Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more;
OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, because I go to my Father, and ye see, [ theooreite (G2334 ), or 'behold'] me no more. Beyond doubt, it is Christ's personal righteousness which the Spirit was to bring home to the sinner's heart. The evidence of this was to lie in the great historical fact, that He had "gone to His Father, and was no more visible to men:" for if His claim to be the Son of God, the Saviour of the world, had been a lie, how should the Father, who is "a jealous God," have raised such a blasphemer from the dead, and exalted him to His right hand? But if He was the "Faithful and True Witness," the Father's "Righteous Servant," "His Elect, in whom His soul delighted," then was His departure to the Father, and consequent disappearance from the view of men, but the fitting consummation, the august reward, of all that He did here below, the seal of His mission, the glorification of the testimony which He bore on earth, by the translation of its Bearer to the Father's bosom.
This triumphant vindication of Christ's rectitude is to us divine evidence, bright as heaven, that He is indeed the Saviour of the world, God's Righteous Servant to justify many, because He bare their iniquities (Isaiah 53:11). Thus the Spirit, in this second sphere of His work, is seen convincing men that there is in Christ perfect relief under the sense of sin, of which He has before convinced them; and so far from mourning over His absence from us, as an irreparable loss, we learn to glory in it, as the evidence of His perfect acceptance on our behalf, exclaiming with one who understood this point, "Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth; who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God," etc. (Romans 8:33-34). 'But, alas!'-may some say, who have long been "sold under sin," who have too long been willing captives of the prince of this world-`Of what avail to me is deliverance from any amount of guilt, and investiture even in the righteousness which cannot be challenged, if I am to be left under the power of sin and Satan? for he that committeth sin is of the Devil, and to be carnally minded is death.' But you are not to be so left. For there remains one more department of the Spirit's work, which exactly meets, and was intended to meet, your case.
Third,