaps ‘don’t be clinging to Me,’ is the real force of it — as if to keep me here) for I am not yet ascended to My Father, but go to, My brethren and say, I ascend to My Father and your Father, to My God and your God.” The time was come when He should “show them plainly of the Father.”
Now it was just this time He was anticipating, here. Redemption having been accomplished, He had declared the name of His God and Father to His brethren. He was to go to the Father and send the Holy Ghost, the Comforter to abide with them forever.
And, so He says to them, “Hitherto ye have asked nothing in My name; ask and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.” And then He adds “At that day ye shall ask in My name; and I do not say that I will pray the Father for you; for the Father Himself loveth you because; ye loved, me, and have believed that I am come out from God.” As the way to the Father He puts Himself, before us, but we do not come, as asking Him to go to the Father for us, nor in, any sense as if He were between us and the Father. He would have us know that boldness of access with confidence is our privilege. Nor is asking, for His sake but in His name. The Father Himself loveth you, and you can go freely to Him in my name. What love in this, what carefulness to guard us from drawing back from the full confidence in the Father in which He walked on earth, and in which He would have us walk too, sharing His rejection by the world, but sharing too the privileges and joy of knowing His Father as our Father and His God as our God, while waiting to see Him face to face and be with Rim in His glory.
R. T. G.