Christ Visible to Loving Hearts
What Christ here promises is something special and interior; deeper and more intimate; the peculiar gift of those who "keep His commandments." It is a manifestation, not to the eye or to the ear, but to a sense above both hearing and sight; a spiritual sense, comprehending all powers of perception, to which all other senses are but avenues. And this presence is no mere figure, but a reality; this manifestation no empty metaphor, but a showing of Himself to our spiritual sense; a perception which should be equal to the perception of sight in all fulness, vividness, and truth. Let us therefore take an example. What does the sight of any one, as, for instance, of a friend, bestow upon us? What are its effects?
I. The first effect it produces in us is a sense of his presence; we know what his coming and going awakens. It may be, we were waiting for his arrival full of other thoughts, busy or weary, or musing, or all but forgetful. When he came, we were wakened up in every pulse. We see him, recognise him again; he sees us, and fixes our sight upon himself. Some such effect is wrought in faithful hearts by this promise of our Lord. He shows Himself by a secret unveiling of His presence. His disciples' whole life is full of a sense that He is near; and they know, by an inward faculty, that they are living with Him and for Him.
II. Another effect wrought by the sight of a friend, is a perception of his character. We read the fullest and most detailed biographies and imagine the most vivid picture of the subject; but what is all biography to one meeting? Then the moral life which is in the one speaks to the moral sense which is in the other by a language which has no written character. So is it in those who love the Lord Jesus. When He shows Himself by the illumination of the heart, then all they have read turns to reality.
III. We may take one more effect of sight. It gives us a consciousness of the love of a friend for us. There is something in his eye, looks and bearing, which is expressive above all words and emphatic above all speech. So there is a love with which, as God, Christ loved all mankind eternally; and another deeper love, with which He loved all whom He foreknew would love Him again. In His foreknowledge, all His elect people love Him and are loved. As, one by one, they love Him, He loves them and shows Himself to them. When the disciple whom Jesus loved lay on His breast at supper, the foreknowledge of everlasting love had its fulfilment. So with every one who shall love Him unto the end of the world. "He hath heard of Me by the hearing of the ear, but now his eye shall see Me."
H. E. Manning, Sermons,vol. iv., p. 105.
The Spiritual Presence of Christ in the Church
I. Observe what the promise is in the text and the verses following. A new era was to commence, or what is called in Scripture "a day of the Lord." We know how much is said in Scripture about the awfulness and graciousness of a day of the Lord, which seems to be some special time of visitation, grace, judgment, restoration, righteousness and glory. The day that dawned upon the Church at the Resurrection, and beamed forth in full splendour at the Ascension; that day which has no setting, which will be not ended but absorbed in Christ's glorious appearance from heaven to destroy sin and death; that day in which we now are, is described in these words of Christ as a state of special Divine manifestation, of special introduction into the presence of God. Christ is really with us now, whatever be the mode of it. As God He is ever present, never was otherwise than present, never went away; when His body died on the Cross and was buried, when His soul departed to the place of spirits, still He was with His disciples in His Divine ubiquity.
II. Observe what was the nature of His presence in the Church after His resurrection. It was this, that He came and went as He pleased; that material substances, such as folded doors, were no impediments to His coming; and that when He was present His disciples did not, as a matter of course, know Him. For so it was ordained that Christ should not be both seen and known at once; first He was seen, then He was known. Only by faith is He known to be present; He is not recognised by sight. When He opened His disciples' eyes He at once vanished. He vanished from sight that He might be present in a sacrament; and in order to connect His visible presence with His presence invisible, He for one instant manifested Himself to their open eyes manifested Himself, if I may so speak, while He passed from His hiding-place of sight without knowledge, to that of knowledge without sight.
J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons,vol. vi., p. 120.
The Light of Faith
I. These words announce the departure of our Lord through the grave into the unseen world, when He passed among the long-imprisoned dead, "the spirits in prison," and unveiled His visible form, His soul, to the longing eyes of the saints of the earlier covenant, and, overthrowing the powers of hell, delivered the thralls of ages, opening to their gaze the inner realms of light, and the vision of God which His passion had obtained for redeemed man. The interval between His death and His resurrection was the "little while" during which He was no longer seen by the disciples on earth; and His return from the grave and His lingering among them before He ascended was the "little while" during which they again saw Him.
II. We may understand these words to represent one important feature of the spiritual life which characterises all the people of God in their earthly state. This not seeing Him for a little while, and again for a little while seeing Him, this alternative of brightness and darkness, is what our experience shows us to be the appointed condition of the faithful throughout the time of their probation. The loss of the sensible presence of Christ is, as even our natural reason may discern, necessary for the exercise of this discipline. An unchanging vision, palpable to the sense, would have been as incompatible with this economy of trial as the complete hiding of His countenance from the forsaken soul. In the one case it would have been all rapture, in the other all despair. What is needed is the vision of faith, which is a seeing and yet not seeing a seeing neither clearly nor darkly, but an inexpressible intermingling of experiences, which are neither fulness of sight, nor yet blindness. And this wonderful discipline of the soul began in earnest, as the law of our regeneration, when our Lord withdrew Himself into His ascended glory, and the invisible and incomprehensible Spirit came forth to be the second Comforter. "Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself." But it is only because we cannot yet see Thee and live that Thou shinest upon us with tempered ray suited to our weakness; but our dim eyes strain after Thee, and seek to discern Thee more and more, not merely in the special means and pledges of Thy presence, but even in all these outer forms, these visible works of Thy hands.
T. T. Carter, Sermons,p. 183.
References: John 16:16. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iv., p. 359; C. Kingsley, All Saints' Day,p. 109; G. E. L. Cotton, Sermons and Addresses in Marlborough College,p. 137. John 16:16-21. W. Roberts, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xi., p. 302. Joh 16:16-22. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. i., p. 195.John 16:16-33. A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve,p. 442. Joh 16:19. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iii., p. 414.John 16:20. T. J. Rowsell, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxvii., p. 248; J. Keble, Sermons from Ascension Day to Trinity,p. 335.John 16:20-22. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxiv., No. 1442. Joh 16:21. J. M. Neale, Sermons for the Christian Year,vol. ii., p. 29. John 16:21; John 16:22. D. Fraser, Metaphors of the Gospels,p. 360.