And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning.
And ye also - as the other witness required to the validity of testimony among men (Deuteronomy 19:15)
Shall bear witness, [ martureite (G3140 ) or 'do bear witness'] because ye have been, [ este (G1510 ), or 'are'] with me from the beginning. Our Lord here uses the present tense - "do testify" and "are with Me" - to express the opportunities which they had enjoyed for this office of witness-bearing, from their having been with Him from the outset of His ministry (see the note at Luke 1:2), and how this observation and experience of Him, being now all but completed, they were already virtually a company of chosen witnesses for His Name.
Remarks:
(1) If the strain in which our Lord spoke of Himself in the foregoing chapter was such as befitted only Lips Divine, in no less exalted a tone does He speak throughout all this chapter. For any mere creature, however lofty, to represent himself as the one Source of all spiritual vitality in men, would be insufferable. But this our Lord here explicitly and emphatically does, and that at the most solemn hour of His earthly history-on the eve of His death. To abide in Him, he says, is to have spiritual life and fruitfulness; not to abide in Him is to be fit only for the fire - "whose end is to be burned." What prophet or apostle ever ventured to put forth for himself such a claim as this? Yet see how the Father's rights and honours are upheld. My Father, says Jesus, is the Husbandman of that great Vineyard whose whole spring of life and fruitfulness is in Me; and herein is My Father glorified, that all the branches in the True Vine do bear much fruit. Then, again, such power and prevalency with God does He attach to His people's abiding in Him, and His words abiding in them, that His Father will withhold nothing from such that they shall ask of Him. In a word, so perfect a manifestation of the Father does He declare Himself to be in our nature, that to see Him is to see Both at once, and to hate Him is to be guilty in one and the same act of deadly hostility to Both.
(2) When our Lord said, "If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you," He must have contemplated the preservation of His words in a written Record, and designed that, over and above the general truth conveyed by His teaching, the precise form in which He couched that truth should be carefully treasured up and cherished by His believing people. Hence, the importance of that promise, that the Spirit should "bring all things to their remembrance, whatsoever He had said unto them." (See the note at John 14:26.) And hence, the danger of those loose views of Inspiration which would abandon all faith even in the words of Christ, as reported in the Gospels, and abide by what is called the spirit or general import of them-as if even this could be depended upon when the form in which it was couched is regarded as uncertain. (See the note at John 17:17.)
(3) If we would have Christ Himself abiding in us, it must be, we see, by "His words abiding in us" (John 15:7). Let the word of Christ, then, dwell in you richly in all wisdom (Colossians 3:16).
(4) How small is the confidence reposed in that promise of the Faithful and True Witness, "If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you" - if we may judge by the formal character and the languid and uncertain tone of the generality of Christian prayers! Surely, if we had full faith in such a promise, it would give to our prayers such a definite character and such a lively assured tone as, while themselves no small part of the true answer, to prepare the petitioner for the divine response to his suit. Such a manner of praying, indeed, is apt to be regarded as presumptuous by some even true Christians, who are too great strangers to the spirit of adoption. But if we abide in our living Head, and His words abide in us, our carriage in this exercise, as in every other, will commend itself.
(5) Let Christians learn from their Master's teaching in this chapter whence proceeds much, if not most, of their darkness and uncertainty as to whether they be the gracious objects of God's saving love in Christ Jesus. "If ye keep My commandments," says Jesus, "ye shall abide in My love, even as I have kept My Father's commandments, and abide in His love." Habitual want of conscience as to any one of these will suffice to cloud the mind as to the love of Christ resting upon us. Take, for example, that one commandment which our Lord so emphatically reiterates in this chapter: "This is My commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. These things I command you, that ye love one another." No ordinary love is this. "As I have loved you" is the sublime Model, as it is the only spring of this commanded love of the brethren. How much of this is there among Christians? To what extent is it characteristic of them-how far is it their notorious undeniable character? (See the note at John 17:21.) Alas! whether we look to churches or to individual Christians, the open manifestation of any such feeling is the exception rather than the rule.
Or let us try how far the generality of Christians are like their Lord by the world's feeling toward them. We know how it felt toward Jesus Himself. It was what He was that the world hated: it was His fidelity in exposing its evil ways that the world could not endure. Had He been less holy than He was, or been contented to endure the unholiness that reigned around Him without witnessing against it, He had not met with the opposition that He did. "The world cannot hate you," said He to His brethren, "but Me it hateth, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil" (John 7:7). And the same treatment, in principle, He here prepares His genuine disciples for, when He should leave them to represent Him in the world - "Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than His lord. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you." Is it not, then, too much to be feared that the good terms which the generality of Christians are on with the world are owing, not to the near approach of the world to them, but to their so near approach to the world, that the essential and unchangeable difference between them is hardly seen? And if so, need we wonder that those words of Jesus seem too high to be reached at all - "If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love; even as I have kept My Father's commandments, and abide in His love"? When Christians cease from the vain attempt to serve two masters, and from receiving honour one of another, instead of seeking the honour that cometh from God only; when they count all things but loss, that they may win Christ, and the love of Christ constraineth them to live not unto themselves, but unto Him that died for them and rose again: then will they abide in Christ's love, even as He abode in His Father's love; His joy shall then abide in them; and their joy shall be full.