Our Exodus. “They Are Not of the World, Even as I Am Not of the World.”
The disciple who has accompanied his Lord through the various scenes which served to call out His personal glories both by words and works in the first twelve chapters of John's Gospel, must have been prepared in some measure for His departure “out of this world to the Father.” Nor is this rupture to be accounted for because of what men were when brought into the presence of the Word made flesh, though an early intimation reveals the secret that “Jesus did not commit himself unto them because he knew all men;” and a later one declares “they loved the praise of men, more than the praise of God.” But other reasons are at hand.
The group of men and women who had been attracted out of the world by what He was, and gathered round Him with true-hearted affection, had to learn that they could not follow Him. “Wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The cock shall not crow till thou hast denied me thrice.” But further, that little enclosure at Bethany where Jesus was at home with Martha and Mary and Lazarus whom He loved, and which shone out in such heavenly light and grace, would not satisfy the heart of the Lord: He must have them with Himself, in His own life and likeness and glory. All was at its very best— “there they made him a supper and Martha served.” Lazarus too, who had been dead “was one of them that sat at the table with him.” And Mary took her ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair. Moreover, “the house was filled with the odor of the ointment,” and He who brought His glory into it, was there as “the resurrection and the life.” Measuring themselves by themselves, why was the house at Bethany broken up? and why did the Lord give that strange character to Mary's act, “against the day of my burying hath she kept this?” The glory of God had been the rule and object of Christ's action at the grave when He cried with a loud voice “Lazarus, come forth;” and so now, in His renewed intimacy with them in Bethany, He accepts no other measure. Lazarus, though raised from the dead, was still in the image of the first man earthy.
The Son of the Father passes beyond all their thoughts into the depths of His own love about them, and is as truly in intercourse with “the voice from the excellent glory” in this chapter xii. as when upon the mount of transfiguration about the matters of the kingdom and its glories, and His own personal majesty. “Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify thy name. Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.” In John we may remark the entire absence of the holy mount, of which Luke and Peter give the account. They were occupied with “the Son of man coming in his kingdom,” when His face did shine as the sun, and His raiment was white as the light: though at the mount of transfiguration, as in the house at Bethany, He accepted the decease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem, as His appointed pathway into the kingdom and His personal glory. John's occupations are different, and have other objects, though there is this point of similarity, that the house of Bethany, where Jesus was anointed for His burying, is transferred to another day; just as the transfiguration scene was folded up for the millennium, when Jesus accepted “his decease” from that mount.
John's Gospel introduces us to the Father, and the “Father's house,” during this dispensation, while the kingdom glory is in abeyance, and its king rejected and seated at the right hand of the throne of God in heaven. It is therefore with these new relations, as one with Him who has left this world and gone to the Father to prepare a place for us, that chapter 13 begins, though founded upon His decease and the day of His burying— “except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die it abideth alone, but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit.” The home of Bethany has given place to the Father's house and its many mansions. The hour has come and gone, that the Son of man should be thus glorified. The voice from heaven has verified itself by glorifying the Father's name, and glorifying it again in the resurrection of Him who was “lifted up from the earth,” that He might draw all men unto Him. Other and new associations have been formed between the risen One and His own by redemption through His blood, never to be broken up—with those who are not in the flesh, nor of the world, but born of the Spirit, and in life, and in union with Christ. Himself said, “Go tell my brethren I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; to my God, and your God.” Lazarus was dead and risen, but in the likeness of Adam. The redeemed are dead with Christ, and risen in Christ, and new creatures in Him. In Christ we have passed out of the judgment that man in the flesh, and the world, and Satan are judicially under and are going into. “Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out.” A parting word was uttered by the Lord in John 12 before all was closed up in darkness, “while ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children alight. These words spake Jesus and departed and did hide himself from them.” They have lost Him: the light of the world has gone down in obscurity. Israel is in thick darkness; the life that was the light of men has been refused; and the Anointed One of Bethany has passed through His “burying,” and become the glorified Son of man at the right hand of God.
It is in this position, where man never was before, that we who now believe in Christ are called out to know Him, and by grace to take a portion with Him; and this fact amongst others necessitates the new ministry of the water and the towel and the basin between the Lord and ourselves that we “may have part with him.” From chapter 13 onward we shall find our heavenly relations opened out consequent upon the break-up and the break-down of the earthly ones, proposed to Israel by Him who rode into the city of Jerusalem upon a colt, the foal of an ass. Before we leave the first twelve chapters of this Gospel we shall do well to remember that “the Word made flesh” had presented “himself to his own, and his own received him not.” As a worshipping people He went up with them to the appointed feasts of the first and the seventh months; and then in His own person took the place of the Passover and of the feast of Tabernacles. He had visited their temple which should have been the house of prayer for all nations, but found it a den of thieves; and been compelled to challenge a ruler of the Jews, the one who owned Him as a teacher come from God— “if I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?” After this He publicly convicted the nation, or at least the two tribes, “I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you,” and prophetically adds, “I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not; if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.” Israel after the flesh had set itself aside, “ye will not come to me that ye might have life.”
The Lord has become glorious in other eyes by departing out of this world to the Father—He has made us one with Himself where He is. The revelation of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost had been made in the ministry of our Lord when on earth, and especially in the Gospel of John; but it is by the anticipated departure of Jesus in the chapters we are now about to consider, that we are put into relation with the Father by the Son through the Holy Ghost. That which constitutes Christianity, three persons in the Godhead, a trinity in unity, would be repugnant to the mind of a Jew, for he seemed instructed otherwise, “the Lord thy God is one Jehovah.” These chapters therefore become the basis, and declare the character of the present dispensation: that is, if the Church can be said to be in any. Moreover this period between the ascension of the Lord and His second coming, and our gathering together unto Him, is not only marked by this full revelation of the Trinity, and our relations with the Father's house; but by the descent of the Holy Ghost consequent upon the departure and ascent of the Son. Nothing can be so important as this, if we would rightly understand the peculiarity of our dispensation—one that is marked, and indeed constituted by the Father's glory in the heavens—the Son's departure from this world to the right hand of God—and the Holy Ghost's descent to this earth as the Comforter, and the Spirit of truth during the Lord's absence. This revelation of the unity in trinity, and this change of places as regards the Son and the Holy Ghost, is characteristic of our new position and standing, consequent upon the world's rejection of Christ. He beheld the Person in heaven, in whom the counsels and purposes which were hid in God from before the foundation of the world are now connected; just as when the Lord was upon the earth Jewish promises and prophecies and types found their yea and Amen in Him.
The Holy Ghost by the apostles has made known to the Church since Pentecost, that hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world unto our glory. Another book has also been written, “the Revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave unto him to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass,” and which tells us of the marriage of the Lamb, in the coming day of His espousals when His Bride shall have made herself ready. But the Church soon lost consciousness of the fact “that she was espoused as a chaste virgin to Christ,” as well as of her portion with her Head and Lord in heaven, and her place of testimony on earth. It is this forgetfulness of what the Church of God really is to Him and to His Son and to the Holy Ghost, that makes it so difficult to recover the members of Christ, from the Babylon and harlotry of these many centuries.
Enough has been said perhaps to lead some to the discovery of the peculiarity of the Christian, which these precious chapters of John's Gospel so abundantly and plainly declare. Indeed so entirely is our calling and portion with the departed One in heaven, that He must needs say, “I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you I will come again and receive you unto myself that where I am, there ye may be also.” There was really no place anywhere “for his own which were in the world:” only they were confident in His love, who loved them to the end. From the river to the ends of the earth had been given by covenant to Abraham and his seed in the earliest times; and moreover the Seed and Heir of the world had them in possession by incarnation and righteous title. The kingdom and its glories were also His, as we have seen at the Mount of transfiguration; but neither His kingship, nor His heirship, nor His sonship with Abraham and David, would He enjoy alone. No, the love He bore to the earthly people led Him to talk of His decease with the men in glory, just as He interpreted Mary's anointing for the day of His burial; that so He might at a future time take His place as the true Boaz, and lead His redeemed people into the inheritance.
In the meanwhile He forms an entirely new dispensation with the Father, according to the hidden wisdom and secret counsels which were hinted at by the Lord to His disciples; but which became the glorious subjects of Holy Ghost revelation and testimony, when the earthly order and course of Jehovah with His nation and people were set aside, for the millennial age. There was thus no place on earth for the followers of a rejected Lord, and certainly no place in the heavens, for Christ was not as yet ascended, though all was perfect in counsel and in purpose, but a mystery hidden in God. Nor does the peculiarity of the Christian's position apply to place merely; for it was equally so as regarded any relation to God Himself. In truth we were orphans, without a father, and without a house or home—outside of the dispensation to Israel, of which as Gentiles we never formed a part: and not yet introduced into this new dispensation or economy which was about to be opened in heaven.
It was that we might not be left in this state that these chapters from 13 to the end were written, and which open up to us the new sources of life and love which the departure of Jesus to the Father, formed for Himself and us. We were orphans; but new revelations and heavenly relations were at hand, and thus Jesus said, “I will not leave you orphans [comfortless], I will come to you.” “At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you” —blessed portion! Two abodes for those who have part and place with the departed One are opened out in these scriptures: the first is in the Father's house for the orphans but the children of His adopting love; and the second is on earth, and in ourselves— “if a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.” The intercession and communion are thus maintained between the Father and the Son and the children, by the descended Holy Ghost in the power of life in our inner man; and in a known understood fellowship, which makes us partakers of Christ and with Christ, in love and joy and peace. For instance, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” “These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.” He puts us also into the same place that He held with the Father. “Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.” So in reference to love, His own love, “having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end,” and as regards His Father's love, “I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
It was indeed this hidden communication, so real and yet so unintelligible at that time, which led one of the disciples to ask, “Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world?” How entirely different was this kind of intercourse from What they had known with their Messiah on the earth, in the days of His flesh, and which was closed up at Bethany! He who was once seen with their eyes and heard and looked upon and which their hands had handled is now the invisible and departed One—the absent and the missing One—but nevertheless to be known and enjoyed in a new way, and in such a manner as would surpass all they had ever felt or understood before, even when their hearts burned within them, as He talked with them on the Emmaus journey! “We have the mind of Christ” —they had the opened understanding.
In a certain sense the general acknowledgment of Christians is a true one, and most important when intelligently made, that this period in which we are living is “the dispensation of the Spirit.” The Holy Spirit has come down consequent on the Son of man's glorification, “I will pray the Father and he shall give you another Comforter that he may abide with you forever” —fruit of the intercession of Christ above. Besides this, the Holy Ghost has descended in virtue of the title and right of the ascended Lord in His own person, “when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, he shall testify of me, and ye also shall bear witness,” &c. But further, as to ourselves, “howbeit when he the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth, for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear that shall he speak, and he will show you things to come.” Proceeding from the Father, sent by the Son, and dwelling with us and about to be in us, He is the glorifier of Christ, the Son of man in power and glory on high; “he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you.” Finally, and to complete this full statement of blessedness during our Lord's absence, and that we might not be left orphans, it is added, “all things that the Father hath are mine; therefore, said I, that he shall take of mine and show it unto you.” This is what the apostles in their varied epistles bring out to us, under the anointing and teaching of the Holy Ghost.
The descended Spirit, thus standing in relation to Christ's own which are in the world as the Comforter, takes a place of convicter towards all who are not His: “when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.” He is the evidence and witness, from the departed One who is with the Father, of the world's sin, which cast out righteousness in the glorified Man, and of the coming judgment of God upon those who did it, and of the casting out of its prince. The presence of the Holy Ghost upon earth is all this, whether men accept the conviction and receive their forgiveness through faith in the blood of the Lamb, or not. These chapters contain the great characteristics of this parenthesis (so to speak) in which we are living, and which bring out the requisite revelation of the purposes of God respecting us; and unfold the relations with the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, till the Lord comes again to receive us to Himself, and to present us in the Father's sight, holy and unblameable and unreproveable.
The Church of God does not properly form the subject of the Son's ministry, and is therefore not found in this gospel; but the Father, whom He came to reveal, and the Father's house which He is gone to prepare for us, and the joint manifestation of the Father and the Son making their abode with us while unmanifested to the world, are the prominent features of these chapters. Some details which they present, as the Lord was teaching these mysteries to His disciples, may now be examined. Two things in the beginning of chapter 13 which refer to the Lord alone need be stated, that we may understand the ground on which He personally acted in their midst. The first is, “Jesus knew that his hour was come, that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, and having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end,” so that go where He may His own are one with Him. The second thing to notice is, “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come from God, and went to God, he riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments, and took a towel and girded himself; after that he poureth water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet,” &c., and this ministry of love connects the Lord with us where we still are. “If I wash thee not [as he said to Peter], thou hast no part with me,” explains and accounts for the object of this loving service to “his own which were in the world,” though because they were no longer of it.
Strange and contradictory powers are brought into view in this chapter: on the one hand, Jesus in the activity of love, which has girded Him afresh for new ministry; and, on the other, the devil corrupting the mind of Judas Iscariot, and putting it into his heart to destroy his Lord and Master. The devil and man are together, but as they never were before, nor ever can be again; “and after the sop Satan entered into him. He then having received the sop went immediately out and it was night,” and a long and dreary night it has been from that hour to this, save as divine grace has broken into it, to “turn men from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God.” But let us return to Jesus, and witness the self-sacrificing devotedness of His heart to His disciples. Now there was leaning on Jesus' bosom one of His own whom Jesus loved, and this place of confiding rest for the head of a disciple is as necessary, in order to have part with Jesus where He now is, as that He should gird Himself and wash and wipe a disciple's feet in order to maintain the character by a walk on earth, with the departed One in heaven.
Besides this devotedness of heart and hand to His disciples in the active services of His living love, the hour was come, when by His dying love He reached the point where the Son of man found His glory, and where God was glorified in Him. Connected with this—yea growing out of it—Jesus adds, “If God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify him.” His perfect obedience in life, and by laying down His life, His decease at Jerusalem, and His burial, were the steps by which He reached these glories for Himself and His Father, till lower He could not go. He had secured everything for God against the full power of Satan by going down into “the lowest parts of the earth.” In His own thoughts with the Father, as to the causes that brought Him to this hour, and the consequences in glory both now and hereafter which were about to be declared by His death and resurrection, He must of necessity be alone: and this leads Him to say to the disciples, “Little children, yet a little while I am with you, ye shall seek me, and, as I said to the Jews, whither I go ye cannot come, so now I say to you.” His departure out of this world raised the inquiry in Peter, “whither goest thou, and why cannot I follow thee now?”
The present One was soon to be the absent One, and thus a new trouble filled their hearts; nor was their faith able to understand the fact, how He would become the object of their confidence and hope, in the place where ascension would soon carry Him. “Ye believe in God, believe also in me.” Yea, every further word that Jesus spoke was a trouble of heart to those that were to be left behind Him, and when He said to them, “Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know,” Thomas replied at once, “Lord we know not whither thou goest, and how can we know the way?” Difficulties thicken, as they necessarily must, between Him and them, nor are they lessened when He adds, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by me. If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also; and from henceforth ye know him and have seen him.” This declaration of the identity of the Father and the Son leads Philip to say, “Lord show us the Father, and it sufficeth us.” What does this strange but blessed intercourse between our Lord and His own which were in the world prove to us; but the love which was thus giving them “a part with himself” for communion and joy with the Father, and the Father's house, that they might not be orphans when He was gone? The last question, and one of equal importance perhaps, arises as to the required and adequate link between the Father and the Son in heaven, and His own upon the earth, by which this living communication should be maintained in an existing relationship. Fruitful in loving affection to Jesus from whom such blessedness flows, Judas said, “Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world?” These four questions from Peter, Thomas, Philip, and Judas, served to reveal and lay the basis, or at least to bring out all that was needful for them and ourselves, as regards our intercourse with the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, in a known peace, “my peace,” which the world could neither give nor take away. Moreover this intimacy is maintained by the Comforter “who dwelleth with you, and shall be in you” upon the footing of an obedience in which love delights: so that Jesus declares, “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.”
All is thus formed and complete that is requisite for a heavenly people to have part with the Son in the Father's house, till He comes again to receive us to Himself. He has girded Himself for our feet, and displayed Himself in a love which draws the disciple's head to His breast. He stands revealed as the way, the truth, and the life, by whom we come unto the Father, and declares, “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father;” adding, “believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me, or else believe me for the very works' sake.” What remains, but that this same love should bring Him back, and crown itself by receiving His own to Himself, “that where he is, there we may be also.”
(To be continued.)