What is the significance of Jesus saying, "Believe also in me" in John 14:1?

These disciples of the Lord were troubled because He was going away. They had had no trouble while He was with them. "Lacked ye anything?" He had asked, and they had answered, "Nothing." But He was going away and what would they do without Him? His answer to their unspoken fear was, "Let not your heart be troubled." There would be no trouble for any of His own if He were here. "Disease and death and demon fled from His presence, and great peace had they who kept His company, but He is not here and He said in view of His going away, "in the world ye shall have tribulation," and is not tribulation trouble? His answer is "Let not your heart be troubled." That is His word to every one of us. Do any of us think that He would have said that to us if He were not able to keep us from troubling? Did He ever mock a needy soul with vain words? We may be sure that He would never have uttered the words if He were not able at all times and in every circumstance to keep us from troubling. "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because He trusted in Thee." "In the world ye shall have tribulation but in Me peace." Then He proceeded to give the basis for this untroubled confidence. "Ye believe in God, believe also in Me" and in those words He declared His Deity and set Himself before us as the object of our faith and trust even as God is. God is invisible but real, He would be invisible but as real to faith as God is. Those disciples were well acquainted with Old Testament history. They had read of Abraham and Moses and David and Daniel and the three Hebrew youths. They knew that these men had trusted in God and were not confounded, He had not failed any of them when they cried to Him, at all times He was their shield and exceeding great reward. Well, said the Lord, all that God was to His trusting people in ancient days, I will be to you. Have the centuries that have passed weakened His strength and diminished His interest in His own? has He grown weary of them and their troubles? Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? "Ye believe in God, believe also in Me." Having loved His own which were in the world, He loves them to the end. "Let not your heart be troubled."

The answer to our question is not far to seek. The Lord said to them, "Let not you heart be troubled, ye believe in God, believe also in Me." But did they not believe in Him? They did, but this is not faith for soul's salvation, it is something more than that. He was not only their Pattern, He was also to be their Resource. They were to have Him as their inexhaustible and all-sufficient resource for the carrying out of God's purpose in their lives in the world. He is that for us. He says: "Believe also in Me." In that short sentence He presents Himself in the fullness and power of His Deity. All that ever God had been to men in olden days — to Abraham, Moses, David, Daniel — He would be to them, and will be to us. We do not see Him with our mortal eyes, but faith sees Him, and all that He is is at the disposal of our faith, He is indispensable, all-sufficient. "Believe also in ME."

As I have said, among many deeply-precious lessons which this portion teaches us, there are three points which especially demand our attention. Firstly, our Lord's earnest desire, that during this period of His absence from us, we should be in the habit of looking to Him about everything, and to expect all we need from Him. He was going to the Father. Though away from us as to personal presence, there would be no change in His love or His care. Nor would His power be less; for He was going to the position of all power in heaven and in earth. He therefore first of all makes a particular request before leaving them; it was this, that they would exercise faith in Him, and not allow their hearts to be troubled. How exquisitely tender this is! What loving concern and interest it manifests! Did the precious Saviour say, You will not have trouble? No. Quite the contrary. He said, "In the world ye shall have tribulation;" but twice in this chapter He entreats us not to let our hearts be troubled. How is it possible that my heart should not be troubled, some may say? Jesus supplies the answer. As Jews they had known what it was to believe in God, to trust God; but now they were also to trust Him, exercise faith in Him. "Believe also in me." How simple and efficacious is this preventative of heart-trouble! Do we know its blessedness, beloved, in our own soul experiences? Do we so cast all our care upon Him, who careth for us, as to keep our troubles as it were at arms' length, so as not to get under them? How sweet and salutary is this counsel! This trust in Him is something more than believing on the Lord Jesus for salvation; for it is because we are His own, and objects of His everlasting love and care, that we are enjoined to roll every burden upon His Almighty arm, and leave it there. "Believe also in me." How blessed, then, the thought, that the Lord Jesus, though now in glory, far above all principality and power, desires that in this present trying scene our eyes may be looking to Him, and casting every trouble into His arms of love, so that our poor hearts may be free to love and serve Him, and not be oppressed by grief; but instead of this, as we afterwards read, that His peace in all its calm unruffled sweetness may be ours. I repeat, how loving is our Lord's counsel, and how marvellous His care for our present comfort and blessing in Himself!

There is another point I should like to say a word upon in connection with it, because it helps to make plain a saying of Christ. In the fourteenth chapter of John there is a very beautiful setting forth of this blessed hope. "Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me." At first it sounds very peculiar that the Lord should here tell believing disciples to believe in Him. I do not think it means that they were merely to increase their former faith. i.e., "Ye believe in God, believe also in me." I take it that the force is this: You believe in God though you have not seen Him; believe in Me, who am going to become invisible to you. I, who have been your visible Master, your Teacher in your midst, am going to leave the world. I am going, therefore, to enter a condition of invisibility as far as you are concerned, because I shall be no longer on earth, but in heaven. This follows most simply and naturally from the words of the next verse — "In my Father's house are many mansions." It is not that the Lord was going to have done with His body; He never will do that to all eternity. In that sense, therefore, it will never be a question of absolute invisibility, but only relative — to those disciples certainly so. And this is necessary for Christianity. If I were asked to give in very few words one specific difference between Christianity and Judaism, I would say that Judaism was a religion of sight; Christianity of faith. We walk not by sight, but by faith. Here then, now, to test the truth of it all, the Lord enters that condition, but not by becoming a spirit. The Lord is not a spirit; He has a spiritual body. An angel is a spirit; but the Lord Jesus is not. "A spirit hath not flesh and blood." We must not at all allow such a notion as that the Lord Jesus, in His risen condition, has not flesh and bones — of course He has. He has no longer a life in the blood, because this is a life in connection with earth, a life which lives by food, air, etc.

Simpler words there could hardly be, but what depth of feeling and height of glory! Jesus was departing, despised of Israel. He was His disciples' beloved Lord, yet one was the traitor, another His denier. Who could wonder if all of them were troubled? Let them be assured that grace would turn all for good and to God's glory. “Let not your heart be troubled. Ye believe on God,” though you never saw Him. “Believe on Me” when I depart unto the Father, and you cease to see Me. Let your faith rise from its Jewish form to its Christian character and fullness. Compare John 20:29.

Even my earthly people shall yet say, Blessed is He who cometh in Jehovah's name. Meanwhile I am re-entering heaven to give you who have fore-hoped in Me, the Christ, a better portion, even a part with Me on high. Instead of abandoning you, I will as your divine Saviour both prepare you for the place as already set before you, and prepare the place for you by going to the Father's house. My heart is fixed, as is the Father's will, on bringing you there. “In My Father's house are many abiding-places.” No doubt you have never aspired to such a home. You have expected Me to abide forever with you in your house when I have purged it of all adversaries and evils by the power which I have even to subdue all things to Myself. But there is ample room for you as well as Me in that intimate home of divine love and heavenly glory. “If it were not so, I would have told you, because I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go, and prepare a place for you, I am coming again and will receive you unto Myself that where I am, ye also may be.”

The Lord had spoken of His near departure (13:33). It would not be a short absence. Its duration He nowhere specified. He would go whither they could not then follow Him. Great of course would be the change to them, when that should become an accomplished fact, — a change such as none of us can fully understand; for His disciples, since first called to follow Him, had never known this world without Him. 'Tis true for a few hours He had once left them, when they were on the sea and He on the land (John 6). True, too, that once for some hours only Peter, James, and John had been with Him on the mount, whilst the rest awaited His return at its foot (Luke 9:37). Shortly, however, He would take His departure from earth, never again to abide with the Apostles on this side of death. Hence in His love and care for them He speaks a little word: "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in [or better, on] God, believe also in [or, on] Me" (14:1). God was an object of faith to them, though they had never seen Him. The Lord was to be that likewise, when He should have left this scene. Lost to sight, to faith He was to be still very real.

At the beginning the Lord says, "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me." This at once gives them notice of another Object of faith than what they as yet had. God, in the sense of these words, had been already known to Israel. The disciples, in their Jewish place, were already believers in God. The Lord here allows that, as He had before asserted, speaking to the woman of Samaria: "We [i.e., Jews] know what we worship." The Jews had God; their faith was not wrong, but only defective, and the Lord would now fill it out. He would now have them to know the Father through the Son — and the whole of this discourse with His disciples furthers this design. He speaks particularly of the Father, and promises the Comforter to make these things (the things of the Father and the Son) known to them.

The Lord Jesus in a Scripture which so powerfully asserts His deity, puts Himself alongside the blessed God as an object for faith (John 14:1).

The first great truth that He brings out is that they belong entirely to another place. This world is not good enough for them. He was going away from them, and this was something to trouble their hearts. Therefore He brings before them Himself, as the object of comfort, "Ye believe in God, believe also in me." By believing in God, you get comfort; so it will be by believing in Me.

The discourse (V. 1) opens with the tender and touching words "Let not your heart be troubled." Who but the Lord could have uttered such gracious words at such a solemn moment. The Lord had just foretold the thrice repeated denial of Peter, and just as the premonition of the denial is preceded by that gracious word, "Thou shalt follow Me afterwards," so it is followed by these touching words, "Let not your heart be troubled." With the treachery of Judas and the denial of Peter before them, the disciples might well be troubled. Yet, says the Lord, "Let not your heart be troubled."

In this early part of the discourse the Lord takes a threefold way to relieve our hearts of trouble. First, He sets Himself before us as the object of faith in the glory. "Ye believe in God — One whom we have never seen — and now, as the Lord passes out of sight into glory, He can say, "Believe also in Me." Thus Christ, as a Man in the glory, becomes the resource and stay of the heart. Everything on earth may fail us, the world tempt us, the flesh betray us, yet Christ in the glory remains the unfailing resource of faith. As one has said. "There is no solid comfort to be found outside of Christ." Christian friends however true, relatives however loving, circumstances however favourable, health however good, prospects however pleasing — yea all on earth — will fail to give lasting comfort; but Christ in the glory remains the One to whom faith can turn and find in Him the unfailing resource of His people, throughout the long dark night of His absence.