Yet a little and the world sees me no longer; but ye see me; because I live ye also shall live.
Jesus is hours from the cross. He tells His disciples that a short time will end the world's view of Him for good — but not theirs. The promise turns on a single word: because. Their life is not an independent possession but a consequence of His.
The "little while" marks the end of Christ's public showing to the world. One writer notes how this has held since the crucifixion:
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.
Behind that closure lies a decision. The world had already made its judgment of Him:
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.
"But you will see me" cannot mean ordinary eyesight, since the disciples were about to lose that too. What takes its place is better, not worse:
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.
What faith sees is not the Christ of the past. It is the Man who has entered glory:
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.
The link between His living and ours is not just a comparison. It is a shared nature:
"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 life in view comes from the other side of the grave. One writer links it to the breath of the risen Christ:
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.
If the life is His, its security is His too. One writer pushes that reasoning to its limit:
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.
For a believer full of fear, the same logic silences doubt:
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.
Safety is not the whole of it. The same verse describes an ongoing dependence:
"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.
- Because — everything in the verse hangs on this word. They live because He lives. Their life is never a separate supply held in themselves.
- Departure — the world's last sight of Christ was the cross. No worldly eye has seen Him since, and His relations with the world are closed.
- Sight — believers still see Him, by faith and through the Spirit. That sight is clearer than natural eyes ever gave. It rests on Him where He now is, in glory.
- Certainty — the life cannot change, because its source cannot change. Those joined to Him could die only if Christ could die.
- Dependence — this shared life is not a stored deposit but a daily hanging on Him, sustained by all He is doing for us now.
In that day ye shall know that I [am] in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.
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