John 14:18

When friends are parting, it is a common request they make to each other, "Pray let us hear from you as often as you can:" this Christ engaged to his disciples, that out of sight they should not be out of mind.

I. He promises that he would continue his care of them (Joh 14:18): "I will not leave you orphans, or fatherless; for, though I leave you, yet I leave you this comfort, I will come to you." His departure from them was that which grieved them; but it was not so bad as they apprehended, for it was neither total nor final. 1. Not total. "Though I leave you without my bodily presence, yet I do not leave you without comfort." Though children, and left little, yet they had received the adoption of sons, and his Father would be their Father, with whom those who otherwise would be fatherless find mercy. Note, The case of true believers, though sometimes it may be sorrowful, is never comfortless, because they are never orphans: for God is their Father, who is an everlasting Father. 2. Not final: I will come to you, erchomai - I do come; that is, (1.) "I will come speedily to you at my resurrection, I will not be long away, but will be with you again in a little time." He had often said, The third day I will rise again. (2.) "I will be coming daily to you in my Spirit;" in the tokens of his love, and visits of his grace, he is still coming. (3.) "I will come certainly at the end of time; surely I will come quickly to introduce you into the joy of your Lord." Note, The consideration of Christ's coming to us saves us from being comfortless in his removals from us; for, if he depart for a season, it is that we may receive him for ever. Let this moderate our grief, The Lord is at hand.

II. He promises that they should continue their acquaintance with him and interest in him (Joh 14:19, Joh 14:20): Yet a little while, and the world sees me no more, that is, Now I am no more in the world. After his death, the world saw him no more, for, though he rose to life, he never showed himself to all the people, Act 10:41. The malignant world thought they had seen enough of him, and cried, Away with him; crucify him; and so shall their doom be; they shall see him no more. Those only that see Christ with an eye of faith shall see him for ever. The world sees him no more till his second coming; but his disciples have communion with him in his absence.

1. You see me, and shall continue to see me, when the world sees me no more. They saw him with their bodily eyes after his resurrection, for he showed himself to them by many infallible proofs, Act 1:8. And then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord. They saw him with an eye of faith after his ascension, sitting at God's right hand, as Lord of all; saw that in him which the world saw not.

2. Because I live, you shall live also. That which grieved them was, that their Master was dying, and they counted upon nothing else but to die with him. No, saith Christ, (1.) I live; this the great God glories in, I live, saith the Lord, and Christ saith the same; not only, I shall live, as he saith of them, but, I do live; for he has life in himself, and lives for evermore. We are not comfortless, while we know that our Redeemer lives. (2.) Therefore you shall live also. Note, The life of Christians is bound up in the life of Christ; as sure and as long as he lives, those that by faith are united to him shall live also; they shall live spiritually, a divine life in communion with God. This life is hid with Christ; if the head and root live, the members and branches live also. They shall live eternally; their bodies shall rise in the virtue of Christ's resurrection; it will be well with them in the world to come. It cannot but be well with all that are his, Isa 26:19.

3. You shall have the assurance of this (Joh 14:20): At that day, when I am glorified, when the Spirit is poured out, you shall know more clearly and certainly than you do now that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. (1.) These glorious mysteries will be fully known in heaven; At that day, when I shall receive you to myself, you shall know perfectly that which now you see through a glass darkly. Now it appears not what we shall be, but then it will appear what we were. (2.) They were more fully known after the pouring out of the Spirit upon the apostles; at that day divine light should shine, and their eyes should see more clearly, their knowledge should greatly advance and increase then, would become more extensive and more distinct, and like the blind man's at the second touch of Christ's hand, who at first only saw men as trees walking. (3.) They are known by all that receive the Spirit of truth, to their abundant satisfaction, for in the knowledge of this is founded their fellowship with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ. They know, [1.] That Christ is in the Father, is one with the Father, by their experience of what he has wrought for them and in them; they find what an admirable consent and harmony there is between Christianity and natural religion, that that is grafted into this, and so they know that Christ is in the Father. [2.] That Christ is in them; experienced Christians know by the Spirit that Christ abides in them, Jo1 3:24. [3.] That they are in Christ, for the relation is mutual, and equally near on both sides, Christ in them and they in Christ, which speaks an intimate and inseparable union; in the virtue of which it is that because he lives they shall live also. Note, First, Union with Christ is the life of believers; and their relation to him, and to God through him, is their felicity. Secondly, The knowledge of this union is their unspeakable joy and satisfaction; they were now in Christ, and he in them, but he speaks of it as a further act of grace that they should know it, and have the comfort of it. An interest in Christ and the knowledge of it are sometimes separated.

III. He promises that he would love them, and manifest himself to them, Joh 14:21-24. Here observe,

1. Who they are whom Christ will look upon, and accept, as lovers of him; those that have his commandments, and keep them. By this Christ shows that the kind things he here said to his disciples were intended not for those only that were now his followers, but for all that should believe in him through their word. Here is, (1.) The duty of those who claim the dignity of being disciples. Having Christ's commandments, we must keep them; as Christians in name and profession we have Christ's commandments, we have them sounding in our ears, written before our eyes, we have the knowledge of them; but this is not enough; would we approve ourselves Christians indeed, we must keep them. Having them in our heads, we must keep them in our hearts and lives. (2.) The dignity of those that do the duty of disciples. They are looked upon by Christ to be such as love him. Not those that have the greatest wit and know how to talk for him, but those that keep his commandments. Note, The surest evidence of our love to Christ is obedience to the laws of Christ. Such is the love of a subject to his sovereign, a dutiful, respectful, obediential love, a conformity to his will, and satisfaction in his wisdom.

2. What returns he will make to them for their love; rich returns; there is no love lost upon Christ. (1.) They shall have the Father's love: He that loveth me shall be loved of my Father. We could not love God if he did not first, out of his good-will to us, give us his grace to love him; but there is a love of complacency promised to those that do love God, Pro 8:17. He loves them, and lets them know that he loves them, smiles upon them, and embraces them. God so loves the Son as to love all those that love him. (2.) They shall have Christ's love: And I will love him, as God-man, as Mediator. God will love him as a Father, and I will love him as a brother, an elder brother. The Creator will love him, and be the felicity of his being; the Redeemer will love him, and be the protector of his well-being. In the nature of God, nothing shines more brightly than this, that God is love. And in the undertaking of Christ nothing appears more glorious than this, that he loved us. Now both these loves are the crown and comfort, the grace and glory, which shall be to all those that love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. Christ was now leaving his disciples, but promises to continue his love to them; for he not only retains a kindness for believers, though absent, but is doing them kindness while absent, for he bears them on his heart, and ever lives interceding for them. (3.) They shall have the comfort of that love: I will manifest myself to him. Some understand it of Christ's showing himself alive to his disciples after his resurrection; but, being promised to all that love him and keep his commandments, it must be construed so as to extend to them. There is a spiritual manifestation of Christ and his love made to all believers. When he enlightens their minds to know his love, and the dimensions of it (Eph 3:18, Eph 3:19), enlivens their graces, and draws them into exercise, and thus enlarges their comforts in himself - when he clears up the evidences of their interest in him, and gives them tokens of his love, experience of his tenderness, and earnests of his kingdom and glory, - then he manifests himself to them; and Christ is manifested to none but those to whom he is pleased to manifest himself.

3. What occurred upon Christ's making this promise.

(1.) One of the disciples expresses his wonder and surprise at it, Joh 14:22. Observe, [1.] Who it was that said this - Judas, not Iscariot. Judah, or Judas, was a famous name; the most famous tribe in Israel was that of Judah; two of Christ's disciples were of that name: one of them was the traitor, the other was the brother of James (Luk 6:16), one of those that were akin to Christ, Mat 13:55. He is called Lebbeus and Thaddeus, was the penman of the last of the epistles, which in our translation, for distinction's sake, we call the epistle of Jude. This was he that spoke here. Observe, First, There was a very good man, and a very bad man, called by the same name; for names commend us not to God, nor do they make men worse. Judas the apostle was never the worse, nor Judas the apostate ever the better, for being namesakes. But, Secondly, The evangelist carefully distinguishes between them; when he speaks of this pious Judas, he adds, not Iscariot. Take heed of mistaking; let us not confound the precious and the vile. [2.] What he said - Lord how is it? which intimates either, First, the weakness of his understanding. So some take it. He expected the temporal kingdom of the Messiah, that it should appear in external pomp and power, such as all the world would wonder after. "How, then," thinks he, "should it be confined to us only?" ti gegonen - "what is the matter now, that thou wilt not show thyself openly as is expected, that the Gentiles may come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising?" Note, We create difficulties to ourselves by mistaking the nature of Christ's kingdom, as if it were of this world. Or, Secondly, as expressing the strength of his affections, and the humble and thankful sense he had of Christ's distinguishing favours to them: Lord, how is it? He is amazed at the condescensions of divine grace, as David, Sa2 7:18. What is there in us to deserve so great a favour? Note, 1. Christ's manifesting himself to his disciples is done in a distinguishing way - to them, and not to the world that sits in darkness; to the base, and not to the mighty and noble; to babes, and not to the wise and prudent. Distinguishing favours are very obliging; considering who are passed by, and who are pitched upon. 2. It is justly marvellous in our eyes; for it is unaccountable, and must be resolved into free and sovereign grace. Even so, Father, because it seemed good unto thee.

(2.) Christ, in answer hereto, explains and confirms what he had said, Joh 14:23, Joh 14:24. He overlooks what infirmity there was in what Judas spoke, and goes on with his comforts.

[1.] He further explains the condition of the promise, which was loving him, and keeping his commandments. And, as to this, he shows what an inseparable connection there is between love and obedience; love is the root, obedience is the fruit. First, Where a sincere love to Christ is in the heart, there will be obedience: "If a man love me indeed, that love will be such a commanding constraining principle in him, that, no question, he will keep my words." Where there is true love to Christ there is a value for his favour, a veneration for his authority, and an entire surrender of the whole man to his direction and government. Where love is, duty follows of course, is easy and natural, and flows from a principle of gratitude. Secondly, On the other hand, where there is no true love to Christ there will be no care to obey him: He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings, Joh 14:24. This comes in here as a discovery of those that do not love Christ; whatever they pretend, certainly those do not love him that believe not his truths, and obey not his laws, to whom Christ's sayings are but as idle tales, which he heeds not, or hard sayings, which he likes not. It is also a reason why Christ will not manifest himself to the world that doth not love him, because they put this affront upon him, not to keep his sayings; why should Christ be familiar with those that will be strange to him?

[2.] He further explains the promise (Joh 14:23): If a man thus love me, I will manifest myself to him. First, My Father will love him; this he had said before (Joh 14:21), and here repeats it for the confirming of our faith; because it is hard to imagine that the great god should make those the objects of his love that had made themselves vessels of his wrath. Jude wondered that Christ should manifest himself to them; but this answers it, "If my Father love you, why should not I be free with you?" Secondly, We will come unto him, and make our abode with him. This explains the meaning of Christ's manifesting himself to him, and magnifies the favour. 1. Not only,I will, but, We will, I and the Father, who, in this, are one. See Joh 14:9. The light and love of God are communicated to man in the light and love of the Redeemer, so that wherever Christ is formed the image of God is stamped. 2. Not only, "I will show myself to him at a distance," but, "We will come to him, to be near him, to be with him," such are the powerful influences of divine graces and comforts upon the souls of those that love Christ in sincerity. 3. Not only, "I will give him a transient view of me, or make him a short and running visit," but, We will take up our abode with him which denotes complacency in him and constancy to him. God will not only love obedient believers, but he will take a pleasure in loving them, will rest in love to them, Zep 3:17. He will be with them as at his home.

[3.] He gives a good reason both to bind us to observe the condition and encourage us to depend upon the promise. The word which you hear is not mine, but his that sent me, Joh 14:24. To this purport he had often spoken (Joh 7:16; Joh 8:28; Joh 12:44), and here it comes in very pertinently. First, the stress of duty is laid upon the precept of Christ as our rule, and justly, for that word of Christ which we are to keep is the Father's word, and his will the Father's will. Secondly, The stress of our comfort is laid upon the promise of Christ. But forasmuch as, in dependence upon that promise, we must deny ourselves, and take up our cross, and quit all, it concerns us to enquire whether the security be sufficient for us to venture our all upon; and this satisfies us that it is, that the promise is not Christ's bare word, but the Father's which sent him, which therefore we may rely upon.

Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Joh_14:18-19

I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you

Not left comfortless

The word comfortless means bereft.

We have adopted the Greek word, and have gradually limited it to the severest kind of bereavement--orphanhood. But the promise, starting from one kind of bereavement, enlarges itself, and takes in all who from any cause want comfort. God does not say that you shall never be comfortless, but on the contrary, He implies that you shall be so. Nobody, however saintly, could say he was never comfortless, but he can say, I was not left comfortless. And the length of the comfortless period depends upon the faith we have in Christs coming to us.

I. Let us confine our view to one kind of sorrow--BEREAVEMENT, This has in it

1. Change. One you loved, and with whom you were almost hourly in converse, has passed away. Everything is changed; nothing looks to us as it used to look in the sunshine, which seems as if it never would come back again. It is wonderful how one face gone, one voice silent, alters the whole world.

2. Separation. Then a gulf opens, which, however persons may talk about it, is then very wide. The grave is a wall of adamant to you--they may be conscious of no distance, but to you, oh, how very far off!

3. Loneliness. No wonder that the silence is oppressive. No matter how many you may have around you, or how kind, you are thrown hack into your own thoughts which circle about one, and that one is gone, and it is a perfect solitude.

4. Fear: a painful apprehension of what the future is going to be. How shall I live on? What shall I do without that love, that counsel?

II. FOR THESE FOUR WRETCHEDNESSES, CHRIST IS THE ONLY ANTIDOTE--I will come to you. And mark, it is His presence, not His work, His Cross, His final Advent, but His living presence now.

1. With Him there is no shadow of a turning. It is the same voice which faith hears, and the same face which faith sees now, which you heard and saw in years long gone by. I will never leave you. And the awful change which has passed over everything else only makes it stand out more comfortingly--His impossibility of change.

2. And with that felt, present, unchangeable Christ, both worlds are one. The Church in heaven and the Church on earth are the members, and all meet in that one Head, and in Him they are here. Where then is loneliness? He is a Brother by me, to whom I can tell everything, and He will answer me. I seem speaking to them because they are holding the very same converse within the veil.

3. The solitude of the soul, where He is, becomes peopled with the whole host of heaven. There is no sense of being alone when we realize that we are alone with Jesus.

4. And so the fear flies away. For what Christ is now, He will be always. And that presence is the pledge of a reunion. A little while, and it will be He, and they, and I, and we shall be together forever.

Conclusion:

1. Read a particular emphasis on the I, that great word which God is so fond of. Whatever it be to you now, this gay world will leave you utterly comfortless. Those whom today you are most fondly cherishing, and the thought of whose death you dare not admit to your own heart--if you have none but them, and no Christ in them, you will wake up some morning to such a cold vacancy, for that one will have gone, and will have left you comfortless. Friends will come with their emptinesses, and they will go, and you will be as comfortless as when they came. Only He who could say, I will come to you as none other comes, as He came to Martha and Mary at Bethany; only He can say, I will not leave you comfortless.

2. Read another emphasis on that you. I, Jesus seems to say, I was left comfortless, but I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.

3. Of all the bereaved in the whole world, there is none so bereft as that man of whatever happy circle he may be, who cannot look up to heaven, and say, My Father. That man is an orphan indeed.

4. There is another. He has known what it is to feel God His Father, but it is gone Do you say, It is I? Then I am sure that at this moment Jesus is saying it to you--I will not leave you an orphan, etc. For if there be a thing on the whole earth which Jesus will not have it is an orphaned heart. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)

Our Comforter

I. MAN NEEDS A COMFORTER. I do not now speak of men in the bulk, but in units. Wars, pestilences, strikes, and social evils trouble men, but besides these, each man in himself has trouble which none but God can soothe. Perhaps friendless poverty is the sorest trouble of existence. Returning along the road from Warrington, I heard a groan which made my heart shudder. Stooping to the hedge, I saw a woman and a little child in great distress. She was from Liverpool; her husband had come to Manchester seeking for work and had written saying he had been taken ill, and that as he could send no money, she must trust in God. Without a penny in her pocket, love for her husband gave her strength to walk to Manchester with her child in her arms. She inquired at his lodgings, but found he had been taken to the hospital. She then by asking at every corner arrived at the Manchester workhouse, and found that her husband was dead, and his remains had been placed in the grave the day before. Footsore, hungry, and friendless, she was sent away, and pawned her shawl to keep from dying in the street. Then she dragged herself to the road near Irlam and lay down under a hedge to groan and to die. But in the cottage of a poor farm labourer she found help and sympathy which caused her to live. Did God not hear, and hearing, did He not provide comfort?

II. MEN VERY OFTEN SEEK ARTIFICIAL COMFORTERS. After the great deluge, men built the tower of Babel, hoping by that means to receive comfort in any similar calamity. And in these days men are building towers which they hope will save them from the deluge of trouble. Many people think that if they build up a tower of riches they will be happy. But the rich man is no happier than the poor one. I was once asked to visit a man who was said to be dying. Standing at his bedside and holding his hand in mine, I said, Have you the joy of knowing that your sins are forgiven? The man looked and replied, Joy! joy! joy! Taking his hand from mine he pushed it under the pillow and bringing out a bottle of brandy he held it with his trembling hand, saying, This is my joy. Poor, miserable, drunkard! Most people before they become drunkards have had some sickness of mind or body preying upon them; but do not fly from your great trouble to drink.

III. OUR FATHER HAS PROVIDED A COMFORTER FOR EVERY MAN. If you seek in the history of the past, what man would you select to be your comforter? I ask the philosophers if they would ask for Socrates above all others? I ask the deists if they would ask for Thomas Paine or Voltaire? Or would you ask for John Bunyan, or for Wesley or Whitefield? If you knew none better you might. Take the worst man in the world, or an unbeliever, and ask him, If you were to select out of all men one who should be your bosom friend until you die, upon whom would you fix? If he told his hearts truth, he would reply, Jesus.

1. Jesus our Comforter is with us. My mother died in giving me life, and, of course, I have not the slightest remembrance of her. The only relic I had was a little piece of her silk dress, and this I preserved as my dearest treasure. Tossed about, and yearning for a love which was not to be had, I used to sit alone for hours, and long for, and pray to my mother. You may call it an insane fancy, but to me it was real and powerful and comforting. And I owe the success of my boyhood to the consciousness of her beloved presence. In the same way, Jesus communes with us. Jesus in Spirit is with you.

2. He comforts

(1) By showing that our Father loves us. Deep down in every human heart there is the instinct that God loves men. In great calamity men always cry to God.

(2) By pointing us to the Cross. Look to the Cross of Jesus, and see the remedy which shall in time save all the world.

(3) By inspiring us with hope. When a man is cast out of society, and swears in is despair, I will now do all the evil I can and spite them, if a friend tap him on the shoulder, saying, Brother, why despair of yourself? Come with me, and I will hold on to you until you are a better man, why, such language would be an inspiration! Jesus is the friend who does this to the despairing souls of men.

(4) When we are heavily burdened. Paul was burdened. He had a thorn in the flesh. But did God take it away? No; but He gave him grace to bear it. So Jesus comforts us when we are burdened by giving us strength to bear it.

(5) He comforts us too by showing us Gods purpose. He teaches us that all things work together for good. (W. Birch.)

Soul orphanhood

I. CONSISTS IN MORAL SEPARATION FROM GOD.

1. Not local, for God is everywhere, and no spirit can flee from His presence.

2. Not physical; for in God we live and move, etc.

3. But, morally, the unregenerate are ever distant from Him--alienated in sympathy, purpose and pursuit: without God. The ungodly world is a world of orphans, without a fathers fellowship and guidance.

II. IS AN EVIL OF STUPENDOUS MAGNITUDE.

1. Orphanism, so far as human parentage is concerned, is a calamity, but this is a crime. The soul has broken away from its Father, not its Father from it.

2. Orphanism in the one case may have its loss supplied, but not in the other. Thank God, society in this age has loving hearts, and good homes for orphans. But nothing on earth can take the place of God in relation to a soul: such a soul is benighted, perishing, lost.

III. IS REMOVED BY THE PRESENCE OF CHRIST. He brings the soul into a loving, blessed fellowship with God. The deep cry of humanity is the cry of an orphan for the Father. The response is the advent of Christ. (D. Thomas, D. D.)

The absent present Christ

I. THE ABSENT CHRIST IS THE PRESENT CHRIST. Orphans is rather an unusual form in which to represent the relation between our Lord and His disciples. And so, possibly, our versions are accurate in giving the general idea of desolation. But, still, it is to be remembered that this whole conservation begins with Little children; and they would be like fatherless and motherless children in a cold world. And what is to hinder that? One thing only. I come to you. Now, what is this coming? Our Lord says, not I will, as a future, but I come, or, I am coming, as an immediately impending, or present, thing. There can be no reference to the final coming, because it would follow, that, until that period, all that love Him here are to wander about as orphans; and that can never be.

1. We have here a coming which is but the reverse side of His bodily absence. This is the heart of the consolation that, howsoever the foolish senses may have to speak of an absent Christ, we may rejoice in the certainty that He is with all those that love Him, and all the more because of the withdrawal of the earthly manifestation Which has served its purpose. Note the manifest implication of absolute Divinity. I come. I am present with every single heart. That is equivalent to Omnipresence. I cannot but think that the average Christian life of this day woefully fails in the realization of this great truth, that we are never alone, but have Jesus Christ with each of us more closely, and with more Omnipotence of influence than they had who were nearest Him upon earth. If we really believed this, how all burdens and cares would be lightened, how all perplexities would begin to smooth themselves out, and how sorrows and joys and everything would be changed in their aspect. A present Christ is the Strength, the Righteousness, the Peace, the Joy, the Life of every Christian soul.

2. This coming of our Lord is identified with that of His Divine Spirit. He has been speaking of sending that other Comforter, who is no gift wafted to us as from the other side of a gulf; but by reason of the unity of the Godhead, Christ and the Spirit whom He sends are, though separate, so indissolubly united that where the Spirit is, there is Christ, and where Christ is, there is the Spirit. If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.

3. This present Christ is the only Remedy for the orphanhood of the world. We can understand how forlorn and terrified the disciples were, when they looked forward to the things that must come to them, without His presence. Therefore He cheers them with this assurance.

(1) And the promise was fulfilled. How did that dispirited group ever pluck up courage to hold together after the Crucifixion at all? Why was it that they did not follow the example of Johns disciples, and dissolve and disappear, and say, The game is up. If it had not been that He came to them, Christianity would have been one more of the abortive sects forgotten in Judaism. But, as it is, the whole of the New Testament after

Pentecost is aflame with the consciousness of a present Christ working amongst His people.

(2) The same conviction you and I must have, if the world is not to be a desert and a dreary place for us. If you take away Christ the elder Brother, who alone reveals the Father, we are all orphans, who look up into an empty heaven and see nothing there. And is not life a desolation without Him? Hollow joys, roses whose thorns last long after the petals have dropped, real sorrow, shows and shams, bitternesses and disappointments--are not these our life, in so far as Christ has been driven out of it?

II. THE UNSEEN CHRIST IS A SEEN CHRIST.

1. That yet a little while covers the whole space up to His ascension: and if there be any reference to the forty clays, during which, literally, the world saw Him no more, but the apostles saw Him, that reference is only secondary. These transitory appearances are not sufficient to bear the weight of so great a promise as this. The vision, which is the consequence of the coming, is as continuous and permanent as the coming. It is clear, too, that the word see is employed in two different senses. In the former it refers only to bodily, in the latter to spiritual perception. For a few short hours still, the ungodly mass of men were to have that outward vision which they had used so badly, that they seeing saw not. It was to cease, and they who loved Him would not miss it when it did. They, too, had but dimly seen Him while He stood by them; they would gaze on Him with truer insight when He was present though absent. So this is what every Christian life may and should be--the continual sight of a continually present Christ.

2. Faith is the sight of the soul, and it is far better than the sight of the senses.

(1) It is more direct. My eye does not touch what I look at. Gulfs of millions of miles lie between me and it. But my faith is not only eye, but hand, and not only beholds but grasps.

(2) It is far more clear. Senses may deceive; my faith, built upon His Word, cannot deceive. Its information is far more certain, more valid. So that there is no need for men to say, Oh! if we had only seen Him with our eyes! You would very likely not have known Him if you had. There is no reason for thinking that the Church has retrograded in its privileges because it has to love instead of beholding, and to believe instead of touching. Sense disturbs, faith alone beholds.

(3) The world seeth Me no more. Why? Because it is a world. Ye see Me. Why Because, and in the measure, in which you have turned away your eyes from seeing vanity. If you want the eye of the soul to be opened, you must shut the eye of sense. And the more we turn away from looking at the dazzling lies which befool and bewilder us, the more shall we see Him whom to see is to live forever.

III. THE PRESENT AND SEEN CHRIST IS LIFE AND LIFE GIVING. Because He comes, His life passes into the hearts of the men to whom He comes, and who gaze upon Him.

1. Mark the majestic I live--the timeless present tense, which expresses unbroken, undying and Divine life. It is all but a quotation of the name Jehovah. The depth and sweep of its meaning are given to us by this Apostle, the living One, who lived whilst He died, and having died is alive for evermore.

2. And this Christ is Lifegiver to all that love Him and trust Him.

(1) We live because He lives. In all senses the life of man is derived from the Christ who is the Agent of creation, and is also the one means by whom any of us can ever hope to live the better life that consists in union to God.

(2) We shall live as long as He lives, and His being is the guarantee of the immortal being of all who love Him. Anything is possible, rather than that a soul which has drawn a spiritual life from Christ should ever be rent apart from Him by such a miserable and external trifle as the mere dissolution of the bodily frame. As long as Christ lives your life is secure. If the Head has life the members cannot see corruption. The Church chose for one of its ancient emblems of the Saviour the pelican, which fed its young, according to the fable, with the blood from its own breast. So Christ vitalizes us. He in us is our life. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

Christians not forgotten by Christ

A tragic story comes from Senegal. Four natives who had been sent to guard the French flag on a newly acquired barren island in that region were left without provisions, and died of starvation. They had a supply of food to last three months, but the governor had entirely forgotten to send relief to the guardians of the standard on the lonely rock. (Christian World.)

Christ in heaven helps His disciples

Suppose a kings son should get out of a besieged prison and leave his wife and children behind, whom he loves as his own soul; would the prince, when arrived at his fathers palace, please and delight himself with the splendour of the court, and forget his family in distress; No; but having their cries and groans always in his ears, he should come post to his father, and entreat him, as ever he loved him, that he would send all the forces of his kingdom and raise the siege, and save his dear relations from perishing; nor will Christ, though gone up from the world and ascended into His glory, forget His children for a moment that are left behind Him. (J. Gurnall.)

Comfort for the bereaved

On every Mohammedan tombstone the inscription begins with the words, He remains. This applies to God, and gives sweet comfort to the bereaved. Friends may die, fortune fly away, but God endures. He remains.

Yet a little while, and the world seeth Me no more, but ye see Me

Seeing the living Christ

Came in the flesh--that is the outward, material fact. He is here in the Spirit--that is the inward, spiritual reality.

I. CHRISTS LITTLE WHILE.

1. His visible appearance on earth was only for a little while. Yet how much has been crowded into it. Example; teaching; miracle; suffering. All this helps us to understand His mission, and especially to realize to ourselves His abiding spiritual presence. He is still with us, the very Christ that He was.

2. When Jesus spoke these words there was but a very little while left. Only the death scene, and the forty days in the Resurrection body. But these also help us to realize the spiritual presence of Christ, as we can know it; especially do we get suggestions from the Resurrection time.

II. THE WORLDS BLINDNESS. What report can the world give of Christ? He was a good Man, an original Teacher, But He offended the religion and society leaders of His day, and they secured His crucifixion. The world testifies that He was dead and buried; but the world resists the bare ideas of His Resurrection or spiritual life. How little the world knows, or can conceive, of the coming, the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. So Christ is lost as an actual power in life.

III. THE DISCIPLES VISION. Ye see Me. That is, Ye do constantly see Me. If they had seen Christ truly while He was here on earth, then they would find they never lost the sight of Him. Because, during His earthly life, His real presence with the disciples had been presence to heart, not to eye.

1. Christ never goes out of disciples thought or heart.

2. Christ never ceases to be the disciples Ruler and Referee.

3. The honour of Christ never ceases to be the disciples sole aim.

4. The strength of Christ never ceases to be the souls victory. The joy of Christian life depends on the clearness of our vision of this ever-present Christ. (Weekly Pulpit.)

Because I live, ye shall live also

The Lord of Life

This saying is only to be fully understood in the light of the Resurrection and Ascension. Christ has taken the measure of death; death was to be no real interruption of His ever-continuing life. Already He sees the Resurrection beyond. He treats Death as an already vanquished enemy. Observe:

I. WHAT OUR LORDS WORDS DO NOT MEAN. They do not mean that the immortality of the soul of man is dependent upon the work or life of Christ. Man is an immortal being, just as he is a thinking and feeling being by the original terms of his nature. Any of us may see who will consider how generally unlike the spirit or soul of man is to any merely material creature.

1. The soul of man knows itself to be capable of continuous development. However vigorous a tree or an animal may be, it soon reaches a point at which it can grow no longer. Its vital force is exhausted; it can do no more. With the soul, whether as a thinking or feeling power, we can never say that it has exhausted itself. When a man of science has made a great discovery, or a man of letters has written a great book, or a statesman has carried a series of great measures we cannot say--He has done his all. Undoubtedly, as the body moves towards decay it inflicts something of its weakness upon its spiritual companion. But the soul constantly resists, asserting its own separate and vigorous existence. The mind knows that each new effort, instead of exhausting its powers, enlarges them, and that if only the physical conditions necessary to continued exertion are not withdrawn, it will go on continuously making larger and nobler acquirements. So too with the heart, the conscience, the sense of duty. One noble act suggests another: one great sacrifice for truth or duty prompts another. Be not weary in well-doing is the language of the Eternal Wisdom to the human will.

2. The spirit is conscious of and values its own existence. This is not the case with any material living forms, however lofty or beautiful. The most magnificent tree only gives enjoyment to other beings; it never understands that itself exists; it is not conscious of losing anything when it is cut down. An animal feels pleasure and pain, but it feels each sensation as it comes; it never puts them together, or takes the measure of its own life, and looks on it as a whole. The animal lives wholly in the present, practically it has no past, nor does it look forward. How different with the conscious, self-measuring spirit of man! Mans spirit lives more in the past and in the future than in the present, exactly in the degree in which it makes the most of itself. And the more the spirit makes of its powers and resources, the more earnestly does it desire prolonged existence. Thus, the best of the heathens longed to exist after death, that they might continue to make progress in all such good as they had begun in this life, in high thoughts and in excellent resolves. And with these longings they believed that they would then exist after all when this life was over. The longing was itself a sort of proof that its object was real; for how was its existence to be explained if all enterprise was to be abruptly broken off by the shock of death?

3. Unless a spiritual being is immortal, such a being counts for less in the universe than mere inert matter. For matter has a kind of immortality. Within the range of our experience, no matter ceases to exist; it only takes new shapes, first in one being, and then in another. It is possible that the destruction of the world at the Last Day will be only a re-arrangement of the sum total of matter which now makes up the visible universe. If mans spirit naturally perishes, the higher part of his nature therefore is much worse off than the chemical ingredients of his body. For mans spirit cannot be resolved like his body, into form and material; the former perishing while the latter survives. Mans spirit either exists in its completeness, or it ceases to exist. Each man is himself: he can become no other. His memory, his affections, his way of thinking and feeling, are all his own: they are not transferable. If they perish, they perish altogether. And therefore it is a reasonable and very strong presumption that spirit is not, in fact, placed at such disadvantage, and that, if matter survives the dissolution of organic forms, much more must spirit survive the dissolution of the material forms with which it has been associated. These are the kind of considerations by which thoughtful men, living without the light of revelation, might be led to see the reasonableness, the very high probability of a future life. This teaching of nature is presupposed by Christianity, and it is no true service to our Master to make light of it. At the same time, it is true that, outside the Jewish revelation, immortality was not treated by any large number of men as anything like a certainty. Jesus Christ assumed it as certain in all that He said with reference to the future life. And it is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ--which has in this, as in so many other ways, opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers. What has been may be. And thus the Christian faith has brought immortality to light. And what a solemn fact is this immortality of ours! A hundred years hence no one of us will be still in the body: we shall have passed to another sphere of being. But if the imagination can take in these vast tracts of time, ten millions years hence we shall still exist, each one with his memory, will, and conscious contact, separate from all other beings in our eternal resting place.

II. WHAT CHRISTS WORDS DO MEAN. Clearly something is meant by Life which is higher than mere existence; not merely beyond animal existence, but beyond the mere existence of a spiritual being. We English use life in the sense of an existence which has a purpose and makes the most of itself. And the Greeks had an especial word to describe the true life of man, his highest spiritual energy. This is the word employed by our Lord and by St. Paul. This enrichment and elevation of being is derived from our Lord. He is the Author of our new life, just as our first parent is the source of our first and natural existence. On this account St. Paul calls Him the Second Adam. And, in point of fact, He is the parent of a race of spiritual men who push human life to its highest capacities of excellence. When our Lord was upon earth He communicated His Life to men, by coming in contact with them. Men felt the contagion of a presence, the influence of which they could not measure, a presence from which there radiated a subtle, mysterious energy, which was gradually taking possession of them they knew not exactly how, and making them begin to live a new and higher life. What that result was upon four men of very different types of character we may gather from the reports of the Life of Christ which are given us by the evangelists. But at last He died, and arose and disappeared from sight. And it is of this after time that He says, Because I live, ye shall live also. How does He communicate His life when the creative stimulus of His visible Presence has been withdrawn?

1. By His Spirit. That Divine and Personal force, whereby the mind and nature of the unseen Saviour is poured into the hearts and minds and characters of men, was to be the Lord and Giver of this life to the end of Joh_16:14; Rom_8:9; 2Co_5:17).

2. By the Christian sacraments, the guaranteed points of contact with our unseen Saviour; for in them we may certainly meet Him and be invigorated by Him as we toil along the road of our pilgrimage.

Conclusion:

1. It is this new life which makes it a blessing to have the prospect before us that we shall individually exist forever.

2. Our immortality is certain. But what sort of immortality is it to be? (Canon Liddon.)

Life in Christ

I. LIFE. We must not confound this with existence. Before the disciples believed in Jesus they existed, and altogether apart from Him as their spiritual life their existence would have been continued. Life, what is it? We cannot tell in words. We know it, however, to be a mystery of different degrees. There is the life of the vegetable. There is a considerable advance when we come to animal life. Sensation, appetite, instinct, are things to which plants are dead. Then there is mental life, which introduces us into quite another realm. To judge, to foresee, to imagine, to invent, to perform moral acts, are not these functions which the ox hath not? Now, far above this there is another form of life of which the mere carnal man can form no more idea than the plant can of the animal, or the animal of the poet. Education cannot raise man into it, neither can refinement reach it; for at its best, that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and to all must the humbling truth be spoken, Ye must be born again. It is to be remarked concerning our life in Christ, that it is

1. The removal of the penalty which fell upon our race for Adams sin.

2. Spiritual life. Christ works in us through His Holy Spirit, who dwelleth in us evermore.

3. A life in union with God (Rom_8:6-8). Death as to the body consists in its separation from the soul; the death of the soul lies mainly in the souls being separated from its God.

4. This life bears fruit on earth in righteousness and true holiness, and it is made perfect in the presence of God in heaven.

II. LIFE PRESERVED. Ye shall live also. Concerning this sentence, note

1. Its fulness. Whatever is meant by living shall be ours. All the degree of life which is secured in the covenant of grace, believers shall have. All your new nature shall thoroughly, eternally live. Not even, in part, shall the new man die. I am come, saith Christ, that ye might have life, and have it more abundantly.

2. Its continuance. During our abode in this body we shall live. And when the natural death comes, which indeed to us is no longer death, our inner life shall suffer no hurt whatever; it will not even be suspended for a moment. And in the awful future, when the judgment comes, the begotten of God shall live. Onward through eternity, whatever may be the changes which yet are to be disclosed, nothing shall affect our God-given life.

3. Its universality. Every child of God shall live. The Lord bestows security upon the least of His people as well as upon the greatest. If it had been said, Because your faith is strong, ye shall live, then weak faith would have perished; but when it is written, Because I live, the argument is as powerful in the one case as in the other.

4. Its breadth. See how it overturns all the hopes of the adversary. You shall not be decoyed by fair temptation, nor be cowed by fierce persecution: mightier is he that is in you than he which is in the world. Satan will attack you, and his weapons are deadly, but you shall foil him at all points. If God should allow you to be sorely tried your spirit shall still maintain its holy life, and you shall prove it so by blessing and magnifying God, notwithstanding all. We little dream what may be reserved for us; we may have to climb steeps of prosperity, slippery and dangerous, but we shall live; we may be called to sink in the dark waters of adversity, but we shall live. If old age shall be our portion, and our crown shall be delayed till we have fought a long and weary battle, yet nevertheless we shall live; or if sudden death should cut short the time of our trail here, yet we shall have lived in the fulness of that word.

III. THE REASON FOR THE SECURITY OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. Because I live.

1. This is the sole reason. When I first come to Christ, I know I must find all in Him, for I feel I have nothing of my own; but all my life long I am to acknowledge the same absolute dependence. Does not the Christians life depend upon his prayerfulness? The Christians spiritual health depends upon his prayerfulness, but that prayerfulness depends on something else. The reason why the hands of the clock move may be found first in a certain wheel which operates upon them, but if you go to the primary cause of all, you reach the mainspring, or the weight, which is the source of all the motion. But are not good works essential to the maintenance of the spiritual life? Certainly, if there be no good works, we have no evidence of spiritual life. To the tree the fruit is not the cause of life, but the result of it, and to the life of the Christian, good works bear the same relationship, they are its outgrowth, not its root.

2. It is a sufficient reason, for

(1) Christs life is a proof that His work has accomplished the redemption of His people.

(2) He is the representative of those for whom He is the Federal Head. Shall the representative live, and yet those represented die?

(3) He is the surety for His people, under bonds and pledges to bring His redeemed safely home.

(4) We who have spiritual life are one with Christ Jesus. Jesus is the head of the mystical body, they are the members. What were the head without the body?

3. An abiding reason--which has as much force at one time as another. From causes variable the effects are variable; but remaining causes produce permanent effects. Now Jesus always lives.

4. A most instructive reason. It instructs us to admire

(1) The condescension of Christ.

(2) To be abundantly grateful.

(3) To keep up close communion with Christ. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Fellowship in Christs life

These words strikingly resemble the declaration of our Lord to John in Patmos (Rev_1:17-18).

I. THE LIFE OF CHRIST. I live.

1. Our Lord, as a Divine Person, is possessed of independent, infinite, immutable, eternal life; that is, capacity of action and enjoyment. In Him--was, is, and ever will be, the fountain of life (Joh_1:4; 1Jn Psa_36:9).

2. It is not, however, to this life that reference is made. That is a life in which none can participate beyond the sacred circle of Deity. The life is the life which belongs to the Son, as God-man, Mediator; and it refers to this life in its state of full development, after His resurrection.

3. He had lived the life of a man in union with God while He was on the earth--of the God-man, commissioned to give life--and many and striking were the demonstrations that He gave of His possession of this life. But, till sin was expiated, this life could not be fully developed nor displayed. That death in the flesh, which was the bearing away of the sins of men, was the procuring cause of that quickening in the Spirit which followed.

4. It is, however, to the new development of life which accompanied and followed the resurrection that our Lord refers. I am alive again, I have the keys of hell and of death. His life is royal life--the life of the King of kings and Lord of lords (Psa_21:1-7; Isa_53:10).

II. THE LIFE OF CHRISTS PEOPLE. Ye shall live also.

1. Christ rose as the first fruits of them that sleep in Him, the first born of the chosen family, their representative and forerunner.

2. Christians are, by faith, so identified with Jesus Christ as to be partakers with Him of that life on which He entered, when, being raised from the dead, He sat down forever on the right hand of the Majesty on high. They reign in life with Him--in Him (Rom_5:17; Rom_6:8-11; Eph_2:5-6; Col_3:1-4; Gal_2:19-20). This life is

(1) One of holy activity and enjoyment.

(2) Immortal.

(3) Incomplete now, but destined to be complete at the

Resurrection. We shall be like Him.

III. THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE TWO. Because

1. His life proves that He has done all that is necessary in order to secure life for them. Had He not succeeded in doing this He Himself would not thus have lived. His resurrection and celestial life are undoubted proofs that the sentence adjudging us to death was repealed, and the influence that was necessary to make us live was sent forth. So were we not to live, the great end for which He died and rose would be frustrated.

2. His life shows that He possesses all that is necessary to bestow life on His people. The Father hath given to Him to have life in Himself; so that He quickeneth whom He will. It has pleased the Father, that in Him all fulness should dwell, that out of His fulness His people may receive, and grace for grace.

Conclusion:

1. This truth is calculated to sustain and comfort Christians amid all the sufferings, and anxieties, and sorrows of life and death. He can give power to the faint, and to them that have no power He increaseth strength. He can strengthen the things that remain, and are ready to die.

2. When our nearest and dearest are taken from us, how consoling to think the great God our Saviour lives! He is still their life, still our life. Because He died, we live; because He lives, we live; because He lives--because He is the living One--we shall live also! Happy, surely, are the living disciples of the living Saviour! Happy in prosperity--happy in adversity--happy in life--happy in death--happy forever!

3. But the Saviours unending life is full of terror to His enemies because He ever lives. Because I live, you must perish forever. They would not come to Him that they might have life.

4. He is still proclaiming, As I live, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked. I will that they would turn--I will that they would live. (J. Brown, D. D.)

The Christians life force

Christ is the basis of

I. PHYSICAL LIFE. He is the Creator, and the life of Adam and Eve after the fall depended entirely on the promise of the Redeemer. His advent postulated the continuance of the race. The birth of the first child was a prelude to the gospel. It may be that Eve saw in the birth of Cain the fulfilment of the promise, for she said, I have borne the seed, a man, the Lord.

II. THE RENEWED LIFE. The plan of redemption depends upon His incarnation and atonement. There is no spiritual life on earth apart from Him. The fact that there are millions of Christians who live by faith in Him under the dispensation of the Spirit, proves the reality of His life, of its continuance and power. Because He lives, we live, and our life is hid with Christ in God.

III. THE RISEN LIFE in glory, to all eternity. Because He continues to live, His disciples shall continue to live also. When Christ, who is our Life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory. Reflections:

(1) Apart from Christ, the Christian can do nothing.

(2) The fact that Jesus continues to live, is the assurance that all who believe in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

(3) How great will appear at last the guilt of those who reject Christ, when they shall learn that even their bodily life has depended upon Him, and that, being destitute of His Spirit, they are none of His. (L. O. Thompson.)

The believers life

Because I live, ye shall live also. What life is it that Christ speaks of when He here says, I live? It is the life which He now has in heaven, and which began at the Resurrection. It is different from all other life, higher and better than any life with which we are acquainted. It is everlasting life; He has done with death. It is a life of liberty; He has done with servile work, and now reigns on high. It is a life of glory; He has done with shame, and has a name that is above every name. It is a life of favour; He is now very near and very dear to God forever. He never slumbers nor sleeps; He has all power in heaven and on earth; He is Head over all things to the Church. But what is the believers life of which Christ speaks, when He says, Ye shall live also. It is the same as Christs own life, of which we have been speaking. It springs out of His life, and is fed and maintained by it. True, the believers natural life is like that of all other men: one of sin, misery, without God, without hope under wrath, on the way to everlasting woe. It is not worthy of the name of life; it is properly death. But this natural life loses its power and dominion when we believe on Christ. It received its death-blow on the cross. Hence the apostle says, Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God; and the believer answers, I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live. At present this higher life is only in its infancy. It is hindered by its connection with the old life, by the circumstances in which it is placed by its absence from Christ its Fountain. The life of the believer is the same in nature as Christs; the same in duration. It is the same in the reason for which it is bestowed. Christ got it, because He wrought out the perfect, everlasting righteousness; we get it, because by faith we have received that righteousness. It is the same in its origin. It began in Christ, when God wrought in Him by His mighty power, to raise Him from the dead. It begins in us by the working of the same mighty power. But what assurance have we that this life of Christ will always continue to be imparted to His people? This springs from the relation which He holds to them. He is their Surety, Representative, Covenant Head. (John Milne.)

The continued life of Christ the ground of our hope

Christ lives

I. IN ALL THE STRENGTH AND TENDERNESS OF HIS AFFECTIONS. A heart which bore the agony, shame, desertion of His disciples must be always warm towards those whose salvation He seeks.

II. IS HIS ABILITY TO HELP TO THE UTMOST. All power is given unto Me Eph_1:20-22). He ever liveth to make intercession.

III. IN A SPECIAL MANNER WITH THE BELIEVER. I am the Bread of Life; I am the Vine, ye are the branches. The Church is His bride. How can we famish or die?

IV. TO DESTROY ALL POWER THAT IS OPPOSED TO MANS REDEMPTION. (Ray Palmer, D. D.)

The living Church

1. The life of the Church of Christ is its most distinctive and glorious characteristic. It has changed its forms, varied its circumstances, altered its doctrines, but has maintained in every period of its history its inward life. If justification is the article of a standing or a falling Church, regeneration, or life by the Holy Spirit, is the article of a living or a dead Church.

2. This life is communicated, not by anything that is outward, but entirely by the Holy Spirit of God. The patronage of princes may make a rich or a renowned Church. Eloquence and orthodoxy may make a convinced or an enlightened, but they cannot make a living Church.

I. THE EVIDENCES OF THIS LIFE. It is easy to ascertain if a man be dead or living physically; and it is not difficult to ascertain if a man be living or dead spiritually.

1. Life is an internal principle originating outward and visible characteristics. We know not what life is. All that we know is, that there is some principle within that looks through the eye, that hears through the ear, that feels through the touch, that enables me to walk, to speak, and to hold converse with society around me. Now it is so with spiritual life.

2. Life has the power of assimilation. H a man eats a piece of bread, that bread is so assimilated that it is turned into the energy of his physical system. And this spiritual life lays hold upon all the elements of nutriment, as these are laid up in Christ, found in the oracles of truth, and at the communion table.

3. Life is sensible of pain. A dead man does not feel. What pain is to the body, sin is to the spiritual life; and just as our nervous system shrinks from the very touch or contact of pain, so the soul that is in unison with God shrinks from sin as its greatest evil, and the immediate source of all misery.

4. Wherever there is life, we find it has within itself the power of adaptation to varied temperature. Man lives at the Pole, as he lives below the Line. And if there be life in mans soul, that life will adjust itself; will not be conquered by, but will conquer its circumstances. Place the Christian in the palace with Pharaoh, or in the dungeon with Joseph, and he can breathe the atmosphere of the one just as he can the other.

5. Life is progressive, and Spiritual life grows in likeness to Christ. Its progress is illimitable, because the principle itself is infinite.

6. Life is communicative. The proof that a man is no Christian is, that he is no missionary. Monopoly is a word banished from the religion of heaven. The Christian cannot see pain he does not wish to alleviate; ignorance he does not wish to enlighten; death in trespasses and sins to which he would not communicate a portion of his own spiritual life.

II. THERE ARE CERTAIN POINTS TO WHICH THIS LIFE SPECIALLY REFERS. A Christian is alive

1. To the presence of God. Thou God seest me is the constant feeling of the Christian.

2. To the favour of God. Who will show us any good? is the question with the worldling; but the Christian says, Lift Thou upon us the light of Thy countenance.

3. To the glory of God. We are prone to think that Christianity is a thing for the Bible, for the Sunday, for the Church merely. But it is meant to be like the great principle of gravitation which controls the planet and the pebble. When you transact business you are bound to do it to the glory of God. In your homes, whether your tables be covered with all the luxuries, or merely with the necessaries of life, ye are to do all to the glory of God.

III. THIS LIFE HAS CERTAIN SPECIAL CHARACTERISTICS. It is

1. A holy life. If there be Gods life in mans heart, there must be Gods holiness in mans conduct.

2. A happy life. Joy is one of the fruits it bears.

3. A royal life. He has made us kings and priests unto God. We are a royal priesthood.

4. An immortal life. All systems, hierarchies, and empires shall be dissolved; but the man that has the life of God in his heart has the immortality of God as his prerogative. Conclusion: The history of the Church that has possessed this vital principle has been throughout a very painful but a very triumphant one. That vitality must be a reality since nothing has been ever able to extinguish or destroy it. Systems that chime in with the fallen propensities of man have sunk before rival systems; but Christianity, which rebukes mans pride, which bridles mans lusts, which rebukes mans sins, has outlived all persecution, survived all curse, and seems to commence in the nineteenth century, a career that shall be bounded only by the limits of the population of the globe itself. Is not this evidence of a Divine presence--of a Divine power? Let me make one or two inferences.

This life is

1. The true secret and source of ministerial success.

2. The source of all missionary effort.

3. The true distinction between the Church and the world.

4. The true safety of the Church.

5. The great want of the Church today. (J. Cumming, D. D.)

Immortality as taught by the Christ

1. Science may throw no barrier in the way of belief in immortality; nature and the heart of man may suggest clear intimations of a future life; human society may demand another life to complete the suggestions and fill up the lacks of this; but, for some reason, all such proof fails to satisfy us. It holds the mind, but does not minister to the heart.

2. It is noticeable also that the faith of natural evidence awakens no joyful enthusiasm in masses of mankind. Plato and Cicero discourse of immortality with a certain degree of warmth, but their countrymen get little comfort from it. The reason is evident. The mere fact that I shall live tomorrow does not sensibly move me. Something must be joined with existence before it gets power.

3. We will now consider the way in which Christ treated the subject.

I. HE ASSUMED THE RECEIVED DOCTRINE AND BUILT UPON IT. When He entered on His ministry He found certain imperfect or germinal truths existing in Jewish theology. He found a doctrine of God, partial in conception; He perfected it by revealing the Divine Fatherhood. He found a doctrine of sin and righteousness turning upon external conduct; He transferred it to the heart and spirit. He found a doctrine of immortality, held as mere future existence. His treatment of this doctrine was not so much corrective as accretive. Hence He never uses any word corresponding to immortality (which is a mere negation--unmortal), but always speaks of life. He never makes a straight assertion of it except once, when the Sadducees pressed Him with a quibbling argument against the resurrection. Elsewhere He simply assumes it. But an assumption is often the strongest kind of argument. It implies such conviction in the mind of the speaker that there is no need of proof.

II. IN HIS MIND THE INTENSE AND ABSOLUTE CONSCIOUSNESS OF GOD CARRIES WITH IT IMMORTALITY, AS IT DOES THE WHOLE BODY OF HIS TRUTH. Within this universe, at its centre, is world around which all others revolve, the sun of suns, the centre of all systems, whose potency reaches to the uttermost verge, holding them steady to their courses. It is not otherwise in morals. Given the fact of God, and all other truth takes its place without question. Hence, when there is an overpowering, all-possessing sense of God as there was in Christ, truth takes on absolute forms; hence it was that He spoke with authority. It was Christs realization of the living God that rendered His conviction of eternal life so absolute. We can but notice how grandly Christ reposed upon this fact of immortal life. He feels no need of examining the evidences or balancing proofs. He stands steadily upon life, life endless by its own Divine nature. Death was no leap in the dark to Him; it was simply a door leading into another mansion of Gods great house. It is proper to ask here, Is it probable that Christ was mistaken? That His faith in immortality was but an intense form of a prevailing superstition? If we could find any weakness elsewhere in His teachings, there would be ground for such questions. But as a moral teacher He stands at the head, unimpeachable in the minutest particular. Is it probable that, true in all else, He was in fault in this one respect? That a body of truth all interwoven and suffused with life is based upon an illusion of life? If one tells me ninety-nine truths, I will trust him in the hundredth, especially if it is involved in those before. Build me a column perfect in base and body, and I will know if the capital is true. When the clearest eyes that ever looked on this world and into the heavens, and the keenest judgment that ever weighed human life, and the purest heart that ever throbbed with human sympathy, tells me that man is immortal, I repose on His teaching in perfect trust. It is reason to see with the wise, and to feel with the good. Still another distinction must be made; we do not accept immortality because Jesus, the wise young Jew, wove it into His precepts, but because the Christ, the Son of God and of man--Humanity revealing Deity--makes it a part of that order of human history best named as the reconciliation of the world to God.

III. HE DOES NOT THINK OF IT AS A FUTURE, BUT AS A PRESENT FACT. As time in the Divine mind is an eternal now, so it seems to have been with Christ. If the cup of life is full, there is little sense of past or future; the present is enough. When Christ speaks of eternal life, He does not mean future endless existence; but fullness or perfection of life. That it will go on forever is a matter of course, but it is not the important feature of the truth.

IV. And thus we are brought to the fundamental fact that HE CONNECTED LIFE OR IMMORTALITY WITH CHARACTER. Life, as mere continuance of being, is not worth thinking about. Of what value is the mere adding of days to days if they are full of sin? Practically such life is death, and so He names it. There can be no real and abiding faith in immortality until it becomes wedded to the spiritual nature. When life begins to be true, it announces itself as an eternal thing to the mind; as a caged bird when let loose into the sky might say, Now I know that my wings are made to beat the air in flight; and no logic could ever persuade the bird that it was not designed to fly; but when caged, it might have doubted at times, as it beat the bars of its prison with unavailing stroke, if its wings were made for flight. So it is not until a man begins to use his soul aright that he knows for what it is made. When he puts his life into harmony with Gods laws; when he begins to pray; when he clothes himself with the graces of Christian faith and conduct, when he begins to live unto his spiritual nature, he begins to realize what life is--a reality that death and time cannot touch. But when his life is made up of the world, it is not strange that it should seem to himself as liable to perish with the world. Those who believe have everlasting life. Others may exist, but existence is not life. Others may continue to exist, but continuance is not immortality. To lift men out of existence into life was Christs mission.

V. He not only gave us the true law, BUT WAS HIMSELF A PERFECT ILLUSTRATION OF IMMORTALITY, and even named Himself by it--the Life. It is a great thing for us that this truth has been put into actual fact. Human nature is crowded with hints and omens of it, but prophecy does not convince till it is fulfilled. And from the Divine side also we get assurances of endless life; but in so hard a matter we are like Thomas, who needed the sight and touch to assure him. And in Christ we have both--the human omen and the Divine promise turned into fact. In some of the cathedrals of Europe, on Christmas eve, two small lights, typifying the Divine and human nature, are gradually made to approach one another until they meet and blend, forming a bright flame. Thus, in Christ, we have the light of two worlds thrown upon human destiny. The whole bearing of Christ towards death, and His treatment of it, was as one superior to it, and as having no lot nor part in it. He will indeed bow his head in obedience to the physical laws of the humanity He shares, but already He enters the gates of Paradise, not alone but leading a penitent child of humanity by the hand. And in order that we may know He simply changed worlds, He comes back and shows Himself alive; for He is not here in the world simply to assert truth, but to enact it. And still further to show us how phantasmal death is, He finally departs in all the fullness of life, simply drawing about Himself the thin drapery of a cloud. Conclusion: A true and satisfying sense of immortality cannot be taken second hand. We cannot read it in the pages of a book, whether of nature or inspiration. We cannot even look upon the man Jesus issuing from the tomb, and draw from thence a faith that yields peace. There must be fellowship with the Christ of the Resurrection before we can feel its power; in other words, we must get over upon the Divine side of life before we can be assured of eternal life. Join thyself, says Augustine, to the eternal God, and thou wilt be eternal. (T. T. Munger.)

Living because Christ lives

When Luther was in his worst troubles a friend came in to see him, and he noticed that he had written upon the wall in big letters the word Vivit! He inquired of Luther what he meant by vivit? Luther answered, Jesus lives; and if He did not live I would not care to live an hour. Yes, our life is bound up with that of Jesus. We are called upon to live of ourselves, that would be death; but we have life and all things in union with Him. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Joh 14:18-24. I will not leave you comfortless — Greek, ορφανους, orphans: a word elegantly applied to those who have lost any dear friend; I will come to you — By my spiritual presence. The Greek, ερχομαι, is literally, I come to you; for what was certainly and speedily to be, our Lord speaks of as if it were already. Yet a little while and the world — Which only sees by bodily eyes; seeth me no more — In the sense it has done for some time past, though it knows me not; but ye see me — That is, ye certainly shall see me; for, after I have done conversing with the world, I will appear again to you, and give you distinguishing marks of my regard for you; because I live, ye shall live also — Because I am the living One, in my divine nature, and shall rise again in my human nature, and live for ever in heaven; therefore, ye shall live the life of faith and love on earth, and hereafter the life of glory. At that day — When I fulfil this promise to you; when ye see me after my resurrection; but more eminently at the day of pentecost, Joh 14:21. He that hath my commandments — Written in his heart; and keepeth them — Makes them the continual rule of his conduct; he it is that loveth me — And none else have any title to this character, whatever specious pretences they may make to it. And he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father — With a peculiar love, a love of approbation and delight; and I will love him — In an especial manner; and will manifest myself to him — More abundantly. Judas saith — Being much surprised to hear our Lord speak as he had done; not Judas Iscariot — For he, as it was said before, was gone out before our Lord began this discourse; but another apostle of that name, who was also called Thaddeus and Lebbeus, the son of Alpheus, and the brother of James the less. This Judas, upon hearing Christ express himself in such a way, said, Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself to us, &c. — Dost thou not intend to make a public appearance, which will be obvious to the eyes of all? For, according to the notions they had conceived of the Messiah, he was to appear unto all the Jews, nay, to the whole world, and was to take unto himself universal empire. Jesus answered, If a man love me — It may be sufficient to tell you, that, as I said before, (Joh 14:21,) If a man, in deed and in truth, love me, he will keep my words, in an humble, obedient, and conscientious manner; and my Father will love him — Will still more approve of, and take complacency in him, for the more any one loves and obeys God, the more God will love him; and we will come unto him — By still larger communications of the Spirit of truth wisdom, holiness, and comfort; and make our abode with him — Continually. If our Lord had been a mere creature, though of the highest rank, it would have been blasphemy in him to have joined himself in this manner with God. This promise implies such a large manifestation of the divine presence and love as far exceeds the former, given when a person is justified and first obtains peace with God. He that loveth me not — Though he may profess to do it; keepeth not my sayings — With any constancy and resolution, and thereby shows that his professions of loving me are not sincere; and, therefore, he must expect no such spiritual and eternal blessings, whatever outward privileges he may enjoy. See to it, therefore, that you diligently hearken and attend to what I say; for the word which ye hear me speak is not mine — Originally or merely; but the Father’s which sent me — Who has particularly given it in charge to me, that I should thus insist on practical and universal holiness as one great end of my appearance.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John

THE ABSENT PRESENT CHRIST

Joh 14:18 - Joh 14:19.

The sweet and gracious comfortings with which Christ had been soothing the disciples’ fears went very deep, but hitherto they had not gone deep enough. It was much that they should know the purpose of His going, whither He went, and that they had an interest in His departure. It was much that they should have before them the prospect of reunion; much that they should know that all through His absence He would be working in them, and that they should be assured that, absent, He would send them a great gift. But reunion, influence from afar, and gifts from the other side of the gulf were not all that their hearts needed. And so here our Lord gives yet more, in the paradoxes that, absent He will be present, unseen visible, and dying will be for them for ever, living and life-giving. These great thoughts go to the centre of their needs and of ours; and on them I now touch briefly.

There are then in the words I have read, though they be but a fragment of a closely-linked-together context, these three great thoughts: the absent Christ the present Christ; the unseen Christ the seen Christ; the Christ who dies the living and life-giving Christ. Let us look at these as they stand.

I. First, then, the absent Christ is the present Christ.

‘I will not leave you comfortless,’ or, as the Revised Version has it, ‘desolate-I come to you.’ Now, most of us know, I suppose, that the literal meaning of the word rendered ‘comfortless,’ or ‘desolate,’ is ‘orphans.’ But that is rather an unusual form in which to represent the relation between our Lord and His disciples, and so, possibly, our versions are accurate in giving the general idea of desolation rather than the specific idea conveyed directly by the word. But still it is to be remembered that this whole conversation begins with ‘Little children’; and there seems to be no strong reason for suppressing the literal meaning of the word, if only it be remembered that it is employed not so much to define Christ’s relation to his brethren as to describe the comfortless and helpless condition of that little group when left by Him. They would be like fatherless and motherless children in a cold world. And what is to hinder that? One thing only. ‘I come to you.’ ‘Then, and only then, will you cease to be desolate and orphans. My presence will change everything and turn winter into glorious summer.’

Now, what is this ‘coming’? It is to be observed that our Lord says, not ‘I will,’ as a future, but ‘I come,’ or ‘I am coming,’ as an immediately impending, and, we may almost say, present, thing. There can be no reference in the word to that final coming to judgment which lies so far ahead; because, if there were, then there would follow from the text, that, until that period, all that love Him here upon earth are to wander about as orphans, desolate and forsaken; and that certainly can never be. So that we have to recognise here the promise of a coming which is contemporaneous with His absence, and which is, in fact, but the reverse side of His bodily absence.

It is true about Him that He ‘departs from’ His people in bodily form ‘for a season, that they may receive Him’ in a better form ‘for ever.’ This, then, is the heart and centre of the consolation here, that howsoever the external presence may be withdrawn, and the ‘foolish senses’ may have to speak of an absent Christ, we may rejoice in the certainty that He is with all those that love Him, and all the more with them because of the very withdrawal of the earthly manifestation which has served its purpose, and now is laid aside as an impediment rather than as a help to the full communion. We confound bodily with real. The bodily presence is at an end; the real presence lasts for ever.

I do not need to insist, I suppose, upon the manifest implication of absolute divinity which lies in such words as these. ‘I come.’ ‘Being absent, I am present in all generations. I am present with every single heart.’ That is equivalent to the Omnipresence of deity; that is equivalent to or implies the undying existence of the divine nature, and He that says, when He is leaving earth and withdrawing the sweetness of His visible form from the eyes of men, ‘I come,’ in the very act of going, ‘and I am with you always, with all of you to the end of the ages,’ can be no less than God, manifest in the flesh for a time, and present in the Spirit with His children for ever.

I cannot but think that the average Christian life of this day wofully fails in the simple, conscious realisation of this great truth, and that we are all far too little living in the calm, happy, strengthening assurance that we are never alone, but have Jesus Christ with each of us more closely, more truly, in a more available fashion, and with more omnipotence of influence, than they had who were nearest Him during the days that He lived upon earth.

Oh, brethren! if we really believed, not as an article of our creed which has become so familiar to us that it produces little impression upon us, but as a vital and ever-present conviction of our souls, that with us there was ever the real presence of the real Christ, how all burdens and cares would be lightened, how all perplexities would begin to smooth themselves out and be straightened, how all the force would be sucked out of temptations, and how sorrows and joys and all things would be changed in their aspect by that one conviction intensely realised and constantly with us! A present Christ is the Strength, the Righteousness, the Peace, the Joy, and as we shall see, in the most literal sense, the Life of every Christian soul.

Then, note, further, that this coming of our Lord is identified with that of His divine Spirit. He has been speaking of sending that ‘other Comforter,’ but though He be Another, He is yet so indissolubly united with Him who sends as that the coming of the Spirit is the coming of Jesus. He is no gift wafted to us as from the other side of a gulf, but by reason of the unity of the Godhead and the divinity of the sent Spirit, Jesus Christ and the Spirit whom He sends are inseparable though separate, and so indissolubly united that where the Spirit is, there is Christ, and where Christ is, there is the Spirit. These are amongst the deep things which the disciples were ‘not able to carry’ at that stage of their development, and which waited for a further explanation. Enough for them and enough for us, to know that we have Christ in the Spirit and the Spirit in Christ; and to remember ‘that if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.’

We stand here on the margin of a shoreless and fathomless sea; and for my part I venture to think that the men who talk about the incredibilities and the contradictions of the orthodox faith would show themselves a little wiser if they were more conscious of the limitation of human faculty, and remembered that to pronounce upon contradictions in the doctrine of the divine Nature implies that the pronouncer stands above and goes round about the whole of that nature. So, for my part, abjuring omniscience and the comprehension of Deity, I accept the statement that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit come together and dwell in the heart.

Then, note, further, that this present Christ is the only Remedy for the orphanhood of the world. The words had a tender and pathetic reference to that little, bewildered group of followers, deprived of their Guide, their Teacher, and their Companion. He who had been as eyes to their weak vision, and Counsellor and Inspirer and everything for three blessed years, was going away to leave them unsheltered to the storm, and we can understand how forlorn and terrified they were, when they looked forward to fronting the things that must come to them, without His presence. Therefore He cheers them with the assurance that they will not be left without Him, but that, present still, just because He is absent, He will be all that He ever had been to them.

And the promise was fulfilled. How did that dis-spirited group of cowardly men ever pluck up courage to hold together at all after the Crucifixion? Why was it that they did not follow the example of John’s disciples, and dissolve and disappear; and say, ‘The game is up. It is no use holding together any longer’? The process of separation began on the very day of the Crucifixion. Only one thing could have stopped it, and that is the Resurrection and the presence with His Church of the risen Christ in His power and in all the fullness of His gifts. If it had not been that He came to them, they would have disappeared, and Christianity would have been one more of the abortive sects forgotten in Judaism. But, as it is, the whole of the New Testament after Pentecost is aflame with the consciousness of a present Christ, working amongst His people. And although it be true that, in one aspect, we are absent from the Lord when we are present with the body, in another aspect, and an infinitely higher one, it is true that the strength of the Christian life of Apostles and martyrs was this, the assurance that Christ Himself-no mere rhetorical metaphor for His influence or His example, or His memory lingering in their imaginations, but the veritable Christ Himself-was present with them, to strengthen and to bless.

That same conviction you and I must have, if the world is not to be a desert and a dreary place for us. In a very profound sense it is true that if you take away Jesus Christ, the elder Brother, who alone reveals to men the Father, we are all orphans, fatherless children, who look up into an empty heaven and see nothing there. It is only Christ who reveals to us the Father and makes our happy hearts feel that we are of His children. And in the wider sense of the word ‘orphans,’ is not life a desolation without Him? Hollow joys, fleeting blessednesses, roses whose thorns last long after the petals have dropped, real sorrows, shows and shams, bitternesses and disappointments-are not these our life, in so far as Christ has been driven out of it? Oh! there is only one thing that saves us from being as desolate, fatherless children, groping in the dark for the lost Father’s hand, and dying for want of it, and that is that the Christ Himself shall come to us and be with us.

II. The unseen Christ is a seen Christ.

It is clear that the period referred to in the second clause of our text is the same as that referred to in the first, that ‘yet a little while’ covers the whole space up to His Ascension; and that if there be any reference at all to the forty days of His earthly life, during which literally, the work ‘saw Him no more,’ but the Apostles ‘saw Him,’ that reference is only secondary. These transitory appearances are not of sufficient moment or duration to bear the weight of so great a promise as this. The vision, which is the consequence of the coming, has the same extension in time as the coming-that is to say, it is continuous and permanent. We must read here the great promise of a perpetual vision of the present Christ.

It is clear, too, that the word ‘see’ is employed in these two clauses in two different senses. In the former it refers only to bodily sight, in the latter to spiritual perception. For a few short hours still, the ungodly mass of men were to have that outward vision which might have been so much to them, but which they had used so badly that ‘they seeing saw not.’ It was to cease, and they who loved Him would not miss it when it did; but the withdrawal which hid Him from sense and sense-bound souls would reveal Him more clearly to His friends. They, too, had but dimly seen Him while He stood by them; they would gaze on Him with truer insight when He was present though absent.

So this is what every Christian life may and should be-the continual sight of a continually-present Christ. It is His part to come. It is ours to see, to be conscious of Him who does come.

Faith is the sight of the soul, and it is far better than the sight of the senses. It is more direct. My eye does not touch what I look at. Gulfs of millions of miles may lie between me and it. But my faith is not only eye, but hand, and not only beholds, but grasps, and comes into contact with that to which it is directed. It is far more clear. Sense may deceive; faith, built upon His Word, cannot deceive. Its information is far more certain, far more valid. I have better reason for believing in Jesus Christ than I have for believing in the things that I touch and handle. So that there is no need for men to say, ‘Oh, if we had only seen Him with our eyes!’ You would very likely not have known Him if you had. There is no reason for thinking that the Church has retrograded in its privileges, because it has to love instead of beholding, and to believe instead of touching. That is advance, and we are better than they, inasmuch as the blessing of those ‘who have not seen, and yet have believed,’ comes down upon our heads. The vision of Christ which is granted to the faithful soul is better and not worse, more and not less, other in kind indeed, but loftier in degree too, than that which was granted to the men who saw Him upon earth. Sense disturbs, faith alone beholds.

‘The world seeth Me no more.’ Why? Because it is a world. ‘Ye see Me.’ Why? Because, and in the measure in which you have turned away your eyes from seeing vanity. If you want the eye of the soul to be opened, you must shut the eye of sense. And the more we turn away from looking at the dazzling lies with which time and the material universe befool and bewilder us, the more shall we see Him whom to see is to live for ever.

Oh, brethren! does that strong word ‘see’ in any measure express the vividness, the directness, the certainty of our realisation of our Master’s presence? Is Jesus Christ as clear, as perceptible, as sure to us as the men round us are? Which are the shadows and which are the realities to us? The things which are seen, which the senses crown as ‘real,’ or the things which cannot be seen because they are so great, and tower above us, invisible in their eternity? Which world are our eyes most open to, the world where Christ is, or the world here? Our happy eyes may behold and our blessed hands may handle the Word of Life which was manifested to us. Let us beware that we turn not away from the one thing worthy to be looked at, to gaze upon a desolate and dreary world.

III. Lastly, the present and seen Christ is living and life-giving.

The last words of my text may be connected with the preceding, as the marginal rendering of the Revised Version shows. But it is probably better to take them as standing independently, and presenting another and co-ordinate element of the blessedness arising from the coming of the Christ. Because He comes, His life passes into the hearts of the men to whom He comes, and who gaze upon Him.

Time forbids me to dwell upon that majestic proclamation of His own absolute and divine life, from lips that were so soon to be paled with death. Mark the grand ‘I live’-the timeless present tense, which expresses unbroken, underived, undying, and, as I believe, divine life. It is all but a quotation of the great Old Testament name ‘Jehovah.’ The depth and sweep of its meaning are given to us in this Apostle’s Apocalypse, where Christ is called ‘the living One,’ who lived whilst He died, and having died ‘is alive for evermore.’

And this Christ, coming to all His friends, possessor of the fullness of life in Himself, and proclaiming His absolute possession of that life, even whilst He stands within arm’s-length of Calvary, is Life-giver to all that love Him and trust Him.

We live because He lives. In all senses of the word ‘life,’ as I believe, the life of men is derived from the Christ who is the Agent of creation, the channel from whom life passes from the Godhead into the creatures, and who is also the one means by whom any of us can ever hope to live the better life which is the only true one, and consists in fellowship with God and union to Him.

We shall live as long as He lives, and His being is the pledge and the guarantee of the immortal being of all who love Him. Anything is possible, rather than that it should be credible that a soul, which has drawn spiritual life from Jesus Christ here upon earth, should ever be rent apart from Him by such a miserable and external trifle as the mere dissolution of the bodily frame. As long as Christ lives our life is secure. If the Head has life, the members ‘cannot see corruption,’ ‘Take me not away in the midst of my days: Thy years are throughout all generations’ was the prayer of a saint of old, deeply feeling the contrast of the worshipper’s transiency and God’s eternity, and dimly hoping that the contrast might be changed into likeness. The great promise of our text answers the prayer, and assures us that the worshipper is to live as long as does He whom He adores.

We shall live as He lives, nor ever cease the appropriation of His being until all His life we know, and all its fullness has expanded our natures-and that will be never. Therefore we shall not die.

Men’s lives have been prolonged by the transfusion of blood from vigorous frames. Jesus Christ passes His own blood into our veins and makes us immortal. The Church chose for one of its ancient emblems of the Saviour the pelican, which fed its young, according to the fable, with blood from its own breast. So Christ vitalises us. He in us is our Life.

Brethren, without Jesus Christ we are orphans in a fatherless world. Without Him, our wearied and yet unsatisfied eyes have only trifles and trials and trash to look at. Without Him, we are ‘dead whilst we live.’ He and He only can give us back a Father, and renew in us the spirit of sons. He and only He can satisfy our eyes with the sight which is purity and restfulness and joy. He and He only can breathe life into our death. Oh! let Him do it for you. He comes to us with all these gifts in His hands, for He comes to give us Himself, and in Himself, as ‘in a box where sweets compacted lie,’ are all that lonely hearts and wearied eyes and dead souls can ever need. All are yours if you are Christ’s. All are yours if He is yours. And He is yours if by faith and love you make yourself His and Him your own.

Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

14:18 Jesus had already assured his followers that they would not be spiritual orphans and that he would return to them (14:1-4). While he is away, they will be filled with the Spirit, who will sustain them with his presence (14:12-17).

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Joh 14:18. Οὐκ ἀφήσω, I will not leave) although you fear that I will. Ye shall have joy from Me and from the Father.[351] This is the consolation given to those who were fearing that they should be orphans.—ὑμᾶς, you) O little children: ch. Joh 13:33.—ὀρφανοὺς, orphans [Engl. Vers. loses the force, ‘comfortless’]) The tie of relationship which the disciples had was with Christ, not with the world.—ἔρχομαι, I come) The Present implying the speediness of His coming. I come, after the resurrection; My presence not being done away with after the Ascension, but confirmed by it. Also saith He, I come, not, I return. All His other Comings are rather continuations of His first Coming than repetitions of it. Also He says, in the Present, I come, and presently after, Ye see, and, I live, in Joh 14:19: this is owing to the very vivid realising of the thing as present, which was about to be immediately after, and for certain: Joh 14:27, “Peace I leave (Present) with you, My peace I give,” etc.

[351] Referring to which latter He says, I will not leave you orphans, i.e. Fatherless.—E. and T.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Joh_14:18. Development of the consolatory element in this promised communication of the Spirit, onwards to Joh_14:21.

οὐκ ἀφήσω ὑμ. ὀρφ.] I will not leave you behind, as those who (after my departure) are to be orphans (Joh_14:27; Mar_12:19; Tob_11:2; Sir_6:2; 1Ma_12:41; Soph. Aj. 491; Phil. 484). The expression itself (comp. τεκνία, Joh_13:33) is that of the πατρικὴ εὐσπλαγχνία (Euth. Zigabenus).

ἔρχομαι πρὸς ὑμᾶς] Without mediatory particle (γάρ) in the intensity of the emotional affection. That Jesus means by this coming, i.e. according to the connection coming again (see on Joh_4:16), not the final historical Parousia (Augustine, Beda, Maldonatus, Paulus, Luthardt, Hofmann), is shown by the whole of the following context (quite otherwise, Joh_14:3). See, especially, Joh_14:19, where it is not the world, but the disciples who are to see Him, which is as little appropriate to the Parousia as the ἔτι μικρόν;[150] further, Joh_14:20-21, where spiritual fellowship is spoken of, the knowledge of which cannot first begin with the Parousia, and Joh_14:23, where μονὴν παρʼ αὐτῷ ποιησ. is not in harmony with the idea of the Parousia, since in this the disciples take up their abode with God (Joh_14:3, comp. 2Co_5:8), not God with them, which takes place through the communication of the Spirit. Most of the older expositors refer to the Resurrection of Christ, and to the new union with the Risen One. So Chrysostom, Theophylact, Euth. Zigabenus, Ruperti, Erasmus, Grotius, and many others, and again Kaeuffer, Hilgenfeld, Weiss, and, with a spiritualizing view of the resurrection, Ewald. But opposed to this are Joh_14:20-21; Joh_14:23; Joh_16:16; Joh_16:22-23, expressions all of which equally point to a higher spiritual fellowship,[151] as the οὐκ ἀφ. ὑμ. ὀρφ. also already presupposes a new abiding union. Justly, therefore, have most of the moderns (Lücke, Tholuck, Olshausen, B. Crusius, Frommann, Köstlin, Reuss, Maier, Baeumlein, Godet, Scholten, but also already Calvin and several others) understood by the Paraclete the spiritual coming of Christ, in which He Himself, only in another form of existence, came to the disciples. It is not yet, indeed, the consummation of the reunion; this latter first takes place at the Parousia, and therefore up to that time the state of orphanage still relatively continues, the community seeks its Lord (Joh_13:33), and waits for Him; and believers have to regard themselves as ἐκδημοῦντες ἀπὸ τοῦ κυρίου (2Co_5:6), whose life in Him with God is not yet revealed (Col_3:1-4) (in answer to Luthardts objections). Others explain it in a twofold sense, so that Christ intended His Resurrection, and at the same time His spiritual return. So Luther, Beza, Lampe, Bengel, Kuinoel, De Wette, Brückner, Lange, Ebrard; where De Wette, with this interpretation, assigns the first place to the spiritual thought, as also Hengstenberg. But the bodily ἔρχεσθαι is not indicated at all (as, if so, it would have been, in opposition to the mission of the Paraclete, by the addition of an ἐγὼ αὐτός), and the entire promise of the Paraclete, of which the present passage is an integral part, transports to a time in which the Resurrection of Christ had long passed. Generally, however, to maintain a twofold sense can only be justified by evidence from the connection.

[150] Without ground, 1Jn_2:18, Rev_22:7; Rev_22:12, are appealed to for the setting aside of this shortness of time. How much later were these passages written than our ἔτι μικρόν was spoken!

[151] Which historically took its beginning, not with the appearances of the Risen One, so enigmatic to the disciples themselves, removed and estranged from the old confidential relations, but first with the outpouring of the Spirit. Thence-forward Christ lived in them, and His heart beat in them, and out of them He spake.

OBSERVATION.

That Jesus, according to John, does not speak at all in express terms of His resurrection, but only in allusions like Joh_2:19, Joh_10:17-18, is in entire harmony with the spiritual character of the Gospel, according to which the return of the Paraclete was the principal thing on which the hopes of the disciples had to fix themselves. From death to the δόξα, out of which Jesus had to send the Spirit, the resurrection formed only the transition. But that He also cannot have in reality predicted His resurrection with such definiteness as it is related in the Synoptics, is clear from the whole behaviour of the disciples before and after the occurrence of the resurrection, so that in this point also the preference belongs to the Johannean account. See on Mat_16:21.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Joh 14:18-21 . The third encouragement: that Jesus Himself will come to them and make Himself known to them .

Joh 14:18 . Great as was the promise of this other helper, this spirit of truth, it did not seem to compensate for the departure of Jesus. “Another,” any other, was unable to fill the blank; it was Himself they craved. Therefore He goes on, οὐκ ἀφήσω ὑμᾶς ὀρφανούς · ἔρχομαι πρὸς ὑμᾶς , “I will not abandon you as orphans,” ὀρφανός (orbus) “bereaved,” used of fathers bereft of children (1Th 2:17 , Dionys. Hal., i.); as well as of children bereft of parents. See Elsner. πατρικῆς εὐσπλαγχνίας τὸ ῥῆμα , Euthymius. Cf. Psa 9:14 , ὀρφανῷ σὺ ἦσθα βοηθός . Wetstein quotes Rabbi Akiba as lamenting the death of Rabbi Eleazar, “Vae mihi … quia totam hanc generationem reliquisti orphanam”. The utter helplessness of the disciples without their Master is indicated, ἔρχομαι πρὸς ὑμᾶς . From the absence of ἐγώ it may be gathered that Jesus means to point out not so much that it is He who is coming through the spirit to them, as that His apparent departure is really a nearer approach.

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Vv. 18, 19. “I will not leave you orphans: I come again to you. 19. Yet a little while, and the world shall see me no more; but you shall see me; because I live, you shall live also.”

The term orphans is in harmony with the address my little children (Joh 13:33); it is the language of the dying father. The asyndeton between Joh 14:18 and the preceding verse is sufficient to prove the essential identity of thought between these words and those of Joh 14:16-17. This form, as we have seen, indicates in general a more emphatic affirmation of the thought already expressed. This observation consequently sets aside every other explanation of the words: I come again to you, than that which refers them to the return of Jesus through the Holy Spirit (Joh 14:16-17). This is the explanation of almost all the modern writers (even of Meyer and Luthardt, 2d ed.). Moreover, this explanation is the only possible one, because of the entire following passage, Joh 14:19-23, which can only be the development of the 18th verse (see especially Joh 14:21; Joh 14:23).

Nevertheless, some refer this promise to the appearances of the risen Jesus (Chrysostom, Erasmus, Grotius, Hilgenfeld). Even Weiss joins them, abandoning thus his own explanation of ἔρχομαι, I come, in Joh 14:3. But these appearances had a momentary character and were not a true return of Jesus; comp. the remarkable expression, Luk 24:44 : “while I was yet with you.” The purpose of these appearances was only to establish the faith of the disciples in the resurrection of Jesus, and thereby to prepare for His return in spirit into their hearts, but not to accomplish it. How could these appearances be His return, since His ὑπάγειν, His departure, includes at once His death and His ascension (Joh 14:28, Joh 13:1)? The return must be, therefore, posterior to the latter.

The application of Joh 14:18 to the Parousia (Augustine, Hofmann, Luthardt, 1st ed.) is also impossible; comp. Joh 14:19; Joh 14:23 : in Joh 14:19, the seeing of Jesus again coincides with His disappearance for the world; and according to Joh 14:23, the return to believers is described as purely inward, while of the final coming it is said: “And every eye shall see him.” All that can and must be granted is, that the appearances of the Risen One served to prepare forand render possible His return through the Holy Spirit, and that this spiritual coming of Christ will have its consummation in the coming of the glorified Saviour.

The Spirit is, no doubt, another support in that His action differs from that of Jesus as visible; but His coming is, nevertheless, the return of Jesus Himself. The Spirit is not the substitute for Jesus, as Weiss asserts: otherwise the promise of the Paraclete would answer only imperfectly to the need of the disciples, whose hearts demanded the return of the Master Himself. If then Weiss alleges that the word I come can only denote a personal coming, we say in reply that it is indeed Christ in person whom the Holy Spirit gives to us. As to Joh 16:22, which Weiss also alleges, see on that passage. Tholuck has concluded from the expressionI come, that the Holy Spirit is only the person of Jesus Himself spiritualized, and Reuss affirms that “although the literal exegesis argues for the distinction of persons (between Christ and the Spirit), practical logic refuses to admit it.” He “even hazards the opinion that in the discourses of Jesus the abstract notion of the Word is replaced by the more concrete notion of the Spirit.” John is innocent of such serious confusion. As no writer of the old covenant would have used the terms Spirit of God and Angel of the Lord one for the other, so the confounding of the Word with the Spirit is inadmissible in a writer of the new covenant. No doubt, St. Paul says: “The Lord is the Spirit” (2Co 3:17).

But he does not for this reason confound the person of the glorified Lord with the Holy Spirit. This is a region in which it is of importance to take account of shades of thought. According to Joh 16:14, the Spirit is, not the Lord, but the power which glorifies Him, which makes Him appear, live and grow within us, and that by taking what is His and communicating it to us. The parts of each are perfectly distinct. They are as distinct in the work of Pentecost as in that of the incarnation. In begetting Jesus in the womb of Mary, the Holy Spirit did not become the Christ. After the same manner, the Holy Spirit, by glorifying Jesus and making Him live in us, does not for this reason become Jesus. The Word is the principle of the outward revelation, the Spirit that of the inward revelation. Jesus is the object to be assimilated; the Spirit is the power by which the assimilation is accomplished. Without the objective revelation given in Jesus, the Spirit would have nothing to fertilize in us; without the Spirit, the revelation granted in Jesus remains outside of us and is like a parable which is not understood. Hence it follows that the Spirit who comes is, in a sense, Jesus who comes again; from one without us, Jesus becomes one within us. The consummated work of the Spirit is Christ formed in the believer, or, what expresses the same idea, it is the believer having reached the perfect stature of Christ (Gal 4:19, Eph 4:13). How can Weiss say that this idea is Pauline, not Johannean? Jesus’ being in the believer is of the same nature as God’sbeing in the person of Christ, according to Joh 17:22-23. This idea includes that which we have just developed. It is contained in the expression ἐν χριστῷ, which has no other meaning in Paul than it has in John.

The words: Yet a little while (Joh 14:19), are in accordance with the present I come. They reduce to nothing, so to speak, the duration of the separation.

The asyndeton leads us to see in what follows a development of the promise of Joh 14:18.

The sight of which Jesus speaks is to be permanent, as is indicated by the present θεωρεῖτε,you see me; it is that constant inward contemplation which St. Paul describes in the words which are so similar to the ones before us, 2Co 3:18 : “We who behold the glory of the Lord with unveiled face.” While the world, which has only known Jesus after the flesh, sees Him no more after He has physically disappeared, He becomes, from that moment, visible to His own in the spiritual sphere into which they are transported by the Spirit and in which they meet Him. The difference in the application of the word θεωρεῖν, see, in the two clauses proves nothing against this meaning; it is precisely on this intentional difference that the meaning of the phrase rests; comp. Joh 14:22-23. This intimate intercourse is the source of all the strength of the Christian in his conflict with himself and with the world. This is the reason why, in what follows, the idea of living is, without any transition, substituted for that of seeing.

In the following phrase, the two clauses may be made dependent on ότι : “You see me because I live andbecause you also shall live.” This is what is done by Meyer, Luthardt, Weiss, either in that they apply the whole to the new life produced by the Holy Spirit (Christ and the believers seeing each other again inasmuch as they are transported into the same sphere of life); or, as Weiss, by referring the seeing again to the appearances of the Risen One: “You see me again because you and I then live again.” But the contrast between the present I live and the future you shall live is not sufficiently explained in these two interpretations. And in that of Weiss how are we to explain the word: You shall live? The appearances of the Risen One did not make the disciples live (ζῆν); they renewed their courage.

Life, throughout our entire gospel, is communicated by the Holy Spirit (Joh 7:39). A second construction consists in making the first clause alone depend on ὅτι, and explaining: “You see me (then), because I live; and (as a consequence of this sight of me living) you also shall live.” Our spiritual sight of Jesus results from His heavenly life, and this sight produces life in us. But the strongly accentuated opposition between the ἐγώ, I, and the καὶ ὑμεῖς, and you or you also, causes us to prefer a third construction: that which makes the ὅτι depend on the following verb ζήσεσθε, you shall live: But you see me (in opposition to the world sees me no more); because I live, you shall live also.” They see Him; and, as He whom they thus behold is living, this beholding communicates life to them.

By the present I live, Jesus transfers Himself, as in Joh 14:3; Joh 14:18, to the approaching moment when death shall be finally vanquished for Him and when He will live the perfect, indestructible life; and by the future, you shall live, to the still more remote time when His glorified life will become theirs. Thus is the relation between I live and you shall live naturally explained; comp. the similar relation between I come and I will take, in Joh 14:3. The present designates the principle laid down once for all, the future the daily, gradual, eternal consequences.

Frédéric Louis Godet — Commentaries on Luke, John, Romans, and 1 Corinthians — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1870s–1890s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

I will not leave you comfortless--in a bereaved and desolate condition; or (as in Margin) "orphans."

I will come to you--"I come" or "am coming" to you; that is, plainly by the Spirit, since it was to make His departure to be no bereavement.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 18. I will not leave you comfortless] Literally, orphans. The original word ορφανος, is by some derived from ορφνος, obscure, dark, because, says Mintert, an orphan (one deprived of father and mother) is little esteemed, neglected, and is obliged to wander about in obscurity and darkness. Others derive it from the Hebrew חרף charaph, to strip or make bare, despoil, because such a child is destitute of comfort, direction, and support, and is a prey to misery and disease, to sin and to death.

The disciples of a particular teacher among the Hebrews called him father; his scholars were called his children, and, on his death, were considered as orphans. Christ calls his disciples children, beloved children, Joh 13:33; and, now that he is about to be removed from them by death, he assures them that they shall not be left fatherless, or without a teacher; for in a little time he should come again, (rise from the dead,) and, after his ascension, they should be made partakers of that Spirit which would be their comforter, advocate, teacher, and guide for ever.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

18. I will not have you orphans. This passage shows what men are, and what they can do, when they have been deprived of the protection of the Spirit. They are orphans, exposed to every kind of fraud and injustice, incapable of governing themselves, and, in short, unable of themselves to do any thing. The only remedy for so great a defect is, if Christ govern us by his Spirit, which he promises that he will do. First then, the disciples are reminded of their weakness, that, distrusting themselves, they may rely on nothing else than the protection of Christ; and, secondly, having promised a remedy, he gives them good encouragement; for he declares that he will never leave them When he says, I will come to you, he shows in what manner he dwells in his people, and in what manner he fills all things. It is, by the power of his Spirit; and hence it is evident, that the grace of the Spirit is a striking proof of his Divinity.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(18) I will not leave you comfortless.—Better with the margin, I will not leave you orphans, which exactly represents the Greek word. “Comfortless” is unfortunate, as it suggests a connection with “Comforter” which does not exist in the original. Our translators have rendered the word by “fatherless” in Jas_1:27, which is the only other passage where it occurs in the New Testament, and Wiclif has “faderless” here. He thinks of them as His children whom He is leaving in the world (comp. Joh_13:33), but He will not leave them destitute and bereaved.

I will come to you.—This coming, as is shown by the whole context, is the spiritual presence in the person of the Paraclete.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

18. comfortless] Rather (with Wiclif) fatherless, as the word is translated Jas_1:27, the only other place in the N.T. where it occurs; or (with the margin) orphans, the very word used in the Greek. The inaccurate rendering ‘comfortless’ gives unreal support to the inaccurate rendering ‘Comforter.’ In the Greek there is no connexion between orphans and Paraclete. We must connect this rather with the tender address in Joh_13:33; He will not leave His ‘little children’ fatherless.

I will come to you] Or, I am coming to you, in the Holy Spirit, whom I will send. The context seems to shew clearly that Christ’s spiritual reunion with them through the Paraclete, and not His bodily reunion with them either through the Resurrection or through the final Return is intended.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

I will not leave you comfortless,.... Gr. "orphans", or "fatherless". Christ stands in the relation of a Father to his people, and they are his children, his spiritual seed and offspring; and so the disciples might fear, that as Christ was going from them, they should be left as children without a father, in a very desolate and comfortless, condition: to support them against these fears, Christ promises that he would not leave them thus, at least not long:

I will come to you; in a very short time, as he did; for on the third day he rose again from the dead, and appeared to them, which filled them with great joy. So among the Jews, disciples, and the world too, are represented as fatherless, when their doctors and wise men are removed by death. Says R. Aba, (x) and so sometimes others, concerning R. Simeon ben Jochai,

"woe to the world when thou shall go out of it, woe to the generation that shall be in the world when thou shall remove from them, , "and they shall be left fatherless by thee".''

And in another place (y);

"afterwards R. Akiba went out and cried, and his eyes flowed with water, and he said, woe Rabbi, woe Rabbi, for the world is left, "fatherless by thee".''

(x) Zohar in Num fol. 96. 3. & in Lev. fol. 42. 3. & in Exod. fol. 10. 3. & 28. 3. (y) Midrash Hannealam in Zohar in Gen. fol. 65. 4.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

18 I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.

Ver. 18. I will not leave you comfortless] Orphans, or darkling, ορφανους ab ορφνη, tenebrae. I your Lord am taken indeed from your head for a while, but you shall have the supply of my Spirit, Php 1:19. And I, even I, will come again to you ere long; yea, I am now upon the way; I come to fetch you, I come to meet you, I come, I come, ερχομαι, Dedit me in viam.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Comfortless - Greek, “orphans.” Jesus here addresses them as children, Joh 13:33. He says that he would show them the kindness of a parent, and, though he was going away, he would provide for their future welfare. And even while he was absent, yet they would sustain to him still the relation of children. Though he was to die, yet he would live again; though absent in body, yet he would be present with them by his Spirit; though he was to go away to heaven, yet he would return again to them. See Joh 14:3.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Comfortless; the word in the Greek is, orphans, persons without father and mother, who for the most part are the most comfortless persons; therefore it is translated comfortless: Christ hath a care, not only of the people’s salvation and life, but also of their comforts while they are here; he will not leave his people without proportionable comfort for their distresses.

I will come to you; in the Greek it is, I do come to you, to denote the certainty and the suddenness of his coming; which is either to be understood of his resurrection, which was (as we know) after the absence of three days; or, which is more probable, (for after his resurrection he stayed with them but a few days), in and by his blessed Spirit, (for the Spirit is called the Spirit of Christ), who was to come, and to abide with them for ever. Though it may also have a reference to his coming again to judge both the quick and the dead, to receive them to himself, that (as he said before) they might always be where he was; but the two former senses are understood as more specially relating to their present distresses, upon account of his bodily absence from them.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

18. Will come to you—Here doubtless is a coming which is not bodily but spiritual. So Christ promised to his apostles, (Mat_28:20,) “I am with you always, even to the end of the world.” And this perpetual presence is consistent with his perpetual absence. And so the coming of the present verse is not the bodily coming of the final day, but inasmuch as the Spirit is the spirit of Christ, so Christ is present both in his own spirit as Son of God, and in his representative the Holy Spirit.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

I will not leave you behind as orphans, bereft of my paternal guardianship. Though the disciples were his brethren, yet, as we have seen, he calls them (Joh 13) teknia his "little children;" and (Heb_2:11) the apostles reckoned him as Arthur (in "Guinevere") does when he speaks of "our fair Father Christ." His departure might be the signal for the most utter sense of desertion, exposure, and peril; and even the promise of another Advocatus would hardly console them before the time would arrive when he would receive them unto himself; but, says he, I am coming to you. Much unnecessary comment has here arisen as to whether this coming was the last triumphant parousia of which he speaks in part in Ver. 3, this would be incompatible with the assurances that then the world would and will see him: "Every eye shall" then be prophetic and "see him," and "before him shall be gathered all nations;" or whether this coming be simply his resurrection with his transitory appearances in the flesh; for both of these representations would fail of the full consolation which would terminate their orphanhood. Surely he speaks of his own spiritual coming in the bestowment of the other Advocate, who, by being with them and in them, would prove to them, notwithstanding his own apparent departure, that he had come again in his glorious fullness of love. In the thought of the early Church the Lord was the Spirit: the glorified Lord, the Christ, who had all power in heaven and earth," was manifested, was veritably present, in all the work of the Spirit of God in his Church. The Spirit was not only the Unity of the Father and the Son, the one Self-consciousness of both, but the one Consciousness of the Son of God and Son of man, the uniting Energy which represents the one Personality of the Christ, the Spirit-power which blends all the members of the mystical body with the Head. Throughout the Acts of the Apostles we see that all the great operations of the Holy Spirit are but the energies of the living, reigning Lord.

Vers. 18-21. The comforts of Christ.

Notice some of the comforts left by Jesus to his disciples. "I will not leave you desolate or, "orphans," or, "comfortless," implying that he would leave them some suitable and substantial comforts.

I THE COMFORT OF HIS CONTINUOUS COMING UNTO THEM. "I come unto you.

1. This was really the case, in spite of some appearances to the contrary. They thought that he would leave entirely and for ever by death. This was a mistake, and Christ is very careful to correct it. "I come unto you." Many of our troubles and sorrows arise from our mistaken notions of things. Things are not always what they seem. The disciples thought that Christ was going away from them by death, while in fact he was coming unto them, spiritually nearer to them in sympathy and fellowship. On the cross and in the grave he was coming unto them; and he was coming nearer and nearer unto them in all the trials and dangers of after-life. And thus he comes unto all believers, even when they think that he leaves them.

2. This was literally the case at his resurrection. He came unto them, and they embraced their risen Lord.

3. This was specially the case on the Day of Pentecost. When his promise of the Spirit was fulfilled, and in the fulfillment of this promise, they realized the presence of Christ more than ever; and, instead of the outward Christ, they henceforth enjoyed him in them as a Divine power, light, and inspiration. "Christ in you, the Hope of glory.

4. This will be fully the case at the last day. He ever comes in his Word, in his Spirit, in the dispensations of providence, in the shadows and sunshine of life, and especially in the gloom of death, and each coming is a source of comfort and joy; but his great coming at the last day will crown all, and swallow every other coming in itself, and will perfect the mutual fellowship for ever.

II THE COMFORT OF A CONTINUOUS VISION OF JESUS.

1. This is denied to the world. "Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more." The world had seen him outwardly. But even this vision would be soon withdrawn. There is an undertone of sadness in his announcement of this. The best opportunity the world ever had would soon be lost forever. The world cannot see the spiritual and eternal; only the material and outward. Only this it saw of Jesus; but even this was about to be withdrawn.

2. This vision is granted to the disciples. "But ye see me." He assures them not merely that he would continue to come unto them, but that they would continue to see him see him even after his departure; and if not, it would be their own fault. They had professed to have the power of spiritual vision, faith, which they doubtless had, and they had been well strengthened by his teaching and miracles. Now it was about to be tried, and he had no doubt of the ultimate success. Material and circumstantial changes cannot entirely intercept the vision of faith. There may be an eclipse, but not total; and if total, it will not continue long enough to be specially noticed. It was so now in the case of the disciples with regard to their impending trial. After the terrible but brief gloom, the Sun of Righteousness" appeared to faith brighter than ever. So clear and full was the vision to the disciples that they could see nothing else. It filled their horizon with his presence and glory. They saw him in every object around and above them in the gloom of earth and in the glory of heaven; saw him in all the circumstances and trials of life and in the sufferings of death, in nature, providence and redemption. Christ, in fact, was their "all in all.

III THE COMFORT OF A CONTINUOUS LIFE.

1. The life of Jesus. "I live." Christ"s life was continuous. It is true that he really died, but it was the act of his own will. He was the Prisoner of death, but only for a short time, and that by his own permission. By reason of the fullness of life in him, he could well afford to ignore death. He lived in death, and through death he attained his mediatorial life in its glory. Death was made by him to serve life. The disciples were afraid that would be his final end; but this fear is dispelled by the announcement, "I live." Of the truth of this they had ample proofs in due time. What a comfort it is to believers to know that their pious dead are still living, and especially to know that their Redeemer liveth! They are not orphans.

2. Their life. "And ye shall live also." Next to their concern for his life was that for their own. They were afraid that his death would involve their death, and they would naturally and sadly ask What will become of us, of our fond hopes, dreams, and aspirations? They are set at rest by the statement, "And ye shall live a]so.

3. Their life as united with his. "Because I live," etc. We have here:

(1) The nature of their life. A life like that of Jesus; a Divine and spiritual life, different from and superior to the physical and its circumstances. They are directed to the spiritual nature of their life as a source of consolation.

(2) The infinite cause of their life. It is a great source of comfort to have an adequate reason for an important statement such as the one made here by our Lord, "Ye shall live also." One would naturally ask Why and how is this? It appears strange, if not impossible. There is sufficient answer in the statement of Jesus, "Because I live," etc. Physical life is dependent upon the life and will of God; and spiritual life by faith is entirely dependent on the life of Christ as its Divine Source, its efficient and meritorious Cause, its infinite Support and Guarantee.

(3) The perfect certainty and safety of their life. In the degree they would believe in the life of Jesus they would realize their own, and have confidence in its safety. The life of faith is as certain and safe as that Divine life from which it emanates, and by which it is protected and supported.

Safe in all the trials and dangers of life, and even in death itself. It is "hid with Christ in God.

(4) The endless continuance of their life. "Ye shall live also." The cravings and aspirations of immortality are fully satisfied in the life of Jesus. There is no room for any fear with regard to the great changes of the future. The life of faith is commensurate in duration with the life of Christ, with which it is inseparably connected. They had the comfort of a continuous vision of an ever-living Savior, and of their life eternally safe in connection with his.

IV THE COMFORT OF A FULLER REALIZATION OF DIVINE FELLOWSHIP.

1. The fellowship of Christ with the Father. "Ye shall know that I am in my Father." This as yet was but imperfectly known a source of perplexity to them.

2. Their fellowship with Christ, and Christ with them. "Ye in me," etc.

3. Their fellowship with the Father. This is an inevitable consequence of their fellowship with Christ. To realize all this would be to them a source of great comfort and spiritual peace and joy. Then they would not consider themselves orphans, but happy and rich children in the warm embrace of an almighty and infinitely kind Father.

(1) It is possible to have an interest in Christ without fully knowing it at the time. The disciples had much now of which they were not aware. Their spiritual possessions were greater than knowledge.

(2) Faith naturally presses forward to a fuller knowledge of Divine things. It craves for it, and is never disappointed. If we want an increase of knowledge, let us strive for an increase of faith. Believe, and you shall know.

(3) There are periods when Divine knowledge is specially attained and realized. "In that day ye shall," etc. The morning of Christ"s resurrection was such a day, and Pentecost was another; and in individual and social experience of believers there are many such days, when faith is rewarded with knowledge, and culminates in spiritual realization. Then the language of the soul is not "I believe," but "I know know that my Redeemer," etc.; "I know whom," etc. Then there is in the soul a spring-tide of spiritual comfort and peace, and an ecstasy of inspired confidence.

V THE COMFORT OF A CLEARER MANIFESTATION OF CHRIST. "I will manifest," etc,

1. This is a self-manifestation of Christ. He is the Revealer and the Revealed. Different mediums and agents are employed; still he is the Source and Subject of the revelation. During his personal ministry on earth he chiefly manifested the Father and the Spirit; but after the Ascension he manifests himself through the Spirit and the ministry of his Word. He manifests himself in his humanity and Divinity in his human and Divine relationships; in short, in all his past, present, and future agency with regard to the great scheme of human redemption. His manifestation in the flesh was comparatively small, and only introductory to the great spiritual manifestation of himself in the soul and in the spirit of humanity.

2. This self-manifestation of Christ is inseparably connected with loving obedience to him. "He that hath my commandments," etc. Love to Christ manifests itself through obedience to his commands, and through this loving obedience Christ manifests himself to the soul. With every loving act comes a fresh vision of the Savior.

3. This self-manifestation of Christ is inseparably connected with a corresponding experience of Divine love. "He that loveth me shall be loved," etc. Love begets love. Human love to Christ is repaid with Divine interest. It returns in living streams of love to the experience from the Father and the Son. And this Divine love is the sweetest and most powerful medium through which Christ manifests himself. It is a manifestation of him in itself.

4. This self-manifestation of Christ is gradual and progressive. It was so in the experience of the disciples. There was a vast difference between the Christ of Pentecost and Jesus of Nazareth. And it is so in the experience of believers ever since. Jesus once really seen by faith will never be permanently lost sight of, but the constancy and clearness of the vision depend upon the degree of faith and love in the soul. He will manifest as we believe and love.

5. This self-manifestation of Christ will be ultimately complete. "I will," etc. It will not reach completion till the last day. To fully see him, he must fully appear; to fully know him, we must be like him; and to be like him, we must see him as he is. But even then we shall not see all his beauty nor comprehend all his Being. Were this the case, our happiness would cease. Eternity will not exhaust his glory, although fully employed in its exhibition. But at his final coming there will be such a full manifestation of him as will exclude every element of unhappiness, and fill the soul with satisfaction forever. We shall be satisfied with each draught of revelation, and look forward with serene confidence and ecstatic joy to the next and the next.

LESSONS.

1. The sympathy of Christ with his people is most tenderly considerate. It was so here. His disciples did not tell him that they were afraid of orphanage and desolation, but he knew it; and in answer to their inward thoughts and feelings, he tenderly said, "I will not leave you," etc.

2. His sympathy with his people is ever practical. It is not mere sentiment. It is not only negative, but ever assumes an affirmative form. He did not stop with saying, I will not leave," etc., but proceeded to say, "I come," etc. And all this was fulfilled in their experience; and it is ever so.

3. As Christ is manifested in the soul, we at once realize all we need. When the sun appears in the sky, all the landscape around is in full view. So, when the Sun of Righteousness arises in the soul, the spiritual universe is all ablaze. We see an ever-living Savior and an ever-loving Father in closest fellowship, and our life by faith in closest fellowship with both. When Christ manifested himself to his disciples, they never thought of orphanage and desolation afterwards.

4. Let us take care of the condition of our spiritual comfort and realization. "He that hath my commandments," etc. B.T.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

I will not leave you orphans - A word that is elegantly applied to those who have lost any dear friend. I come to you - What was certainly and speedily to be, our Lord speaks of as if it were already.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

Further encouragement:

v. 18. I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you.

v. 19. Yet a little while and the world seeth Me no more; but ye see Me. Because I live, ye shall live also.

v. 20. At that day ye shall know that I am in My Father, and ye in Me, and I in you.

The Lord repeats His comforting assurance from another angle. He promises not to leave His disciples orphans, without a guide, deprived of all comfort. In addition to the fact that He will provide the Comforter for them, He Himself will not abandon them and leave them to the fate of children bereft of their parents. It may seem to them that His departure means as much, but because of this very fact that He is entering into His glory, He will be able to be present with them just as surely as before, and for all times. He will return to them in the means of grace, where His presence is always certain, and He will shortly return to them in person. It is but a little while, and the world, the unbelieving, hostile children of unbelief, would see Him no more, neither with the eyes of the body nor with those of the spirit. But His disciples would and will see Him, the eyes of their understanding being enlightened; they would understand Him, His person and work, better than ever before. For with His resurrection His human body would enter into a new mode of existence, His mortal body would be transfused with divinity, it would be transfigured for all times. Jesus lives, and they shall live. When Christ comes to them in the spirit and they learn to know and understand Him better with each new day, then they become partakers of the new spiritual life of Jesus. They will also understand more and more what that wonderful union and communion means which obtains between Father and Son, between the believers and Christ. And the day will come when the last shred of the veil will be taken from their eyes, and they will know their Savior and the mystery of the Triune God even as they are known. In the mean time they should rest assured that the relation between the Savior and the believers is just as intimate and blessed as that between the Father and the Son. The presence of Jesus in the believers assures them of the fullness of both His grace and power in them, grace and mercy for their sins and power for their sanctification.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Here observe, 1. The condition which the disciples were in upon the account of Christ’s removal from them, and that was sad and comfortless: fatherless or orphans, as the word signifies.

Learn hence, That Christ’s departure, or the loss of his gracious presence, is very sad and comfortless to a pious soul; well might the disciples here lament and mourn upon the occasion of Christ; leaving of them, seeing thereby they should be deprived of his doctrine and instructions, of his advice and counsel, and of the benefit of his holy and instructive example.

Observe, 2. The care of Christ for his disciples, in reference to this their sad and disconsolate condition; He would not leave them comfortless.

Where note, He doth not say, I will not suffer you to be comfortless, but I will not leave you so; that is, he will not desert or disown them in their comfortless condition: he will not leave them, either in point of affection, or in point of activity; he will not cease to love them, nor cease to bestir himself for them.

Learn hence, That Christ will not leave his friends in a sad and comnfortless state and condition, though for a time they may be brought into it: I will not leave you comfortless, I will come unto you. Christ’s coming here unto them, is to be understood of his coming to them by his Holy Spirit; in the gifts of it, in the graces of it, and in the comforts of it: thus he did not long leave them comfortless, but at the feast of Pentecost came to them again.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

18, 19. I will not leave you comfortless. They shall not be left desolate by his departure, because “he will come again” to be with them always, in the Spirit. He will be a living Savior, and they will have his life.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

leave you alone

Here Jesus implies that he will not leave his disciples with no one to care for them. AT: "leave you with no one to care for you" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)

the world

Here the "world" is a metonym that represents the people who do not belong to God. AT: "the unbelievers" (See: Metonymy)

you will know that I am in my Father

God the Father and Jesus live as one person. AT: "you will know that my Father and I are just like one person"

my Father

This is an important title for God. (See: Translating Son and Father)

you are in me, and that I am in you

"you and I are just like one person"

translationWords

world

life

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

18. ὀρφανούς. Desolate, or (with Wiclif) fatherless, as in Jas 1:27, the only other place in N.T. where it occurs. ‘Comfortless’ gives unfair support to ‘Comforter’: there is no connexion between ὀρφανός and παράκλητος. The connexion is rather with τεκνἱα in Joh 13:33: He will not leave His ‘little children’ fatherless.

ἔρχ. πρός. I am coming unto you, in the Spirit, whom I will send. The context seems to shew clearly that Christ’s spiritual reunion with them through the Paraclete, and not His bodily reunion with them either through the Resurrection or through the final Return, is intended. Note the frequent and impressive asyndeton in Joh 14:17-20.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

18.] ὀρφ. should be orphans, as in the E. V. .

The office of the παράκλ. is to connect the disciples with the Father: if therefore they had Him not, they would be fatherless. The expression connects with τεκνία ch. 13:33, and as Euthym., springs from πατρικὴ εὐσπλαγχνία. This makes ἔρχομαι, I am coming, plain, as applying to the coming by the Spirit, who is one with Christ;—not only the ultimate personal coming, which is but the last step of the ἔρχομαι, nor only the bodily coming again to them and not to the world at the Resurrection, which was but a pledge of His lasting presence in the Spirit: see on ver. 3. ἔρχομαι is (as there) the complex of these—the great Revisitation, in all its blessed progress. The absence of any connecting particle as γάρ, with ἔρχομαι, arises (Meyer) from the depth of affection in the Lord’s heart.

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

18. οὐκ ἀφήσω ὑμᾶς ὀρφανούς. ὀρφανός occurs in the N.T. again only at Jas 1:27, and there in its primary meaning of “fatherless.” It has been thought that this is the idea here also; at 13:33 Jesus addressed his disciples as τεκνία, which suggests the relation of a father to his children. But, although ὀρφανός, both in the LXX and in classical literature, generally means “fatherless” in the most literal sense, it may be used of bereavement of any kind. ὀρφανῷ σὺ ἦσθα βοηθός (Psa 10:14) appears in Coverdale’s Psalter as “Thou art the helper of the friendless, ” which brings out the sense well. Milligan (Vocab. s.v.) quotes a modern Greek song where friendless must be the meaning; and also Epictetus, iii. xxiv. 14 for this more general sense. The rendering “comfortless” of the A.V. cannot be defended.

“I will not leave you friendless” means, then, “I will not leave you without a Helper and Friend (a παράκλητος), such as I have been.”

ἔρχομαι πρὸς ὑμᾶς, “I am coming to you,” not, as in v. 3, in the Parousia, but after His Resurrection, when the Spirit will be imparted (20:22). See on 16:23 for the Day of the Spirit’s Advent.

18. οὐκ ἀφήσω ὑμᾶς ὀρφανούς. ὀρφανός occurs in the N.T. again only at Jas 1:27, and there in its primary meaning of “fatherless.” It has been thought that this is the idea here also; at 13:33 Jesus addressed his disciples as τεκνία, which suggests the relation of a father to his children. But, although ὀρφανός, both in the LXX and in classical literature, generally means “fatherless” in the most literal sense, it may be used of bereavement of any kind. ὀρφανῷ σὺ ἦσθα βοηθός (Psa 10:14) appears in Coverdale’s Psalter as “Thou art the helper of the friendless, ” which brings out the sense well. Milligan (Vocab. s.v.) quotes a modern Greek song where friendless must be the meaning; and also Epictetus, iii. xxiv. 14 for this more general sense. The rendering “comfortless” of the A.V. cannot be defended.

“I will not leave you friendless” means, then, “I will not leave you without a Helper and Friend (a παράκλητος), such as I have been.”

ἔρχομαι πρὸς ὑμᾶς, “I am coming to you,” not, as in v. 3, in the Parousia, but after His Resurrection, when the Spirit will be imparted (20:22). See on 16:23 for the Day of the Spirit’s Advent.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Leave [αφησω] . See on 4 3.

Comfortless [ορφανους] . Literally, bereft or orphans. Only here and Jas 1:27, where it is rendered fatherless. Compare my little children (xiii. 33). "He hath not left us without a rule (xiii. 34); nor without an example (xiii. 15); nor without a motive (xiv. 15); nor without a strength (xv. 5); nor without a warning (xv. 2, 6); nor without a Comforter (xiv. 18); nor without a reward (xiv. 2) (James Ford," The Gospel of St. John Illustrated ").

I will come [ερχομαι] . Present tense, I come. See on ver. 3.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.