John 14.
THE Father and the Son are both alike the objects of our faith, and invite the confidence of our hearts.
Our eternal dwelling-place is none other than the “Father’s house.”
The Lord Jesus, who is now personally in that place, will Himself return for us, and conduct us there, to be His bosom companions eternally.
He is not lost to us (as Joseph was to Jacob for a time), though we only know Him, during the “little while” of His absence, by faith; we know where He has gone, and with whom He now is, even with the Father.
The “way” to the Father for us now, all the “truth” for our hearts concerning the Father, and the “life” communicated to us in the new birth, that we might be in the relationship of children with the Father (John 1:12, 13; 3:8), all alike as to source and channel, are centered in the Lord Jesus Himself.
To know Jesus is to know the Father; to see Jesus is to see the Father; the words which Jesus spake were entirely from the Father as their source; the works which Jesus did were done by the Father dwelling in Him; thus they are one in the testimony of divine grace to our souls.
There is revealed to us (twice repeated) this infinite mystery concerning two of the Persons of the Godhead: ― “I am in the Father, and the Father in me;” Jesus also said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). This is the ROCK on which is built our all for time and eternity.
Whatever we ask now of the Father in the name of the Son, the Son declares He will do, and the answer to our request furnishes occasion for the Father to be glorified in the Son.
He invites from us to Himself the active expression of the obedient affections inherent in our new spiritual life, by the delicate constraining power of His divine “if.” (Compare― “He made as though He would have gone further,” Luke 24:28.) He does not need, nor does He ask for outward proof that this life and its nature love exists in us (see John 21:17), but His heart cannot be satisfied with anything short of the adequate outward display of our love to Him, according to the model He has Himself left us. (See also John 13:36; Mark 10:39; Phil. 3:8-14.)
Instead of His own personal presence with us here, to manage all our affairs for us Himself, the Father, in response to His request, has sent us another “Comforter,” or “Advocate,” to undertake this service for us, and He will abide with us in this capacity forever.
This other “Comforter,” whom the world can neither see nor know, we know, and that in the most intimate way, for He dwells with us all collectively, and also in us personally, each one. (Eph. 1:13,14; 1 Cor. 3:16; 2 Cor. 1:22.)
We are orphans through Christ having departed out of this world to the Father, but we are not always to remain so; He is coming to us again. Meanwhile He has committed us and all our concerns to the care of the fully competent ONES, and charged Himself with the supply of all our need until He Himself returns. (Luke 10:35; John 16:11, 15, 17. Phil. 4:19.)
Having received divine and spiritual life from Him, with the affections of love proper to this life and inseparable from it, He assures us that it is utterly impossible (see John 10:28-30) that we can cease to all eternity to possess and live this life with Him who is its source, for He, our Life-Giver and Eternal Lover, says, “Because I live, ye shall live also.”
While we are in this world, so vital and close, and yet so mysteriously divine is our link with Him up there, that its nature as well as the fact is revealed by the inscrutable words― “I am in My Father, and ye in Me, and I in you.”
As the Father, in sending the Son, gave Him a commandment to keep (12:49,50), and He obeyed those commandments and so abode in His Father’s love (15:10), so has He given to us the same words (17:8,14), and looks for us to keep them also, thus manifesting by our obedience that we love Him. This display by us of obedience working by love, draws forth from the Father and the Son the aspect of divine love which is responsive to such acts alone. To secure this special divine favor, it is not enough to have, but we must also keep that which the Lord has entrusted to us.
The obedience of our love, shown in keeping Christ’s words, is so precious to the Father that He responds with that character of His love only thus called forth, and further, the Father and the Son unite in showing their delight and approval, by coming and taking up their abode with the obedient child and disciple.
To have His sayings, or words, and yet not keep them, is to entirely deprive the Lord of that love from us to Himself in which He so delights. Further, to disobey this word of His, which He has caused us to hear, is not only to lightly esteem His affections for us and good pleasure in our company, but to treat the Father likewise, for He it is who has sent us this word through the Son, to obey or keep as He obeyed it. (John 12:42, 43, 19:38; Acts 15:38; 2 Tim. 4:10.)
The Holy Spirit sent down to us by the Father, is our Teacher now in all things that God our Father would have us instructed in, and He loves to remind us, too, of all that Jesus spake when here, so that nothing is lost to us of all that proceeded from His gracious lips.
Peace He leaves with us, a peace founded on His atoning sacrifice―peace of conscience; and lest by any means (though surrounded, within and without, with all that divine love can give for the way home) our hearts should be tossed with anxious care, He gives us, counting upon our obedient walk, His own “Peace,”―His own heart’s repose when here, in doing His Father’s will, at all cost to Himself, through life and in death.
None of His gifts to us were given after the manner in which the world bestows its favors; nothing that is of us naturally ever could or did draw His love and favors towards us. He chose to love us and bless us accordingly, for infinite and eternal reasons of His own, the secret of which is hidden in His own heart.
Because of this, He says to us― “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” (See Deut. 7:7, 8; Rom. 11:29; Eph. 1:4; 1 John 4:10.)
The Father, in sending Him, commanded Him what to speak (see vs. 36, 8:38, 12:49, 50) and also what to do, even as to death itself (10:18, 14:31), and it was His unchanging delight to obey (Psa. 40:8; John 8:28, 29); in John 10:17, He tells us that it was this love in the final act of His perfect pathway on earth, that in a peculiar manner drew to Himself the love of the Father.
The “prince of this world” was allowed every opportunity (of which he took the utmost advantage), to use every cunning art, and device, and pressure that he could command, to turn Him from doing His Father’s will, but all was of no avail; He says of Satan’s crowning and final effort, when the cross was immediately at hand, he “hath nothing in Me.”
The youngest babe in the family of God may learn from these precious portions of the written word, how well-pleasing it is to the Father and the Son, when we are found “imitators” of Film who has left us an example “that we should follow His steps” (1 Peter 2:21-23; Phil. 1:29).
The present consequences in suffering, and shame, and loss, inseparable from such a path, from Satan, from the world, and at times from those that are His own, are scarcely alluded to in the chapter, but are fully recognized by God, and treated of elsewhere (John 12:26; 1 Cor. 15:58).
How precious to the Father, to the Son, and to the Spirit, is the obedience of saints. H. K.