If ye loved Me, ye would rejoice, because I said I go unto the Father
The death of the good a reason for joy
Note the view which Christ had of His death.
“I go.”
1. Whence? From the world.
2. Whither? To the Father, not to destruction, eternal solitude, nor to fellowship with minor souls.
3. How? Not driven. Other men are sent to the grave; Christ freely went. The general truths of the text are these
I. THAT GENUINE LOVE REJOICES IN THE HAPPINESS OF ITS OBJECT. We find illustrations of this in
1. Creation. Love made the universe in order to diffuse happiness.
2. Christ’s mission. Christ came to make happy the objects of infinite love.
3. Christian labour. Happiness is the end of all church work.
II. THAT THE HAPPINESS OF MEN DEPENDS UPON FELLOWSHIP WITH THE FATHER.
1. Happiness is in love.
2. The love, to produce happiness, must be directed to the Father. His perfection delights in it; His goodness reciprocates it.
3. Love for the Father yearns for fellowship with Him. Love always craves the presence of its object.
III. THAT DEATH INTRODUCES THE GOOD INTO A SPECIALLY CLOSE FELLOWSHIP WITH THE FATHER. There were obstructions to the fellowship of the Man Christ Jesus with the Father.
1. The body with its infirmities.
2. The sinful world.
3. The influence of principalities and powers of darkness. These interfere with the fellowship of good men and God, and in addition they have what Christ had not.
(1) Worldly cares.
(2) Inward depravity.
(3) Corrupt habits.
At death, however, all these are removed, and the soul of the good man goes into the immediate presence of God. We need not, then, sorrow for the departed good. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
Joy and faith the fruit of Christ’s departure
I. THE DEPARTURE OF THE LORD IS A FOUNTAIN OF JOY TO THOSE WHO LOVE HIM.
1. Christ’s going is Christ’s coming. The word “again” is a supplement, and somewhat destroys the true flow of thought. But if you strike it out and read the sentence as being what it is, a description of one continuous process, you get the true idea. “I go away, and I come to you.” There is no moment of absolute absence. To the eye of sense, the “going away” was the reality, and the “coming” a metaphor. To the eye enlightened to see things as they are, the dropping away of the visible corporeal was but the inauguration of the higher and the more real.
2. Christ’s going is Christ’s exaltation. Hitherto we have been contemplating Christ’s departure simply in its bearing upon us, but here He unveils another aspect of it, and that in order that He may change His disciples’ sadness into joy.
(1). What a hint of self-sacrifice lies in this thought, that Christ bids His disciples rejoice with Him because the time is getting nearer its end, and He goes back to the Father! And what shall we say of the nature of Him to whom it was martyrdom to live, and a supreme instance of self-sacrificing humiliation to “be found in fashion as a man”?
(2) The context requires that for Christ to go to the Father was to share in the Father’s greatness. Why else should the disciples be bidden to rejoice in it? or why should He say anything about the greatness of the Father? The inferiority, of whatever nature it may be, to which He here alludes, falls away when He passes hence. Now these words are often quoted triumphantly, as if they were dead against the doctrine of the Divinity of Christ. But the creed which confesses that is not to be overthrown by pelting this verse at it; for this verse is part of that creed, which as fully declares the Father is greater than the Son as it declares that the Son is One with the Father. We can dimly see that the very names “Father” and “Son” imply some sort of subordination, but as that subordination is in the timeless and inward relations of Divinity, it must be supposed to exist after the Ascension, as it existed before the Incarnation; and, therefore, any such mysterious difference is not that which is referred to here. What is referred to is what dropped away from the Man Jesus Christ when He ascended up on high. As Luther has it, “Here He was a poor, sad, suffering Christ”; and that garb of lowliness falls from Him, like the mantle that fell from the prophet as he went up in the chariot of fire, when He passes behind the brightness of the Shekinah cloud that hides Him from their sight. Therefore we, as His followers, have to rejoice in an ascended Christ, beneath whose feet are foes, and far away from whose human personality are all the ills that flesh is heir to.
3. On both these grounds Christ’s ascension and departure is a source of icy.
(1) There can be no presence with us, man by man, through all the ages, and in every land, unless He, whose presence it is, participated in the absolute glory of Divinity.
(2) And surely if our dearest one was far away from us, in some lofty position, our hearts and our thoughts would ever be flung thither, and we should live more there than here. And if we love Jesus Christ, there will be no thought more sweet to us than the thought of Him, our Brother and Forerunner, who has ascended up on high; and in the midst of the glory of the throne bears us in His heart, and uses His glory for our blessing.
II. HIS DEPARTURE AND HIS ANNOUNCEMENT OF HIS DEPARTURE AS THE GROUND AND FOOD OF FAITH (John 14:29). He knew what a crash was coming, and with exquisite tenderness He gave Himself to prepare the disciples for the storm, that, forewarned, they might be forearmed. And when my sorrows come to me, I may say about them what He says about His departure. Aye! He has told us before, that when it comes we may believe. But note
1. How Christ avows that the great aim of His utterances and of His departure is to evoke our faith. And what does He mean by faith?
(1) A grasp of the historic facts, His death, resurrection, ascension.
(2) The understanding of these as He Himself has explained them.
(3) And, therefore, as the essence of faith, a reliance upon Himself as thus revealed, sacrifice by His death, victor by His resurrection, King and interceding Priest by His ascension--a reliance upon Himself as absolute as the facts are sure, as unfaltering as His eternal sameness.
2. These facts, as interpreted by Himself, are the ground and the nourishment of our faith. How differently they looked when seen from the further side and when seen from the hither side. “We trusted,” said two of them, with such a sad use of the past tense, “that this had been He which should have redeemed Israel.” But after the facts were all unveiled, there came back the memory of His words, and they said to one another, “Did He not tell us that it was all to be so? How blind we were not to understand Him!”
3. Faith is the condition of the true presence of our absent Lord. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Love’s importance
1. Jesus’ love makes Him use the disciples’ love to Himself as a comfort for themselves when they are distressed about His going away.
2. He appeals to the warmest feeling in their hearts in order to raise their spirits.
3. It is well when grace has put within us principles which are springs of consolation. From our text learn
I. THAT WE SHOULD TRY TO SEE THINGS IN CHRIST’S LIGHT.
1. He sees the whole of things. He says not only, “I go away,” but also, “I come again unto you.”
2. He sees through things. He does not say, “I die,” but He looks beyond, and says, “I go unto the Father.”
3. He sees the true bearing of things. The events which were about to happen were in themselves sad, but they would lead to happy results. “If ye loved Me, ye would rejoice.” To see facts in His light we must dwell with Him, live in Him, grow like Him, and especially love Him more and more.
II. THAT OUR LOVE SHOULD GO FORTH TOWARDS HIS PERSON. “If ye loved Me.” All about Him is amiable; but He Himself is altogether lovely Song of Solomon 5:16). He is the source of all the benefits He bestows. Loving Him
1. We have Him, and so His benefits.
2. We prize His benefits the more.
3. We sympathize in all that He does.
4. We love His people for His sake.
5. Our love endures all sorts of rebuffs for His sake.
6. The Father loves us (John 14:23)
7. We are married to Him.
Love is the sure and true marriage-bond whereby the soul is united to Christ. Love to a person is the most real of emotions. Love to a person is the most influential of motives. Love to a person is, in this case, the most natural and satisfying of affections.
III. THAT OUR SORROW OUGHT NOT TO PUT OUR LOVE IN QUESTION. Yet, in the case of the disciples, our Lord justly said, “If ye loved Me.” He might sorrowfully say the same to us
1. When we lament inordinately the loss of creatures.
2. When we repine at His will, because of our severe afflictions.
3. When we mistrust His wisdom, because we are sore hampered and see no way of escape.
4. When we fear to die, and thus display an unwillingness to be with our Lord. Surely, if we loved Him, we should rejoice to be with Him.
5. When we complain concerning those who have been taken from us to be with Him. Ought we not to rejoice that Jesus in them sees of the travail of His soul, and has His prayer (John 17:24) answered.
IV. THAT OUR LOVE SHOULD MAKE US REJOICE AT OUR LORD’S EXALTATION, THOUGH IT BE OUR PERSONAL LOSS.
1. It was apparently the disciples’ loss for their Lord to go to the Father; and we may think certain dispensations to be our loss
(1) When we are tried by soul desertion, while Christ is magnified in our esteem.
(2) When we are afflicted, and He is glorified, by our sorrows.
(3) When we are eclipsed, and in the result the gospel is spread.
(4) When we are deprived of privileges for the good of others.
(5) When we sink lower and lower in our own esteem, but the kingdom of God comes with power.
2. It was greatly to our Lord’s gain to go to His Father. Thus He
(1) Left the field of suffering forever.
(2) Reassumed the glory which He had laid aside.
(3) Received the glory awarded by the Father.
(4) Became enthroned for His Church and cause.
Conclusion:
1. It will be well for us to look more to our love than to our joy, and to expect our joy through our love.
2. It will be well for us to know that smallness of love may dim the understanding, and that growth in it may make us both wiser and happier.
3. In all things our Lord must be first. Yes, even in those most spiritual delights, about which it may seem allowable to bane strong personal desires. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
For My Father is greater than I
Christ’s equality with and subordination to God
It is contended that our Lord here abandoned any pretension to be a person internal to the essential life of God. But this saying can have no such force if its application be restricted, as the Latin Fathers do restrict it to our Lord’s manhood. But even if our Lord is here speaking, as the Greeks generally maintain, of His essential Deity, His words express very exactly a truth recognized and required by the Catholic doctrine. The subordination of the everlasting Son to the everlasting Father is strictly compatible with the Son’s absolute Divinity; it is abundantly implied in our Lord’s language: and it is an integral element of the ancient doctrine which steadily represents the Father as alone unoriginate, the Fount of Deity, in the eternal life of the ever-blessed Trinity. But surely an admission on the part of One in whom men saw nothing more than a fellow creature, that the everlasting God was greater than Himself, would fail to satisfy a thoughtful listener that no claim to Divinity was advanced by the Speaker. Such an admission presupposes some assertion to which it stands in the relation of a necessary qualification. If any good man of our acquaintance should announce that God was greater than himself, should we not hold him to be guilty of something worse than a stupid truism? And should we not peremptorily remind him that the life of man is related to the life of God, not as the less to the greater, but as the created to the Uncreated, and that it is an impertinent irreverence to admit superiority of rank, when the real truth can only be expressed by an assertion of radical difference of natures? And assuredly a sane and honest man, who had been accused of associating Himself with the Supreme Being, could not content himself with admitting that God was greater than himself. Knowing himself to be only human, would he not insist again and again with passionate fervour upon the incommunicable glory of the great Creator? (Canon Liddon.)