But that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us go hence.
But that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do. The sense must be completed thus: 'But though the Prince of this world, in plotting My death, hath nothing to fasten on, I am going to yield Myself up a willing Sacrifice, that the world may know that I love the Father, whose commandment it is that I give My life a ransom for many.'
Arise, let us go hence. Did they then, at this stage of the discourse, leave the Supper-room, as some able interpreters judge? If so, we cannot but think that our Evangelist would have mentioned it: on the contrary, in John 18:1, the Evangelist expressly says that not until the concluding prayer was offend did the meeting in the upper-room break up. But if Jesus did not "arise and go hence" when He summoned the Eleven to go with Him, how are we to understand His words? We think they were spoken in the spirit of that earlier saying, "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened until it be accomplished." It was a spontaneous and impressible expression of the deep eagerness of His spirit to get into the conflict. If it was responded to somewhat too literally by those who hung on His blessed lips, in the way of a movement to depart, a wave His hand would be enough to show that He had not quite done. Or it may be that those loving disciples were themselves reluctant to move so soon, and signified their not unwelcome wish that He should prolong His discourse. Be this as it may, that disciple whose pen was dipt in a love to his Master which made His least movement and slightest word during thee last hours seem worthy of record, has reared this little hastening of the Lamb to the slaughter with such artless life-like simplicity, that we seem to be of the party ourselves, and to catch the words rather from the Lips that spake than the pen that recorded them.
Remark: Referring the reader to the general observations, prefixed to this chapter, on the whole of this wonderful portion of the Fourth Gospel, let him recall for a moment the contents of the present chapter. It is complete within itself. For no sooner had the glorious Speaker uttered the last words of it than Ho proposed to "arise and go." All that follows, therefore, is supplementary. Everything essential is here, and here in what a form! The very fragrance of heaven is in these out-pourings of Incarnate Love. Of every verse of it we may say,
`O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south, That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour.' - (SHAKESPEARE)
Look at the varied lights in which Jesus holds forth Himself to the confidence and love and obedience of His disciples. To their fluttering hearts-ready to sink at the prospect of His sufferings, His departure from them, and their own desolation without Him, to say nothing of His cause when left in such incompetent hands-His opening words are, "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me." 'Though clouds and darkness are round about Him, and His judgments are a great deep, yet ye believe in God. What time, then, your heart is overwhelmed, believe in Me, and darkness shall become light before you, and crooked things straight.' What a claim is this on the part of Jesus-to be in the Kingdom of Grace precisely as God is in that of Nature and Providence, or rather to be the glorious Divine Administrator of all things whatsoever in the interests and for the purposes of Grace; in the shadow of Whose wings, therefore, all who believe in God are to put their implicit trust, for the purposes of salvation! For He is not sent merely to show men the way to the Father, no, nor merely to prepare that way; but Himself is the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.
We go not from Him, but in Him, to the Father. For He is in the Father, and the Father in Him; the words that He spake are the Father's words, and the works that He did are the Father's works; and He that hath seen Him hath seen the Father, because He is the Incarnate manifestation of the Godhead. But there are other views of Himself, equally transcendent, in which Jesus holds Himself forth here. To what a cheerless distance did He seem to be going away, and when and where should His disciples ever find Him again! ''Tis but to My Father's home,' He replies, 'and in due time it is to be yours too.' In that home there will not only be room for all, but a mansion for each. But it is not ready yet, and He is going to prepare it for them. For them He is going there; for them He is to live there; and, when the last preparations are made, for them He will at length return, to take them to that home of His Father and their Father, that where He is, there they may be also.
The attraction of heaven to those who love Him is, it seems, to be His Own presence there, and the beatific consciousness that they are where He is-language intolerable in a creature but in Him who is the Incarnate, manifested Godhead, supremely worthy, and to His believing people in every age unspeakably reassuring. But again, He had said that in heaven He was to occupy Himself in preparing a place for them; so, a little afterward, He tells them one of the ways in which this was to be done. To "hear prayer" is the exclusive prerogative of Yahweh, and one of the brightest jewel in His crown. But, says Jesus here, "Whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in My name, THAT WILL I DO" - not as interfering with, or robbing God of His glory, but on the contrary - "that the Father may be glorified in the Son: If ye shall ask anything in My name, I WILL DO IT." Further, He is the Life and the Law of His people. Much do we owe to Moses; much to Paul: but never did either say to those who looked up to them, "Because I live, ye shall live also; If ye love Me, keep My commandments; If a man love Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and WE will come unto him, and make OUR abode with him."
Such is Jesus, by His own account; and this is conveyed, not in formal theological statements, but in warm outpourings of the heart, in the immediate prospect of the hour and power of darkness, yet without a trace of that perturbation of spirit which he experienced afterward in the Garden: as if while the Eleven were around Him at the Supper- table their interests had altogether absorbed Him. The tranquillity of heaven reigns throughout this discourse. The bright splendour of a noontide sun is not here, and had been somewhat incongruous at that hour. But the serenity of a matchless sunset is what we find here, which leaves in the devout mind a sublime repose-as if the glorious Speaker had gone from us, saying, "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."