John 14–16

"In My Father's house are many mansions … I go to prepare a place for you." Notice this: it was in His Father's house — the place He had as Son, where He was at home. There He was going to prepare my place. That is unspeakable blessing! It was a comfort, a joy, to have Christ with them in the world, but that was passing. Think what the home of such a heart as His must be! There all His divine affections would flow out. He is the divine Son, and yet a Man. And this is the place where He is going to take us.

In modern English, the word "mansions" suggests size and ornate display. But in the English of 1611 the word meant only what the original language conveys: "resting-places," "abodes" or "dwellings." The word appears only once more in the New Testament, in verse 23 of this same chapter, and there it is translated "abode." "Many" does not point to a variety of conditions. It points to plenty of room. There would be room not only for the Lord, but room for all of them too. That house will never be overcrowded, as the inn at Bethlehem was at His first coming.

Let us note that the word "mansions" is really "abodes" — a home which, once reached, will never again be left. There we shall stay. On earth we have "no lasting city." We are pilgrims and strangers here. Our lasting home is in the Father's house. What is more, in the Father's house there are "many" abodes. On earth there was no room for Christ, and little room for those who are Christ's. But in the Father's house there is room for all who are Christ's — the great and the small.

These men had trusted that He would redeem Israel... The Father's house had never entered their earth-bound minds, but this is what He talks to them about, not thrones and crowns... To remove all question from their minds He says, "if it were not so I would have told you." Suppose I had nothing better for you than the earth can give, nothing better than your highest expectations. Then I would have told you. I would not have asked you to follow Me and then deceived and disappointed you.

"In My Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you," He said; and it is equally true that if there had been no hell to dread and avoid, He would have told us. He has told us in definite terms about both heaven and hell, and everyone who takes His words seriously is wise.

A Man entered heaven, as a result of redemption, and so the place was prepared for them. It was not a question of preparing them for the place (that is the subject of chapter 13), but of preparing the place for them. The presence of their Forerunner, where He was going, accomplished it... The entrance of Christ left nothing to be done for them to enter; only those who will share the inheritance with Him still have to be gathered.

Before He went there, the place had no existence. It was a new thing for man to be in heaven. Angels might have been there as servants, but men were to be there as sons... And that place is now prepared. It is not being prepared. The entrance of Christ, as man before the Father's face, has prepared it. He is there for us; not for Himself.

"I go to prepare a place for you" — He Himself is the home-link, so close and precious, between our hearts and the place... So Scripture never speaks of our going to heaven, but of our going to Christ. The person makes the place, even in natural things; how much more in divine things!

He says, "I go to prepare a place for you." It was the eternal thought of the Father that man should be in that place. But Christ had to go in first as our Forerunner. His entrance prepared the place. He entered as Man into the presence of the Father, in the Father's house. He would have us know that that place is ours.

Notice, it was in His Father's house, the place that He had as Son where He was at home — there He was going to prepare my place. That is unspeakable blessing! It was a comfort, a joy to have Christ with them in the world, but that was only along the way. He was going to prepare a place where He was at home. Think what the home of such a heart as His must be!

It is clear that He did not mean death, nor the destruction of Jerusalem, nor the end of the world. He who was going away promised to come again. If the departure of Jesus was real and personal, the return would be just as real and personal. He does not come to reign over them in their place. He comes to take them to His place, so that He and they may be happy together in heaven.

"I will come again, and receive you to Myself." This is the language of affection. He does not say, I will send for you. No, that would not satisfy the heart — "I will come." He would not be content without having them where He is, and without coming to fetch them.

Had we known Him only as a great ruler, splendid in His glory, it would have been fitting for Him to send some noble servant to lead us into His throne room. But it is not glory, or dignity, or splendour of that sort that He shows us here. It is love — yearning, tender love that cannot wait for someone to bring us, and will not send another for us, but must come itself.

Notice, it is the Person here again. It is not "heaven," or "glory," but "to Myself." What joy there is in that! "That where I am you may be also."

He went there to prepare a place where we can be and see the Father in Him. For this He had to enter the Father's house as a human being. That is what the Father's house is all about. The expression "where I am" occurs five times in this Gospel and each time it refers to the Father's house (7:34, 36; 12:26; 14:3; 17:24).

The promise goes on, "that where I am you may be also." This tells us that the need of our hearts is His own need too. Not only for our joy but for His, we must be where He is. And that is the heaven of the Christian's hope. People have imagined a heaven of their own. It suits them, no doubt, but it does not suit at all what Christ desires for us.

One class of passages is found only in the New Testament. These refer to the coming of the Lord for His saints: John 14:3; Philippians 3:20; 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17; 1 Corinthians 15:23. Another set of texts is common to both Testaments. These teach just as plainly the coming with the saints: Jude 14; Zechariah 14:5; Colossians 3:4; Revelation 19:11-14.

"Where I go you know," the Lord says, pointing it out even more definitely. He was not going into the universe, nor to any place that earth was part of. His hour had come to leave this world and go to the Father. But how did they know the place so well, and the way, despite Thomas? Because it was the Father's presence — a far more definite thing to me than the word "heaven." He was the way to the Father, just as the Father was revealed in Him. So they knew the Father's house.

Thomas contradicts this outright: "Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?" But Thomas was badly mistaken. They knew where He was going by knowing Himself. In Him they had learned everything that gave character to the place. If I wanted to know your house I might get to know it without knowing much about you, but in the things of God it is otherwise. We know divine things by knowing divine Persons. The way to get to know the place is to get to know the Person who is in the place.

I am going to the Father's house, and you shall be there too. And what makes the blessedness of the Father's house? The Father being there, and brothers and sisters there. We do not think about the place or the state in connection with the Father's house, though there are these as well. The great thing to our hearts is the Person there — the object in the house — the Father. No one can go to the Father "but by Me." If I know the Father, I know where I am going. It is He who makes it a home to me.

Philip thought that if only he knew the Father, he could know the Father's house. Jesus says, "Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know Me, Philip? Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father." Every trait of the blessedness of the Father's house shone out in the Person and ways of the Son here below. The heart that knows the Son knows the Father too, even the feeblest baby. It is no matter of attainment; the Lord Jesus would start us with it.

God always treats us according to what He has really given us, treating us as though we had realised it all. So in John the Lord says, "And where I go you know, and the way you know." They did know HIM who was truly the way to the Father. Yet Thomas objected, "We do not know the way," because they had never realised it.

What Thomas should have done was not to sit in judgment on the words of his Master. He was only trading words with the Lord. Instead of saying what he did, he should have asked, "Well, Lord, and what next?" and so taken the place of a learner. It makes a wonderful difference which place we take. Are we receivers from Him, or judges of what He says?

But Thomas was mistaken, for they knew where He was going by knowing Him. In Him they had learned everything that gave character to the place. If I wanted to know your house, I could get to know it without knowing much about you. But in the things of God it is different. We know divine things by knowing divine Persons. The way to become acquainted with the place is to become acquainted with the Person who is in the place.

A way is a great gift, especially through a wilderness which by its nature has no way. Eden, or unfallen creation, had no way either; but then it needed none... But sin came in, and death with it, the forerunner of judgment. Everything was changed into a wilderness. Men wandered in every direction, all of them away from God and hopelessly wrong. It became a wilderness-world, an empty place with no road... Now there is a road, for Christ is the Way. He is the only sure Way for the worst of straying sinners. He is the open way for the lost, whom He came to seek and to save.

Further, He is the Truth, the full expression of everyone and of everything as they are. He tells us in His own Person what God is; He shows us the Father, being Himself the Son. But He, not Adam, shows us man. Adam, no doubt, shows us falling or fallen man; Christ alone is man according to God... Moreover, as He shows us holiness and righteousness, so also He brings out sin in its true colours.

The Lord shows Thomas his mistake. He assures him that He Himself was the Way, and that only through Him could anyone come to God. And not only that; He was also the Truth — the revelation of God. But man was dead and could not receive the truth. So He was the Life as well, the life men needed in order to receive it. Everything man needed was found in Him.

We will notice first the beginning of it all, the way to the Father... No way but through Him — through His blood — the new and living way now opened for us into the holiest of all, the very presence of God. This links back to verses 1 to 3. Those who have access to the Father through Him also have entrance to the Father's house.

"No one comes to the Father except through Me," said the Son of God. "I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life." This shuts out every effort of man apart from the Son. It shuts out man even at his very best. The Son is the Way, not simply a way! The Son is the Truth, not simply a portion of it! The Son is the Life, not simply a partial display of it.

The Christian faith, and the gospel that proclaims it, still make this exclusive claim today. You can see it in scriptures such as John 6:68; John 14:6; Acts 4:12; Galatians 1:8-9. Some men today go to the Buddhist or the follower of Confucius and admit that their religions are ways to God. They claim only that "Christianity" offers a better way. In doing so they bring themselves close to the curse the apostle pronounces in Galatians 1:8, and perhaps under it. At the same time they escape the shame that the gospel brings. It is this exclusive claim, built into the gospel, which provokes the opposition.

Next the Saviour lets them know that the knowledge of the Father is inseparable from that of the Son. He is the image of the invisible God. In the Son the Father is known, and this the disciples are now given to learn.

Before the death of Christ, God was not so revealed. Until Jesus the Son of God came, God stayed hidden behind a veil. People knew little of Him except by His acts. Then Christ revealed the Father, and made Himself known as the Son. On leaving, He promised to send the Holy Spirit to stay with us for ever. "No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, He has made Him known." The Son, the radiance of His glory, has fully shown God in flesh.

It is no longer a question of the Jehovah God of Israel, nor even of the Almighty, the name by which He made Himself known to the patriarchs. There is a richer display of God, and far more intimate. It was God as the Son knew Him, and was making Him known in the fulness of love and fellowship. This God would bring His own who were in the world into the conscious relationship of children, born of Him.

From verse 31 of chapter 13 this character of Jesus opens out. From that act He was as good as dead, and He was stating the result: "From now on you do know Him and have seen Him." He speaks as one who knows Him, and this fulness was now revealed in Him. He had been revealed in a certain sense before, as He was to Peter in Matthew 16. Yet He stayed hidden while He lived and was not yet glorified. Then the veil was torn, and the glory seen there was the glory seen in Him.

We next learn the blessed truth, that by coming through Jesus we not only come to the Father, but we get the Father... The poor weak heart does not know its full blessedness in Jesus. It would pour itself into those words: "Show me the Father, and it is enough for me." Only let me know that the Father too is mine, and it is enough — it is all. And that satisfaction is close at hand: "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father." We cannot separate the two. We cannot get Jesus without getting the Father, because the Father was — and is — in Jesus.

The disciples, like Israel, had heard and witnessed His marvellous words and works, but never really grasped what they heard and saw.

"You who have followed Me, who know what kind of Person I am, who have seen My ways, who have heard My voice, who have watched My character — now everything I want to teach you about the Father is set before you in Me." It is like a child learning what its father is like in the small things of home and school.

Philip wanted to know more about the place. He seemed to grasp that the Person makes the place — that the Father is all the joy and blessedness of the Father's house. So he prays, "Show us the Father, and it is enough for us." What a blessing it is, by grace, to know that we need nothing else to fill and satisfy the whole being.

Philip, like Thomas, cannot rise above physical things. Thomas thought of a physical place. Philip thinks of physical sight, and so says, "Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us." The Lord's reply shows that He is speaking of the seeing that belongs to faith.

Philip says, "Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us." To many readers this might seem an excellent wish. It comes from a man who had seen Jesus himself and had helped others who wanted to see Him. But it was sad unbelief. The Lord had just spoken patient, gracious words to lead them on.

The Lord's rebuke of Philip was aimed less at his unbelief about the Person of the Son, and more at his unbelief about the revelation of the Father which the Son had made. The first is bound up in the second.

The Lord patiently explains to Philip that He Himself, as a Man here, gave a full and blessed display of everything the Father is. His words were the Father's words; His works were the Father's works... When they looked at Jesus the Son as Man here, they were looking at what the Father is. There is no difference between the Father and the Son.

It is pointless, then, to look anywhere else, or to look for something beyond what He has already made known. The Son alone gives us the knowledge of the Father, and He reveals the Father fully.

His very presence here was to declare the Father. That His own disciples still did not know the Father, after all this, wounds Him in the deepest way... If we have truly come to Christ, we have no further journey to make to reach the Father. We already have the very depth of the Father's heart laid open. And oh, what a wonderful joy it is to take this in by simple faith! Philip was at least right in saying, "It is enough for us"; and nothing less than this can satisfy us.

Philip wanted to know more about the place. He seemed to grasp that the Person makes the place. The Father is all the joy and blessedness of the Father's house. So he prayed, "Show us the Father, and it is enough for us." How wonderful, by grace, to have the sense that nothing else is needed to fill and satisfy the whole being.

The Lord's reply to Philip is an expression of pain at his lack of understanding… His very presence here was to declare the Father. That His disciples should still not know the Father, after all this, wounds Him in the deepest way… It is a tender but sad rebuke. Had Philip really not known that He was on the Father's mission? that He was Himself the love-gift of God? But we are even less excusable if we do not know it now… If we have truly come to Christ, we do not have a further journey to make to reach the Father. We have had the very depth of the Father's heart told out to us.

The unbelieving world did not see the Son; all they saw was the supposed son of Joseph — the carpenter. Only faith could see, in that lowly Man, the only begotten Son who came to declare the Father… Abraham could tell us that God is Almighty. Moses could tell us that God is the I AM, eternal and unchanging. But neither Abraham nor Moses was great enough to declare the heart of the Father to us. None but a divine Person is great enough to reveal a divine Person.

Philip says to Him, "Show us the Father," and the Lord answers, in effect: Whom have you been looking at all the time I have been with you? Whose words have you been listening to? Whose works have you seen? Whose moral nature has been displayed before your eyes? "Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father."

The nature, character and disposition of God came to light in the Son of God in this world, and not after He ascended back to where He was before. "Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father" was what came out down here, and we do need to contemplate Jesus as He walked if we want to see this in all its fullness.

Here the Lord expressly teaches His essential Godhead as one with the Father. No doubt distinct as to personality, as He elsewhere shows, when He says, "the Father is greater than I." But the point insisted on is that He is one in essence…

If we want to know God the Father, where are we to learn Him? "Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father." Have our hearts ever looked at Christ as an object and said, while looking, "I have nothing more to seek"? Just think what it is to look at the Lord in the power of the Spirit of God. In that poor despised Man you see One who was God walking on the earth. So when someone sat down beside Him and told Him his sin, he was telling it to God!

Jesus replied, "Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father." So it is useless to look anywhere else, or to hope for some advance on what has been made known in Him. We are limited to the Son for the knowledge of the Father, and in Him the Father is fully revealed.

Everything turned on the glory of His Person. The oneness of the Godhead was the central truth Israel had to testify to, and it was a difficulty for the reasoning mind of man, which cannot rise above its own experience. The law and the prophets had prepared the way, and so had John the Baptist's witness. But more than that, the words Jesus said were not like the words of any other man. They were no mere human things, nor independent of His Father. He had been made flesh, but never ceased to be the Word, the Son; and the works He did bore the unmistakable imprint of the same gracious One — the Father. It was He that did the works. So the disciples were called to believe that He was in the Father, and the Father in Him. Only the Divine nature can be like that. The works themselves bore witness to it, and left unbelievers without excuse.

I take the words that follow to be connected with these: "I am in the Father and the Father is in me." "I do not speak on my own authority." And, "the Father who dwells in me," and so on. He could not say instead, "But the Father speaks"; for the Son was the word of the Father. He did not speak of Himself, yet He could not distinguish the Persons here. He spoke the word of God; being in the Father, He spoke as the Word of God. This showed His unity with the Father — that He did not speak from Himself.

Religious men who were not born again said the Lord Jesus was "making Himself equal with God" (John 5:18), and they therefore sought to kill Him. He was here doing His Father's will, depending on Him, and He explained that He did nothing on His own. He did work that proved who He was: "For the works that the Father has given Me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about Me," He said. But again, "the Father who dwells in Me does His works." He did His works for the Father's honour and in His Name.

Being what He was, His words were as perfect as His works... Our words often say either less or more than the truth. We are often humbled to find that we have failed to say even what we wanted to say. Sometimes our imperfect words have left a wrong, even untrue, impression behind. With Him, on the other hand, every word was perfect, and so a ray of His own glory as well as a display of the Father. We find in John 14 that He identifies His words with His works... The words were as perfect as the works, and both alike the revelation of the Father.

"Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me; or else believe me for the very works' sake." Now, the latter surely proved that the Father was in Him... The "believe me" depended on His Person, and brought them into communion, in reliance on His word, with the Father. If they could not see that He was in the Father, and so know the value of His word as speaking the words of God, being so one with the Father, let them take the evidence of His truth from the works He did.

Everything turned on the glory of His Person. The very unity of the Godhead was the central truth Israel had to testify to. Yet it became a difficulty to the reasoning mind of man, which cannot rise above its own experience. He had been made flesh, but He never ceased to be the Word, the Son. And the works He did carried the unmistakable stamp of that same gracious One — the Father. It was He who did the works. So the Lord called the disciples to believe that He was in the Father, and the Father in Him. That is a state of being only possible in the Divine nature. The works themselves gave witness to it, and left the unbelieving without excuse.

"Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me; or else believe me for the very works' sake." Now the second surely proved that the Father was in Him. But it could serve here, and did, only to prove the truth of His word — "believe me for." The "believe me" rested on His Person. It drew them into communion, trusting His word along with the Father. Suppose they could not see that He was in the Father, and so could not know the worth of His word as speaking the words of God, being so one with the Father. Then let them take the evidence of His truthfulness from the works He did.

I find the grace of the Lord in this chapter 14. He has to come down to a lower testimony (verse 10). He drops the other question for the present, and comes down to words and works. "Who worked these words and works in me? What do you think of them?" If they would not receive them, they were denying His place as servant. He would not say His own words and works: "The Father who dwells in me, He does the works."

The works of His Father done by Him confirmed all He claimed, in the fullest way. They implied the Father abiding in Him, in the power displayed. They implied His abiding in the Father, in intimacy of communion. So there was enough witness to the truth of His claims; and if they would not believe His words, they might at least believe His works.

"If not … for the very works' sake." Here it must be kept in mind that our Lord is addressing His disciples. It is His works, not as Messiah, but as Son of God.

Miracles confirmed the word, and the word was the proper and express revelation of God's mind. But miracles were also a testimony in and of themselves. They spoke not only of power but of goodness — of God working in goodness in the middle of sorrow and misery, and doing it in the most definite and distinct way.

"Do you not believe," said the Lord to Philip, "that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me?" Words and works both attested it. "Believe Me," He said to all, "that I am in the Father and the Father in Me." His being man in no way hindered or lowered His dignity, nor His essential oneness with the Father. It was, and is, of the greatest importance for believers to hold this firmly and with worship. The Son is God, even as the Father.

Here the Lord stops speaking of His words and works, which the disciples had enjoyed while He was still with them. He passes on to the new and deeper experience of His power after His departure to the Father. The words "Truly, truly" mark the change — words generally used to introduce some fresh truth. So the Lord reveals to His amazed disciples a new truth. After His departure the believer in Jesus would do the works that Jesus had done in person, and, more surprising still, would do greater works.

The Lord Himself gives the answer. It sits in the short sentence "because I am going to the Father." Of course, He far surpasses all who came after Him, both in personal glory and in moral beauty. The reason for the greater works that were to follow had little to do with the servants who were used to perform them. Rather, the greater works flowed from the glory of Christ. They reflected that He was no longer on earth, in lowliness, but glorified by and with the Father.

And more than this, the day was coming, as stated in verse 12, when the disciples would do similar and even greater works. That was because He was going to the Father, which, as we have learned in John 7, meant the coming of the Spirit… Before His death and resurrection the Lord was restricted (Luke 12:50). But once that was done and the Spirit given, He could work freely by the Spirit through His disciples. No day in the Lord's ministry saw 3,000 souls converted, as on the Day of Pentecost. Nor did His labours cover the mighty circuit "from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum," as Paul's did.

…the power that would clothe the believer, and enable him to do not only what they had seen Jesus do, but greater things still in honour of His name. And this came true to the letter. We never hear of the Lord's shadow healing the sick. No cloths were taken from His body to cure disease or drive out demons. And that is not to mention the crowds brought in far and wide by the preaching of the apostles. What greater proof of divine power than to work as He Himself did, and yet more by His servants!

Verse 12 has been a difficulty to many… Christian Scientists and extreme faith-healers claim that He meant His actual works of healing. They say Christians should do the same works now, and even greater works. But how could a believer do a greater work than the raising of Lazarus from the dead? The promise that the believer "will also do the works that I do" came true right after the day of Pentecost. Peter's shadow healed the sick, the lame man was healed, demons were driven out, and the dead were raised. Were these miracles to continue to the end of the age? Scripture nowhere states that this should be the case. The "greater works" are spiritual works. The thousands saved at the start of this age, and the preaching of the gospel far away among the Gentiles with its gracious results — these are the greater works.

So the Lord had guaranteed a solemn and cheering promise. His going to the Father would in no way stop and dry up the mighty stream of gracious power in which He had worked here below. … He now follows this up and explains it by the place He gives to faith at work in prayer. From now on prayer would have its fullest character in His name — the name of the One who had glorified the Father to the uttermost.

Here, for the first time, we read of prayer in His name. When He gave the disciples the prayer of Matthew 6, He did not tell them to ask in His name. In John 16:24 we hear from His own lips that this was something quite new: "Until now you have asked nothing in my name." The prayer of Matthew 6 was prayer to the Father. It was the pouring out of the heart to God by someone who knew he was God's child. But prayer in His name was unknown until Christ made atonement by His blood.

So it matters greatly to find out what the words "in my name" mean. They cannot mean simply saying the words, or ending our prayers with "through our Lord Jesus Christ." That would tie the answer of prayer to a mere formula. Even between people, no one may use another's name without his consent and authority. In the same way we cannot use the name of Christ in our prayers without His warrant — a warrant we must find in His own Word. And we have that warrant for every prayer the Holy Spirit stirs in us. With it we come before God with all the authority of Christ Himself, and such prayers rise with the same power as if Christ presented them Himself.

"Whatever" tells us that no subject and no area of life falls outside this promise in advance. In principle, a Christian can "ask in His name" about any issue and any situation in life. He or she just has to make sure the request does not go against God's will.

"Whatever" is the promise, but the words "in my name" define and limit it. As another has said: "Whatever! If it stood alone, it would be boundless, and the Lord would have opened the door to every desire of unbroken self-will among His people. But He adds, in my name. This is His limit — the barrier He sets up."

The disciples were to count on power that could not fail, if they sought it in His name. Jesus was no mere man, whose departure must end what He used to do when present. Though absent, He would prove Himself Divine. He was no less interested in their requests now that He had risen from the dead. Whatever they might ask, He would do, so that the Father might be glorified in the Son.

In Matthew 18, the Father would answer prayer for the honour of the Son. Here the Son will answer their prayers, so that the Father might be glorified. In every activity on earth the Son had sought the Father's glory. In His exalted place in heaven, the Father's glory would still be before Him. And how wonderful that the Father has tied His own glory to the blessing of those He has given to the Son, so that the two can never be parted. Such is the Father's grace!

It is a real thing to use the name of Christ in prayer. When we do, the request goes up to the Father tied to all that the Son is to Him. The Lord has promised to answer such prayers, so that the Father should be glorified in the Son. What a healthy check this could be on rash and thoughtless asking! How many a prayer would never be spoken, if the one praying stopped to ask: Can I present this in that name?

The disciples were to count on power that could not fail, if sought in His name. Jesus was no mere man, whose departure must end what He used to do while present. Absent, He would prove Himself divine, and no less interested in their requests because He was risen from the dead. He is not content with the broad assurance of verse 13, which holds no matter what the difficulty. He repeats it in verse 14 about any particular request of theirs, and His pledge of personal action there is even more emphatic.

In John 14:14 the "Englishman's Greek New Testament" gives a footnote reading, "If you ask Me anything." One of the latest Greek lexicons (Nestle) puts the word "Me" in the text itself.

This mighty power was available for faith expressing itself through prayer in His name. As one writer has truly said: "When you ask in the name of another, you take his claims, his merits, and his right to be heard as your own." The Lord, by His own words, gives this privilege to those who are in relationship with Himself by faith. It was something new to the disciples to ask in the name of Christ. Like everything else in these discourses, it grows out of the Lord's departure. Asking in His name assumes the absence of Christ. The phrase "ask in My name" occurs five times in these discourses.

It could not mean simply saying the words. It could not mean ending our prayers with "through our Lord Jesus Christ." That would tie the answer to a mere formula. Even in human dealings, you cannot use another person's name without his consent and authority... In the same way we cannot use the name of Christ in our prayers without His warrant, and we find that warrant in His own Word.

When I appear before God in the name of Christ, I present my requests in all the value of that name to God. That is why our Lord says, "If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it" — because it is the joy of the heart of God to grant every request presented that way. The promise is absolute, with no limit at all. The reason is simple: no one could ask in the name of Christ for anything that went against the will of God.

This does not mean an automatic system or a "self-service shop." It is not a mechanism for reaching our human or even selfish goals. If a small child reaches for a knife, of course his parents will not give it to him. But if he comes hungry, they will feed him.

The glory of the Father is bound up in the Son's response to the poor feeble cry of His people. Wonderful to say, the Son heightens that glory by the gracious way He takes up our "whatever." What tremendous encouragement to pray. "I will do it," He says, for no object lower than the glory of the Father.

It is a real thing to use the name of Christ in prayer. In that case the request goes up to the Father in connection with all that the Son is to Him... But what a healthy check that could prove on rash and thoughtless requests! How many a prayer would never have been spoken, if the one praying had only stopped to ask himself: Can I present this in that name?

The Comforter is also the Spirit of truth. Truth, together with grace, "came through Jesus Christ" (John 1:17), and He is the truth, as we have just seen, set before us outside ourselves. The Spirit of truth is now to come, living in the saints, and so bringing truth inside them.

It is not that the world does not receive Him; it cannot receive Him. He is not put before the world as a testimony to accept or refuse. He brings the world the testimony of a heavenly Christ — the One they rejected, for all the Father's grace. The world has no capacity to receive Him. It only receives what it sees and knows, and it neither sees nor knows Him whom the Father has sent.

The Spirit of truth! Could I expect a world of falsehood to receive Him? No… The Holy Spirit never came in a human body. What the world sees it is prepared to believe. What it does not see it refuses to believe… He was not put before the world as an object for it to receive.

Men of the world are not born of God, so they are bound entirely to the material world. It does not say that we see Him, but it does say we "know Him." Something is already in our souls that is the Spirit's own work, and as He makes His home in our hearts as the Comforter, we are conscious that He is there — we "know Him."

Here it is a special possession of the Spirit. His personal presence is something only the Christian has… It is the privilege of the believer here below, and of no one else: "for he dwells with you and will be in you." The Spirit does not just give them a passing taste of blessing; He dwells with them. And more than that: He does not only dwell with them — "He will be in them." There is this double truth: the dwelling with, and also the being in.

This was fulfilled at Pentecost. In Acts 2:2 we first find that the Spirit "filled the entire house" — that is, He came to be with them. Then "they were all filled with the Holy Spirit" (v. 4). The first we find in 1 Cor. 3:16-17 and 2 Cor. 6:16: "you are God's temple" — one temple, not many. The second in 1 Cor. 6:19: "your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you."

I have not the least doubt that the interpretation of John 14:17, though very common, is a mere blunder. "Dwells" is the same word as "abide" in verse 16. Christ the Comforter would not "abide" with them as He then was, nor was He "with" them. The other Comforter would abide "with" them, and "be in" them.

The Spirit could not come until Jesus was gone… Redemption had to be accomplished, and Christ had to be glorified as man at God's right hand, before God could give such a gift to the saints. The work is done, Jesus has gone, and the Comforter is here… How much real unbelief there is about the personal presence of the Divine Spirit! Many today pray for His outpouring, or for a fresh baptism, while others fear He will leave them because of their shortcomings and failures. But He is to be with us for ever, and the righteous basis for that is the sacrifice of Christ.

The Lord spoke these words to His bewildered and sorrowful disciples, and they had a very special meaning for them: they were to see Him alive from the dead. They did see Him; they looked with wonder on His wounded hands and side. But they are also good and true words for us... Think about the words, "I will not leave you as orphans." This is what they mean: I will not leave you desolate, forlorn, lonely, and uncared for. It is all that and more. Others may care for an orphan, and care very tenderly, but the heart cries out for the love of relationship. "I want my mother" is the cry that breaks from the heart of the bereaved child. I will not leave you crying out like that for Me, said the Lord, I will come to you.

An orphan is one who is without a protector or guide, without help or resource... we are orphans, defenceless and destitute, if we do not have the Lord. Well, to a company of nobodies such as we are, the Lord says, "I will come to you." And then we have everything, and we glory in the Lord.

In John 14:3 we have the Lord coming again in person to take His own to be with Himself. In verse 18 we have His spiritual coming to us now. Before that second promise, and to prepare for it, He tells of the coming of the Holy Spirit (verse 16).

But the Lord said, "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you." He does not mean here His future coming, but the gift of the Spirit. So He would comfort them while He was away... Nothing could be further from what they thought and expected of the Messiah of Israel, seen by every eye.

Tholuck, Meyer, Luthardt, Godet, Plummer and Charles also take this "coming" as the Holy Spirit. Zahn, following Augustine, understands it as the coming spoken of in verse 3. Ewald and Weiss take it here of the Lord's appearance to His disciples after His resurrection.

He would not leave them as orphans, but would come to them: first in person after He rose, then in spirit, and at last in person from heaven. Their eternal life would depend on nothing but its flowing from Him. Could they be joined to Him any more closely?

"I will not," He says with emphasis, "leave you as orphans" (that is, by leaving them); "I will come to you"... Community of nature is taught here... "Because I live, you also will live." Nothing can be more intimate than this.

Christ comes to the company of those on earth who have shut the door on the first man — that is, on themselves. "I will not leave you [the company] as orphans; I will come to you." (John 14:18.) He comes to that company whenever He can, and whenever they make room for Him in this way.

Earlier the Lord had promised His presence to His own together... now the promise is to the individual believer. So often down the centuries, and in these last days, devoted saints of God have found themselves isolated and alone because of their faithfulness to Christ. If others desert them, or if they cannot meet with other believers, they can still have the companionship of Christ.

When He was drawing near to the cross of Calvary, He said to His disciples, "Yet a little while, and the world sees Me no more; but you see Me." And it is true: since He was taken down from the cross, no worldly eye has rested on Him. His mission to the earth then closed.

He is going to the Father's house. The world and the Father are in direct opposition… They saw no beauty in Him that they should desire Him. And when the world rejected Him, He went up to sit at the Father's right hand. The accepted One of the Father was the rejected One of the world.

Soon the world would see Him no more. His relations with the world came to an end, except as Lord of all. His relations with His own did not. They would see Him, not yet with their natural eyes, but by faith, as the Spirit revealed Him. That sight is far clearer and better than the sight their natural eyes had given them.

In the little while the Lord speaks of here, the world only saw Him in rejection and dishonour. But after that little while He entered into His glory. There His loved ones gaze on Him with the deepest pleasure and joy. And this is because the Lord could add, "Because I live, you shall live also." Living in His life, we can look into heaven. We see what is invisible to those whom the Son of God has not made alive.

"I will not," He says with emphasis, "leave you orphans" — that is, by His departure from them. "I will come to you."… Is the Holy Spirit not forming us into a body, uniting the believer to Christ as the head? There is more than this. What is taught here is a shared nature, not the unity of the body that we find in Paul's letters. "Because I live, you shall live also." Nothing can be more intimate than this.

The Son of God, having life in Himself, now comes with it to His saints. He breathes on them now, as long ago He breathed into man's nostrils (Gen. 2). Only this was the breath of the last Adam, the life-giving Spirit. He had a life to give, a life won from the power of death. That life was therefore beyond death's furthest reach.

When we are made alive, the life is not looked at as being in us. Christ says, "Because I live, you shall live also." So this life cannot change. If Christ's life can in any way be cancelled or set aside, then the life in us can be too, and not otherwise. If Christ can die, so can we; but if death no longer has dominion over Him, neither has it over us.

My life is bound up in His. I have said it before, and I say it again: it will be time for me to have doubts and fears when I find that Christ has them.

"Because I live you shall live also" is not only security. It takes in all His present service for us, so that we may hang upon Him moment by moment.

"He that has my commandments, and keeps them, that is the person who loves me." So two things mark him out: having them, and keeping them. The world will say, How can we keep them if we do not have them? But the believer knows it is grace to have them. Grace finds them out by God's revelation. And when desire finds them by the grace of God, he treasures them with delight in that grace.

To a shallow mind it may seem strange that our Lord speaks of having His commandments, and not only keeping them, as a proof of loving Him. But it is deeply true. The wicked, the disobedient, the careless, do not understand... The single eye is full of light. The desire to do His will finds and knows what it is. So the loving heart has and keeps His commandments. And in loving Him, it draws down His Father's love, for the Father honours the Son and will not be exalted at His expense.

The Lord has already said, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." Now He says, "Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me." As has been truly said, the first presented love as the spring of obedience; the second presents obedience as the proof of love. Every expression of the Father's mind was a commandment to Christ. In the same way, every expression of the mind of Christ is a command to the one who loves Him.

One listens to the voice of divine wisdom, like a child who wants to please its parents, or a wife her husband. They notice the words of the parent or the husband, even when those words are not given as commands, and they know what they wish. So the Christian pays attention to the words of Jesus; he is familiar with what the Lord wills, and desires to do His will. This is the proof of true affection.

This is not, "We love Him because He first loved us" — that is the work of grace. Here it is, "If a man loves Me, my Father will love him." This is God dealing with children. The question is not whether they are children, but whether they are obedient children... A parent does not scourge his child when it is doing well, nor is he pleased with it when it is doing ill.

They are saved by pure unconditional grace. But once saved, their blessing and their enjoyment of spiritual blessing depend on their walk, on obedience to the Word. They do not obey in order to be saved... Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ has brought them to God, and their blessing during their stay in this world depends on their submission to the mind and will of God.

When He speaks here of manifesting Himself, He means a showing of Himself, and from Him, to the soul. He makes the soul realise His presence and feel it. Jude does not understand this. He does not see how Jesus could show Himself to His own without showing Himself to the world. Sadly, it is just what too many Christians do not understand.

He loves all His children perfectly. But the one who follows the Lord most closely will enjoy the largest showing of that love. The Lord loved Peter as much as John, yet only John laid his head on the Saviour's breast... It was equally open to Peter; but Peter's own condition of soul was what kept him from enjoying it.

Another disciple breaks in here — Judas, called Thaddaeus in Matthew 10:3 and in Mark 3:18. This Gospel carefully sets him apart from the traitor Iscariot. This is his only recorded remark.

Judas has Jewish thoughts and Jewish hopes in his mind, and these words baffle him. He does not realise the change that was coming. He still holds to the idea of a visible kingdom about to be set up. So he cannot understand how this can be if the Lord does not show Himself to the world. His own brothers had a similar thought when they said, "Show yourself to the world" (John 7:4). The same ignorance is still with us. Many true Christians do not grasp the calling of the church, or the character of the day we live in. In various ways they still say to the Lord, "Show yourself to the world."

He voices the question we all long to have answered. ... Here the Lord had brought together two ideas that seem to clash: "the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me," and again, "I will manifest Myself to him." How can He be hidden from the world and yet show Himself to the individual? ... Love in the heart for the Son of God produces obedience to His commandments. Where obedience to the Lord's revealed will grows out of love for Him, He discloses Himself — His glories, His offices, His graces.

Judas (not Iscariot) did not understand this. He saw no further than a bodily showing of Christ, the kind the world could also see. So Jesus adds that the Father would love the truly obedient disciples, and that the Father and He Himself would come and make their home with him. Here He speaks in a wider and more spiritual way of His word, not just of His commandments. So where there is obedience, He and the Father live in us. We wait for the day when we shall go and live with Jesus in the Father's presence.

One day the Messiah will show Himself to the world. That will be when the world-kingdom of our Lord and of His Anointed has come. Then many will offer a pretended obedience, held in check by the display of His power and glory. Obedience now, while He is absent, faces a harder test, and is precious to Him because it is real.

Where obedience is only skin-deep, and self-will or worldliness goes unjudged, a commandment is always needed to enforce it. So people ask, "Must I do this? Is there any harm in that?" To such people the Lord's will is only a matter of command. There are commandments, and they express His authority; they are not burdensome. But there is more. Where the heart loves Him deeply, His word is enough to show His will to the one who loves Christ. Even in natural life a parent's look will do it.

He could not understand how the Lord would show Himself to them, and not to the world. They had of course never known a spiritual presence of Christ apart from a bodily one. The Lord answers him... He joins the Father with Himself. So it was plain, and Judas no doubt understood it, that He was speaking of showing Himself in spirit, and not in bodily presence.

The word differs from the commandments of Christ in one way only: it is the full revelation of His mind, while the commandments have to do with details — for instance, the often-repeated one, that we love one another. There is not a commandment for everything. But His word covers the whole range of life, and it leaves no room for the subtle plea of self-will that His will is not revealed.

A loving mother goes out from her house one morning. Before she goes, she calls her daughter and names several jobs to do while she is out, and several more that she herself will do when she gets back. When she comes back, she finds her child has been obedient and has done what she was told. But when she turns to do the things she meant to do herself, she finds them all done. She says to her daughter, "I did not tell you to do these things." "No," replies the child, "but I thought you would be pleased if I did them." She has kept her mother's words... Keep My commandments, says the Lord, and I will pay you a visit; keep My word, and My Father and I will make our abode with you.

It is not sovereign grace which first loves the poor sinner: here the Father loves the soul which shows its affection for the Saviour in keeping His words. It is fatherly government, the satisfaction of the Father's heart because the Son is honoured and obeyed.

See how large a blessing depends on our keeping His Word. Never overlook this: the love of the Father in this passage, and the Father and the Son coming to make their abode with us, are entirely conditional.

One loving and obedient heart becomes the abode of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The shrine of the Trinity is in the heart of one who loves the Lord.

"We will take a mansion in his heart." It is a wonderful thing to say, "He has a mansion for me up there." But it is far more wonderful to think that He will come down and take a mansion for Jesus and the Father in our hearts!... The Father and the Son doing what? Visiting? No, but dwelling.

Note the position of believers: until we make our home in the Father's house, He makes His home in us.

Christ has gone to prepare an abode for you in the Father's house. So you prepare an abode in your house for the Father and the Son, as you love the Lord and treasure His word. It may be an attic up the stairs, with only a few sticks for furniture and not many comforts in this world. But there your Father and your Saviour will abide with you.

His sayings, which carry His word to us, become the test of our love. They lead us to the word of the Father who sent Him. If we disregard them, we prove our claims of love for Him empty and insincere.

One who does not love Him does not keep His words (v. 24): he is not a believer.

The word of the Lord in verse 24 is clear, "Whoever does not love Me"; He is speaking to the Christian company, not to the world.

Now that He is absent, obedience must be tested more, and it is precious to Him because it is real. It should also grow, since it comes from life in the Spirit, as we come to know His will better. So it deepens from His commandments to His word. His commandments were not a burden; we treasure His word because we love Him.

The contrast is short and simple: "Whoever does not love Me does not keep My words." He does not say "word" here. "Word" means His mind as taught, given to a willing heart and ear, which takes His mind as a whole. But here the words are not kept. They are not taken as commandments either. The Lord does not press them as commandments here. His words are ignored.

The Son passed on the Father's word with nothing mixed in, in all its purity, in the words He received from the Father. Accepting or refusing those words decided a person's attitude to the Father and to the Son.

He was not merely sent to speak for the Father. While the words were His, they were the Father's; and if they were His, they were the Father's. So there is real responsibility, and the mark of sin, in rejecting Him and not seeing the Father in Him.

Yet the word spoken by the Lord was not merely His own, but the Father's, this being another insistence on the fact that He was in no detail of His ministry independent of the Father: no one therefore has a valid excuse for not loving Him.

His word — the word He says is not His own but the Father's — is the revelation of the Father and of the Son... When the Lord Jesus spoke those wonderful words revealing the Father's Name, they were not mere words such as we might speak; and the truth of the Father and the Son are not mere doctrines to be learned mentally and talked about, as we might talk about some science. These words revealed living Persons, and when you have got the words, you have got the Persons.

These things He said while He was with them — the right time. It was bound up with His own personal love to them, and with His Person, for in His Person these things were now centred. Faith saw in Him the centre of their truth and the love that made them ours. They were displayed in the order of glory after His resurrection, but that did not make them less dear as known in Him. They always centred in His Person. We knew we had them all.

Here the great work of the Spirit is to engage us with Christ Himself... First the Lord tells the Eleven, "He shall teach you all things." The "all things" of verse 26 are in contrast to "these things" of verse 25. The Lord had spoken of certain things, but other things belonged to the glory of Christ. The eleven disciples could not grasp them at that moment. Their limited spiritual capacity limited what the Lord could tell them. When the Spirit came, their spiritual understanding would be enlarged. Then the Spirit could communicate "all things" connected with Christ in the glory.

While the Saviour was on earth He could not unfold to the disciples all that was in the Father's counsels. Verse 25 implies this, and John 16:12 states it plainly. But when the Comforter arrived He would not be under restraint. He comes from the supreme height to which Jesus has ascended. He knows all the glory and all the love of that bright home, the Father's house. He would teach us all things. Dear saint of God, what education is indeed open to us, and what a Teacher!

So heavenly things were indicated by our Lord Himself in seed form, and His death and resurrection were shown to be the basis of their introduction. "These things," He said, "being yet present" (John 14:25), but when the Holy Spirit had come He would teach them "all things," as the next verse says.

In John 14 our Lord outlines for us the ministry of the Spirit of truth: "He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you." This would have particular reference to the Gospels. We are not left to the fallible memory of men. No — we have the infallible Spirit of truth to direct the disciples even in these matters.

The same Holy Spirit anointed Christ and remained in Him while He ministered here below. How blessed that this Spirit was to teach the disciples all things, and to give them back all the words of Jesus! And so it was fulfilled, and more, as suited a Divine Person who chose to serve in love, sent by the Father in the name of the Son. Here it is not the Son requesting the Father and the Father giving, as in verse 16. Here the Father sends, in the name of the Son, the One who could and would teach all things, and also recall all that Jesus said to them. So room is left, not only for His reviving in their memory all the instructions of Christ, but also for His own unlimited teaching.

See how important the coming and indwelling of the Spirit was. Our Lord tells His disciples that it was expedient, advantageous, for Him to go away, so that the Spirit might come. If He had not said it, who could have imagined a greater privilege than personal contact and company with the Lord Himself? Before Pentecost the disciples had partial, earthly ideas. Compare them with the same men after the Spirit came down, and we see how true our Lord's words were.

It helps to compare the different sides of peace. In John 14:27 the Lord makes a difference between peace left to us and peace given to us. "Peace I leave with you" is peace with God about every question of sin. He made it by the blood of His cross. He brought the news of it on the evening of the day He rose, when He stood among His own and greeted them with "Peace be with you." … It was the precious legacy of His death. … It is peace of conscience. He could not speak of it as His. He never needed it. We did. So He made it and left it to us.

Apart from the cross and the anticipation of the cross, the heart of Jesus was always with God. He felt everything in love, yet nothing distracted Him or weakened His communion with His Father. Perfect obedience and confidence kept a peace in Him. That peace flowed from His walk with God, and from communion with His Father that never failed. … The difficulties He met only gave a chance to show divine life in the heart of a man. They showed the peace that came from knowing He was always with God.

He Who gives it did not give it away. He had it no less because we were to receive it. Like everything else He gives, we enjoy it whole, in its own divine fullness. Everyone who shares in it adds to it instead of taking from it.

The world stands at the doors of its grand houses and hands out gifts to the poor and distressed who gather at its gates. But those same poor never enter the homes the good things come from. No one welcomes them into the comfort and warmth of those houses. They stay outside — strangers. Our Lord does not give His peace to us that way, and we could not know it that way. He opens the door of His dwelling to us and says, "Come and see." And His dwelling is at His Father's side — the infinite, unchanging love of His Father's heart.

This peace means holding such quiet that nothing else disturbs us. … The soul, so satisfied with its own peace, wants nothing else. It knows God, and finds nothing to disturb it in God or outside of God. This peace will keep God between the trouble and us, instead of the trouble coming between us and God. That is our danger, and that is the remedy.

The effect for them would be peace in the heart, just as the legacy of His death was peace in the conscience. They would have the peace He Himself enjoyed — the result of that unbroken communion in which He walked with God. For us, a restless will is what disturbs this. It means a struggle against His will. And every gain we make in that direction leaves the soul unsatisfied. If we want only His will, the outcome is not in doubt. … and so we find the true cure for fear.

Let us not stand at a distance, full of dark doubts. Let us not nurse our sorrows and fears as though the Father had forgotten us or was angry with us. Let us take the children's place. Let us rest in the Father's love and enjoy that peace beyond measure. Let not our hearts be troubled, nor let them be afraid, even though trouble in the world is what we are given.

"You have heard how I said, I go away, and come again to you." This removed their uneasiness as to themselves. It was not disappointment or death, but going to return.

If you think of yourselves, it is quite natural that you should be troubled. But if you could think of Me, it would have been your joy to think that I leave this world of sorrow and suffering to go to the Father. I take up My glory again and enter again the land of holiness and peace, where all My rights are recognised. So the Lord places Himself near us, and He wants us to think of His happiness.

He says, as it were: "I have brought you into such perfect association with Myself. I have set you down in a place of such complete fullness in Myself. So I count on you sharing My joy. I give you to be partakers with Me in My joy." What is that? To forget your own sorrow in My joy!

Is it ever enough for you that Christ is happy? Does your heart ever rest in this thought: the One who has done and suffered everything for you has entered His rest?

He says to His disciples, in the most touching and appealing way, "If you loved Me, you would rejoice, because I said, I go to the Father." That is: if you loved Me enough. There was no question of their loving Him; but did they love Him enough to rejoice because He said, I go to the Father?

The last words of this verse, "My Father is greater than I," have been made an occasion of stumbling to some. But here it is the Word made flesh who is speaking, and He speaks in His condition as the lowly Man on earth. So in position or station the Father was greater than He, while as to being and nature He and the Father were one.

It is plainly evident that Jesus must have been speaking as a Man when He said, "MY Father is greater than I." ... For when He spoke of Himself as the Son, one with the Father, He did not then say "My Father." Speaking as God the Son, He told those who listened, "I and THE Father are one." So there is no contradiction between John 14:28 and 10:30. Each Scripture glows with divine beauty, one revealing Him to us as Man and the other as God.

Whatever His essential and personal glory, He never forgets that He is man on earth. As such He calls on them to rejoice in His going to the Father... It was no small thing that man in His Person should enter into glory like this... The Lord would have the Christian rejoice in the second Man, who has gone up even now into the paradise of God. He is the sure pledge that we will follow Him there when He comes back again for us.

He would leave this scene of trouble and opposition. He would be with His Father in the untroubled peace and rest that surrounds the throne above. Yet He would not go just to rest for Himself. He would care for His own, and ask the Father on their behalf — His Father, who was greater than He, the Son.

"And now I have told you before it takes place"; that is, this great truth about His going away and all the rest, to His Father. This testimony given in advance was evidence of truth. Compare Isaiah 41:22-23; and earlier, chapter 13:19. Everything, whatever the gift, turns back to this: believing in Jesus and His glory. This is God's great purpose, and a great purpose of testimony given beforehand… In the same way, all seeming sorrows end up confirming faith; things that seem to discredit Him end up proving how true and strong our hope in the Lord is… He tells the disciples beforehand, as something owed to them, so that their faith would not be shaken; this is the blessing that comes with being close to Him. The world learned it only when it had already happened.

Also, if the Lord was going away, it would only be for a time, because He was coming again. In the meantime, unselfish love would rejoice that His path of suffering was over, and that He was going to the Father. He warns them clearly, ahead of time, about His departure, so that when it took place their faith would not be shaken.

The Lord's going away does not make us worse off but better off (He leaves us His peace, prays the Father to send us a permanent comforter to teach us, He dwells with us and prepares the place for us). Surely, they should not be troubled (v.1,27) and He prepared them for what was to come to strengthen their faith (v.29; compare 13:19).

It was no small thing that man, in His Person, should enter into glory like this… The Lord would have the Christian rejoice in the second Man, who has already gone up into the paradise of God. He is the sure pledge that we will follow Him there when He comes back for us. That is why He draws attention all the more strongly not only to the fact, but to His mention of it before it happened, so that when it did happen they would believe. He Himself in glory is the living object of faith, and this carries deep and fruitful consequences for us.

The Lord's words in verse 29 shed great light on everything in this chapter. The things He had been speaking about had not yet happened, because first He had to accomplish His work of redemption. Once He had done that, they would happen, and He was telling them now so that in the coming days they might believe. In saying this the Lord again indicated that our day is one in which faith is all-important. Israel's day was marked by things you could see and touch, but everything He had just spoken about must be grasped by faith and not sight. Both the peace and the joy reach our hearts by faith.

After that evening He would not talk much with them. Satan was about to unleash all his hatred against Him. He would be betrayed, arrested, abused as a criminal, put through a mock trial, and crucified. In all of this He said very little, even to Pilate, the judge. But as to Satan, He only says, "he has nothing in Me." Wonderful words! All that Satan, the prince of this world, could do was confirm the perfection and purity of the Lord Jesus. A Stronger One defeated him.

"Prince of this world" is an important expression. It was then that the devil showed himself to be the prince of this world. He is never called that until Christ was rejected. As long as it was still possible for the world to receive the Son and own Him, the name did not belong to him. But in the rejection of Christ the devil could raise both Jews and Gentiles against Christ Himself, and even the disciples ran away. His full power came out. And so now the devil is a judged being — "the prince of this world is judged" — and the world lies under Satan's power. He is its god and its prince. The opposite is in Christ: he "has nothing in Me."

It was not only that He never sinned, but He had no sin; and this makes all the difference possible. He was the Holy One, and this came out above all in the temptations He endured, which no one else has ever faced. In Him was no sin — not sins merely, but sin. It was not only that He did not yield to sin, but there was no sin there to yield. His nature as man had no evil to be acted on by the devil.

Come when he might, he had no more in Christ at the end than at the beginning. At first he tried to lure the Saviour off the path of obedience by offering Him pleasure. Now he tries to fill Him, on that same path, with fear and horror of the death ahead. It was useless: "Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?"

His holy nature shrank from any suggestion of sin. He had taken the place of a servant to do the will of the Father — was He now going to leave that path and do His own will? Satan came to Him when the cross was in view, and He said: "The prince of this world comes, and has nothing in Me." No other man could have said such words. There is a great deal in us that Satan can act on: the flesh is in us, open to his influence.

The perfectly obedient One could say, "The ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me" (John 14:30). And when the will of the flesh is held under the judgment of death, he finds nothing in us either.

One more passage connects obedience with the spring it flows from — LOVE. Whether in Him or in us, love gives obedience all its blessed character and acceptance. I refer to John 14:30-31… What foothold could the enemy find in a life made up of nothing but love and obedience?

The prince of this world came to Jesus as the head of the world's religion and power, acting through Jews and Gentiles. He could not hinder Him. This is what we who believe know of Jesus: the prince of this world had nothing in Him. He willingly gave Himself to be the sacrifice, and the act of giving Himself was perfect.

Earlier he would have been glad to lure the Saviour off the path of obedience by offering pleasure. Now, while He walks that path, he tries to fill Him with fear and horror of the death ahead of Him. It was in vain: "The cup which My Father gives Me, shall I not drink it?" In us, naturally, there is everything that can give Satan a handle; in Christ he had nothing.

His death would not be the result of Satan's power, but the outcome of Christ's love to the Father. His perfect obedience to the Father's commandment, even obeying to death, is the everlasting proof of His love to the Father.

One thing only remained to make it completely clear to the world that He loved the Father, and that the Father's commandment was everything to Him. That one thing was the Cross — the last, the supreme test. And with that in full view He said: "Rise, let us go from here."

He gave Himself in death of His own will, to carry out the Father's will. There is another side too, where the glory of the Son shines out in the perfection of His obedience. His death was a free act, and yet an act of obedience to the Father's commandment. The free act proves His divine glory and right. The obedience proves the perfection of His place in Manhood.

These words meant leaving the upper room. But there is a deeper spiritual lesson here. He was leaving the world behind, and they too were to be identified with Him in this. As He is not of the world, neither are they. It appears that He spoke John 15 and John 16 as they walked toward Gethsemane.

The Lord had now closed His present relationship with the disciples as a remnant connected with the Jews. He gets up and leaves that association: "Rise, let us go from here." A fatal word for Israel! He had shown this in advance when He got up from supper, looking ahead to His priestly action in chapter 13. But He had not yet done it in fact. Then He sat down again.

Before He left Gethsemane, the whole power of Satan was morally destroyed. He had gone through the hour with His Father, and now takes the cup at the hand of His Father, as an act of obedience... He presents Himself again (as He says in John 14:31, "so that the world may know that I love the Father… Rise, let us go from here") saying, "Whom do you seek? … If therefore you seek Me, let these go their way," and they were not touched, as a token of the complete deliverance of us all.

In John 15 Jesus looks at His disciples as in the world, with the privilege and responsibility that go with it, not in their new place and state before the Father, which was the theme in John 14. There He gave them His place before the Father. Now they are identified with Him in His place before the world.

The Lord introduces the subject of fruit-bearing with the words, "I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser." Such words would have sounded strange to the Eleven. The Psalms and the Prophets had taught them to think of Israel as the vine. Psalm 80 had spoken of Israel as a vine brought out of Egypt. Isaiah, in the song of the Beloved about His vineyard, uses the vine to picture the love and care Jehovah had spent on Israel. Jeremiah speaks of Israel as "a noble vine." But Israel had brought forth no fruit for God. Isaiah mourns that they produced only "wild grapes." Jeremiah complains that the "noble vine" became "the degenerate plant of a strange vine." In the same way Hosea speaks of Israel as an "empty vine," only bringing "forth fruit to himself," but nothing for God.

Israel would have thought Him the best branch in the vine, but no — He is the Vine and they are the branches.

With Israel as the unfruitful vine, the branches had to supply the fruit to the vine, not the vine to the branches. Israel had been put under the law, which demanded a response but gave no power to meet its claims. In the case of the true vine, it is the blessed Lord who supplies the sap and strength and vitality that are needed.

The scene of the parable is obviously earth and not heaven; we do not think of a vine and a vinedresser in heaven. The figure is very distinct. It is not the Head and the members, but a tree and its branches. And the subject of the parable is as distinct as the parable itself: it is not eternal life, but fruit-bearing.

Clear as these words are, bias has misunderstood them. Calvinists and Arminians each twist them to fit their own scheme. Both start by assuming that the picture of the vine means union with Christ, or membership of His body. But this Gospel never teaches His body, and no one teaches it but the apostle Paul. Scripture teaches union in other places, not here. Here the subject is communion. Union is a settled fact in the spiritual realm, on the basis of Christ's death and by the power of the given Spirit. But communion is conditional, and so may or may not exist, since it depends on abiding in Christ.

Here is the Father bound in this responsible office of love. He cares for the branches according to that love, and according to the character of the stock of the Vine in which they are. How beautiful that this office rests in the Father's care! Notice too the sureness of the work of the vineyard. There may be many vinedressers, but the real vinedresser of the vine is the Father. It is "I," and also "My Father."

The Father is seeking fruit from those who are branches in the True Vine. The fruit He seeks and values is the reproduction of the virtues of His Son. So as a true vinedresser He removes what does not bear fruit. He prunes and helps on what does, to increase still more the fruit He delights to see.

"Every branch in Me that bears fruit," He says. This shows that the branch must be in Him, the true Vine, if it is to bear fruit. This sentence gives us the key to the passage. The union spoken of here is an earthly union, for vines do not grow in heaven… So our union with Christ as members of His body is not what is meant here. That union cannot be broken, and it does not depend on us at all.

True blessing and fruitfulness for God no longer depended on being children of Abraham by birth, able to call Jacob their father. It all depended on a living connection with Christ. He was the true vine here on earth… So the question of profession comes up, and with it the question of fruitfulness. A vine might have branches on it that bore no fruit. A person might claim to be Christ's disciple without the claim being real. As the vinedresser removes the barren branches of a vine, so the Father, shown here as the vinedresser, takes away those whose discipleship is not real.

There is an immense difference between salvation and fruit-bearing, between being a branch of the vine and a member of Christ's body. If you miss this difference, you lose the teaching of John 15. Worse still, you put at risk the peace of conscience that belongs to those who rest on Christ and His work. When I think of salvation, I think of grace; but when fruit-bearing is before my mind, I think of responsibility.

There is the sad possibility that some branches, though having a living link with the vine, may bring forth no fruit. Such the Father takes away. These branches are very different from the withered branches of verse 6. Here it is the Father who takes away; there it is men who throw them out and burn them.

The Father is seeking fruit from those who are branches in the True Vine. It is a privilege given and jealously watched over by the Father. The fruit He seeks and values is the reproduction of the virtues of His Son. Therefore as a true vinedresser He removes what does not bear fruit and prunes and helps on what does, to increase yet more the fruit He delights to see.

Many of the Lord's dear children are dismayed when they find themselves in trial… They overlook the blessed truth revealed to us here: pruning always follows fruit bearing. Bear even a little fruit, and you may be sure the vinedresser will not spare the pruning knife. Once, walking round an orchard, I saw a tree that had not been pruned. I asked the gardener why he had neglected it when all the others showed the marks of his care. He replied, "That tree is half dead. I have no hope of it bearing more fruit, so I do not think it worth the trouble of pruning." Another day I saw a tree cut back so hard that to my eyes it looked almost ruined. Again I asked the gardener, "Why was this?" "Ah Sir," he replied, "that is my finest tree. I look for more fruit from that tree in autumn than from any other in the garden."

The Father chastens and disciplines us to remove everything that keeps the character of Christ from showing. It may indeed be painful, for "no discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it" (Heb. 12:11). If we take His dealings to heart before the Father, hardship will not sour us or make us bitter. It will soften us instead, so that the character of Christ is seen in us and we bear fruit.

A vineyard, above all, shows the need of pruning… To get the fruit that is wanted, a vine needs the knife used on it without sparing… The lesson is the need of concentration: turning all our energy into what has profit in it, and spending none on what is merely harmless. This is not legalism or strict self-denial. As we may learn from the connection here, it is what makes for happiness as well as fruitfulness.

They had received His word, and knew that He came from God, though they knew the Father only in part, if at all. Yet Christ's word had worked in their souls. It had cleansed their ways. It had judged their worldly thoughts. It had exposed their sinful desires. The effect was real in their consciences… They were clean already, even before the Holy Spirit was given as power from on high.

"Now you are clean" is "already you are clean." The "you are not all clean" in chapter 13 refers to Judas. Here there is no exception, because Judas had gone out… He says, "Every branch in Me that bears fruit, He prunes." And in verse 3, "Now you are already pruned." It is the same word. They were clean in the sense of "pruned," only the pruning continues. It is like the man who has been bathed and needs only to wash his feet. This is the first of those washings.

The Lord came by water, speaking His Father's word, and could say to His disciples, "Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you." This word of the Lord produced moral cleansing. But something more was needed to remove their guilt, and to cleanse the stain their guilt had produced. That something more was the shedding and sprinkling of blood… John witnessed the blood and water that flowed from the side of Christ, and has put it on record.

When God's word enters the soul by faith, it deals with the conscience in a purifying way. It awakens a sense of sin, and produces repentance toward God… So the Lord told the disciples, "Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you." The atoning work was not yet done. Christian baptism was not commanded or even possible. It was God's word that worked in His grace.

The point here is the cleansing that keeps going on right now. The Lord Jesus has you in hand. He wants to teach you. He wants to bring you up in His ways, ways that agree with His own mind and will. There are things about you that do not please Him — in your words, in your thoughts, in your ways and friendships. They are not according to His mind, and He wants to cleanse you from them. And how will He do it? He does it by His word.

The Father Himself does this pruning or cleansing. So we should not see such dealing as discipline for something done wrong, where a person suffers the fruit of his own ways. It is the Father's dealing to get more fruit. The eleven were already clean by the word that Christ had spoken to them. Yet the Father would still cleanse them, to remove anything that might keep them from bearing more fruit.

The word 'abide' is used by John very frequently. It is rendered in different ways. Sometimes it is 'remain' and at other times it is 'continue', but all having the same basic meaning.

Fruitfulness is promoted by abiding in Christ. What does it really mean to do this? It may be more easily understood if we say, "Keep close to the Lord! Draw all your resources from Him." In the book of Acts 11:23 one of the Lord's servants, Barnabas by name, urged the believers "to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose." The word "remain faithful" [older versions: "cleave"] is the same word as "abide" in the original.

First, we see what alone is enough for the fruit required. It is what the very nature of a branch implies — to abide in the vine. Apart from Christ we can do nothing. If the branch does not abide in the vine, the vine — the vine-sap — cannot abide in the branch. That is why the Lord's words come in this order: "Abide in Me, and I in you." "Abide in Me" — that is the command, the responsibility; "and I in you" — that will be the assured result.

Here the Lord insists on more. We must depend on Him and be close to Him. This is to abide in Christ… He, and He only, is the dwelling-place for the soul in this world of traps and danger, in this desert where there is no water. Make Him the resource, make Him the object. Then the sap, as it were, flows without hindrance, and the branch bears fruit. Without Him no teaching works, and all religious excitement fails. Bring Him in, trust Him, and He sustains the heart, and fruit-bearing follows — no matter what the difficulty, the pain, the shame, the opposition or the slander.

No — that is not the meaning of these words. What they teach is that the only possible way of fruit-bearing is to abide in Christ, as a branch abides in the vine. And the one evidence of abiding in Christ is fruit-bearing… It is not a question of a branch abiding in Christ today and not tomorrow. It is a question of two sorts of branches: the fruit-bearing branches and the non-fruit-bearing branches. It is a question of what claims to be for the Lord on earth, and in that sense everyone who claims His name is a branch. But if there is no living union with Him there will be no fruit, and such a branch will in the end be cast out, as Judas was.

Heavenly grace forms that one body by the one Spirit, united to the glorified Head. There we do not hear of tearing, wounding, or cutting off… Responsibility on earth under divine government is another thing. The Vine and its branches teach that, not the unfailing heavenly relationship of the Church.

Is it your fruit-bearing or Christ? If it is your fruit-bearing, it is self-occupation, and as a result the fruit will be poor in both quantity and quality. But if you have learnt what He means when He says, "Apart from ME you can do nothing," and so have turned wholly to Him — the Source of your life, strength and energy — fruit will not be lacking. You abide in Him when you realise that you can't do without Him, and when you know that all you need is in Him. Two words cover it. He is INDISPENSABLE to you, and He is ALL-SUFFICIENT.

You will abide in Him HABITUALLY when you know His love as greater than all other loves, Himself better than the brightest and best below… The secret of constant abiding in Him is simply the knowledge of His love.

The disciples were used to thinking of Israel as the vine the Lord had planted. He brought it out of Egypt and planted it in the land He had chosen... Here the Lord sets Israel aside altogether and puts Himself in the place of that fruitless vine. Christ is the True Vine, and His Father is the gardener who tends it. This is not His work in heaven as Advocate (John 13). Nor is it His coming as our Hope, to place us with Himself in the Father's house (John 14). It is His relation to His own people on earth, for bearing fruit. Christ is all.

The relation of head and body serves quite another purpose in Scripture, and we must keep the two completely separate... There it is the church seen as the object of Christ's unfailing love, until He presents it to Himself in glory. Responsibility on earth, under God's rule, is another thing. The Vine and its branches teach that responsibility, not the unfailing heavenly relationship of the Church.

Fruit is the character of Christ reproduced in the lives of His disciples. We read in Galatians 5:22 that "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control." These are the very qualities that marked Christ in His life here on earth... Fruit, then, is not preaching and teaching, or different forms of service. In this passage it is not even souls won for Christ through preaching. It is the beautiful qualities of Christ seen in the people who are won. Yet a person can be very active in Christian service and still show little of the character of Christ.

If service and work were fruit, then only those with gift and ability could bear it. But if fruit is the character of Christ, then every believer can bear fruit, from the oldest to the youngest — and it is a privilege to do so.

All the resources of the Father are in the Son, and we can only draw on those resources as we abide in Him. The Son's abiding in us is the consequence of our abiding in Him.

To abide in Him supposes not merely distrust of ourselves, but clinging to Him and counting on Him. Every influence around us is against this; every natural feeling no less so... We need Him, and we cannot do without Him for the smallest things any more than the greatest. But there is more — He also draws us by His own excellence.

Take any branch in the whole vine, however impressive or wide-spreading it looks. Cut it off from the main stem by no more than the thickness of a sheet of gold leaf, and it cannot produce the smallest atom of fruit. We must keep a living sense of our union with Christ. That means abiding in Him by faith in a practical way — day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Only then can we bear fruit that God accepts.

Fruit is not produced by making fruit an object, or by thinking about fruit; it is the outcome of having Christ as an object, of thinking of Him. Christ comes before fruit.

The Lord's words here say little about Christianity in its heavenly relations. This is not about relationship with Christ in heaven, as members of His body by the Holy Spirit — a vital relationship that cannot be broken. It is about relationship with Christ on earth, through the profession of discipleship. That profession may be real, or it may be only a claim. So the Lord speaks of two kinds of branches: those that have life and prove it by bearing fruit, and those that have no life, which are thrown out and burned.

It hardly needs saying that the relation of head and body serves quite another purpose in Scripture. It must be kept completely separate. Heavenly grace forms that one body by the one Spirit, united to the glorified Head. There we never hear of tearing, wounding, or cutting off. It is the church seen as the object of Christ's unfailing love, until He presents it to Himself in glory. Responsibility on earth under God's government is another thing. That, not the unfailing heavenly relationship of the church, is what the Vine and its branches teach.

He has been addressing the Eleven as true branches of the vine, and He will address them that way again. But in the word of warning He changes from "you" to "a man"... Should a real believer then fear that this might be his own end? The wording of verse 6 clearly shows that none of the Eleven were in view. Suppose the Lord had said, "If you do not abide in Me." Then there might be some excuse for the serious mistake that a real believer could be lost after all — a child of God today, a lost soul tomorrow. But the Lord's language was guarded.

In the picture the Lord uses, the vinedresser does not deal with the dead branch Himself. Others deal with it. So the Father does not deal with the fruitless and therefore lifeless professing Christian. Under the government of God, those who carry out His judgment deal with him. And here the branch is not "taken away" but "thrown away," "withers," "thrown into the fire," and "burned."

Withering follows, because the sap of the divine Spirit is withdrawn. That sap flows to believers through their vital union with their great Head. Note the contrast. A branch in Him is fruitful and productive. Thrown out as unfruitful, it then withered by itself.

There was an empty place at the table. Judas, the twelfth, had just left. He was already on his way to the high priest's palace, working out how many pieces of silver he would sell Jesus for — and Jesus knows it.

Since Christ is the only source of fruit, to abandon Him is fatal. So it was with Judas... The Calvinist is afraid he will compromise his doctrines of grace. The Arminian is eager to press his advantage on the side of falling away. So the first tends to dodge the solemn warning of personal ruin and final judgment given here. The second argues that the passage means a saved soul may be lost after all.

It was someone who had come out from the world and had followed Christ. But there was no attraction of heart, no power of faith, and therefore no dependence on Christ; and this is the sentence the Lord pronounces on all such people, whether in that day or in any other.

Here the larger subject is how vital it is that Christ's words abide in us: "If you abide in me, and my words abide in you." First comes the person, then the expression of His mind. Prayer follows: "ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you." Prayer does not come first, for it must not take the place of Christ, or of understanding His mind. Christ Himself is the prime object. Then come His words, forming the heart fully according to His thoughts and will. Last comes the going out of the heart to the Father, resting on both Christ and His revealed mind, with the assurance attached that it would come to pass for them.

Here the Lord insists on more — the necessity and the importance of dependence on Him, of intimacy with Himself. This is to abide in Christ, and His word is, "Abide in me, and I in you." This is not sovereign grace to the sinner. It is His call to the disciple. So His abiding in us, as a matter of daily communion, depends on our abiding in Him. "As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me." Outwardly nothing is simpler than this fact. Inwardly nothing is surer in our experience than that it works the same way. He, and He only, is the dwelling-place for the soul in this world of snares and danger, in this desert where there is no water.

What, then, is meant by having His word abiding in us? Here it means nothing less than that His words should have found their home in our hearts, and in such a way that they have formed our thoughts. Or rather, because they fill us with divine thoughts, they have produced the mind of Christ in us. So the very desires we express in prayer are only the expression of His own mind and will. That is why He can say, "ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you."

There is one more element in John 15:7, "and my words abide in you." My mind and will are directed by Christ's words. The words of Christ abide in me. That being so, I ask whatever I wish and it will be done for me. Divine power is at my disposal if I am directed by Christ's will, if what He says is what I am doing and nothing else. We ask whatever we wish when these words have power in us. This is not asking wrongly, as in James. If He answers such a prayer, it is in discipline. Still, it is an immense thing, if I am doing God's will, to have God's power at my disposal, to be able to wield His power in the path of obedience.

This is often a puzzle to many of us, for we often ask and do not get what we pray for. The difficulty vanishes when we see that the asking here is not for ourselves or our affairs, but for what concerns His interests and His testimony on the earth. The Father and the Son had put their affairs into the disciples' hands. In these chapters the disciples are seen as being in that business, so that their prayers and asking serve the interests of the business, if we may venture to speak that way.

This is sometimes spoken of as a lower kind of prayer, but the slightest examination of the terms our Lord uses will dispel the misunderstanding.

What then does the Lord mean when He speaks of fruit? May we not say that fruit is all that in our lives which is agreeable to God? It follows that only that which is of Christ in us can be for the Father's delight. We may therefore say that fruit is the character of Christ reproduced in the lives of His disciples. We read in Galatians 5:22 that "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control." These are the very qualities that marked Christ in His path down here. They called forth the Father's expression of pleasure, for the voice from heaven said, "This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased." So fruit is not simply preaching and teaching. It is not activity in different forms of service. In this passage it is not even souls won for Christ through the preaching. It is the beautiful qualities of Christ seen in the souls that are won.

Fruit-bearing is more what one is than what one does. It is being something for God, not doing something for Him. Bearing fruit for God has to do with character and Christ-likeness rather than service.

When the Son was in this world, the Father looked down on Him. In His every movement He found what delighted His heart. Fruit is the visible display of the features of eternal life. To us, in picture, it is the life of the vine producing its own fruit in the branches. We who abide in Him have His life so that we may reproduce His features. When we do, the Father is now glorified in the saints as He was ever glorified in the Son.

Not only is the fruit itself for the Father's glory, but He is glorified by His working with us as the gardener to produce this fruit. Notice that we are not told to bear fruit, but to abide in Him. This abiding produces fruit on its own.

So it becomes clear that fruit is not produced by making fruit an object, or by thinking of fruit. It is the outcome of having Christ as an object, of thinking of Him. Christ precedes fruit.

The bud is the early evidence of life in a tree. The blossom brings out the sweet fragrance of that life, and the fruit is its mature expression. So also have we these things in the believer; but there is also fruit, more fruit, and much fruit. It is the much fruit that glorifies the Father and shows discipleship. The Father watches over the disciples of Christ, just as a gardener watches and cares for the branches of the vine. He disciplines them (Hebrews 12:5-11) to remove from us everything that would hinder the life of Jesus from showing. No doubt the Father is glorified in every bit of fruit we bear, for anything that shows Christ glorifies the Father. But nothing less than much fruit is what the Father and the Son desire from every believer.

He would touch our hearts with another thought: His Father will be glorified when we bear much fruit. And we shall become such as He can count true disciples of His own. A precious inducement! In it He appeals to our hearts, and expects them to respond to affection so well proved.

Finally, as we bear fruit, so we shall become witnesses to Christ Himself. Showing His character, it will become clear to all the world that we are His disciples.

He gives us, as the only measure of the love with which He loves us, the Father's love for Himself, His well-beloved Son. We may well say, "it surpasses knowledge." And His love never changes. It is "the same yesterday" — when He first set His heart upon us, dead in our sins — "today, and forever." Our understanding of it may change, but His love never can.

This is not just the eternal love of the Father to the Son. It is divine love to one walking in this world, whose word was, "I always do the things that are pleasing to him." This love took up the disciples as they walked down here. He could put them in the same relation to Himself that He was in to His Father.

This was a love that entered into all the sorrows of His path, all the hostility He had to meet, and the sufferings He had to endure. In the same way, Christ loves us with a love that enters into all our trials. It feels for us in perfect sympathy in all our sorrows. In our case it also bears with us in all our failures, and restores our souls when we have wandered far from Him. Whatever we have to meet, we can count on a love that never changes and will continue to the end.

The love of Christ rests on the way of obedience, and shines along the path of His commandments. Keeping His commandments does not create the love, any more than walking in sunny places creates the sunshine. So the call is not to seek or earn or gain the love. It is to remain in it, by continuing in the state and life to which alone it belongs.

If there is in us a spirit of simple obedience to Him, we abide in His love. If we do a thing because He said it, we abide in His love.

When He had said "abide in Me," life is more prominent — that is, to depend on Him for the life by which to bear fruit. But to abide in His love emphasises that love as the dwelling of the soul. It is the warm, precious comfort of communion with One who delights in the fellowship of His own.

If we walk in disobedience we have a condemning heart, and we grieve the Holy Spirit. Then our own failures fill our minds instead of the love of Christ. But if we walk in obedience, we keep our closeness to Him, and our confidence in Him remains unbroken.

A man may be very dry in his soul, unlovely and unloving, and yet be a separate man... Think of a Christian who becomes fault-finding, critical of others, and harsh in his judgments. He sets up his own opinions — or perhaps his own conscience — as a standard for others. One thing is certain: he has not been breathing the atmosphere of love that keeps the soul fresh and makes us patient and kind.

The love of Christ rests on the way of obedience, and shines along the path of His commandments. Keeping His commandments does not create the love, any more than walking in sunny places creates the sunshine. So we are not told to seek or earn or gain the love. We are told to remain in it by continuing in the state and life to which alone it belongs.

So far as we walk in a way that pleases Him, we abide in Christ's love, and the heart is always going out to Him. It does not say His love abides, for that never changes.

"His commandments" are not the tables of the law, but the various communications by which the Lord has shown the perfection of His divine Person. The words, the precepts, and commandments that came from His mouth were the expression of the life He lived here on earth. They now become the light that directs that life in us. The law says, "Do this, and you will live." On that footing no one has obeyed. But Christ, who was the life, obeyed. Being in Christ through grace we inherit this position. We receive from Him a life freely given, which places us and leads us in the path of obedience. Christ who obeyed is our life.

It is not here simply the eternal love of the Father to the Son. It is divine love to One walking in this world, whose word was, "I always do the things that are pleasing to him." This same love took up the disciples as they walked here on earth. He could put them in the same relation to Himself that He was in to His Father... He gives Himself as our example: "just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love." I need not say how He remained in it! ... If there is in us a spirit of simple obedience to Him, we abide in His love. If we do a thing because He said it, we abide in His love.

If we walk in disobedience we have a condemning heart, and this grieves the Holy Spirit. So we are taken up with our own failures and not with the love of Christ. But if we walk in obedience, we stay close to Him, and our confidence in Him remains unbroken. An obedient child lives close to his father in happiness, and enjoys the love that belongs to a son with his father. A disobedient child still knows his father loves him. But he does not enjoy that closeness, which is the privilege of every obedient child.

The result is this. Where there is carelessness in one who belongs to Christ, in a living branch of the vine, the Father as the gardener prunes him in judgment. Where habitual obedience is found, there is habitual enjoyment of Christ's love.

"These things" — what things were the source of Jesus' joy? First, to be the true Vine that never failed to bring forth fruit to the Father. Secondly, to walk in perfect obedience to His will and so to have a perfect plea for intercession for His people. Thirdly, to abide in His Father's love by keeping His commandments. He would share that joy with us; He would have us as full of joy as He was Himself.

The Lord here speaks of what He had proved as a man on earth — love and joy. He knew His Father's love as the obedient One who kept His commands. He knew joy for Himself as the dependent One in this world. For it is not Christ's joy in them that He speaks of, but the joy that He, as the obedient and dependent man, had known. Christ gives us His peace in chapter 14; His joy He would have us know in chapter 15. Here we get a little glimpse of the Lord's inner life while in humiliation.

It is generally accepted that we should read "be" instead of "remain" in this verse, and even brief thought will show that the change gives the better sense. "Remain" implies the disciples already had the Lord's joy. "Be" means the Lord's aim in these words was that they might share in it, and this is what He says.

In outward circumstances He was the Man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. But He always walked in the inward joy of the Father's love, and of the glorious prospect before Him... The Psalmist could say, "You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound" (Ps. 4:7). The world's joy depends on good circumstances. The believer's joy is that inward gladness of heart that finds its springs in the unchanging love of the Lord... In these verses the Lord speaks of "My love," "My commandments," and "My joy," and these marks follow in beautiful order. The Lord's unchanging love is over all. Walking in obedience to His commands, we shall abide in His love. Abiding in His love, we shall taste His joy.

This is indeed wonderful. So soon there was to be the fulfilment of the words of Jeremiah's Lamentations (Lam. 1:12), "Is there any sorrow like my sorrow?" — yet the Lord speaks to His disciples of His joy. His sorrows came from His devotion to His Father, and from His great love for His own. But He found His joy in the Father, and in finishing the work the Father had given Him to do.

Christ gives "not as the world gives." The world may give generously sometimes, but it has finished with what it gives. Christ gives by bringing His own into what He is enjoying Himself. Take glory: "The glory that you have given me I have given to them." Take joy: "that my joy may be in you." Take peace: "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you." Take love: "you loved them even as you loved me."

He had no joy from the world. He had perfect joy in the Father. His joy was in bringing forth fruit to the Father's glory. He is showing us how, in fruit-bearing, we can have joy and blessedness down here. "That your joy may be full." That is what He wants us to have — fulness of joy; and it is not from the world, but the kind of joy He had... This is how it is for the heart that walks with Him and abides in Him. If we have joy, it is His joy. If it is reproach, it is His reproach.

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. The love of God in Jesus went far beyond this. It has to stand alone, and it is right that it should. We ought to lay down our lives for the brothers and sisters, as we are taught elsewhere. But what is that worth if our hearts do not go out day by day to the common needs and sufferings of God's children? The Lord at once binds love up with obedience, without which it is only self-pleasing.

Such was His love that He could lay down His life for His friends. Here He does not present His death as the sacrifice that pays for sin, which could be no pattern for us. He presents it as the highest expression of love for one's friends. These verses hold a whole history of love: the Father's love to the Son, the love of Jesus to His people, and the love of His people to one another. Each stage is both the source and the standard for the next.

This is a completely different thing from laying down His life for sinners. Here it is for His friends. It shows the intensity of His love: I sacrifice Myself for him. He does not say, I am your Friend, but we are His friends. He was the Friend of sinners when He gave His life for them. We are His friends when we enjoy His confidence... If I have a friend, I tell him what is on my mind, even things that have nothing to do with him. I share all my thoughts with the one who is my friend.

No one can boast of greater love / Than dying for a friend; / You for Your enemies were slain, / What love can compare with Yours?... The thought expressed in the hymn is quite different from the Lord's thought in John 15. In the hymn we think of ourselves as His enemies, which is the exact opposite of "You are My friends."

In John's Gospel, two statements from His own lips show how He expressed His love to God and love to man... He expressed love to His Father and love to His friends in full, when He laid down His life for them both. On the one side for the Father's glory and on the other for the need of His own.

"By this we know love, that He laid down His life for us." If you want to know what love is, look here. This was love indeed. "And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers and sisters." The same life that we live by was in Him. Should it not show the same love? He may not often ask us to lay down our life for our brothers and sisters. But are there not plain, simple, common ways to test that love every day? My brother may be in need. It is no use talking about being ready to die for him if I at once shrink back from meeting his ordinary, and maybe urgent, need.

The Lord at once binds love up with obedience, without which it is only self-pleasing, with nothing of Him in it or before the soul. "You are my friends if you do what I command you." He is not speaking of reconciling enemies, but of why He calls us His friends. Obedience is the character and the condition. He treats us as friends according to His perfect love, for He lets us into His secrets instead of merely pressing our duty. In principle this is the cherished privilege of the Church — to know His mind, and to read the tangled web of human life by it. But in practice we must be constant in obedience, or the privilege is a bare title and not a living reality.

We all know how the sweetest and most tender relationships and feelings are the easiest to disturb and break. "You are my friends, IF you do what I command you." The life, with its relationships and intimacies, is ours, but we can well understand the meaning of the IF. None of us cares to tell everyone his secrets; we keep them for our intimate friends. But someone may show by his ways that he undervalues his friend's confidence. This may grieve that friend, and, in the very nature of things, the intimacy stops. Distance takes the place of nearness.

He is treating them with perfect confidence. He treats the true disciple with the confidence of being His friend. Otherwise He would be betraying His Father's confidence in telling His secrets. If I go to a person on a matter of business, I simply tell him my business and have done with him. But if I go to a friend, I can tell him everything on my mind, even what does not concern him at all. I do this because I have full confidence in his love and his interest in what concerns me.

One more thing goes with this in verse 14: "You are my friends if you do what I command you." How unspeakable the privilege! To be treated not as servants who receive their orders and nothing more, but as the trusted friends of Christ! He tells them His mind — all that He has heard from the Father. So they keep it in a world that has seen and hated both Him and the Father, and it shapes them as witnesses for Him.

How beautiful it is to see an example of true friendship in Abraham. The Lord said, "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice," and so on. Abraham was trustworthy. It is as we do what our Lord has commanded that we continue in His love, and, like Abraham, we become trustworthy.

But can He trust us? Are we really His friends? "If you do what I command you." This is the proof. Not doing what we think, but what He commands. And He has said, "If anyone serves me, he must follow me." There is no such thing as knowing the Master's mind apart from the intimacy of communion. This involves separation from this world and its ways, and nothing but His love can draw us to Himself. As He draws us in this way, our hearts will close against every other voice. In the quiet of His presence we shall learn His secrets and receive His commands.

The disciples of the Lord Jesus were greatly favoured in being called His friends. Earlier He had spoken of them as His sheep, and in resurrection He would call them His brothers. But now He says, "No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you." Great as the privilege of being servants of the Lord was, this place of friendship was higher, for it brought them into nearness and intimacy with the Son of God, where He made known to them the most wonderful secrets it is possible for men to know.

The Lord treats His own not only as servants, whom He gives directions. He treats them as friends, whom He tells His secrets. He can say, "All that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you." The disciples were indeed servants of Jesus Christ (2 Peter 1:1; Jude 1; Rom. 1:1). But they were more than servants, they were friends, and, if "the privilege of being servants is great, that of being friends is greater."

The servant, as such, "does not know what his master is doing." He only knows the task given to him, and he gets only the direction he needs to carry it out. The servant whom his master treats as a friend knows more. His master tells him the secret purpose behind the work. And there is more. A friend is someone we tell our own affairs to, knowing they will interest him deeply, though they do not touch him directly.

When Abraham was on the mountain with the Lord, the Lord said, "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?" He was the friend of God, and God took him into His confidence. And the Lord Jesus says the same thing of us... So the whole mind of God — all that He is for man — has been told out in Christ, and by the Spirit now given.

Their right to all this high privilege rests on this — the Son is their prophet. The Son Himself has spoken to them, and He is "the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature." He says, "All that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you." Israel never stood in such privilege as this. God spoke to Israel in many measures and in many ways through His prophets. But their prophets were not the Son. They did not come from the bosom of the Father.

Obedience was the order, but He recognised them as friends. Then He makes known His mind. He tells them all that He had heard from His Father. What friendship! What friend is there to whom we could tell everything?... How the secret of the Father's love must be in Him, and on us too, that we should be the confidants of all that the Father makes known to Him!

The Lord at once ties love to obedience. Without obedience, love is only self-pleasing, with no thought of Him before the soul. "You are my friends if you do what I command you." He is not speaking of reconciling enemies, but of why He calls us His friends. Obedience is the character and condition.

He treats us as friends according to His perfect love, for He lets us into His secrets, instead of merely pressing our duty... It ought to be the treasured privilege of the Church to know His mind this way, and in principle it is. By His mind we read the tangled web of human life, and even the world's changing fortunes. But in practice we must be in earnest and constant in obedience, or the privilege stays a bare title instead of a living reality.

How unspeakable the privilege! He treats us not as servants who receive their orders, and that is all, but as the trusted friends of Christ. He tells us His mind — all that He has heard from the Father. So we keep it in a world that has seen and hated both Him and the Father, and it shapes us as witnesses for Him.

"These things" that the Lord has been speaking about began with the love of Christ for His own. Their end is to bind the disciples together in love for one another. So we can appreciate how fitting the Lord's words are.

As a reminder of how closely love among the disciples is bound up with these things, the Lord repeats His command in verse 17 that they love one another. The Lord knew in advance how much His people would need this word through their history. So He gives this command no fewer than three times in these closing words before He suffered.

The Lord had laid it down in John 13 as a new commandment that marked them out. Here He repeats love to one another, following the pattern of His love to them. How pure and unbounded that love was! Do we believe this is His will for us? Do we love as if we believed Him and valued His love?

Love is the great command the Lord lays on His disciples — the love of each other. It is not the general moral duty of loving one's neighbour, but the mutual love of Christians, with His own love for them as the standard. The nature of the case rules out the love of God that went out to them in their guilt, hostility, and weakness. At that time they were objects of sovereign grace. They were now born of God and therefore they love; for love, since it is of God who is love, is the energy of the new nature. Whatever else the Lord may command, this is His commandment: He loved them, and would have them love one another in the same way. So Paul told the Thessalonians that he did not need to write to them about it. Young as they were in the things of God, they were taught by God to love one another (1 Thessalonians 4:9).

Loving one another is of the greatest importance, along with the truth. This does not mean loving only those who think alike. Least of all does it mean loving only those who agree on some small and outward point. It means loving those who are Christ's, despite ten thousand things that try our nature. And it is safeguarded here by a measure: loving one another as He loved us. He delights in love that goes as far as death.

Our Lord commands love as the bond between His disciples. That command gains force from the world's hatred. Love circulating inside, hatred pressing from outside: this is the situation He has in view as the result of His rejection and death. Let us take this to heart. All through the centuries the tendency has been to reverse this. As the hearts of believers stray into loving the world outside and courting its favour, coldness, division and even hatred find a place inside.

Verses 17 and 18 show a remarkable contrast: love inside the circle, hatred from the world outside. Christianity, in the true sense, is a love circle. You have the Father loving the Son, and the Son loving the Father. You have the Son loving the disciples, and the disciples loving the Son. You have the Father loving the disciples because they loved Jesus. You have the disciples loving one another… Here is a love circle, and through grace, though we are few and weak, we are in it.

Our Lord commanded that love be the bond between His disciples. The world's hatred gives that command extra force. Love flowing inside, hatred pressing from outside — that is what He describes as the result of His rejection and death. Let us take this to heart. Down through the centuries the tendency has been to reverse it. When believers begin to love the world outside and chase its approval, coldness, division and even hatred creep in among them.

The world hates those who belong to Him and are no longer of the world. But the Lord wants us to know this: it hated Him before us just as surely as it hates us now... For it hates us because of Him, not Him because of us. So our faults are not the true cause. The cause is His grace and moral excellence, His divine nature and glory. The world dislikes and hates what belongs to God, and it hates Him who is God.

Of all things, grace offends the world most. The world can love human nature in its fallen state. Righteousness must condemn the sinner, and that offends. But grace offends more. Grace rises above the sins it condemns and, in compassion for the sinner, saves him by Christ and in Christ. It does this by treating man as nothing and giving the entire glory to God... The world hates divine love as much as it hates divine light.

There is nothing surprising, therefore, if the believer is faced with the hatred of this world... The world hates him for the same reason that the person who does evil hates the light. It is the same reason Cain hated his brother Abel. Sadly, we must admit that we are often amazed when the world hates us. That is very foolish of us. It is what we should expect, from the nature of the case.

The world is a vast system that takes in every race and class, and false religion too. What they all share is their hatred of God. The world that immediately surrounded the disciples was the world of corrupt Judaism. Today the world that believers meet most often is the world of corrupt Christendom. Its outward form may change from age to age. At heart it is always turned away from God and full of hatred for Christ.

We share with Christ the love, joy, and close friendship of the inside circle. Then we must also share the hatred and shame the world poured on Him. There is no suggestion that the disciples should try to make the best of both worlds. It must be Christ or the world; it cannot be Christ and the world.

It is useless to plead that the world has improved since then... it is still the world that hated and rejected Christ. If we have never felt its hatred and contempt, the reason is that we have not been faithful to Him.

It is hard, of course. But what a moral honour it is to be linked with Christ like this! "For to this you have been called." God allowed it, overruled it, and used it for the good of His children on earth.

John 15:19 — "The world." This, in the words of Westcott, stands for "the organisation of society alien from, and opposed to, God" (compare 1 John 2:15). "Chosen you out": here is the idea of the Church.

The world is a vast system taking in every race and class, and false religion, all sharing a hatred of God. The world right around the disciples was the world of corrupt Judaism. Today the world believers mainly meet is the world of corrupt Christendom. Its outward form may change from age to age; at heart it is always marked by alienation from God and hatred of Christ.

It is important to notice that in these verses the Lord traces the world's hatred of His disciples to the fact that they belonged to Him. They were His servants, and the servant is not greater than his Lord. "If they have persecuted Me," He said, "they will also persecute you." The world would not hate them because they were law-breakers, or because of objectionable features in their moral character, but because the Lord had chosen them out of the world to be His own.

The Lord would have us know this: the world hates us no more surely than it hated Him before us. Is it not sweet and comforting to be so sure about the world, dreadful as that truth is? For it hates us because of Him, not Him because of us. It is not our faults, then, that are the true cause, but His grace and moral excellence, His divine nature and glory. The world hates the Father shown in the Son. So it hates the children who were the Father's and were then given to the Son. Christ was hated first, they next, and for His sake.

The world does love those who belong to it, in its own way. That stands in sharp contrast with the grace that goes out to the stranger, the wretched and the lost. Grace is of all things the most offensive to the world, which can love nature in its fallen state. Even righteousness offends less, though righteousness must condemn the sinner. Grace rises above the sins it condemns. It has compassion on the sinner, to save him by Christ and in Christ. Grace offends because it treats man as nothing and gives the entire glory to God... So the world also hates us who confess Christ. It hates us not only because we are not of the world, but because Christ has chosen us out of it. That choice shows the world to be utterly worthless and condemned. Divine love is as hateful to it as divine light.

Here we get the source of the world's hatred. The world dislikes us not only for how we walk, but for the place Christ has chosen us for. It is a distinct place, "out of the world," so that we may be a distinct people. It is because they are Christ's that the world cannot like them. We should let our light shine out. Our confession of Christ should be so clear that the world knows who deserves the credit for the good works — that we belong to Christ.

The Lord has chosen us out of this world system. In saving our souls He "delivered us from the domain of darkness," from Satan's kingdom of this evil world, and "transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son" (Colossians 1:13). Our citizenship and our associations in life are in heaven (Philippians 3:20).

This "out of the world" character of the Christian company is so little valued, and the result is a very feeble testimony to the world. I wish we understood its meaning better. We are in the world but not of it. We are to be kept from the evil in it, while we bear witness of Christ to it and try by the gospel to gather souls out of it for Him.

Here we need that word, "remember." Do we feel resentful or discouraged because of the world's attitude? Then how vital it is that we keep in mind what our Lord went through among men. He Himself had stressed this to them in His words.

The Lord then recalls to their mind His word that no servant is greater than his lord. Instead they must expect His position, the position of the One whom men despised and rejected. They and their teaching would be hated just as much, and for His sake. If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will also keep yours… Here the Lord kindly warned them in advance, so that no sorrow would take them by surprise.

Notice what the Lord does in these verses. He traces the world's hatred of His disciples back to one thing: they belonged to Him. They were His servants, and the servant is not greater than his Lord. "If they persecuted Me," He said, "they will also persecute you." The world would not hate them for breaking the law, or for some fault in their character. It would hate them because the Lord had chosen them out of the world to be His own.

Of all things, grace offends the world most, for the world can love human nature in its fallen state. Righteousness must condemn the sinner, yet even righteousness does not offend as much as grace does. Grace rises above the sins it condemns, in compassion toward the sinner, to save him by and in Christ. Grace offends because it treats man as nothing and gives the entire glory to God… Divine love is hated as much as divine light.

His disciples are identified with their Lord. They are now to be His representatives on earth. The world itself would identify them. The world had followed Him with hatred, and it would now show that same hatred to His people… His persecutors would of course be theirs, and those who kept His word would keep theirs also.

The world persecuted Him. It refused His Word. It stayed ignorant of the Father who sent Him. It hated the light and preferred the darkness.

"You share My position before the Father, with all the favour and blessing that belongs to it. But you also share My position of reproach and rejection before the world. If you have all the assets that go with My place before the Father, do not be surprised to find you also carry My liabilities with the world."… We have grown so used to a quiet, peaceful life in this land… that we easily forget the truth about the position we hold. It is a position of the greatest possible blessing before God. But in this world it is also a position of persecution and reproach, if we are true to our Master.

In such times, how good it is to look away from the persecutors and mockers. Look instead to Him for whose sake we go through these things… When we too have to suffer for righteousness, let us remember whose rights and honour are under attack. Then disappointment and discouragement will not fill us.

Jesus further warns the disciples that this hatred will show itself in persecution: "If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you." This active hatred is tied more directly to confessing the name of Christ. The Lord can say, "All these things they will do to you on account of My name." The persecution, whether of Christ or of His disciples, proved they had no knowledge of the One who sent Christ — the Father.

He gives His own the comfort of knowing this in such hours of bitter suffering, and beforehand too: all the contempt and suffering they might endure from the world was for His sake. It came from the world's ignorance of Him who sent Him — ignorance of the Father. How deeply true this is! It would be impossible for a professing religion to persecute if it really knew Him who sent Christ.

This was hatred indeed — hatred "without a cause," hatred returned for love. The cross of Christ was soon to display man's fullest hatred meeting God's fullest love. Ignorant of the Father, the world might still be zealous for God, and think it was serving God by killing the children of the Father.

He tells them these things before they happen, so that they will not be caught unawares. The truth about these matters would put them on their guard. Their own countrymen would disown them, treating them as law-breakers. Blind in heart and mind, and without the truth, they would be zealous for their religion, and would treat His own as hateful to God. In this way the world would prove that it does not know the Father or the Son... As these things came true, they would trust the One who had told them beforehand even more.

What encouragement there is in verse 21 for the suffering believer! He may accept whatever persecution comes as being for Christ's name's sake, remembering that the world is ignorant of the Father who sent the Son, and therefore does not understand the significance of the evil it is doing.

We are declared to be happy or blessed if the reproach is "for" the name, or "in" the name of Christ; which means that the world sees in us His representatives... To be reproached in the name of Christ is an honour to us. Men may blaspheme Him and reproach us, but we glorify Him, and the Spirit who lives in us rests upon us as the Spirit of glory and of God.

The church knows from God's word that the world's character will stay the same to the end of this age. In fact, at its very close the world will take an even more open and daring attitude of defiance and revolt than ever.

God takes full account of all of this. He has sent His Son, and He will use this to show the true character of an evil world. That world manages to keep its corrupt condition partly covered up, so long as nothing sets a contrasting standard before its eyes. But the Son of God has come, and has spoken. If He had not come, "they would not have been guilty of sin." That is, nothing would have brought their sin into the light and shown it for what it is. Now they stood exposed, with no cover-up left them.

Note, in John 15:22 and following, it is not sins, but sin. They certainly had sins. But if they had not rejected Jesus, they would not have been fixed for good in the state of sin... Their state before God was a condition of absolute sin, hatred with nothing left to cover it, at a time when God had been fully shown to them — the Son and the Father alike. It is a terrible position.

This one far greater sin swallowed up all sin before it and of every other kind: they rejected the Son, who had come in love. He spoke not merely as no man ever spoke, but as God had never spoken... God had sent servants, and prophets had spoken. Their messages carried divine authority, but they were only partial. The law had made nothing perfect... He was their Messiah, the Son of David, born where and when they expected... but He was far more. He was the Son of God, beyond reach in His own glory, yet here on earth the most approachable of men. He gave out the words of the Father, as no one had ever spoken since the world began.

Suppose Christ had not come and spoken to the world words such as no man had ever spoken. Suppose He had not done among them works which no other man had done. Then no one could charge them with the sin of deliberate hostility against Christ and the Father. They would still have been fallen creatures. But little would have shown that they deliberately hated God. But now there was no cloak for their sin... So the world's hatred is no longer ignorance. It is sin. It is a causeless hatred. We, even as Christians, may at times give the world cause for hatred, but in Christ there was no cause.

John 8 sets out His words which were rejected by men — words which presented Himself as being "the truth"... In John 9, His works set out what He is, and what God is. They are equally rejected, and the favoured object of His sovereign grace is cast out of the synagogue... These two things are taken up by the Lord in the end of John 15. His words (verse 22)... His works (verse 24).

All seemed lost. Man had failed every test, and failed it plainly. No option seemed left but to condemn guilty mankind. Then God acted in free sovereign grace and sent His Son. The coming of Christ put the first man to the final test. Instead of receiving the Son of God (come in love and grace!), man passed a terrible verdict... This was the final test.

Those who say they see have no excuse. Confessed blindness is not at all the difficulty, but professed sight. This is a very solemn principle for an age like ours, where so many claim to believe. Sin stays in place where there is nothing more than a claim to see. A man who is blind, and knows it, can have his eyes opened; but what can anyone do for a man who thinks he sees when he does not?

Morally, the death of Christ is the end of the world. God tried man in every way, and man failed... When the sin is proved, it is put away... That very crowning act that proved their hatred of God put away their sin.

The revelation of Christ forced everything to a point. It measured man's condition as nothing else could. It proved this. Israel might be bad when measured by a law — a holy, just, good law of God. But measured now by the Son of God, all sin before this was as nothing compared with the still deeper sin of rejecting the Son of God. "Whoever hates Me hates My Father also." It is not merely God as such, but "My Father" that was hated.

They cannot reject Him or hate Him without hating His Father. They do not know, says the Lord, Him that sent Me. But is this all? No. Jesus had made Him known and had spoken to them. His word had been enough to judge all their acts. They had no excuse, for He, the Truth, had spoken. … But he who hated Him hated His Father also.

By rejecting Christ, men proved they did not know the Father. If Christ had come saying that God was not Jehovah, they would have been right not to receive Him; but He always identifies Himself with the Father, and so men were proved the very enemies of both.

Christ came on an errand of infinite love from God. In Him man, if he had not been blind, would have seen what he should have been toward God, and what God is toward man. Christ was the wholly dependent and always obedient man. But God was also in Him reconciling the world to Himself. He was the perfect expression of divine love to the guilty and miserable. But man would have neither. His unrighteousness hated true righteousness, and his enmity to God hated the love that came to save and bless him.

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. Though ignorant of the Father, the world might still be zealous for God, and think it was serving God by killing the children of the Father.

Solemn words indeed. The professing people of God — which the Jews were — are here viewed as the world. They share in its spirit and show it: hatred of Christ, and hatred of His Father. The professing people of God part of the world? Yes, where profession is not real. And what was true then is true still.

There is the warning that "Everyone who denies the Son does not have the Father either." There follows also the encouragement that "Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also." … Some profess to honour the Father but deny the Son. According to the scripture before us, their profession of the Father is completely worthless. The test of the truth is not the Father, but the Son.

Would the Lord leave the world without another effort to rescue people out of it? He would not. … Hostility and hatred had not quenched His deep compassion. If possible, souls should be rescued from everlasting ruin. For that, a fresh testimony should go out. … The world rejected Him and crucified Him in its hatred. Yet He would send the Holy Spirit to bear witness to the world about the One they had cast out.

And there was this further aggravation of their sin — the works He had done. Fitting words have a strong effect on some people. Works reach others even more deeply — works that express not only power, but goodness, holiness and love. Here they had words and works in perfect harmony, each confirming the other, such as were never seen except in Jesus the Son of God.

It is not that they would not have been sinners. No — but "they had not had sin." So He says in another place, "If you were blind, you would have no guilt" (John 9:41). God came near to man in the Person of His Son. Man was able to say, "This is the heir" — yet he also said, "Come, let us kill him." So, "they have no excuse for their sin." Those who say they see have no excuse. Confessed blindness is not the difficulty; professed sight is. Sin stays where there is only a claim to see. A man who is blind, and knows it, can have his eyes opened. But what can be done for someone who thinks he sees, when he really does not?

Every page of the Gospels tells us He was the God-man. On one side, He was a homeless stranger, a weary Man sitting at Samaria's well. He was hungry in the desert and slept in the boat. He groaned and wept tears of sorrow and sympathy. On the other side, He worked miracles, cleansed lepers, opened blind eyes, raised the dead to life, and showed His power over the winds and the waves. In a word, He declared by His mighty acts that though He was a man, He was also God.

The Father's glory shone out in the works — the Son at work, the voice and the works together. It was no longer only the Son's voice, with the Father still behind. Now the works that witnessed to the Father were added. They saw, and they hated. Their alienation was total: they were cut off from the blessedness they had seen, the whole revelation of the Father and the Son in Him.

If the Lord had not done among them the works no other man had done, they might have stayed as they were. They might have refused to believe in Him and not been guilty before God. They would still have been the object of God's patience. But in fact they had seen and hated both the Son and the Father. The Father had been fully revealed in the Son. If, when God was revealed in full and in grace, they rejected Him, what else could be done but to leave them in sin, far from God? If He had been revealed only in part, they would have had an excuse. They might have said, "Ah, if He had shown grace, if we had known Him as He is, we would not have rejected Him." They could not say that now.

"If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin," said the Lord Jesus. It is as though the sin of Cain, of the world before the flood, of Babel, of Sodom and Gomorrah, of Tyre and Sidon, of Pharaoh, of Jeroboam, of Ahab, could not be put in the same scale or measured by the same measure. It is as though every earlier act of transgression, disobedience and blasphemy were now eclipsed.

How sharp His sorrow must have been — not only because they hated Him with such violence, but because they hated His Father too.

The New Testament sometimes uses the term "law" for other parts of the Old Testament besides the five books of Moses. The Lord said, "Is it not written in your Law, 'I said, you are gods'?" — yet that quotation came from the Psalms (John 10:34). First Corinthians 14:21 does the same.

Yet God was in perfect control. He had foretold this in "their law," where the psalm presents the Messiah saying, "They hated Me without a cause" (Ps. 35:19). So the Jews unknowingly fulfilled their own Scriptures by their hatred and rejection of Christ. Nothing can thwart the fulfilment of the word of God.

The world as a whole had no hope left, for by their own law they hated Christ without a cause. So the world's hatred is no longer ignorance: it is sin. It is a causeless hatred. Sadly, we, even as Christians, may at times give the world cause for hatred, but in Christ there was no cause. There is indeed a cause for the hatred, but it lies not in the One who is hated, but in the hearts of those who hate.

That is how causeless man's hatred was, right in the presence of divine grace. A full display of grace can end no other way. The mind of the flesh is hostile to God. Not only is there refusal to submit to His law, but hatred of His love; and this was now proved. Only Jesus, present in this way, speaking and working among men as He did, could prove it fully. They had seen Him, and the Father in Him — and they had hated both! Hatred of the Father and the Son is in itself irreparable, complete, and final.

The love was freely given, and here was the desperate evil. "They hated Me" — the state foretold — freely, "without a cause." What a word! It is sad and awful, and it humbles us about man's evil nature and corruption. They hated the blessed perfection of Jesus, freely and without a cause. They hated the Lord freely — evil moving of itself, with nothing to cause it.

On the cross the Lord felt to the full the hatred of the Jewish nation towards the godly remnant. His infinite perfection let Him say in an absolute way that they hated Him "without a cause." Those who sought to destroy Him were His enemies for no just reason. His enemies were many and strong. He had to meet not just the hostility of one man, but at the cross the hatred of a whole nation, led by its powerful leaders.

"All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift" — freely, without a cause — "through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." Of the Lord it is said that they hated Him "without a cause." God justifies the believer "without a cause." What wonderful grace!

Was He fiercely opposed and hated? He was — so much so that the Scripture came true: "They hated me without a cause" (John 15:25). He warns us too, with His own lips, "Because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you" (John 15:19).

The Greek word for "Comforter" is parakletos. It is the same word used to describe our Lord in 1 John 2:1: "If anyone does sin, we have an ADVOCATE [parakletos] with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." The meaning of the original Greek word is One called alongside to help. Is the word "Comforter" enough for this meaning? We think not. We have no word in the English language that quite conveys the full meaning.

Christ is our Paraclete (Advocate) in this sense on high. The Holy Spirit is our Paraclete (Comforter) down here, living within us. What He does answers to what our Advocate does with the Father. So He is charged with our interests below, as Christ is above.

Though the Father and the Son are One in divine essence, so that Jesus could say, "I and the Father are one," yet in person they are distinct... Our Lord also spoke of the Spirit's personal actings: "He will teach you all things... He will bear witness about me. He will guide you into all the truth."... What language could show us more plainly that a Person is acting? And who, I ask, but One who was God, could teach all things, and guide into all truth? It is "He," "He," "He," all through.

In John 14, our Lord identifies "another Comforter" as the Holy Spirit (verse 26)... So in John 14 the Father would send Him in the Son's Name. In John 15, the Son would send Him as from the Father. And in John 16, He would come... How blessed is the inter-communion of the Persons of the Godhead!

In this present age the Holy Spirit also takes a place that looks like a lower one. He "proceeds from the Father" and is "sent" by the Father and the Son... All such expressions seem to put the Spirit in a lower place, as others seem to do with the Son. But it is only in appearance. It has to do with the place they have taken and the part they play in carrying out the divine purposes, not in any way with the dignity of their Persons. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are coequal in deity.

Knowing the wickedness of the world and the weakness of the disciples He says, "I will send" to you the Comforter "from the Father, the Spirit of truth," and the Lord adds, "He will bear witness about Me." However weak the disciples may be, however strong the world may be, "He will bear witness about Me."... The world will crucify Him in the lowest place on earth. Heaven will crown Him in the highest place in glory. And the Holy Spirit would come to bear witness of His glory. The Son had come from the Father to bear witness of the Father: the Holy Spirit was coming from the Father to bear witness to the Son.

The Spirit of Truth is the fitting witness to Christ as He is above; the disciples also testify, as His companions, chosen from the beginning... For as such they could not go beyond what they had seen and heard... The Spirit of Truth who proceeds from the Father would not only strengthen them to do that task perfectly, but would add a testimony of another kind altogether, of a blessedness never known before, as sent by Christ Himself from the Father.

Coming from the glory, He would bear witness to Christ. He would bear testimony to the glory into which He has entered for us, that our souls might be formed by it. What could we know of this but for Him?... The Spirit loves to bring before us the blessedness which is now His, and to assure our hearts that all is ours because we are in Him before God.

The apostles had authority and could say so. The Spirit of truth would testify, and so would they: "you also will bear witness, because you have been with Me from the beginning." They bore their witness through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was sent down to bear witness of what Christ is in heaven. The apostles bore witness of what He was on earth.

The previous verse mentions the coming of the Holy Spirit and the testimony He would render. His testimony is perfect, so would any further testimony be needed? Yes, there were men chosen to bear witness. They had the privilege of hearing, seeing and even handling these things, as they kept company with their Lord from the beginning, in the days before the Spirit was given.

"That which was from the beginning" does not mean the beginning of creation, as in Genesis 1 and John 1. It means the beginning of the revelation that has reached us in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Anyone who doubts this can turn to John 15:27.

So they were called to bear witness of Him — "because you have been with Me from the beginning." It was not only the great display at the end. The truth was there from the beginning; grace and truth were always in Him.

The Lord had chosen the twelve as His disciples, but also as His witnesses. He said, "You also will bear witness, because you have been with Me from the beginning" (John 15:27). Men who had been witnesses from the beginning wrote Matthew's Gospel and John's Gospel.

They were now entering the path of testimony, which always involves suffering… The hatred of the world and the love of Christ press them so much the more together. But there is also the hatred that comes upon them in testifying, not as disciples so much as witnesses. They witnessed of what they had known of Christ here, and of what the Spirit taught them of Christ on high. The result would be: "They will put you out of the synagogues."

They bore witness to Him in the days of His flesh, but after Pentecost they were called to testify of Him in glory. This is where we all come in. As a qualification for their work, they had to be with the Lord when He was here… But as witnesses to Christ glorified we are all brought in.

It is true that we have not been with Jesus in the literal way the disciples were. They kept company with Him from the beginning of His ministry. Still, it remains true in a moral sense: if we are to bear witness for Christ before men, we too must be with Christ in secret. When the Holy Spirit had come, Peter and John bore a striking witness to Christ before the persecuting religious world. It was so striking that their persecutors "recognized that they had been with Jesus" (Acts 4:13).

"I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away" (16:1) — or, as older translations put it, "that you should not be offended," that is, made to stumble. Persecution from heartless people might not seem so strange. But persecution from the professed people of God, who had a zeal for God, might stagger some. It is the same today. We may expect persecution from unconverted, godless people. Persecution from professing Christians, for the truth's sake, seems to some almost impossible to understand. Yet it happens.

The thoughtful and tender love of the Lord looks ahead to the suffering of His own. So He gives them this loving warning, so that they would not stumble when persecution came. Without it, two things could have tripped them up. Their natural prejudices came from their ties to the old order that was closing. And they knew nothing yet of the new Christian era about to dawn. Faced with persecution, that could have made them stumble. The later history of the disciples will prove how much the warning was needed.

John the Baptist, in his day, came close to being offended. Treatment so foreign to his thoughts gave his faith a severe shock. His faithful witness landed him in prison. He did not know the mind of the Lord, so he sent Him a message: "Are you the one who is to come?" The answer came back: "Blessed is the one who is not offended by me." The disciples faced this same danger. They were filled with the false hope that Israel would be set free at once, so they were not ready for persecution from Israel. Their false expectations left them open to being offended.

Many among the Jews were going to stumble. They expected anything but sorrow, shame, and groundless hatred to be the lot of those who follow the Messiah. But the Lord kindly thinks of His own. He uses trial for the blessing of the strong, yet He would also shield and strengthen the weak. He does this in two ways: by warning them of the world's undying ill-will, and by telling them the Holy Spirit is coming to add His testimony to theirs, when the world persecutes the servants as it persecuted their Master. How precious are the words He has spoken!

In the days to come, the persecution would bring the Lord's words back to mind. It would comfort the disciples' hearts with a fresh sense of the knowledge that saw it all in advance, and the love that warned them. Until then there had been no need to speak of these things, for the Lord was there to shelter and guard them. These things belonged to the time of His absence, not the time of His presence.

He says, in effect, "You are identified with Me in My position before the Father, with all the favour and blessing that belongs to it. But you are also identified with Me in My position of reproach and rejection before the world. If you have all the assets that come with My place before the Father, do not be surprised to find you have My liabilities in relation to the world."

Men would take two ways to get rid of Christians and their testimony. One was public, when men put on a show of the utmost zeal for God's authority and holiness. The other was open to any single person, even to the point of death, to wipe out criminals not fit to live. It is impossible to imagine hatred more deadly, yet approved by all, than this. Anyone who wished might take it on himself to kill a follower of Christ — though official authority still stood behind him. He would do it not only without punishment, but claiming to do God a religious service by it.

Being thrown out of the synagogue was the severest religious punishment. Death was the last act of judicial power. This is the treatment they must expect. To anyone not settled in the faith these consequences would seem terrible. To our nature it is no light thing to lose religious rites and friendships. It is no light thing to hear your name thrown out as evil, or to have people treat you as a moral leper, unfit to mix with your own nation or family.

They would be put out of the synagogues (v. 2), just as the man who was cured of blindness had been (John 9:34). For a Jew this was a dreadful experience, because it meant rejection by his own people.

The Lord's warning prepares them not only for persecution, but for religious persecution... This religious persecution would come from religious motives. "Whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God." So the greater the sincerity, the more ruthless the persecution. But this persecution would come from ignorance of the Father and the Son. And this is how it has been with every form of religious persecution. It has been truly said, "As it was with the Jews who persecuted Christians, so with the Christians who have persecuted Christians. Things have been done 'to the glory of God,' and 'in the name of Christ,' of which He who looks down from heaven would only say, 'They have not known the Father nor Me.'"

Man walks in darkness, because he is darkness. His conscience is darkness, and false teaching blinds his mind as well. Whatever a man does from conscience he always does with intensity, even when his conscience is blinded and his action is wrong. A person may be very conscientious in resisting the truth. What people call conscientious action is often nothing in God's sight but the conduct of someone Satan has thoroughly blinded.

People sometimes say that if you only act from conscience you cannot go far wrong. But in Paul we have a man whose very conscientiousness made him the chief of sinners. It is not conscience that saves, but the light of the knowledge of God as it has shone out in Christ.

Acts 8:3; Acts 9:1-2; 1 Timothy 1:13 give us a commentary on verses 2 and 3 of our chapter. Saul of Tarsus persecuted this way to the death, and he did it ignorantly in his unbelief. At that time he certainly knew neither the Father nor the Son.

In tender concern for our weakness, the Lord, through His servants, has warned us in advance of what we have to expect among His professing people. Two important things follow. First, only the light of the Scriptures lets us read the state of professing Christianity correctly. Second, if we do not know the teaching of the Word of God, we are open to disappointments and deceptions of every possible kind.

Verse 3. "And they will do these things because they have not known the Father, nor me." God had given them every proof of who Christ was, yet despite all that God could give, they rejected Him. "And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness…"

He gives His own the comfort of knowing — in such hours, which might be full of bitter grief, and beforehand as well — that all the contempt and suffering they might endure from the world was for His sake. It came from the world's ignorance of the One who sent Him, ignorance of the Father. How deeply true that is! It would be impossible for a religion that claims God's name to persecute if it really knew the One who sent Christ.

The Lord's warning prepares them not only for persecution, but for religious persecution. The disciples of Christ would be put out of the synagogue, and that meant losing all fellowship — in family life, in social life and in public life (John 9:22). This religious persecution would come from religious motives. "Whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God." So the greater the sincerity, the more ruthless the persecution. But this persecution would come from ignorance of the Father and the Son. And so it has been with every form of religious persecution. Someone has said, and said it truly, "As it was with the Jews who persecuted Christians, so with the Christians who have persecuted Christians. Things have been done 'to the glory of God' and 'in the name of Christ' about which He who looks down from heaven would only say, 'They have not known the Father nor Me.'"

Acts 8:3; Acts 9:1-2; and 1 Timothy 1:13 give us a commentary on verses 2 and 3 of our chapter. Saul of Tarsus persecuted this way to the death, and he did it in ignorance, in his unbelief. At that time he knew neither the Father nor the Son.

But because they were ignorant of the Father and the Son, they would think they were serving God by killing them… They were to expect no relenting, for men who murder out of conscience never relent — it is the power of Satan. Yet they are not beyond conversion, as we know from Paul.

But believers should not become bitter or discouraged under such persecution. It came from ignorance — not just ignorance of certain principles, but ignorance of the Father and the Son as Persons (v. 3). The Lord warned them in advance so that, when these things happened, they would remember His perfect wisdom, and that He was truly in control of everything that took place. What calmness and rest this would give in the face of such trouble!

This is what is missing today: the knowledge of the Father and the Son. I do not mean that any true believer is without this knowledge. What I mean is this: I fear we do not have these divine Persons as our constant guests. We know forgiveness, and, like Martha, we may be busy with much service. But what do we know of the sweetness beyond words of welcoming the Father and the Son into the secret of our own souls?

In the days to come, the persecution would bring the Lord's words back to mind. It would comfort the disciples' hearts with a fresh sense of the knowledge that saw it all in advance, and of the love that warned them beforehand. Until now the need to speak of these things had not arisen, for the Lord was present to shelter and guard them. These things belonged to the time of His absence, not the time of His presence.

Excommunication was the most severe religious punishment, and death was the final act of judicial power. This was the treatment they must expect. To anyone not settled in the faith these outcomes would seem terrible. To nature it is no small thing to lose your religious rites and community. It is no small thing to have your name thrown out as evil, and to be seen as a moral leper, unfit to mix with your own nation or family. Then death: cut off from life here, and the consequences may reach even to those nearest and dearest. All this is hard, very hard, to flesh and blood. And some, we learn from Acts 26:11, shrank back from such terrible treatment. They kept their lives and their place in the synagogue by speaking against the name they had claimed to honour. None of them, of course, were among the eleven apostles.

The Lord was preparing the disciples for harsher treatment from the professing people of God than from those who knew nothing of Him. So now He lets them know what they must suffer. He does it so that they might gather comfort in that very hour by remembering His words. He knew the trial that was coming, and He told them of it. So they could trust His assurance of love and blessing, of deliverance and glory. Besides, He explains why He had not spoken of these things before. He was with them, their shield and helper; and what need was there to say a word? But as He was about to leave them, it was right to speak, and it would help everything to work for good.

He tells them of these things before they happen, so that they might not be caught off guard. The truth about these matters would put them on their guard. Their own countrymen would disown them, treating them as law-breakers… As these things came to pass their confidence would be strengthened in the One who had told them about them beforehand. He did not tell them these things earlier because He protected them while He was with them. What comfort He sought to bring them now, showing how fully He knew, cared and felt for them.

The first means of defence is to remember the words of the apostles, who spoke beforehand about the coming of these sorrowful evils… The Lord Himself sought to strengthen His disciples in the same way… So, in tender concern for our weakness, the Lord has warned us through His servants about what we must expect among His professing people. Two important things follow. First, only in the light of the Scriptures can we read the state of professing Christianity rightly. Second, if we do not know the teaching of the Word of God, we are open to disappointments and deceptions of every possible kind.

Here, as everywhere in this Gospel, the Lord speaks of His departure. He does not put it in the light of His suffering and rejection — dying here as a man. He puts it according to the dignity of His person: He is "departing out of this world to the Father." And it is in this light that He sets the disciples who had loved Him.

In John 16:5 the Lord says, "But now I am going to him who sent me." He was going away to the Father, and His going to the Father was the answer to the mystery around these words... These verses use three different words for "going away," and a very close study helps here. But the word in this verse says only that He was about to depart. He was removing His presence from them.

They were all devoted to Him, yet no one, He says, was asking Him, "Where are you going?" It is true that Peter had asked that question in John 13:36. But the Lord was speaking about the present. His words make that plain: "None of you asks [not, have asked] me, Where are you going?"

"No one asks any more, because it had become only too clear to them that the 'I go back to the Father,' which He kept saying, meant His final departure from the earth." There is no reproach in the Lord's words. Still, as that writer puts it, a desire to hear more from Him would have been the mark of simpler faith.

Their sorrow was justified, but they were full of themselves — full of their own grief — instead of seeing how God was working and what His purposes were. The real truth was that the Son was going back to the Father. We can lose God's purpose of blessing for our own souls by not seeing His mind in the thing that grieves us.

The Son of God was not going out of this world by an accident. It is the same in the smallest details of our lives: not a sparrow falls to the ground without our Father. The thing that troubled them was in fact the work of redemption.

They cared more about the place He was leaving than about the place He was going to. But as soon as the Lord was glorified, the place He had gone to was everything to them.

Jesus was going to Him who sent Him. The disciples understood enough of the loss ahead to be filled with sorrow. But if only they had asked more about where He was going, and what His presence with the Father would mean, they would have seen things in a different light. His departure was going to be profitable for them. There would be loss, but also gain that would outweigh the loss.

The Lord was hardly speaking about the troubles of daily life, however much His tender words may ease them. It was the special trouble of hearts about to lose the One whose infinite love had won their affections. ... It was the trouble of hearts that had been so attracted to Christ that they were satisfied in His presence, and sorrowful in His absence. To be left in an evil world, from which Christ is absent, is a sore trial to the heart that loves Him.

This sorrow was more of nature than of faith. No wonder it surprised them to hear of their divine Master leaving them with such a prospect before them... And they had forsaken everything and followed Him: what could it mean? He had already assured them that He would not leave them orphans, but was coming to them. If their faith had been simpler, they would have counted on His loving care. They would also have asked where He was going, and would have learned what it meant for His glory and their blessing.

Nature is occupied with what it loses. Faith looks at the future into which God leads. Precious thought! Nature was at work in the disciples: they loved Jesus; they grieved at His going away. We can understand this. But faith would not have stopped there. Suppose they had grasped the necessary glory of the Person of Jesus. Suppose their affection, stirred by faith, had thought of Him and not of themselves. Then they would have asked, "Where are you going?"

The sorrow was legitimate. But they were filled with themselves — their own grief — instead of seeing how God was working and what His purposes were. The real truth was that the Son was going back to the Father. We may lose God's purpose of blessing to our own souls by not seeing His mind in what grieves us. The disciples were shut up in their own sorrows and thoughts, instead of asking where the Lord was going.

They felt how the circumstances affected them. They did not think of the purposes God was accomplishing in those circumstances. For the Son of God was not leaving this world by accident... What troubled them was in reality the work of redemption. Moreover, what makes our cross in this world corresponds to glory and happiness in the other. Their preoccupation with the circumstances hid heavenly things from them, and the glory the Lamb was entering.

You do not yet know the full truth of the situation, so you regard My going away as loss.

For the disciples, the greatest trial, disappointment, and sorrow was the Lord announcing that He was leaving them. And yet it would result in their fullest and deepest blessing... How often we have proved that the clouds we so dreaded were heavy with the richest blessing.

Their sorrow at losing the Lord was great (John 16:6), and He knew it. But they were still to express their joy as they remembered God's intervention on behalf of Israel. So surely should it be with us. We must not let troubles and sorrows, whether personal or otherwise, outweigh the common joy when we meet to show the Lord's death.

The sorrow was right, but they were taken up with themselves — with their own grief — instead of seeing how God was working and what His purposes were. The real truth was that the Son was going back to the Father. We may lose God's purpose of blessing for our own souls by not seeing His mind in what grieves us. The disciples were shut up in their own sorrows and thoughts, instead of asking where the Lord was going. But He would comfort them despite this weakness of faith, and He gives them the promise of the Comforter.

The coming and indwelling of the Spirit was of enormous importance. That is why our Lord tells His disciples it was profitable, an advantage, for Him to go away so that the Spirit might come. If He had not said it, who could have imagined any privilege greater than personal contact and company with the Lord Himself? Before Pentecost the disciples had partial, earthly ideas. Compare them with the same disciples after the Spirit came down, and we see how true our Lord's words were.

He must go away so that the Comforter, the Spirit of God, would come (v. 7). The Spirit comes to dwell in the Church as the result of two things: redemption accomplished, and Christ raised and glorified at the Father's right hand. Only then would He send the Spirit to them.

The Holy Spirit was now to work as He had never worked before in the children of men or in the children of God. More than that, He was to come in person and take over the entire charge and business of the disciples. That is the meaning of paraclete, which our word "Comforter" only partly captures.

This word presents the Holy Spirit as the One who stands by believers and takes their matters in hand. We are not left as orphans (John 14:18) but supported by the Comforter.

He would send the Spirit, and the Spirit would testify of Him as the glorified Lord. That would let the disciples enjoy a deeper relationship with Him and the Father. The Lord was with them, but the Holy Spirit would be in them. That would give them a fuller understanding of the truth than they ever had when the Lord was on earth.

He has ascended, and so we are immensely better off than if He were on earth. If He were on earth now — say in Jerusalem — He would not also be in Edinburgh. But He is in glory. So the Holy Spirit has come down to dwell among us, and to remain in each believer. He gives us the sense of the Lord's presence no matter where we are.

The Lord had told the disciples (John 16:7): "If I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send Him to you." He had gone, and so He sent the Spirit. Peter told them facts — facts no one could question.

The Lord tells us that when the Spirit comes, He will elegxei the world. It is hard to bring across the true force of that word. "Reprove," as the King James Version has it, is too narrow, if not simply wrong. "Rebuke" is out of the question here. "Convict" barely fits the first clause, and does not fit the second and third at all. It also assumes an effect on people that may not be there at all. "Convince" does not satisfy either, unless it means giving proof by His presence rather than by His action. By coming and staying in believers, apart from the world, He gives the world proof by demonstration of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.

The law dealt with Israel as those under it. But now it is the Spirit who shows the world its "sin." The reason is not that people break the law, that divine measure of a man's duty. The reason is that they reject the Son of God: "concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me." He had come in grace; to reject this was fatal. It is not merely failure in obligation, but contempt for God's love.

The Comforter shows the sin of the whole world as the one that has rejected God: "He will convict the world concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me." There are plenty of other sins, but the Holy Spirit would say to the world, "Where is Christ? What have you done with Him?"

Jesus was going through death and resurrection, and then going up into the glory of the Father. That is how divine righteousness would be proved and displayed. The point here is not forgiveness of sins and justification for us, as it is in Romans 3. It is righteousness set up in the open, in every sphere that sin has touched and spoiled. Christ's death was the world's supreme act of unrighteousness. His glorification was God's supreme act of righteousness, and the guarantee that righteousness will win everywhere in the end... To show sin alone would not have been enough. Righteousness is the opposite of sin, and the thing that will abolish it in the end, so righteousness must be shown too.

This world has refused Christ and has no righteousness of its own. Righteousness now sits on the throne, and that is the proof of the world's guilt. So one thing only is left: judgment. So the last convicting work of the Spirit is to bring home the fact of judgment to the consciences of men. He does this not only by warning of a judgment still to come — "it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment." He also brings home that judgment has already been passed and carried out, in the mind of God, on the prince of this world.

The judgment on the prince of this world has come already. He is judged in the cross of Christ.

"He will convict" does not necessarily mean that men will accept the conviction. The guilty do not necessarily admit that their sentence is right. The world certainly does not admit it. Still, God has demonstrated the guilt of the world, and placed men under responsibility to receive His sentence. That is the way into blessing beyond imagining: the salvation for the guilty that the gospel proclaims.

Had this world received the Son, the Spirit would not be here in His present testimony dwelling in our hearts. I have no doubt the demonstration comes first to us, and then through us to this world. We seek to bear witness to the Son, and to the sin of this world in rejecting Him. But it is the presence of the Spirit which brings this demonstration, not so much what the Spirit has to say.

But now it is the Spirit Who shows the "sin" of the world. He shows it not because they break that divine standard of a man's duty, but because they reject the Son of God: "concerning sin, because they do not believe in me." He had come in grace, and to reject this was fatal. It is not just a failure to meet an obligation. It is contempt for God's love.

It was not just sinfulness or wrongdoing. Both could have been charged against them by nature and by the law. It was their very state, their whole state with God… They were sin, and nothing else. Where all beauty was, they saw none. Where God was revealed in the flesh, they did not know Him. When He came to His own with personal grace, they did not receive Him. They hated and rejected Him.

The very presence of the Holy Ghost stamps the world with this sin. He could not be sent here, unless Jesus had been rejected — unless God's own Son had been cast out.

Why is the Holy Spirit in this world in the special way in which He is? Because Christ is rejected. Why is the Holy Spirit given to some and not to others? Because some believe and some do not. This marks the difference between the believer and the world. It shows the guilt of the world.

"Reprove," as in the King James Version, is too narrow a meaning, if not false. "Rebuke" is out of the question here. "Convict" barely fits even the first clause, and does not fit the second and third at all. It also assumes an effect produced, which may not be there in any case. "Convince" is not satisfying either, unless it means giving proof by His presence rather than by His action.

"He will convict" does not have to mean that men will accept the conviction. The guilty do not always admit that their sentence is just. The world certainly does not admit it. Still, God has shown the guilt of the world, and has placed men under responsibility to receive His sentence. There lies the way into blessing beyond imagining — the salvation for the guilty which the gospel proclaims.

In fact it is not the world itself that receives the demonstration. It is those in whom the Spirit dwells. They do use what they have learned to tell the world its true condition.

The Spirit is here to bear witness to this. His very presence here bears witness that Christ is rejected. And when we meet unconverted people in this world, we too see that they have not believed.

Rejecting Christ does not wipe out every other sin committed; it underlines them. Here is an atonement available for terrible sins. That atonement is rejected, and this makes the sins worse still.

Christ is the righteous One, and the world proved its unrighteousness by rejecting Him. Righteousness is with the Father. The Holy Spirit came down after our Lord went up, and that is the proof of the world's unrighteousness. They rejected the One whom heaven welcomed. To those who love the Lord, everything in this world is out of joint. It is like a kingdom where the lawful king has been driven out and a republic set up in his place. To every loyal subject, its affairs are out of joint.

The proof of sin is not the breaking of the law, as in Israel. There is an entirely new standing, and the Holy Spirit witnesses to this and to no other. So with righteousness — the world rejected Jesus, and righteousness is not here but up in heaven. Righteousness is the fruit of His work, and the work of the Holy Spirit answers to His; you see righteousness only in heaven. God the Father raised up a rejected Christ and set Him at His own right hand. So the world lost Jesus, and God was righteous when He received Him to His own right hand in heaven.

The first ground is that the only righteousness now is in Christ gone to be with the Father. In death Christ glorified God perfectly, just as in life He always did the things that pleased His Father. Nothing less than putting Him as man at His own right hand could meet the case. A wonderful fact — a man now in glory, at the right hand of God, above all angels, principalities, and powers. This is the proof of righteousness... But there is another proof, negative where that was positive — that the world has lost Christ, "and you will see me no longer."

In John 16:10 we see where the righteousness of God has been shown. God has set Christ at His right hand in His own glory, because Christ has perfectly glorified Him. The righteousness consists in this: the Father has lifted Christ as Man into His own glory — the glory He had with Him before the world was... By the rejection of Christ, the world has for ever lost Him as the One who came in grace; but God has accepted and glorified Him.

In "and you will see me no longer," it means you will not see Me in that character of mercy, come as a Saviour; every eye will see Him in His new character as Judge. Suppose I receive the Holy Spirit's proof about righteousness, given because Christ has gone. Then I have ceased to belong to the world, and have become a believer... The root of the gospel is here: "righteousness, because I go to the Father." ... You do not see righteousness fully displayed anywhere except in the glory. The cross is the declaration, not of righteousness, but of the opposite. It is the ground of righteousness.

For us Christ is dead, and risen, and gone on high, and we are made the righteousness of God in Him. So this is the righteousness that the Holy Spirit is convincing the world of: not man's righteousness under law, but God's in grace... The world will never see Christ again until He comes in judgment of it. The Christian even now belongs to Christ in heaven. He will go soon to meet Christ in the air and be with Him in the Father's house.

It is hard to give the proper force of the word translated "reprove" in verse 8. Different passages translate it in different ways. So we must weigh the context to find the mind of the Spirit of God. This note explains the difficulty better than any words of our own: "'Convince' (this word is often used instead of 'reprove') assumes an effect in the person convinced; 'convict' would not do for righteousness or judgment. I have said 'bring demonstration'... I use it in the sense that His presence and all that He does gives this demonstration."

Satan had shown himself to be the prince of this world by leading all men against the Lord Jesus. To carry out the purposes of God in grace, Jesus does not resist. He gives Himself up to death. Satan, who has the power of death, committed himself fully. In his desire to ruin man he had to risk everything in his attack on the Prince of Life. He was able to bring the whole world in with himself in this — Jew and Gentile, priest and people, governor, soldier, and subject. The world was there, led by its prince, on that solemn day.

At the cross it looked as if the devil had won. There he used man to nail to a cross of shame the very One God has destined for a throne of glory. But the presence of the Spirit brings demonstration that Christ is in the highest place in glory, despite all that the world has done under the lead of the prince of the world. God has triumphed over man's sin and the devil's power. The place of glory where God has set Christ proves the devil's defeat in his greatest display of power.

A court passes sentence on a murderer days or weeks before the execution. So in John 12:31 — "Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out" — you see the judgment was a present thing. The casting out was a future thing. Between the verdict and its execution lies this present day of grace, which the word "now" covers, as in 2 Corinthians 6:2. In His patience God delays the execution of judgment.

The Spirit convicts the world of judgment, because the prince of this world (Satan) has lost his possession. Christ is heir of all things, the true owner of this earth. The Holy Spirit is here on behalf of Christ. His very presence proves that the world's prince stands judged, and those who have let him rule them must share his judgment.

The Holy Spirit convinces the world "concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world [Satan] is judged." If Satan really had the upper hand, there would be no Holy Spirit here. This world would not put up with the Holy Spirit, or with those He lives in. How cheering is the word, "Little children, you are from God... for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world" (1 John 4:4). That may be said of the feeblest or youngest believer in whom the Holy Spirit dwells.

So the disciples, favoured as they were, were far from knowing all that the Lord wanted for them. He would have told them if their state had allowed it. They could enter into all the truth only after redemption was accomplished, Christ was raised from the dead, and the Holy Spirit was given — not before.

It was not that they were lacking in intelligence. They could not bear or understand the truths that He wanted to tell them, because they had not yet received the gift of the Holy Spirit... Only after He had come could every believer have the power and the potential to understand every truth put before them. No Christian should be ignorant of the mind of the Lord. It is not a question of natural ability. It is a question of being in a moral condition, with a teachable mind and a desire to learn. Then the indwelling Spirit gives the power to understand and learn the truth of God.

The Spirit, when given, was to supply what the disciples in their state at that time could not bear... The Lord truly had many things to say, kept back for the Holy Spirit. They waited for the time when the disciples would have their consciences purged and could come near with boldness into the holy places, and when a Man glorified in heaven gave the fitting occasion for displaying all that is in God.

Many things He had to say to them, but then they could not bear them. He would not therefore press on them what they were not in a condition to receive. Would they lose by that? Should they afterwards have to speak of an opportunity they had not used, lost for ever? No. He would provide against that. The Comforter sent by Him would come, and guide them into all the truth.

His disciples could only understand so much. So in His teaching the Lord was limited to making known what was only partial. But when the Spirit came there would be full revelation. No longer partial teaching, but open communication from the Father and the Son, through the Spirit — and so unlimited fullness for us.

These words show that truth is revealed as God's people are in a position and state to take it in. Before redemption was accomplished and the Spirit given, the disciples could not receive the truth which the Lord later ministered through the apostles by the Spirit. They also show that the revelation of truth reaches its finality when the Spirit comes, since He guides into ALL truth. This agrees with Paul's word that it was given to him "to fulfil [or, complete] the Word of God" (Col. 1:25). He does not mean the completing of the collection of Bible books — apparently John did that — but the completing of the subjects of revelation, the whole circle of revealed truth.

This is how the Spirit guides into all truth without giving new revelations. He opens and applies His own writings to meet the needs of the church.

So we see that the Lord recognised spiritual growth in His hearers. On one occasion He had many things to say, but the apostles were then unable to bear them (John 16:12). When, however, the Spirit of truth came at Pentecost they were led forward into all truth. But in the Epistles, as in the Gospels, we find that the ministry of the truth took each person's progress into account. Paul fed some with "milk," and others with "meat" (1 Cor. 3:2; Heb. 5:12).

"He will glorify me," says the Lord. Here the main purpose now becomes clearest — whether He is revealing the truth, speaking what He hears, or showing things to come. This is the centre around which all His roles and all His work find their full operation… We never read of the government or rule of the Holy Spirit. The reason seems to be that the Spirit is making good the lordship of Christ: He is exalting Him, not glorifying Himself. So He acts among the saints to exalt Christ before our eyes.

What are "the things" that "are Mine"? We have spoken of Him in His varied glories, but this surpasses them all. Think of His days on earth, or of Him raised to heaven. Think of His moral glory, His official glory, or His glory as Mediator. This goes beyond them all, to the things that are His together with the Father, in the deep blessedness of the full glory of God… It does not say, "All that I have is the Father's," but "All that the Father has is mine."

He says the Spirit takes "what is mine". This shared possession, as in everything else, is the very blessing of the Church. If it were not so, then in receiving or hearing Christ's things we might not have known or received the Father's. But when we know His things spiritually, we know the Father's.

We already know, by the Holy Spirit, the things that belong to Jesus where He is now… We do not wait until we are glorified to know where Christ is today, what things are His, and our part in them. May we know more and more of the resources of Christ, for by the Spirit all the riches of God's glory are available to faith!

For what does the Spirit do? He is glorifying Christ. This is always the true test. The power of a thing is not the test of it. Suppose a man talked a great deal about the Spirit, and at the same time was serving sin and not Christ. Who could trust him? … A man may make the most extravagant claims that the Holy Spirit's power is at work in him or in the church. But how am I to know the claim is real? … The great criterion is just this — the Holy Spirit always exalts Christ. The object is not to make much of the Church or a minister.

This shortage of the ministry of Christ is clear proof that the Holy Spirit is grieved and quenched. And nothing grieves and quenches Him more than making Him and His work the main subject of ministry instead of Christ.

Is Christ the food of your soul? Is He precious? Then you know to whose gracious ministry this is due. "He will take what is mine and declare it to you." May nothing hinder the blessed Spirit in His holy work of feeding our souls with the things of Christ. I might remark in passing that the word of God is the treasure house of all this wealth. The Spirit uses that to bring home to our hearts the things of Christ.

What are "the things" that "are Mine"? We have spoken of Him in His varied glories, but this surpasses them all. Whether in His life on earth or ascended on high; whether morally, officially, or in any way tied to His work as Mediator — this goes beyond them all. It reaches the things that are His with the Father, in the intrinsic blessedness of the full glory of the Godhead. In the passage before us we see His pre-eminence. It does not say, "All things that I have are the Father's," but "All things that the Father has are Mine."

John 16:15 gives our Lord pre-eminence from His own lips. Not of Person or relationship, which are both eternal, but of possessions. "All things that the Father has are Mine." Place beside it the words of John 3:35, and we get a most precious distinction. "The Father loves the Son and has given all things to be in His hand." If all things are given to Him as Man, the same "all things" are HIS OWN as God. The Spirit always guards the glory of HIM who stooped to become Man, and here He guards His pre-eminence in the "all things."

In revealing and declaring things to come, He glorifies Christ, for He is declaring Christ's things. But in this there is no separation from the Father, for it is as "all things that the Father has" are Christ's. He says "receive of Mine"; and this unity of possession, as in all else, is the very blessing of the Church. For if it were not so — and it must be so — the Church, in receiving or hearing Christ's things, might not have known or received the Father's. But in knowing, spiritually knowing, what is His, we know what is the Father's.

Christ's own glory, now on high, is the direct object; and this in every way. He is sent down to glorify not the Church but Christ, and He does this by receiving and reporting what is Christ's (and all the Father has is His), not by exaggerating man's importance or allowing the will of man.

In verse 15 we have a most wonderful statement — "All things that the Father has are Mine." This would show the immense resources which are available to the Spirit in His ministry to the saints.

But notice again how the Spirit is linked with our blessed Lord. Is Christ the food of your soul? Is He precious? Then you know to Whose gracious ministry this is due. "He shall take of Mine and show it to you." May nothing hinder the blessed Spirit in His holy work of feeding our souls with the things of Christ. The word of God is the treasure house of all this wealth. The Spirit uses that to bring home to our hearts the things of Christ.

Apart from the Holy Spirit, what would any one of us see in Christ? Think for a moment of a little snowdrop. The ordinary person looks at it and admires it, but to them it is just a simple little flower. Now let a botanist take it up and examine it. He knows its intricate structure and beauty, and he shows us each tiny part in its perfection under the microscope. The more he shows us, the more we say, "How glorious!" So it is with the Holy Spirit. He unfolds to us the beauties of our Lord, seeking to captivate our hearts with what is in Him. How important that we should make use of His ministry!

The Lord's words clearly speak of two short intervals of time. They tell us that soon the disciples would not see Him, and then that they would see Him again. In the light of what follows, can we not say this? At that moment only a few short hours remained. The Lord was about to leave His disciples and pass out of human sight, into the darkness of the cross and the tomb. Then, after a second "little while" the disciples would see the Lord, and yet not as before, in the days of His flesh, but in resurrection. Though they would see Him no more as in the days of His humiliation, they would see Him for ever in the new and glorious condition of resurrection, beyond death and the grave. But it would be the same Jesus who had lived among them, been patient with their weakness, sustained their faith, and won their hearts. He would stand among them and say, "See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself."

Here He stopped for the moment. The closing clause of verse 16 is really a later addition. When He was risen, they would see Him again. When He went to His Father, they would see Him no more (v. 10). That settles the point that the words are a later addition.

This last statement contains the key: because He went to the Father, they would see Him. This could only be so because the Lord would go to the Father and from there send the Holy Spirit. He had just said of the Spirit: "He will glorify me" and "bear witness to me" (John 15:26).

"You no longer see me": this is about the seeing of an observer or spectator. "And you will see me": this word means to recognise. From this it becomes clear that they would see Him in a new way. Through the Spirit they would be able to "see" much more of Him than they had ever "seen" on earth.

The "little while" in any and every sense sounded strange to Jewish ears; so did His going away to the Father... The Jew thought nothing more certain than that the Christ, when He came, would remain for ever. So the "little while" was another puzzle. His death and ascension cleared it up, and the Spirit later showed that it is bound up with everything that marks the present work of God for the glory of Christ.

How wonderful, though, that the Lord speaks here of the sorrow of His disciples, and not at all of His own. His own sorrow was in fact infinitely deeper than theirs. Knowing all that lay before Him, He was taken up in tender grace with them in their sorrow. This is pure, unaffected love.

The point in the "little while" is that the Lord is not going to be lost, but as soon as God has carried out His purposes He will come again... His rising again proved it true, as far as that went, and His disciples did rejoice greatly then. But it did not stop there... Christ is gone in a certain sense, and yet we have seen Him so that we are always rejoicing. The entire fulfilment will not be until Christ returns.

To the disciples His words now were an enigma. Speaking among themselves, they told each other that they could not understand what He meant. Yet none of them asked Him for an explanation… So they put their two difficulties together. They quoted first and foremost what the Lord had just said, and added to that words He had spoken earlier, as given in verse 10.

There had, in fact, been two difficulties before them in what the Lord had said in verse 17. Verses 18 to the first clause of verse 23 complete the Lord's instruction about the first difficulty. In the latter clause of verse 23 He takes up their second difficulty, "Because I go to the Father." He unfolds the first consequence of His going: now they would be able to ask the Father in His Name. They would come before the Father in the value of His name as they never had done before, left to represent Him in the place of His rejection.

The "little while" in any and every sense was a strange sound to Jewish ears. So was His going away to the Father… The Jew thought nothing more certain than that the Christ, when He came, would stay for ever. The "little while" was therefore another puzzle. His death and ascension cleared it up, and the Spirit afterwards showed it to be bound up with all that marks the present work of God for the glory of Christ.

Can we not say that these words show that, at that moment, there were only a few short hours before the Lord would leave His disciples? He would pass out of the sight of man, as He goes into the darkness of the cross and the tomb. Again after a second "little while" the disciples would see the Lord. They would see Him not as before, in the days of His flesh, but in resurrection… It would however be the same Jesus who had lived among them, borne with their weakness, sustained their faith, and won their hearts. He would come among them and say, "Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself."

If He then continues, "again a little while and you will see me", one might think of the resurrection (and this is certainly not wrong). But this cannot be the entire meaning, because the statement continues: "because I go to the Father".

The Lord's words raise anxious enquiry among the disciples, showing that every statement was a mystery to them. It is noticeable that as the discourses go on the disciples grow silent… Now, as the Lord again speaks of Himself, their hearts are stirred to know the meaning of His words. Yet even so, they speak among themselves, hesitating to voice their difficulties to the Lord.

They had discussed it strictly among themselves, and had not yet made Him aware of their trouble. Yet Christ had entered the privacy of their secret thoughts. He showed the power of reading men's hearts, which belongs to God alone. He knew their still unexpressed difficulty, and that they wanted to ask Him. So He said to them, "Do you now enquire among yourselves about what I said?" He explained and expanded His previous words. He dealt so fully with their unconfessed perplexity that at the close they had to exclaim, "Now we are sure that you know all things and do not need anyone to question you; by this we believe that you came from God."

The "little while" in any and every sense was a strange sound to Jewish ears; so was His going away to the Father... The Jew thought nothing more certain than that the Christ when He came would abide for ever. The "little while" was therefore another riddle, and His death and ascension cleared it up. Later the Spirit showed that it is tied to everything that marks the present work of God for the glory of Christ.

First of all, He was going to leave His own, and to put an end by His death to all the relations of God with Israel and with man: "A little while and you will not see me" — He was going to die. "And again a little while and you will see me." He was not going to stay like other men in the dust of the tomb; He would be with them again. But once more they should not see Him, for He came not to be a Messiah upon earth, but He was going to His Father who ruled over death.

This last statement contains the key: because He went to the Father, they would see Him. This could only happen because the Lord would go to the Father. From there He would send the Holy Spirit, of whom He had just said: "He will glorify me" and "bear witness to me."

His perfect wisdom shows in this: they had not once been able to take in what He said when He spoke to them of His death. In this simple but figurative way, He puts before them what includes His death, resurrection and even His ascension, but to them it seemed as if He were speaking in allegory. God has brought us into a place of favour, so we can well understand the difficulty of these dear men... In the second "little while," the word "see" is a different word. It means seeing with the mind's eye — seeing Him by the eye of faith, as the One who has gone to the Father.

The Lord's words stir anxious questions among the disciples. Every statement was a mystery to them. It is worth noticing that as He goes on speaking, the disciples grow silent... Now, as the Lord again speaks of Himself, their hearts are stirred to know the meaning of His words. Yet even so, they speak among themselves, hesitating to voice their difficulties to the Lord.

They had discussed it strictly among themselves, without letting Him know their trouble (verses 17, 18). Yet Christ had entered the privacy of their secret thoughts. He showed the power of reading men's hearts, and that power belongs to God alone. He knew their unspoken difficulty, and He knew they wanted to ask Him. So He said to them, "Are you asking one another what I meant?" Then He explained and enlarged His earlier words. He dealt so fully and exactly with their hidden confusion that in the end they had to exclaim, "Now we know that you know all things... this is why we believe that you came from God."

The absence of the Lord is to the world getting rid of Him; but even now His resurrection is a joy which no one takes away. What will it be when He comes to receive us to Himself?

The Lord's words stir anxious questions among the disciples. This shows that every statement was a mystery to them. As the discourses go on, notice how the disciples grow silent. Five of them have spoken at times, but since they left the upper room no one but the Lord has spoken. As He unfolded the great truths of the coming of the Spirit, they had listened in silence to what was so far beyond their understanding. Now, as the Lord again speaks of Himself, their hearts are stirred to know the meaning of His words. Yet even so, they speak among themselves. They hesitate to tell the Lord their difficulties.

In John 16 we learn that something the Master said had caused His disciples much thought and confusion. They discussed it strictly among themselves, and had not yet told Him of their trouble (verses 17, 18). Yet Christ had reached into their private thoughts. He showed His power to read men's hearts, and that power belongs to God alone. He knew the difficulty they had not put into words, and He knew they wanted to ask Him. So He asked them whether they were questioning among themselves about what He had said. Then He explained and expanded His earlier words. He dealt with their hidden confusion so fully and so exactly that in the end they had to say, "Now we know that you know all things and do not need anyone to question you; this is why we believe that you came from God."

The older English translation lost the difference between these two words. The passage that suffered most is John 16:23. It looks as if it replaces prayer to Christ directly with prayer to the Father in the name of Christ. But the 'ask' (ἐρωτάω) in the first part of that verse points back to John 16:19, "Jesus knew that they wanted to ask (ἐρωτάω) Him." There the word carries its ordinary Greek sense of 'question,' not 'prayer' at all. The Lord is leading their hearts on from the hour of pain that lay ahead in His death to the dawn of a new and endless day in His resurrection. Then they would have no more questions, and every difficulty would be solved.

The "little while" in any and every sense was a strange sound to Jewish ears; so was His going away to the Father... The Jew thought nothing more certain than that the Christ when He came would abide for ever. So the "little while" was another puzzle. His death and ascension cleared it up. The Spirit later showed how it ties in with all that marks out God's present work for the glory of Christ.

They would see Him no more as in the days of His humiliation. Instead they would see Him for ever in the new and glorious resurrection state, beyond death and the grave. And it would be the same Jesus. He had lived among them, put up with their weakness, held up their faith and won their hearts. He would stand among them and say, "See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself."

The Lord acts before they can ask what His words mean. He not only throws more light on what He has said. He also tells them how the great events so close at hand would touch their hearts, both in sorrow and in joy.

So the Lord, aware of their two difficulties, first deals with the one about the "little while," though He is still speaking in figures… Sorrow now, but joy afterwards.

The little while during which they will not see Him will be a time of overwhelming grief for the disciples. They will weep and lament for one dead, whose grave was the end of all their hopes on earth. The world, though, would rejoice. It thought it had triumphed over One whose presence exposed the evil of its deeds.

They had hung their hearts and their fortunes on Him; they had been drawn by His grace; they owned Him as the Son of God. Whatever they looked for and expected, they expected with Him. They were bankrupt, broken-hearted, dispirited. Their Lord, who was their joy, their hope, their everything, was gone!

The pain of childbirth serves as an illustration. It sets out not only the idea of joy following sorrow, but also of new life springing up. Now their sorrow was just a reflection of His sorrow. His own was so deep, and of such a kind, that Isaiah 53:11 calls it "the anguish of his soul." The previous verse predicts, "he shall see his offspring," clearly in resurrection and in glory.

How wonderful that the Lord speaks here of the sorrow of His disciples, and not at all of His own. His own sorrow was in fact infinitely deeper than theirs. Knowing all that lay before Him, He occupied Himself in tender grace with them in their sorrow. This is pure, unaffected love.

Here we have the prediction. In chapter 20:20 we read of its fulfilment.

The point in the "little while" is that the Lord is not going to be lost. As soon as God accomplishes His purposes He will come again… It came true as far as it went when He rose again, and His disciples did rejoice greatly then. But it was not limited to that… The world was delighted to be rid of Him. Yet He comes up again, and His disciples see Him and rejoice. We have not entered fully into either case. Christ is gone in one sense, and yet we have seen Him, so that we are always rejoicing. The complete fulfilment will not come until Christ returns.

The world, which last saw Jesus on the cross, still rejoices in His absence. It wants Him no more today than when He was on earth. But once the "little while" is over, the joy of His own will be complete — a joy that no one will be able to take from us.

God sweetens outward pain with inward peace. "Your sorrow will turn into joy" (John 16:20). God's rod has honey at the end of it.

The Lord answers the hidden desire in the hearts of His disciples. They tried in vain to solve the puzzle in His words, and they were afraid to ask Him anything. He answers in two steps. First He shows them the feelings that would fill their hearts. Then He shows them the true character of His coming and His departure. Grief would fill their hearts. They were about to lose the One for whom they had left everything, and the hope built on Him was fading away. The world, by contrast, would be quite happy to be rid of the One who troubled it by the testimony of the truth.

A woman in labour has anguish because her hour has come. Then a son is born, and she forgets the anguish. So it would be with them. Sorrow now, but joy afterwards, and their joy would come from seeing Him again... Their sorrow would be like a passing cloud, never to return. A joy would then be theirs that no one could take away. Here we have the prediction. In John 20:20 we read of its fulfilment.

The travail of childbirth serves as an illustration. It pictures joy following sorrow, and it also pictures new life springing up. Now their sorrow was simply a reflection of His sorrow. His sorrow was so deep, and of such a kind, that Isaiah 53:11 calls it "the travail of His soul" [the ESV reads "the anguish of His soul"]. The verse before that predicts, "He shall see His offspring" — clearly in resurrection and in glory. They could not share His atoning sufferings, yet they were dimly sharing His sorrow.

How wonderful that the Lord speaks here of the sorrow of His disciples, and not at all of His own sorrow, which was in fact infinitely deeper than theirs. Faced with all that He knew lay before Him, He occupied Himself in tender grace with them in their sorrow. This is pure, unaffected love.

Deeper things are in view here, for the resurrection of our Lord is the birth of the new creation... So we may clearly see that our Lord's tomb was the womb of the new creation, and His resurrection its birth. This introduces a new order where all is joy, and into which sin can never come.

Nothing is more striking than the way the Lord avoids bringing in His death as such here. No doubt it underlies everything, and the joy would have been poor indeed without His infinite sorrow on the cross... This was certainly true when He rose after His brief absence, and it will be fully proved when He comes for them, never to part again. He illustrates it by the most familiar of all pictures of sorrow turning into joy. Even now His resurrection is a joy that no one takes away. What will it be when He comes to receive us to Himself?

The point in the "little while" is that the Lord is not going to be lost. As soon as God's purposes are accomplished He will come again... We have not entered fully into either case. Christ is gone in one sense, and yet we have seen Him, so that we are always rejoicing. The entire fulfilment will not come until Christ returns.

This, it seems to me, is what the Lord tells the disciples will follow His resurrection and departure — "in that day." It is a day that has already come: the day of grace, not of glory. We share in glory only so far as we enter in through Him, Who has gone above and sent the Spirit from there to be in us.

The passage that has suffered most from the loss of this distinction in the King James translation is John 16:23. It looks as if prayer to the Father in the name of Christ replaces prayer to Christ directly. But the 'ask' (erotao) in the first part of the verse points back to John 16:19: "Jesus knew that they wanted to ask (erotao) him." Here the word carries its ordinary classical sense of 'question.' It does not mean 'prayer' at all. The Lord is leading their hearts on from His death to the dawn of a new and endless day in His resurrection. Then they would have no more questions, and every difficulty would be solved... Now they would be able to 'ask' (aiteo) the Father in His name. They would come before the Father in the value of His name as they never had before, left here to represent Him where He had been rejected.

The Lord is signifying a great change. Until now they turned to Him as their Messiah on earth for every difficulty — not for questions only, but for all they might want day by day. Now He would bring them into access to the Father, as the accepted Man and glorified Saviour on high. Until we know redemption, and grace sets the soul in righteousness, even believers are afraid of God and hide, as it were, behind Christ.

So when the Lord said, "In that day you will ask nothing of me," He was not forbidding prayer to Himself. He was telling them that in a day soon to come they would no longer be questioning Him. He would not be here for them to question. He would be at the Father's right hand, and the Holy Spirit would be here to guide them into all truth.

Asking in the name of Christ is more than having a right through His name. It is to appear before God with all the value and authority of that name. Suppose I go to a bank and present a cheque. I ask for the value of the cheque in the name of the person who wrote it. So when I appear before God in the name of Christ, I bring my requests in all the value of that name.

There is what His name excludes, as well as what it includes. "Whatever" is the promise, but "in my name" defines and limits it. As another has said: "Whatever! On its own it would be boundless, and the Lord would then have opened the door to all the desires of unbroken will among His people. But He adds, in my name. This is His limit — the barrier He sets up."

Now, He says to them, you are going onto new ground. No longer just coming to Me and asking Me, but asking the Father, and asking in Christ's name... The meaning is nothing less than this: redemption once accomplished, and the Holy Spirit uniting them to the Lord Jesus in heaven, would set them in the same position as Himself.

The Lord's Prayer always remains priceless. Yet He gave it to meet the personal needs of the disciples, and the fuller revelation of divine truth changed their condition... It seems to me a happy thought that it is our Lord Himself who tells us this. "Until now you have asked nothing in my name." What do I gather from this? That a person may use the Lord's Prayer every day, and never have asked anything in the name of Christ.

Here for the first time we read of prayer to be offered in His name... The prayer of Matthew 6 was prayer to the Father. It was the pouring out of the heart to God from someone who knew he was God's child. But prayer in His name was unknown until Christ's blood had made atonement. As soon as that was done, and those who believed on Him knew it, they were to offer prayer in His name. From then on His name would have a meaning for them as well as for God. It expresses all that He is in the eyes of God the Father.

Asking in His name is not just for Christ's sake as a motive. It is asking in the value of Himself and of His acceptance. All His worth goes to the account of those who plead this way. And how precious and all-prevailing it is in the Father's eyes! How glorifying to both the Father and the Son! How humbling and no less strengthening to the saints themselves! It is the title of every Christian now; none ever enjoyed it before.

Someone has said it well: "Requests made in the name of another are understood to mean taking to yourself his claims, his merits, his rights to be heard." By His own words, the Lord gives this privilege to those who are in relationship with Himself by faith. Asking in the name of Christ was something new to the disciples. Like everything else in these talks, it comes out of the Lord's departure. Asking in His name assumes that Christ is absent.

"In that day you will ask in My name." This refers to the saints' day, when the Lord is with the Father and the Comforter is here. It assumes that redemption has put the saints here below in the place the Son of Man held when He was on earth. So the full value and power of His Name avails with the Father.

Some say His name covers only part of the believer's prayers. They say it does not reach his personal needs or circumstances, and that believers may go to God about them, but not in Christ's name. The Lord's words fit badly with a claim like that. How would all this fit with the direction, "Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full"? Such a chilling claim would quench anything like fullness of joy. That narrow interpretation would bring regret instead of joy.

What makes their joy full is not the thing they receive. It is the proof they get through it that they have their Father's heart and ear. The Father, not the gift, does this for them, filling up their joy.

While He was with them, of course they had not asked in His name: now they are encouraged to find such delight in that name that they ask with firm, holy confidence for what will honour that name. In this their joy would be full.

I suppose it is because the Hebrew word mashal has such a large and varied meaning that Greek uses paroimia as well as parabolē in the same way. Both words are used like this in the Greek Old Testament and in the New Testament. Matthew, Mark and Luke always use parabolē, and John only uses paroimia, as in John 10 and here. Perhaps "allegory" would fit better, or even "a dark saying" in our chapter, where parable or allegory hardly applies.

Notice with what obvious satisfaction the Lord looked forward to the freeing of their faith. It is clear, too, that He was hampered and held back, bound in spirit as it were. The reason was that they could not grasp that revelation of the Father which was nearest to His heart. And so He looked forward to one part of the joy set before Him: the coming time when He would show them plainly about the Father.

No doubt their grasp of the meaning of His parables was very limited. But the parables were meant to stir them up inwardly, and that stirring would find its answer when the Spirit of God came. By the Spirit the Lord would then show them plainly about the Father, for only spiritual means can properly convey spiritual things (1 Cor. 2:13).

In the day about to dawn He would speak plainly about the Father. So it was at the resurrection. He sent a message to the disciples that said plainly, "I am ascending to My Father and your Father, to My God and your God."

Clearly this hour dawned at Pentecost. It is interesting to see how this agrees with Acts 1:1, "all that Jesus began to do and teach." In the one passage we have the clear hint that our Lord would instruct His servants at a coming hour. In the other, the striking word "began" implies that blessed fact. In short, it marks the continuity of what our Lord did on earth with what He did after His resurrection and ascension.

He had been making known the Father by doing the Father's works. All the miracles, or "signs," recorded in this Gospel had set out the grace and power and glory of the Father, but in a parabolic or allegorical way. When we turn to the letters of the New Testament we read plain declarations about the Father, His purposes and glory and love, given by inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

There was no possibility of coming to the Father except by Him, but He wanted them to know that through Him they had come to the Father. They were to keep asking in His name, but He wanted them to understand that the Father Himself loved them. He wanted to direct their gaze to the Father through Himself, so that they might know Him, and know also that they were the objects of His heart.

The time the Lord spoke of as "that day" was then future. It is now present. This is the one unique day in which, to the delight of His own heart, He is at work as gladly for the Father in glorifying Him as He is for us in showing Him plainly to the eyes and hearts of our understanding and our faith. Is it not right to ask ourselves now and then how far we have really proved the Lord's word about the Father's ministry to our souls?

"In that day," says the Lord, "you will ask Me nothing." These words do not mean we are never to speak to the Lord. They mean we have direct access to the Father. Martha had no sense of speaking to the Father herself when she said, "I know that whatever You ask from God, God will give You" (John 11:22). We do not now have to appeal to the Lord to go to the Father for us. It is our privilege to ask the Father ourselves, in the name of Christ.

Verse 26 does not deny Christ's intercession for us, any more than verse 23 forbids the servant to pray to his Lord about His work or His house. It is not an absolute statement... Words are simply left out here, and the words that follow explain them: I do not say that I will ask the Father for you, as if He did not love you. For the Father Himself does love you dearly.

Christ's interceding for them is unasked. We do not ask Christ to intercede. He is an advocate through His own grace when we have sinned, not when we ask. I return to the Father in confession because He has already prayed for me when I went astray. Peter wept because Christ had prayed for him — Christ did not pray for him because he wept.

Is it meant to take from us the comfort of the intercession of Jesus for us? No; it is meant to remove from the heart the feeling that the Lord Jesus is the originating cause of the Father's love. He has only given liberty to that love — made the way for it to flow out. It is a badly mistaken and harmful idea that the Lord Jesus stands towards us as One turning aside the judgment of an angry God. It is true that the love of God could not flow out fully until the Son had finished His work. But the gift of the Son came out of the love of God.

Not one of the Eleven was left out. All of them loved the Lord, Peter with the rest, grievously though he would fall. Because they loved the Lord, the Father loved them all. It was a revelation to gladden their hearts, and the One who made it was competent to make it. The Son, who was in the bosom of the Father, here assured them that the Father loved them.

It is with the Son that we are linked in the Father's love, and therefore there is no separation from it.

Believers as a rule may not be awake enough to two things: how great this favour from God the Father is in itself, and how far its consequences reach... Yet surely to forget the love of the Father is no necessary result of being occupied with that of the Son. Rather it is that we are one-sided, and nothing is rarer than perfect balance in our appreciation of truth.

This is another of those sentences that not only men and scholars stumble over, but believers too. Many a believer is not enjoying the truth of it. Verse 26 does not deny Christ's intercession for us, any more than verse 23 forbids a servant to pray to his Lord about His work or His house. The sentence simply leaves something unsaid, and the words that follow supply it. I do not say that I will ask the Father for you, as if He did not love you. For the Father Himself does love you dearly.

Christ being then personally absent, they would ask in His name. He does not mean that He would act as the Mediator in their asking. He means they would have direct access to the Father in His name. For He encourages their confidence in the Father's love for them. He does not want them to feel that He Himself is more accessible than is the Father.

He did not use the ordinary word for the love of God, "agapao" (God is love and that love has to manifest itself). He used as an exception the word which speaks of the love of friendship. For example, when I saw something attractive in my wife I was drawn to her. This is the thought the Lord uses here. The Father Himself has been drawn to you. He loves you in that sense, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came out from God.

God loved you when there was nothing lovable about you. He loved you because of what was in Himself. But the Father loves you because of what is in you. He has found something in you in which His heart has unbounded delight. What is it? Nothing but the little spark of love to His Son, which He has kindled there for Himself. His Son has suffered every insult that the corrupt heart of man could invent. Yet here you stand on His side, lifting up a feeble testimony in His favour. And the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Him, and have believed that He came out from God.

Here we learn who the objects of the Father's love are. They are those who have loved Jesus, and have believed that He came out from God. Not those who say this and that, but those who have the two great essentials of living Christianity — faith and love. These two always go together where God has done a work in the soul, for faith works through love.

But this was far short of the full truth He goes on to reveal: "I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father." Here they fell altogether short. They realised as yet little or nothing of His full, divine, and eternal glory as the Son of the Father.

What a wonderful privilege we have! We go through this cold-hearted world in the constant sunshine, the warmth and comfort, of the Father's love. How well it would equip us to meet the hostility of this world, and to answer cursing with blessing! And it is: "Because you have loved Me, and believed that I came out from God." In the Father's love we are joined to the Son, so there is no separation from it.

This sentence sums up the Saviour's whole work on earth in divine fashion. The wheel, if I may put it that way, comes full circle. Let us note one or two points of contrast. To begin with, there is the well-known opposition between the Father and the world. It is just as absolute and vivid as the opposition between the Son and the devil, or between the Holy Spirit and the flesh. The Lord says, "I am leaving (aphiemi) the world" — a word that certainly suggests giving up what had so completely failed to appreciate Him.

Others have used chapter 16:28 to divide the Gospel. This is unquestionably the order of events in the Gospel of John. He came forth from the Father (1:1-18); He came into the world (1:19 – 12); He left the world and has returned to the Father (ch. 13 – 21).

He had come from a Person to a place, and was leaving that place to return to that Person. He named the Person — the Father; and the place — the world.

The words "out of the Father" (ek tou Patros) point to the Father and the Son being one in essence. They stand in marked contrast with "from God" in the previous verse. The tense (exelthon) used of where our Lord came from marks the act of coming forth. The words "have come" (elelutha) throw the lasting results into strong relief. The Lord has come into this world, and so the world can never be as if He had not come. The consequences are momentous for believer and unbeliever alike. And lastly, in "going" (poreuomai) we have a word suggesting a solemn, ordered, stately progress back to the Father.

Was He the Son before He was sent? Certainly He was. Some have denied this. They claim that Christ became the Son only when He became man. Then was God not the Father before He sent His Son? If God was Father, then Christ must have been the Son… The Lord Jesus answers this plainly and beyond question in John 16:28: "I came from the Father and have come into the world." He makes His coming forth from the Father distinct from His coming into the world.

It was His own act. He came forth from the Father and He had come into this world. It was His own act again to leave the world, and by whatever means He chose. Blessed be His Name! He chose to leave this world by the cross. This was so that He might bring us into the presence of that Father from whom He came forth, joined with Him as sons. So we may already enter in spirit into this relationship. We may enjoy what, apart from His departure, He alone had enjoyed or could enjoy.

The disciples understand His meaning. They see that He has correctly read their thoughts and solved their difficulties without being asked… Yet their confession fell short of the Lord's revelation. They spoke of God. He had spoken of the Father. Of course the Father is God. But "God" recalls to us the one divine Being, the powerful One. The thought of the Father reminds us of relationship.

It would be hard to find a verse of John that shows the character of his Gospel more briefly and fully than the one just before us. It would be as hard to find one less understood, then or now, by the disciples. His divine relationship and His mission from the Father stand clearly revealed on earth, before they join Him on high... These great truths go far beyond all the Messianic glory that so far filled the minds of His followers. They proved how little they knew by the very fact that they thought they knew it all clearly.

παροιμία: this is more an obscure saying, John 16:25, 29; 2 Peter 2:22; it is translated "parable" in John 10:6, but "allegory" would be a better rendering.

The disciples understand His meaning. They see that He has read their thoughts correctly and has solved their difficulties before they asked. So they said, "Now we know that you know all things and do not need anyone to question you; this is why we believe that you came from God." Yet their confession fell short of the Lord's revelation. They spoke of God. He had spoken of the Father. Of course the Father is God. But God recalls to us the one divine Being, the powerful One; while the thought of the Father reminds us of relationship.

The disciples think they understand what He had said in this way, without a parable. They felt that He had read their thought, for they had not expressed it to Him. Yet they did not really rise to the height of what He said... They do not enter into the thought of coming "from the Father," and going away "to the Father." They imagined themselves quite in the light. But they had grasped nothing that raised them above the effect of Christ's rejection. Believing that He came from the Father and was going to the Father would have done that.

His words were simple, but they had not taken in their depth. They had no idea of the mighty change ahead. They knew the kingdom as the Old Testament revealed it. They did not know the new state of things that would follow, with Him absent with the Father on high and the Spirit present here below. It sounded plain to their ears. But even up to the day He went up to heaven, they barely caught a glimpse of it, if at all.

Here they fell completely short. They knew as yet little or nothing of His full, divine, and eternal glory as the Son of the Father. The Son did fully reveal God the Father. But only the presence and power of the Spirit, sent down in person, could give them communion with Him now made known... This is what so many believers still miss. Their souls are in much the state the disciples were in then. They may see the glory of the Son a little better, yet they fail to see in Him and His work their title to rest in the Father's love.

The truth that they had seen only dimly now becomes definite and clear by the plain words of the Lord. And yet how little they understood the way of death by which the Lord was returning to the Father. So the Lord can say, "Do you now believe?" They did indeed believe. But, like ourselves too often, they knew very little of their own weakness.

In John 16 a statement of the Master's caused His disciples much thinking and perplexity. They discussed it only among themselves, without yet telling Him their trouble (verses 17, 18). Yet Christ had entered their private, secret thoughts. He showed the power of reading men's hearts, which belongs to God alone. He knew their unspoken difficulty, and that they wanted to ask Him. So He said to them, "Are you asking one another what I meant by this?" He dealt so fully and correctly with their unconfessed perplexity. At the close they had to exclaim, "Now we know that you know all things and do not need anyone to question you; this is why we believe that you came from God."

The disciples were slow to see the full deity of our Lord Jesus Christ. Yet they had a deep sense that He knows everything: "We know that You know all things," they said. They kept company with Him. They felt and observed His perfect knowledge of God, of themselves, of men, and of everything else. Some in our day question what they never thought of questioning. Nathanael had asked Him, "How do you know me?" We find the same thing with the woman of Sychar. She said, "Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?"

And now He spoke plainly: "I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father" (28). … Yet their confession fell short of what the Lord had revealed. They spoke of God. He had spoken of the Father. Of course the Father is God. But "God" recalls to us the one divine Being, the powerful One, while the thought of the Father reminds us of relationship.

The disciples see that His answer to their thoughts is plain. They do not see its force. They say, "You came from God." They also had no strength to follow Him into the death that was His way of returning.

They confess their certainty that He knows all things. His greatness is therefore beyond all questioning of men. This can be true of none but God. They at least acknowledge that they know He had come from God (v. 30). It is precious that their faith went beyond the limits of their understanding. Clearly they were far from grasping the meaning of all that His words involved.

Their own language betrayed them. Simple as His words were, they had not taken in their depth. A mighty change was coming, and they had no idea of it. From the Old Testament they had gathered hopes of the kingdom. Now a new state of things would follow: He would be absent with the Father on high, and the Spirit would be present here below. It sounded plain to their ears. But even up to the day He went up to heaven, they barely caught a glimpse of it.

A Christian who is subject to the Spirit and the written Word may say "we know," but no one else. The eleven disciples had not yet received the Holy Spirit. Their words, "we believe that You came from God," show that they had understood nothing of what the Lord had said about coming from the Father. … Our blessed Lord's answer is worth every bit of attention. He does not mention their pretended knowledge, but says, "Do you now believe?" They lacked the God-given perception by faith of His Person as Son of the Father. They had sincerely believed in Him as having come from God. But they did not know faith in the Son, by whom the world is overcome, for all their boasting. … They would be scattered. Each one would go to his own house and leave Jesus alone.

The Lord asks the disciples, "Do you now believe?" For they little understood all that was involved in His words. Is He really God shown in flesh? If so, nothing could defeat His wisdom and purpose, and we can depend on Him completely. But He says that the hour was upon them that they would scatter from Him, each in his own independent direction, leaving Him, the Son of God, alone! Which of us would have been any different? How sadly weak is the faith we profess!

"You will be scattered" by the instinct of self-preservation; "and will leave Me alone," for I shall matter less to you than your other interests then; "each to his own home," leaving the Master by Himself... And so that we are not tempted to throw stones at them, or to call them cowards, let us ask ourselves whether we have ever sought our own at the expense of His company, His reproach and His interests.

"Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone" — deserted even by the little company gathered round Him in such privileged nearness on earth. It must be so. No man could follow Him where He went, till Jordan's depths were dry. He had to pass alone into these depths of divine judgment for sin. Then faith could know death with Him, stripped of all fear for us, as the wonderful passage into life with Him in the power of His resurrection.

The path of Jesus as a lowly, dependent Man was a lonely one, but He was always in communion with God, on whom He relied at all times. When the Jews opposed Him He told them, "He who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him" (John 8:29)... The Son had proved throughout His life on earth that the Father was worthy of His trust. So He is sure of His presence with Him in the hour of His deepest sorrow, when His disciples desert Him.

They scattered to their own, and He was left alone in the hour of His deepest need! Would any heart but His own have hurried to add, after such desertion on their part, "and I am not alone, because the Father is with Me"?

Our Lord was never forsaken by His Father; He was forsaken of God, the Holy God, when He stood in the sinner's place.

All through His blessed life He was here apart from all men. Still, He had the companionship and support of His Father... And I need not say that in His death He was still more alone. There He entered into a solitude deeper than any heart could conceive. I speak above all of that one supreme moment when God forsook Him on that cross. Never was there a solitude like that solitude.

May we be kept humble, so as to know Him and all the resources that are in Him. They are in Him for present difficulties, and even for loneliness — for He has felt it: "You will leave me alone; yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me." So you can say, "I and Christ who is with me."

His purpose was to lift them to a sense of their calling, as the Church of God, and so to comfort them. He keeps to that purpose, however much He may have to rebuke their slowness of heart for a time... So, at the close of the conversation, He had to tell them that the hour was near. Every one of them would go to his own home and leave Him alone. Yet His love towards them never paused for a moment. He picks up His own thoughts again at once.

He said it to set them on this ground: "in me." He was out of the world, and they in it. He had left the world, so they would meet tribulation in it. His comfort was in the presence of One the world could not see, where He seemed to be alone. In Him they would have the same.

The Lord had said all these things so that His disciples in their turn might have peace in Him, just as He had peace in the Father. His overcoming of the world also pledged that they would have overcoming power too.

In a general sense, everyone who follows the Lord will meet difficulties and even "tribulation." The world is hostile to Christ. But this is a different thing from "the tribulation."

We can see that this is another side of the world. It is not the tempting side, the side Satan used when he hoped to overthrow the Lord... but the persecuting side. On the way to the glory we will meet much tribulation. It is the share appointed to us here. The danger is that we give way under the pressure and become unfaithful.

We had no need to dread the world as an enemy, unless we felt inclined to give it a warm place in our foolish hearts. If we felt inclined to do that, then instead of overcoming the world we would be overcome by it. It would be the winner and we would be the beaten. Let us have no dread of it; and let us have no love for it either.

At the close of John 16, summing up His own pathway and looking over to its certain end, He says, "I have overcome the world." Just as surely as this takes in the final hours of testing, so surely does "I have glorified You on the earth" look on to and include His death, where His journey on the earth was ended.

Yet He calls them to courage. They know the One they have believed, His glory and His grace, and He has overcome the world. What encouragement, that the enemy we have to overcome is already beaten! He overcame alone. We look to Him, and He gives power for everything. And this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? (1 John 5:4-5)