“Do not allow your heart to be troubled, nor let it be fearful. You have heard how I said to you, ‘I am going away, and I am coming to you'. If you loved me you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father. For the Father is greater than I”.
While it is true that He is leaving them, they must not let it get them down. For if they only think about it they will realise that it is both for His and their good. They may want Him to stay, but if they love Him they will rejoice at His going for they will realise that He is going to the Father, and what could be more wonderful than that? He is receiving again the glory which He had with the Father before the world was (John 17:5). He will once more enjoy the fullness of the Father's ‘presence' unalloyed by physical things Here on earth He is tried and tested, often weary, the object of enmity, scorn and ridicule, but there He will share the Father's glory, the glory which was once also His, and will rejoice in the Father's love, as the Father will rejoice in His love.
In His present manhood He is as One Who has stepped down from that glory. Although being Himself of the nature of Godhood from all eternity, He had emptied Himself and become in the nature of servitude, not counting equality with God as something to be grasped and held on to, but as something to be let go so that He may become ‘obedient to death' on a cross (Philippians 2:6-8).
Thus while He is in this present position of servitude and humility His Father is greater than He, for His Father has retained His status and glory in full. The Father is not restricted by human weakness. So they should rejoice that He will now return to that glory and that untrammelled state, and take His rightful place, being exalted and given the Name above every Name (the name of YHWH, the name by which God was known in the Old Testament), and therefore being declared ‘Kurios' (LORD) which in the Greek Old Testament is the translation of YHWH (Philippians 2:9-11).
Note on ‘My Father Is Greater Than I'.
Like all Scripture verses this should not be taken out of context. It is not the statement of an eternal truth in itself, but the acknowledgement of the present position that Jesus was in. He is speaking of His current situation as One Who had deliberately taken the lower place. He Who had once enjoyed equal glory with the Father (John 17:5), Who was pure divine Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:17-18), Who could claim unique Oneness with the Father (John 14:6-9 above; John 10:30), and Who is worthy of equal honour with the Father (John 5:22-23) had chosen to lower Himself and become man, yielding up the status that had been His as the great ‘I am' (John 8:58), and limiting Himself to God-empowered manhood. By being ‘sent' He had taken a lower place (John 13:16). In this position His Father was greater than He in status, and He was now looking forward to being restored to His former status.
As we saw with regard to John 13:31-32 the whole of John 13:31 to John 17:26 has in mind the idea that Jesus was now returning to the glory which He had had with the Father before the world was (John 17:5), a glory which He had voluntarily relinquished. He had voluntarily become less ‘great' than the Father, making Himself lower than the angels for the purposes of our redemption (Hebrews 2:9). This was the position that He was in as He spoke to the disciples and was why He could say ‘My Father is (at present) greater than I'. But the whole point of these words was that the disciples were to rejoice because He was now about to be restored to His former greatness and glory at which point He and His Father would be equal in glory and status.
We can compare how of all men born of women none was ‘greater' than John the Baptist. This did not mean that he was of a superior essence to other men, but that his status as the Forerunner to Jesus singled him out. And yet we then note that the one who is least under the Kingly Rule of God is to be seen as ‘greater' even than John the Baptist, because they have entered that to which John pointed. It is quite clear in either case that this does not mean ‘greater in essential eminence'. It rather refers to their status in God's eyes at that particular point in time (Matthew 11:11). How was John of equal greatness with the greatest of men? Only in that he was so in status in God's eyes as the proclaimer of His truth and as the forerunner to Jesus. This gave him unparalleled status. (The Romans would not have agreed with this argument. It was a status in God's eyes). How are believers greater than John the Baptist? Only in that they have actually entered into that to which John looked forward. They were to be seen as of a higher status because they were actually within the Kingly Rule of God which to John had been a coming event. Both John and they were of the same essence. The greatness lay in their status at that time. John, of course, has since entered into that status. Believers are no longer greater than John. Thus the lack of greatness was of a temporary nature, as with Jesus in His earthly existence.
End of Note.