John 14

John 14:1-31

Section 3. (John 14:1-31.)Part with Him: the Father’s House, and the Manifestation of the Father, in the Son and by the Spirit. We have now the “part with Him” of which He has already spoken. First its full consummation in the Father’s House, the many abodes in glory, in which we shall dwell with Him. Then we have the present manifestation of the Father to us in Christ Himself, and by the gift of the Holy Spirit: so perfectly are we provided for on our way to that eternal Home. Father, Son, and Spirit are all employed in our behalf, on a path which shines with heavenly light upon it to the perfect day.

1. The Lord exhorts and encourages them in view of His departure from them. He is to be their sufficient resource whatever might be their trouble, as the sure though unseen object for faith, as God was. The Father’s House was before them as before Him, the only full satisfaction for the heart, where rest will be eternal. That was the place to which He was going, and there of necessity His own would be with Him. Would He otherwise have encouraged an intimacy which was to end for ever? would He not have warned them? Ah, He was going up there to love and care for them with the same steadfast care as when on earth, and would prepare a place for them. Until He finally left it, as rejected by Israel, the temple was for Christ His Father’s House. Now He speaks of another, -that of which Israel’s was but the figure: but therefore naturally using this to illustrate the higher meaning. The “holy places made with hands,” says the apostle (Hebrews 9:23-24) are “figures of the true,” “the patterns of things in the heavens.” The court of that house with its numerous chambers, in which the priests as they came up for service in their various courses found temporary lodgment, were indeed more a contrast than anything else with the glorious abodes which the Lord speaks of here. These are homes, not mere lodging-places; and in nearer relation to the Divine Father than such outside courts could indicate. The reality transcends all shadows. They who are here provided for are the happy children of One who transcends infinitely all other fathers.

And this at once delivers us from the thought which has been attached to the simple language of the blessed Teacher, -as if “many” signified diversity of rank. The whole connection and the terms used are against such an interpretation.

In the Father’s House all are children; and all the children are in the nearness of such relationship. It is the fruit of Christ’s work, and not the reward of our own. It ought to be plain at once to every one who knows anything of the place into which divine grace has brought him, that these things cannot be mingled. The apostle’s words clearly state the incompatibility of these two principles: “If by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace, otherwise work is no more work” (Romans 11:6). The principles are incompatible, and in all that the work of Christ has accomplished for us, this needs and owns no help from man.

Yet it is quite true that there are rewards, and that divine love will satisfy itself in thus owning all that has been done for love. Mercy will show itself also in this; but how?

By cleansing away all that which has been mixed with it, and would make this impossible; and this is what is represented to us in the blood-washed robes of the book of Revelation. The righteousness which we have in Christ, -the best robe in the Father’s House, -can never need such washing; but the robes that are spoken of in this way are the “righteousnesses,” or, as the Revised Version has it, “the righteous deeds” of the saints: for the book of Revelation is the book of the Throne, -of government and recompense, and we must not be surprised if we have a very different view of things from that presented in Romans or Galatians. But the whole context assures us that differences of reward are not in question. The Lord is not telling His disciples that “one star differeth from another star in glory,” -it is not indeed glory at all, of which He is speaking; He is comforting their hearts in the thought of His absence, that after all it is only a temporary one, and that the Father’s House to which He is going has room enough for all, and is to receive them all eternally. The issues of responsibility do not come in here, as should be plain, and would only introduce an element of uncertainty where faith needed to have the clearest vision. He had come amongst men, not merely to do a certain work among them, however great, and to be gone. He was going back; but as a Man, taking back with Him the nature He had assumed to the glory He had left, -the pledge of abiding fellowship with those for whom He now went up to take a place as their Representative before God. The communion to which He had admitted them on earth was there to be continued and perpetuated: if it were not so, He would have told them; He would not have bound their hearts to Himself by that dear, familiar intercourse to which He had encouraged them, if it were to have an end for ever. Not so; if He were going away, it was to prepare a place for them; and He would return again Himself to receive them to Himself, -to welcome them to His own eternal Home. His must be their first, best greeting. He does not explain how the place in His Father’s House should be prepared for them; nor were they yet, perhaps, able to understand. The epistle to the Hebrews will show us, if we turn to it, that the heavenly places had to be purified by the better sacrifice which He was to offer, in which all the sacrifices of the law would find their fulfilment. Ephesians speaks similarly of the “redemption of the purchased possession;” and Colossians of the reconciliation of things in heaven (Heb. ix-. 23; Ephesians 1:14; Colossians 1:20). Such thoughts are, even now, strange to many a Christian; for we are slow to realize the extent of the injury that sin has inflicted, and equally, therefore, the breadth of the application of the work of Christ. This is not the place to enlarge upon it; but it is not difficult to understand that wherever sin has raised question of God, -and it has done so, as we know, in heaven itself, -the work of Christ, as bringing out in full His whole character in love and righteousness regarding that which had raised the question, has enabled Him now to come in and restore, consistently with all that He is, what had been defiled with evil. Thus our High Priest, to use as the apostle does the figures of Israel’s day of atonement, has entered into the sanctuary to reconcile with the virtue of His sacrifice the holy places themselves, and make them accessible to us. Man in Christ has risen to the highest pinnacle of glory with the whole acclaim of heaven; and men redeemed by His blood can be associated with their Lord in glory, “made the (manifested) righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). They knew therefore whither He was going; they knew also the way. For they knew in fact more than they realized that they knew. When Thomas, thinking, as it would appear, of a kind of map of the road, which they had not, ventures to object their ignorance of this, the Lord shows him his mistake by assuring him that He Himself was the Way: through Him alone could any come to God. Nor only so; He was also the Truth, -the revelation of God. And since, even so, man was dead and unreceptive of the truth, He was the Life also, which men needed for this reception. The fall treasury for man’s need was here then to be found. 2. Philip’s desire to be shown the Father brings out more fully the witness of the Son to Him. Where Philip was, many are still today. They know Christ as, in a sense, the way to God; but as yet they have not seen the Father in Him: Christ is rather to them a Saviour from God, than the manifestation of God. He is the Doer of the work which the Father, although they call Him this, simply receives. They are shielded from His wrath, but Himself they do not know. They are, in short, where the Israelite was the night of their first passover. Sheltered under the blood of the lamb, yet the wail of judgment was in their ears, and God for them was identified with what in reality is only His strange work,-unknown therefore in what is His true character. The Lord’s reply to Philip is an expression of pain at his want of apprehension. “Have I been so long time with you, and hast thou not known Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father, and how sayest thou, Show us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak unto you I speak not from Myself, but the Father who abideth in Me, He doeth the works.” His very presence here was to declare the Father, and that after all the Father should not be understood by disciples of His, wounds Him in the deepest way. “Believe Me,” He says, “that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me,” -that is, that we are thoroughly identified, -“or else believe Me for the very works’ sake.” It is a tender but sad rebuke. Had Philip indeed 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 now we know not.

What, is the Father righteousness merely, and only the Son love? are there two Gods, or One Only God? If we have indeed come to Christ, we have not to go a further journey to reach the Father, but have got the very depth of the Father’s heart told out. This is, as we have seen from the beginning, the constant theme in John. And oh, what a marvellous joy in simplicity of faith to take it in! Philip was right at least in saying, “It sufficeth us”; and nothing short of this can possibly suffice us. And the Lord adds to this, that because He was going to the Father, in testimony of the Father’s delight in that glorious work achieved, even these poor disciples of His should do greater works than He Himself had done. The thousands converted at Pentecost, compared with the “labor for nought” of which He complains through Isaiah as characterizing His own life-toil, already illustrate this; while beyond lay that Gentile harvest which, even while Israel was reaping the fruit of her rejection of Him, would anticipate the final world-harvest. These things are, no doubt, the " greater works," while the miracles that He did His disciples also did, even to the raising of the dead, the healing by the shadow of Peter, or the communication of curative power to handkerchiefs or aprons by the body of Paul. This was still the Son’s own work, all things being put into His hand as the Fulfiller of the Father’s purpose, and received by Him to glorify the Father in the accomplishment of His blessed will. Whatever therefore they should for this end in His Name ask of the Father, He, the Son, would do it; that in the Son the Father might be glorified. And He repeats again, to emphasize it, “If ye shall ask anything in My Name, I will do it.” This is indeed a large enough assurance. It is guarded and made right by the controlling purpose. He who is possessed by the desire that God may be glorified has in this assurance a wondrous possibility before him of successful prayer. Such a desire, just as it is whole-hearted, will clear the sight, and enable for such prayer as can be answered, -will lift up the heart with confidence to God. We are taught by all this what praying in Christ’s Name is: -that it is not a mere putting His Name at the end of one’s prayer. It means that we are identifying ourselves in faith with Him who seeks ever the fulfilment of the divine purposes. How impossible to ask truly in Christ’s Name that we may obtain the satisfaction of mere selfish cravings! And yet what confidence does it give, that in proportion as our desire is to fill aright the place which He has given us as His representatives upon earth, we may have all that we can possibly need to accomplish this. Here there need be no stinted expectation: here is a sphere in which coveting is fully in place. Alas, how we practise humility after the fashion of Ahaz, who, where God had bidden him make request according to His own greatness, assumes the garb of a piety which he does not possess, and says, “I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord.” And how often do we remain content with a mere scanty pittance of spiritual good, when God has blessed us with “all spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus,” -when He is glorified in our practical possession of them, -and when He has said to us, “Covet earnestly the best gifts,” and, “Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.” 3. The Lord now proceeds to speak of the provision made for them, that they might not be left as orphans in the world in the time of His absence from them, but have Him manifested to them, and realize His presence with them in a better and higher way than even when He was with them upon earth. We have already been told of, that gift of the Spirit which they that believed on Him were to receive in a new way after Jesus should be glorified (John 7:35). But now the Lord teaches them distinctly that the Spirit is personally to come and take the place that He had filled among them. As the Spirit of truth He would lead them into all truth, giving them the full consciousness of their identification with Him and His with them. He would not leave them, but abide with them for ever.

This is indeed the great characteristic of the time in which we live, that while Christ is above on high, our Advocate with the Father, we have “another Advocate” down here, -another glorious Person to take up our cause on earth, and be in us such power as Christ is for us at the right hand of God. Thus indeed is our weakness and emptiness ministered to by divine and perfect fulness and strength.

How wondrous is this provision made for us! and what a testimony to the value of the work which has been accomplished for us! This divine Person comes to make us, -our very bodies, -His dwelling-place, -His temple. Yet we are fully conscious that evil also dwells in us: and thus there arises the very serious question, How can the Spirit of God dwell in such an abode? And this is the argument in some forms of perfectionism, -Christ and Belial, it is urged, cannot dwell in the same temple. Certainly the temple cannot be Belial’s and yet Christ’s; but how God could dwell in the midst of a sinful people was the lesson of the day of atonement in the old dispensation: “And (the priest) shall make an atonement for the holy place, because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions in all their sins: and so shall he do for the tabernacle of the congregation, that remaineth among them in the midst of their uncleanness” (Leviticus 16:16). For us the blessed work is accomplished of which Israel’s sacrifices were but the mere figure, and it is in Christ that the believer is seen and accepted. The Spirit indwelling is the witness of the perfection of that offering which has “perfected for ever” -or, “in perpetuity” -“them that are sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14). The right word here is “in perpetuity,” -which assures us that at no time -not for a moment -is the believer other than perfect before the eye of God, and that upon ground entirely irrespective of his personal behavior. With the Father -as such -it is very different: “the Father, without respect of persons, judgeth according to every man’s work” (1 Peter 1:17). But as between God and His creature all is once for all settled, and to take account of sin there would be to dishonor the covering blood. Thus “if any one sin,” says the apostle, writing to Christians, “we have an Advocate with the Father, -Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1).

The relationship in which we stand to God is not, and cannot be changed by that which yet becomes more evil in view of it. The Father’s character is outraged by the ill-conduct of those who are of His family, and the Father’s heart is wounded in the same proportion. His provision of atonement for it cannot make it less serious in His sight: the Cross has only revealed it in its abyss of horror. The Lord’s title in this passage is the same as that which in the Gospel He gives to the Spirit. In the common version: it is translated “Comforter,” and is quite capable -of such a meaning; but when He says, “another Comforter” he is comparing the Spirit with Himself. The word in these two applications must therefore be rendered uniformly, and “Advocate” is perhaps its best, as it is its most usual rendering. Literally it means “one called to one’s side,” -a helper, assistant; thence, an advocate, a legal assistant, in whose hands you leave your case. The Lord is He to whom God has committed His people, -on earth the true and faithful Shepherd of the sheep, who laid down His life for them. Now going on high, He still maintains in glory the same care over His Bock; and thus their stumblings and wanderings engage Him still in their be half.

He is their Advocate with the Father -not because the Father Himself can fail in either love or power, but as the One who has had committed to Him the burden of them all. To Him they were left in the conflict of the Cross: His hand is to bring them through to glory. Yet on earth, He having gone from it, they are to have another Advocate, the Holy Spirit; from the beginning the Worker in God’s creation and then in His new creation work. The communication of life, the whole work of sanctification, the resurrection of the dead, is His to carry into effect; and this through all dispensations. But this very fact, while it suits well the nature of the place which He has come to fill, shows at the same time that the place itself must imply something other than the work that He has always done. He has come to form and indwell the House of God on earth, and to make the saints individually His living temples. He has come to unite the people of Christ to Himself in heaven, and thus to form also the Body of Christ, with destinies of wondrous blessedness. All this will only open up by degrees, John himself never speaking of the Church, but of the family of God, -of the life therefore which makes men His children. But that this also may have its full character, the Spirit of God must come: in this way the Lord now proceeds to speak of Him. It is noticeable that it is to disciples who out of love to Him, and not in a spirit of legality, are seeking to keep His commandments, that the Lord promises the gift of the Holy Spirit. If the Spirit be come to dwell in us, the first requisite is readiness of obedience. Wondrous are the possibilities held out to us in this marvellous gift; but marvellous also is the possibility we have of belittling even a gift like this. The Galatians had it, who were giving up the gospel for the law. The Corinthians had it, who were carnal, and walked as men. It belongs to the mystery of our nature that we may have as though we had not.

It belongs to the royalty of it that we may debase ourselves. Stranger still is it that the children of this world may be wiser in their generation than the children of light, and that the Lord should even have to put this as if a characteristic thing. Were we not unfaithful to ourselves and to God, how would the world be lighted up with the reflection of the glory that is in the unveiled face of Jesus! how we should go through the world as visitants from another sphere! Thus we need not wonder that the Lord should almost seem to put it as if the gift of the Spirit were dependent upon the reality of one’s obedience. What! can we have God in us, and entertain Him so poorly? Nothing could make such a thing credible but the sad experience of so lamentable a fact.

Yes, men who KNOW that Christ has died for them, -who KNOW that the Spirit of God dwells in them, -who KNOW that God’s way is the only way of peace and joy and power, -can yet live and act as if nothing of all this were true. We can give up certainties of blessing for certainties of spiritual loss! Who can enough bewail the misery of such unaccountable folly? Let us learn now from the Lord’s lips what this gift is of which He is speaking to us; the fruit of the Son’s entreaty with the Father, a divine Person with us, -in us, -never to leave us more! One who with perfect wisdom, perfect love, and perfect power, takes our case into His hand, leaving us nothing to do but to walk with Him in restful confidence and certainty of unfailing good. Yet not to be led blindly, or without exercise, but as one being trained in communion with the divine thoughts and affections, for eternal fellowship with the Father and the Son! This Spirit is the “Spirit of truth:” the false halo of Satan’s lure thrown over things, the mirage of the desert, is to depart; not to leave one with a mere sombre shadow in its place, but to substitute for it the true yet transfiguring light of an opened heaven, beckoning, -inviting us to the abodes of the Father’s House, -the glory Of God! Darkness there is still remaining,but it is passing away, as the apostle says, and the true light already shines (1 John 2:8). For the Spirit of truth is now to utter the “many things” of which the heart of Christ has long been full, but as yet unable to relieve itself; for there were none able to bear the things to be spoken. Think of it! all this is uttered now, to the very last we are to have of revelation; and the Revealer Himself is with us, to give spiritual capacity for its reception. The light is now come to illumine all the ages past with the glory of the ages still to come! light that is its own convincing witness to the soul flooded with its brilliance. Yet the world, alas! cannot receive the Spirit. It has rejected the Word manifest in flesh, and will not receive One whom it cannot see: “it beholdeth Him not, nor knoweth Him.” But receptive, obedient souls have good cause to know Him: “for He dwelleth with you,” -as Christ had dwelt with them; but there was to be au intimacy even beyond this; -“He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.” This was to be the new blessedness, -God no more dwelling in temples made with hands, but man to be His temple. After this manner then, Christ would still be with them; they were not to be orphans, left to the helplessness that His very presence had discovered to them. The Spirit would be for them the conscious link with the unseen but unforgetting Saviour. While the world would behold Him no more, they would still behold Him, with whose triumphant life in glory their life was bound up. This identification in life with Him is the connecting link with Paul’s doctrine afterward, who developer from it the whole truth of Christian standing as we find it in Romans and Ephesians; as upon the basis of the Spirit’s indwelling he builds the truth of the Church as the Body of Christ. If Luke in some sense approach nearest to Paul’s gospel, as is so often, and not without cause, insisted on, yet John is most nearly related to him with respect to all his higher truths of Christian position. This we shall see better, if the Lord permit us to go on to the Epistles; but it should not be hard to realize already. So directly He assures us here: “At that day ye shall know that I am in My Father, and ye in Me, and I in you.” We shall be better able, however, to apprehend the meaning of this when we come to His own development of it in the next section. The Lord goes on to show that this manifestation of Himself will be necessarily dependent on, and therefore proportionate to the opening of the heart to receive it. The heart for Christ moreover is indicated not so much by emotional sensitiveness as by the spirit of obedience which has itself also higher or lower grades which require careful noting, though in themselves quite easy to be apprehended. In his first epistle John emphasizes the same thing. The apostle of love is careful to insist that the love of which he speaks is liable to very grave mistakes in men’s estimate of it. It is not so simple as it would appear, to make the estimate. You have to distinguish between sentiment and practical reality; -the world in general easily does this; -and then you have to distinguish, as the world can scarcely do, between the mere human quality and the divine.

Thus love with John is characterized especially as love, not of men in general, but of the brethren: for he that loveth Him that begat loveth them also that are begotten of Him. And again, as here, it is love that keeps His commandments: for “this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments.” So the Lord says: “He that hath My commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me; and he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him.” Here evidently, though a man have the Spirit, the fruits of the Spirit will be found only in the way of practical obedience. How else could we expect them? Can we think that God would comfort His people in paths of disobedience? That would be unholiness, and abhorrent. to His very nature. No: love itself must walk contrary to us, if we will walk contrary: “he that spareth his rod hateth his son; but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes” (Proverbs 13:24). The question of Judas (the Lebbaeus of Matthew, and brother of James the son of Alphaeus), -although the Lord seems not to have distinctly answered it, -brings out the further assurance, “If any one love Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make our abode with him.” This statement might appear at first sight to be only the equivalent of the former one; although it is plain that the latter is more emphatic. In each case it is the character of true love of which the Lord is speaking; and indeed it seems as if He would not suppose in His disciples a love less than such as He is speaking of. John follows his Master’s style, when he bursts out in his impassioned way when speaking of the Lord, (which yet is truer than the most rigorous induction of facts could suggest) “he that sinneth hath not seen Him, neither known Him.” It is the only thing to be said, to speak worthily; and he that falsifies it is in that measure not a true witness to his Saviour-Lord. True also it is, that something of both characters of love, as Christ affirms them, will be found in all true Christians, -overborne so much by contrary influences that like Peter in the high priest’s palace, only He who knoweth all things can detect the true disciple underneath the false. There is the false within us all, as well as the true; alas, in many, so often uppermost. The results cannot fail to follow: the blessing of which the Lord speaks attaches to that with which He here connects it. We find it in proportion as we answer to the character. Looked at in this way, there is no difficulty in seeing the deeper nature of a love that keeps Christ’s word, as compared with that which keeps commandments only. Not to keep a positive command is simple, rank rebellion, -nothing less. His “word” is wider, while it addresses itself with less positiveness of authority to the one whose heart and conscience are less prompt to the appeal of love. And the largeness of Christ’s word involves for keeping it an habitual searching into it, with more than readiness to face all that may be thus discovered. Is it not to be feared that there are many who shrink from honest investigation of the Word, because they do not want to be “troubled” with such and such questions? Nay, is not this one of the commonest causes of the sad ignorance which is found so widely prevalent with regard to it? But were ignorance an excuse, and we were so unhappy as to desire one, it is plain that the deeper the ignorance the better off we should be; and the dullest searcher would be the most blameless also! But how the Lord delights in the one who with a true spirit of obedience welcomes the light of divine truth without any reserve or qualification whatever! Not only will He manifest Himself to him, but “My Father will love him, and We will come and make our abode with him.” How much fuller and more permanent is the blessing here! To the two at Emmaus the Lord manifested Himself; but there was no tarrying of that coveted blessing. And how many of us are in like condition! Transient gleams there are of a glory that abides not, and which leaves the soul burning but mourning after it. But there is something more than this in our Lord’s words here. “We will come,” He says, “and make our abode with him.” The result will be to manifest the competence of Scripture for the “man of God,” to whom alone it is pledged as competent, -“able to furnish thoroughly unto all good works.” Who is the man of God, but he who is out and out for God? and who else can expect to be furnished in this way, but he who is honestly intentioned to use his knowledge as before Him who gave it? The very passage which we are quoting here reminds us of where the profit is to be found: “all Scripture is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” If we do not mean to accept the reproof and the correction, where is the use of talking about the rest? In God’s ordered path alone can we find God. In His marked out way it would be impossible not to find Him. “He that loveth Me not keepeth not My words:” here only is the decisive test. Feeling is right, but too sensitive to external influences to be a safe gauge of the man proper. The truest love is shy and sensitive to self-inquiry. Under its influence we are more apt to challenge and accuse ourselves than to congratulate. Nor need we this introspection: let us walk only in His ways, and we shall find the Lord’s own acknowledgement. We shall find Him walking and talking with us, as has been always His manner with His own: we shall find Him treating us as those of whom He is not ashamed. And this is communion with the Father and the Son: “for the word which ye hear is not Mine,” -not simply Mine, -“but My Father’s who sent Me.” And now they were to receive the full revelation: the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, -sent too from the Father as He had been, but now in His Name which covered all of blessing for them, -He would teach them all things: leading them on, as well as reviving and giving them the full value of all that they had heard with Him. The effect for them would be peace in the heart, even 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 it is restlessness of will disturbs this, -the strife with His will which this means, and the dissatisfaction of soul which follows every gain we may seem to make in this direction. Desiring but His will, there can be no proper doubt as to the issue. That is as sure as it will be blessed; and thus the true remedy for fear is found. 4. Now they should be able to face the fact of His departure which they knew to be but for a time. Nay, they should, if they loved Him, be able to rejoice. that He was going to the Father, -back to Him who abode in that exaltation which He, on His errand of love, had given up. Yet it would bring to an end for the time the intercourse that He had had with them. Nor was the world a place in which this could continue. The world! -its prince was coming; how different from Himself, its rightful Prince!

Nay, there was nothing in common between them: the prince of the world had nothing in Him! Yet to the world He was giving proof, in that through which He was thus to pass, of His love to the Father. But the world being what it was, He was leaving it; and for those that were His also, it was no tarrying place: “Arise,” He says, “let us go hence.”