Having thus passed, in spirit, through the night, and taken His place in the day that lay beyond it, the Lord turns to His disciples, and in these chapters, as the Prophet of the heavenly things, instructs and comforts them, telling them of the mystery of His own heavenly priesthood, and of their calling and duties and blessings as the Church of God still sojourning on earth during the exercise of that priesthood.
The priesthood of the Son of God, or the present dispensation, during which He is on the Father's throne, and we in the kingdom of the Son of God's love, was a secret with God hid from the thoughts of Israel altogether. The "little while" was a stage in the divine procedure of which both the Jews and the disciples were equally ignorant. John 7: 36; John 16: 17. They had all thought that Christ was to abide for ever (John 12: 34); for their prophets had spoken of Him in connection with earthly dominion. There were, however, many intimations, both from prophecy and from history, which might have prepared them for this. Joseph's residence and glory in Egypt, and, during that time, his forgetfulness of his kindred in Canaan till stress of famine brought them to him, had typified this mystery. So had Moses' sojourn in Midian. See Acts 7. We may judge, no doubt, that both Joseph and Moses had constant recollections of their own people, and many a desire toward them, while separated from them--but it was an untold desire. So we know that the Lord is now mindful of Jerusalem, her walls are continually before Him, engraven on the psalms of His hands. But apparently He is to them as a man astonied, as a mighty man that cannot save. Ezekiel 14: 9.
And, beside those typical histories, the prophets had spoken directly of this mystery. They had foretold Jerusalem's widowhood, which was to continue for a season. Moses at the beginning had left a standing testimony with Israel, that the Lord for a time would hide His face from them, and provoke them to jealousy by those who were "not a people." Deut. 32. David had said that Messiah, as his Lord, should for a while sit at the right hand of God. Ps. ex. Isaiah had a vision of Christ in the heavenly glory, during a season of judgment on Israel. Is. 6. Ezekiel saw the glory leave the city, and then, after a season, return to it. And the Lord had said, by Hosea, "I will go and return unto My place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek My face: in their affliction they will seek Me early." In His own ministry the Lord Jesus had already referred to the same mystery. In Matthew He corrects the thought that Christ was to abide for ever, by a recital of those scriptures which spoke of the rejection of the Stone by the builders. In Luke He had shown, by the parable of the nobleman going into a far country, that there was to be an interval between the first appearing of Messiah, and His appearing in His kingdom. But now, in our Gospel, He treats of this matter more fully, showing the character of this interval, or of His session for a while at the right hand of God in heaven.
Having, therefore, closed His public ministry, and being in retirement with the disciples, He occupies Himself with this subject. In the action of the thirteenth chapter, in the teaching of these fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth chapters, and again in the action of the seventeenth, it is the heavenly priesthood that He is variously either exhibiting or teaching; thus showing that, in His present interval of separation from Israel, He is blessedly occupying Himself for the Church. In sympathies and intercessions, in the diligence and wakefulness of One Whose eye is over them, He is all action towards His saints now. He is separated from His brethren according to the flesh, it is true, but He is, meanwhile, like Moses, tending the flock of His Father at the Mount of God, far away from both Egypt's pollutions and Israel's unbelief, tasting the comforts of a beloved home and family, in holy retirement.
An impression of a very happy character lies on my mind from reading the opening of John 14. It is this. Our Lord assumes that His ministry had brought the Father so near to them that His disciples ought to have concluded that His house was their home. There is great consolation in this.
The Lord's ministry had been such a revelation of the Father's love to them, that it would have been strange indeed had this not been the case. Such a thing would have been an exception, and, therefore, to have been noticed. But that there were mansions for them, as well as for Him, in the Father's house, was so fully in character with all His previous works and words, that such a fact, such a truth, needed no mention at all. It was a necessary conclusion. All family privileges were theirs, and of course the family mansion was their home.
What a conclusion for faith to be entitled to draw, without direct instruction! Nay, we should be chargeable with spiritual dulness, if we did not draw it! How could such a ministry as that of Jesus, "the Son of the Father," tell of any thing less than this, that the Father's own house was to be our home for ever?
"Unfathomable wonder, and mystery divine," I may again say. All we need is that spirit of childlike faith which rests in the reality of such surpassing grace.
Would that His family were refreshing the solitude of the Son of God better than they do! Would that they were a more "beautiful flock" for His care and tendance at the Mount of God! a more joyous scene to compensate Him for His present loss of Israel! But He has laid down His life for them, He has given Himself for the sheep, and in His love He abideth faithful.
And these chapters, I may further say, show us that the ministry of the Son had done nothing that was effectual upon the hearts of His disciples. For so the divine order ran--the Father had worked hitherto, the Son was now working, but the Holy Ghost had also to work, ere the Church could be set in her place. And thus it is not until now we get the name of God fully revealed. The revelation of it shines gradually more and more brightly as dispensations advance. But this is a great subject.
In Genesis 1 it is simply "God" that we see and hear. It is "God" Who goes through the six days' work, and then rests on the seventh. But in Genesis 2 it is "the Lord God" that we see and hear. And these are two stages in God's revelation of Himself. In the first chapter we see Him coming forth as God simply, for His own delight and glory. He takes His full delight in the work, beholding it all to be very good, and He glorifies Himself by the work, setting over it one in His own image, the representative of Himself. But in the second chapter we see "the Lord God," that is, God in a covenanted character, God entered upon purposes and plans for the blessing of His creature. And, therefore, much of the previous detail of the work, as it proceeded under the hand of "God," is omitted, and many things are brought into view which had no place before. Thus we have, in strong relief, and which we had not at all in the first chapter, the Garden and the River, the manner of creating the Man, of investing him with dominion, of forming the Woman, and of instituting their union--and we have also the mystic Trees, and the Commandment with its penalty--for all these concerned the place and blessing of the creature in covenant with "the Lord God."*
*We are conscious, when we utter the word "Lord," that we speak of One nearer to us, more our own, than when we say simply "God."
Thus did He begin to unfold His name to us; and after these first notices of "God" and "the Lord God," we get the name "God Almighty," published to Abram. This was a further revelation of Himself. And this was done when Abram was "Past age," and had nothing to lean upon but the almightiness, or all-sufficiency, of God. Gen. 17: 1. In this name, which declared this needed sufficiency, God led him; and Isaac and Jacob after him; for they were all strangers and pilgrims on the earth, having nothing but the promise of an Almighty Friend for their stay and staff. Gen. 28, 35, 48. In process of time, however, God was known to His people by another name. Bringing them into the covenant, into the promised inheritance, He calls Himself "Jehovah;" that is, the covenant God of Israel. Ex. 6: 1-6. And under God as Jehovah Israel take their seat in Canaan.
But still, all this did not communicate God in the full glory of His name. There was grace in God, and there were gifts by grace, which these ways of His did not fully unfold. But this is done in the name which is now published to us--the name of "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." This is the full name or glory of our God; and grace, and the gifts of grace, are effectually brought to us by that dispensation which publishes it.*
*The believer will ever take his sweetest delight in the last or fullest revelation of God. And by this the believer and the mere man of science are distinguished. The merely philosophic man will allow the divine hand to be displayed in creation; he will own "God" in the plants and the cattle, for instance; but the garden and the river, and the married pair, which "the Lord God" has to do with, have no attraction for him; but these are the objects that chiefly engage the believer's thoughts.
Thus it was not until the present age that the full name and glory of our God were published. The Father had been working, it is true (see p. 47), in all ages of the Jewish times; but still, Israel were put nationally under God simply as "Jehovah." The revelation of "the Father" had to wait for the ministry of the Son, and certain dispensations had to finish their course ere the Son could come forth. The Son could not have been the minister of the law--such ministry would not have been worthy of Him Who is in the bosom of the Father. It was committed to angels. And the Son did not come forth in ministry till the "great salvation" was ready to be published. Heb. 2: 1-3. So the manifestation of the Holy Ghost waited for its due time. The Holy Ghost could not wait on the ministry of the law, any more than could the Son. Smoke and lightning and the voice of thunder were there (Ex. 19); but the Holy Ghost came forth, with His gifts and powers, to wait on the ministry of the Son, on the publication of the great salvation. Heb. 2: 3. The Spirit of God could not be a spirit of bondage gendering fear--the law may do that, but the Holy Ghost must gender confidence. "As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God."
Till the Son of God had finished His works, the Holy Ghost could not come forth. The heart must first be purged from an evil conscience, so that the temple might be sanctified for the indwelling Spirit, and the holy furniture (that is, the spirit of liberty and adoption, and the knowledge of glory) must be prepared for this temple; and all this could be done only by the death, resurrection, and ascension of the Son. The revelation of the Holy Ghost waited for these things. He had been, it is true, the holy power in all, from the beginning. He had spoken by the prophets. He was the strength of judges and kings. He was the power of faith, of service, and of suffering, in all the people of God. But all this was below the place which He now takes in the Church. His indwelling in us, as in His temple, had not been of old; but now He does so dwell, spreading out a kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy. As the Spirit of wisdom He gives us "the mind of Christ," spiritual senses for the discerning of good and evil. As the Spirit of worship He enables us to call God "Father," and Jesus "Lord." He also makes intercession for us, with groanings that cannot be uttered. He sheds abroad in the heart "the love of God," and causes us "to abound in hope." He is in us a well of water springing up into everlasting life; and He is the source also of "rivers of living water," flowing forth from us to refresh the weary. And He forms the saints together as "a spiritual house," where "spiritual sacrifices" are offered; no longer admitting "a worldly sanctuary," and "carnal ordinances;" for they are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit; and gifts, causing them all to grow up into Christ in all things, are dispensed among them.
These are some of the ways of the Holy Ghost in His kingdom within the saint: these are His works which shine in the place of His dominion. He is there an Earnest, an Unction, and a Witness. He tells us "plainly of the Father," and takes of the things of Christ, to show them to us. John 16: 14, 15. His presence in us is so pure, that there is no evil that He does not resent and grieve over (Eph. 4: 30); and yet so tender and sympathizing, that there is nothing of godly sorrow that He does not feel and groan over. Rom. 8: 23. He causes hope to abound; He imparts the sense of full divine favour; He reads to our conscience a title to calm and entire assurance. There is nothing of feebleness, or narrowness, or uncertainty in the place of His power. His operations savour of a kingdom, and a kingdom of God too, full of beauty and strength. We have to own how little we live in the virtue and sunshine of it; but still, this is what it is in itself, though our narrow and hindered hearts so poorly possess themselves of it. And His handiwork is to have its praise from us; and His glory in His temples is to be declared. It is well to be humbled at times by testing ourselves in reference to such an indwelling kingdom; but the kingdom itself is not to be so measured.*
*I must observe here something that again strikes me as being highly characteristic of this Gospel by John. The name of God is published in a formal manner in Matthew; it is published, as I may say, literally, or in the strict terms and syllables of it. See John 28: 19. But in this Gospel, as we have now seen in these chapters, it is published after a moral method; the knowledge of that name, "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost," being conveyed to the soul through a revelation of their several acts and ways in the economy of our salvation and blessing.
Precious, I need not say, beloved, all this mystery is. The whole order of things to which we are introduced tells us (and this is full of richest comfort) that it is God and not ourselves we have now immediately to do with. In the law it was otherwise. The law dealt with us immediately, saying, "Thou shalt," and "Thou shalt not." But now it is God we have first to do with. We are absolutely summoned away from ourselves, and are not to remember whether we were Jews or Greeks. We have God to look to, God to hear, God to do with. And this is the highest possible point of blessing for a sinner to apprehend--so blessed is it that Satan does what he can to keep us short of it, to make the ear heavy to the voice of God, the eye dim to the ways and works of God, and the heart irresponsive to the love of God. He would fain busy us with any thing that the light of the glory of the Gospel of Christ, Who is the Image of God, may not shine in. He makes some busy with thoughts of their righteousness, and others busy with thoughts, of their sins, that he may keep them, either through vainglory or fear, apart from God Himself.
Now, to draw the disciples from a mere Jewish place into this elevation, and by this to comfort them under the sense of His absence, is the Lord's great purpose in the discourse which He holds with them in these chapters, the like to which never passed between the sons of men--the heart and mind of God had never before so largely and blessedly communicated their treasures to the desires and thoughts of His people, as now the Lord was doing. Most sacred moments of communion between heaven and earth were these!
At the beginning the Lord says, "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me." This at once gives them notice of another Object of faith than what they as yet had. God, in the sense of these words, had been already known to Israel. The disciples, in their Jewish place, were already believers in God. The Lord here allows that, as He had before asserted, speaking to the woman of Samaria: "We [i.e., Jews] know what we worship." The Jews had God; their faith was not wrong, but only defective, and the Lord would now fill it out. He would now have them to know the Father through the Son--and the whole of this discourse with His disciples furthers this design. He speaks particularly of the Father, and promises the Comforter to make these things (the things of the Father and the Son) known to them.
This was the character of grace which this Gospel at the beginning intimated, when John wrote, "As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God." And this early notice of the value and power of the Son's ministry is, in these chapters, largely unfolded. But while this is doing, we have several forms of Jewish ignorance brought out--necessarily so, I may say, for Israel did not stand in this knowledge into which the Lord was now leading them. Thomas is ignorant of Christ's departure and separation from this earth, and says, "Lord, we know not whither Thou goest;" for Israel had been taught that Christ was to abide for ever. Philip betrays his unacquaintedness with the Father; for it was not the knowledge of the Father in the Son that Israel had been led into. Judas wondered at any glory but the manifested, worldly glory of Messiah; for such was Israel's hope. And they all stand amazed at the mystery of the "little while." But out of these thoughts the heavenly Prophet is leading them. They had been already drawn out from the apostate nation, as God's remnant accepting Jesus as Messiah come from God; but they had still to know the Son as come from the Father, Who, while He was with them, had been showing them the Father, Who was now about to return to the Father, and Who would come again to take them home to the Father. These were the great things of His love which their divine Prophet here reveals to them; but these were as yet strange things unto them.
But the course of our Lord's own thoughts through this conversation, is only for a while interrupted by these defective Jewish thoughts of His disciples. His purpose was to elevate them to the sense of their calling, as the Church of God, and thus to comfort them; and that purpose He steadily follows, however He may, for a time, have to rebuke their slowness of heart. Thus: in the interruption occasioned by Peter (John 13: 36 - 14: 1), the Lord, in answering Peter, is called to contemplate and foretell his faithlessness, and denial of Him; but this does not turn out of their course the thoughts, of kindness about him and the rest of them which the Lord was pursuing. "Let not your heart be troubled," says the gracious Master, immediately after forewarning Peter of his sin. So, at the close of the conversation, He had to tell them that the hour was then at hand when every one of them would go to his own, and leave Him alone; and yet, without allowing an interruption of His flow of love towards them for a single moment, He at once resumes His own thoughts, saying to them, "These things I have spoken unto you, that in Me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world."
And so, beloved, with His saints ever since. We may, through our own folly, have to listen to the "cock crowing "to receive rebuke, go out, and weep; but the heart of Jesus does not repent of His purposed kindness toward us. His purpose is to save, and He will save. His purpose is to bless, and who shall hinder? He has not beheld iniquity in His people. They are to have peace accomplished for them by His death, life brought to them by His resurrection, and glory to be hereafter theirs at His return. These are their blessings and of these He tells them, in spite of all slowness of heart or unworthiness, for their comfort under the sense of His going away.
The works that Jesus did, in Matthew's Gospel, are owned to be those of the Son of David. John 12: 23. They are there the seals of His Messiahship. But here the Lord offers them to His disciples as the seals of His Sonship of the Father. He would have them looked upon, not merely as tokens that He could order the kingdom of Israel, according to the promises of the prophets (Isa. 35: 5, 6), but as witnesses that He was the Dispenser of the Father's grace and power; for He says, "Believe Me that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me: or else believe Me for the very works' sake." And this is in full consistency with our Gospel. And the "greater works," which He immediately afterwards promises that believers in Him should do, were to be. as I judge, works of the same character, works that were to savour of the Father's grace, such as the bringing of condemned sinners into the liberty of the children of God. As Paul says, "In Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the Gospel." And so is it still. Sinners are still brought into the liberty of dear children. "I will not leave you orphans," says the Lord in this place: "I will come to you." "Because I live, ye shall live also." No orphanage for them no lamentation from them as there was from Israel, that they were fatherless. John 14: 18, margin; Lam. 5: 3. The adoption of the saints during the orphanage of Israel is here brought out by the Lord in terms of deep and wondrous meaning. They were to know that He was in the Father, and they in Him, and He in them. THE FATHER is the holy burden here.
And there is a little action of the Lord's that I must notice. At the close of the fourteenth chapter He says, "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you;" by this telling them, that, ere He left this world, He would leave His peace behind Him--peace for them as sinners accomplished by His death. And after thus telling them of peace, He says, "Arise, let us go hence." Upon which we may assume that they all rise from the paschal table, and walk forth toward the Mount of Olives; and then it is, that He at once presents Himself to them as, in resurrection, their Life, the Source of quickening power, saying, "I am the Vine; ye are the branches."
There is a beauteous significancy in the whole of this action. He sits at the paschal table till peace had been pronounced, for on that table the pledges of their peace were at that moment spread; but as He rises from it, He tells them of their resurrection-life--life that they were to know as in Him, risen above the power of death--the true Vine. And He tells them that there is no other life but this; saying "If a man abide not in Me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered." And, having thus disclosed to them the only root of life, He shows them the joys and holy prerogatives of this life, teaching them that they were to have His own joy, the joy of the Son, fulfilled in them, and were also to enter into the dignity and grace of friendship with their Lord, and to assure themselves that His glory and their blessing were now but one interest; and, moreover, that the Father's great purpose was to glorify the Son as this Vine, or Head of life; that having planted it as the only Witness of life in the earth, which is the scene of death, the Father would watch over it with the care and diligence of a husbandman. This the Lord here shows to be the Father's present care, to have the Vine in beauty and fruitfulness, to glorify Jesus as the HEAD OF LIFE, as by-and-by He will glorify Him on the throne of glory as HEIR OF ALL THINGS. In old times the eye of God was upon the land of Israel, as her Husbandman (Deut. 11: 12); but now it is watching over this Vine, which His own hand has planted.
All this told the disciples of exceeding riches of grace. But withal He tells them, that this. union with Him was to separate them from the world; this friendship with Him was to expose them to the world's hatred. The world was soon to express its full enmity to God, and then to them. The revelation of God in love, the revelation of the Father in and by the Son, was soon about to be fully refused by the world. This was hatred indeed, hatred "without a cause," hatred for love. The cross of Christ was soon to present man's fullest hatred meeting God's fullest love. Ignorant of the Father, it might be still zealous for God, and think to do God service by killing the children of the Father. For there may be zeal for the synagogue, yea, and for the God of the synagogue, with entire separation from the spirit of that dispensation which publishes riches of grace, and reveals the Father in the Son.
But this view of the sorrows which His saints might endure from the world, leads the Lord to exhibit the services of the promised Comforter in them and for them still more blessedly. He tells them that the Comforter would stand for them against the world, convicting it of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment, but at the same time dwelling in them the Witness of their Father's love, and their Lord's glory. This comfort He provides for them against the day of the world's hatred.
And here let me observe, that the Spirit was now to be received from the Father. God had approved Jesus of Nazareth (Acts 2: 22); but it was from the Father that the Holy Ghost was to be received, and He would approve His presence according to this. Look at the character of His presence in the Church, immediately on His being given. Acts 2. What an oil of gladness, what a Spirit of liberty and largeness of heart, is He in the saints there! Jesus had received Him in the ascended place, where He Himself had been made full of joy with God's countenance, and giving Him forth from such a place, He manifests Himself here accordingly, imparting at once something of that joy of God's countenance into which their Lord had entered. They gladly received the word, ate their bread with gladness, and praised God. And this joy could easily dry up other sources. They parted with what might have secured human delights and provided for natural desires. The Holy Ghost in them was joy and liberty and largeness of heart. It was the Spirit "of the Father." It was the reflection on the saints here of that light which had fallen on Jesus in the holiest. The oil had run down from the beard to the skirts of the clothing. Psalm 133.
Indeed, we can form but a poor idea of the value of such a dispensation as this which the Comforter was now to bring, to a soul that had been under the spirit of bondage and of fear gendered by the law. What thoughts of judgment to come were now bidden to depart! What fears of death were now to yield to the consciousness of present life in the Son of God! And what would all this be but anointing with an oil of gladness? And the disciples, by this discourse, were under training for this joy and liberty. The schoolmaster was soon to give up his charge--his rod and his book of elements were now to be dispensed with--and in this discourse, the Son is leading the children on their way home to their Father from under such tutors and governors, and they are soon to reach the Father, that they might know, through the Holy Ghost, the liberty and joy of adoption. Gal. 3, 4.
Such was this interesting hour to the Church. The Holy Ghost, the Witness of the Father and the Son, and thus the Spirit of adoption, was soon to be imparted, and they were now led forth from the school of the law to wait for it. With thoughts of the Father and of the Son, and of the Church's interests in all their love, the Holy Ghost was now to fill the saints. And this accordingly He does in our dispensation. He tells ifs, as the Lord here promises He should, of the delight that the Father has in the Son, of His purpose to glorify Him, and of our place in that delight and glory. He takes of these things and the like, and shows them unto us.
Look at Genesis 24, a well-known and much enjoyed scripture. It sets forth the election of a bride for the Son by the Father--but the place which the servant occupies in it, is just the place of the Holy Ghost in the Church, ministering (as in divine grace) to the joys of the Son and the Church, in perfecting the purposes of the Father's love. In that scene, the servant of Abraham tells Rebecca of the way in which God had prospered his master--what a favoured and beloved one Isaac was, how he had been the child of old ace, and how Abraham had made him the heir of all his possessions. He discloses to her the counsels which Abraham had taken touching a wife for this much loved son of his, and lets her see clearly her own election of God to fill that holy and honoured place. And at last he puts upon her the pledges of this election and of Isaac's love.
Nothing could be more touching and significant than the whole scene. Would that our hearts knew more of the power of all this, under the Holy Ghost, as Rebecca knew it under the hand of Abraham's servant! It was because he had filled her with thoughts of Abraham and of Isaac, and of her own interest in them, that she was ready to go with this stranger all alone across the desert. Her mind was formed by these thoughts; and she was prepared to say to her country, her kindred, and her father's house, "I will go." And the thoughts of our heavenly Father's love, and our Isaac's delight in us, can still give us holy separation from this defiled place where we dwell. Communion with the Father and the Son through the Comforter, is the holy way of distinguishing the Church from the world. There may be the fear of a coming judgment working something of actual separation from it, or the pride of the Pharisee working religious separation from it, but the present knowledge of the Father's love and the hope of the coming glories of the Son, can alone work a divine separation from its course and its spirit.
The Father's love, of which the Comforter testifies, is an immediate love. It is the love of God that has visited the world in the gift of His Son (John 3: 16); but the moment this love of God is believed, and the message of reconciliation which it has set forth is received, then are believers entitled, through the riches of grace, to know the Father's love, a love that is an immediate love, as the Lord here tells us. John 16: 26, 27. It is of this love of the Father, as well as of the glory of the Son, that the Comforter tells us on the way homeward. He is our Companion for all the journey, and this is His discourse with us. How did the servant, I doubt not (to return to the same chapter, Gen. 24), as he accompanied Rebecca across the desert, tell her further of his master, adding many things to what he had already told her in Mesopotamia; for he had been the confidant of his master, and had known him from the beginning. He knew his desire for a son, and God's promise and God's faithfulness. He knew of Abraham's victory over the kings, of his rescue of Lot, and meeting with Melchizedek. He knew of the covenant, the pledge of the inheritance. He knew of the dismissal of Ishmael from the house, and of Isaac's walk in it without a rival--of the mystic journey up Mount Moriah, and of Isaac being thus alive from the dead. All this he knew, and all this doubtless he told her of, as they travelled on together, with these recollections and prospects delighting her, though her back was now turned, and turned for ever, upon her country and her father's house. And, beloved, were we more consciously on the way with the Comforter, the way would to its in like manner be beguiled by His many tales of love and glory, whispering of the Father and of the Son to our inmost souls. Be it so with us, Thy poor people, blessed Lord, more and more!
