Chapter 25. Dying Charge to the Future Apostles

A.B. Bruce — The Training of the Twelve

The subject of discourse in these chapters is the future work of the apostles, — its nature, honors, hardships, and joys. Much that is said therein admits of application to Christians in general, but the reference in the first place is undoubtedly to the eleven then present; and only by keeping this in mind can we get a clear idea of the import of the discourse as a whole.

The first part of this charge to the future apostles has for its object to impress upon them that they have a great work before them.John xv. 1-17. The keynote of the passage may be found in the words: “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain.”Ver. 16. Jesus would have His chosen ones understand that He expects more of them than that they shall not lose heart when He has left the earth. They must be great actors in the world, and leave their mark permanently on its history: they must, in fact, take His place, and be in His stead, and carry on the work He had begun, in His name and through His aid.

To put their duty clearly before the minds of His disciples, Jesus made large use of a beautiful figure drawn from the vine-tree, which He introduced at the very outset of His discourse. “I am the true vine;” that is the theme, which in the sequel is worked out with considerable minuteness of detail, — figure and interpretation being freely mixed up together in the exposition. The question has often been asked, What led Jesus to adopt this particular emblem as the vehicle of His thoughts? and many conjectural answers have been hazarded. In absence of information in the narrative, however, we must be content to remain in ignorance on this point, without attempting to supply the missing link in the association of ideas. This is no great hardship; for, after all, what does it matter how a metaphor is suggested (a thing which even the person employing the metaphor often does not know), provided it be in itself apt to the purpose to which it is applied? Of the aptness of the metaphor here employed there can be no doubt in the mind of any one who attentively considers the felicitous use which the speaker made of it.Sanday (Fourth Gospel, p. 231) speaks of the allegory of the vine as belonging to a different and more didactic period in the life of Christ, and represents it as breaking the thread and having little bearing on the object of the discourse, which is to comfort the disciples in the prospect of their Lord’s departure. That was certainly one object, but not the only one. The allegory is very apt to the other principal object of the discourse, viz. to bring before the hearers their responsibilities as apostles of the Christian faith.

Turning our attention, then, to the discourse of Jesus on His own chosen text, we cannot but be struck with the manner in which He hurries on at once to speak of fruit. We should have expected that, in introducing the figure of the vine, He would in the first place state fully in terms of the figure how the case stood. After hearing the words, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman,” we expect to hear, “and ye, my disciples, are the branches, through which the vine brings forth fruit.” That, however, is not said here; but the speaker passes on at once to tell His hearers how the branches (of which no mention has been made) are dealt with by the divine Husbandman; how the fruitless branches, on the one hand, are lopped off, while the fruitful ones are pruned that they may become still more productive.John xv. 2. This shows what is uppermost in the mind of Jesus. His heart’s desire is that His disciples may be spiritually fruitful. “Fruit, fruit, my disciples,” He exclaims in effect; “ye are useless unless ye bear fruit: my Father desires fruit, even as I do; and His whole dealing with you will be regulated by a purpose to increase your fruitfulness.”

While urgent in His demand for fruit, Jesus does not, we observe, in any part of this discourse on the vine, indicate wherein the expected fruit consists. When we consider to whom He is speaking, however, we can have no doubt as to what He principally intends. The fruit He looks for is the spread of the gospel and the ingathering of souls into the kingdom of God by the disciples, in the discharge of their apostolic vocation. Personal holiness is not overlooked; but it is required rather as a means towards fruitfulness than as itself the fruit. It is the purging of the branch which leads to increased fertility.

The next sentence (“Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you”John xv. 3.) it seems best to regard as a parenthesis, in which for a moment the figure of the vine is lost sight of. The mention of branches which, as unproductive, are cut off, recalls to the Lord’s thoughts the case of one who had already been cut off, — the false disciple Judas, — and leads Him naturally to assure the eleven that He hopes better things of them. The process of excision had already been applied among them in one instance: therefore they should not be high-minded, but fear. But, on the other hand, as He had said before in connection with the feet-washing, that they were clean, with one exception; so now He would say they were all clean, without exception, through the word which He had spoken to them. As branches they might need pruning, but there would be no occasion for cutting off.

Having strongly declared the indispensableness of fruit-bearing in order to continued connection with the vine, Jesus proceeded next to set forth the conditions of fruitfulness, and (what we should have expected at the very commencement of the discourse) the relation subsisting between Himself and His disciples. “I am the vine,” He said (to take the latter first), “ye are the branches.”Ver. 5. By this statement He explains why He is so urgent that His disciples should be fruitful. The reason is, that they are the media through which He Himself brings forth fruit, serving the same purpose to Him that the branches serve to the vine. His own personal work had been to choose and train them, — to fill them, so to speak, with he sap of divine truth; and their work was now to turn that sap into grapes. The Father in heaven, by sending Him into the world, had planted Him in the earth, a new, mystic, spiritual vine; and He had produced them, the eleven, as His branches. Now His personal ministry was at an end; and it remained for the branches to carry on the work to its natural consummation, and to bring forth a crop of fruit, in the shape of a church of saved men believing in His name. If they failed to do this, His labor would be all in vain.

Returning now to the conditions of fruitfulness, we find Jesus expressing them in these terms: “Abide in me, and I in you.”John xv. 4. These words point to a dependence of the disciples on their Lord under two forms, which by help of the analogy of a tree and its branches it is easy to distinguish. The branch abides in the vine structurally; and the vine abides in the branch through its sap, vitally. Both of these abidings are necessary to fruit-bearing. Unless the branch be organically connected with the stem, the sap which goes to make fruit cannot pass into it. On the other hand, although the branch be organically connected with the stem, yet if the sap of the stem do not ascend into it (a case which is possible and common in the natural world), it must remain as fruitless as if it were broken off and lying on the ground.

All this is clear; but when we ask what do the two abidings signify in reference to the mystic vine, the answer is not quite so easy. The tendency here is to run the two into one, and to make the distinction between them merely nominal. The best way to come at the truth is to adhere as closely as possible to the natural analogy. What, then, would one say most nearly corresponded to the structural abiding of the branch in the tree? We reply, abiding in the doctrine of Christ, in the doctrine He taught; and acknowledging Him as the source whence it had been learned. In other words, “Abide in me” means, Hold and profess the truth I have spoken to you, and give yourselves out merely as my witnesses. The other abiding, on the other hand, signifies the indwelling of the Spirit of Jesus in the hearts of those who believe. Jesus gives His disciples to understand that, while abiding in His doctrine, they must also have His Spirit abiding in them; that they must not only hold fast the truth, but be filled with the Spirit of truth.

As thus distinguished, the two abidings are not only different in conception, but separable in fact. On the one hand, there may be Christian orthodoxy in the letter where there is little or no spiritual life; and there may, on the other hand, be a certain species of spiritual vitality, a great moral, and in some respects most Christian-like earnestness, accompanied with serious departure from the faith. The one may be likened unto a dead branch on a living tree, bleached, barkless, moss-grown, and even in summer leafless, stretching out like a withered arm from the trunk into which it is inserted, and with which it still maintains an organic structural connection. The other is a branch cut off by pride or self-will from the tree, full of the tree’s sap, and clothed with verdure at the moment of excision, and foolishly imagining, because it does not wither at once, that it can live and grow and blossom independently of the tree altogether. Have such things never been since Christianity began? Alas, would it were so! In the grand primeval forest of the Church too many dead orthodoxies have ever been visible; and as for branches setting up for the themselves, their name is legion.

The two abidings, which we have seen to be not only separable, but often separated, cannot be separated without fatal effects. The result ever is in the end to illustrate the truth of Christ’s words, “Without, or severed from, me ye can do nothing.”John xv. 5. Dead orthodoxy is notoriously impotent. Feeble, timid, torpid, averse to any thing arduous, heroic, stirring in thought or conduct at best, it becomes at last insincere and demoralizing: salt without savor, fit only to be thrown out; worthless vine-wood, good for nothing except for fuel, and not worth much even for that purpose. Heresies, not abiding in the doctrine of Christ, are equally helpless. At first, indeed, they possess a spurious ephemeral vitality, and make a little noise in the world; but by and by their leaf begins to wither, and they bring forth no abiding fruit.

The conception of a dead branch, applied to individuals as distinct from churches or the religious world viewed collectively, is not without difficulty. A dead branch on a tree was not always dead: it was produced by the vital force of the tree, and had some of the tree’s life in it. Does the analogy between natural and spiritual branches hold at this point? Not in any sense, as we believe, that would compromise the doctrine of perseverance in grace, nowhere taught more clearly than in the words of our Lord. At the same time, it cannot be denied that there is such a thing as abortive religious experience. There are blossoms on the tree of life which are blasted by spring frosts, green fruits which fall off ere they ripen, branches which become sickly and die. Jonathan Edwards, a high Calvinist, but also a candid, shrewd observer of facts, remarks: “I cannot say that the greater part of supposed converts give reason by their conversation to suppose that they are true converts. The proportion may perhaps be more truly represented by the proportion of the blossoms on a tree which abide and come to mature fruit, to the whole number of blossoms in spring.”See memoir by Sereno E. Dwight, prefixed to English edition of the Works of Edwards, in two volumes: vol. i. p. clxxii. The permanency of many spiritual blossoms is here denied, but the very denial implies an admission that they were blossoms.

That some branches should become unfruitful, and even die, while others flourish and bring forth fruit, is a great mystery, whose explanation lies deeper than theologians of the Arminian school are willing to admit. Yet, while this is true, the responsibility of man for his own spiritual character cannot be too earnestly insisted on. Though the Father, as the husbandman, wields the pruning-knife, the process of purging cannot be carried on without our consent and cooperation. For that process means practically the removal of moral hindrances to life and growth, — the cares of life, the insidious influence of wealth, the lusts of the flesh, and the passions of the soul, — evils which cannot be overcome unless our will and all our moral powers be brought to bear against them. Hence Jesus lays it upon His disciples as a duty to abide in Him, and have Him abiding in them, and resolves the whole matter at last, in plain terms, into keeping His commandments.John xv. 10. If they diligently and faithfully do their part, the divine Husbandman, He assures them, will not fail to give them liberally all things needful for the most abundant fruitfulness. “Ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.”Ver. 7.

The doom of branches coming short in either of the two possible ways, is very plainly declared by Jesus. The doom of the branch which, while in Him structurally, beareth not fruit, either because it is absolutely dead and dry, or because it is afflicted with a vice which makes it barren, is to be taken away — judicially severed from the tree.John xv. 2. The doom of the branch which will not abide in the vine, is not to be cut off, — for that it does itself, — but to be thrown out of the vineyard, there to lie till it be withered, and at length, at a convenient season, to be gathered, along with all its self-willed, erratic brethren, into a heap, and burned in a bonfire like the dry rubbish of a garden.Ver. 6.

In the latter portion of the discourse on the vine,Vers. 8-17. Jesus expresses His high expectations with respect to the fruitfulness of the apostolic branches, and suggests a variety of considerations which, acting on the minds of the disciples as motives, might lead to the fulfilment of His hopes. As to the former, He gave the disciples to understand that He expected of them not only fruit, but much fruit,Ver. 8. and fruit not only abundant in quantity, but good in quality;Ver. 16. fruit that should remain, grapes whose juice should be worthy of preservation as wine in bottles; a church that should endure till the world’s end.

These two requirements, taken together, amount to a very high demand. It is very hard indeed to produce fruit at once abundant and enduring. The two requirements to a certain extent limit each other. Aiming at high quality leads to undue thinning of the clusters, while aiming at quantity may easily lead to deterioration in the quality of the whole. The thing to be studied is to secure as large an amount of fruit as is consistent with permanence; and, on the other hand, to cultivate excellence as far as is consistent with obtaining a fair crop which will repay labor and expense. This is, so to speak, the ideal theory of vine culture; but in practice we must be content with something short of the perfect realization of our theory. We cannot, for example, rigorously insist that all the fruit shall be such as can endure. Many fruits of Christian labor are only transient means towards other fruits of a permanent nature; and if we satisfy the law of Christ so far as to produce much fruit, some of which shall remain, we do well. The permanent portion of a man’s work must always be small in proportion to the whole. At highest, it can only bear such a proportion to the whole as the grape-juice bears to the grapes out of which it is pressed. A small cask of wine represents a much larger bulk of grapes; and in like manner the perennial result of a Christian life is very inconsiderable in volume compared with the mass of thoughts, words, and deeds of which that life was made up. One little book, for instance, may preserve to all generations the soul and essence of the thoughts of a most gifted mind, and of the graces of a noble heart. Witness that wondrous book the Pilgrim’s Progress, which contains more wine in it than may be found in the ponderous folios of some wordy authors, whose works are but huge wine-casks with very little wine in them, and sometimes hardly even the scent of it.

To satisfy these two requirements, two virtues are above all needful, viz. diligence and patience, — the one to insure quantity, the other to insure superior quality. One must know both how to labor and how to wait; never idle, yet never hurrying. Diligence alone will not suffice. Bustling activity does a great many things badly, but nothing well. On the other hand, patience unaccompanied by diligence degenerates into indolence, which brings forth no fruit at all, either good or bad. The two virtues must go together; and when they do, they never fail to produce, in greater or less abundance, fruit that remaineth in a holy exemplary life whose memory is cherished for generations, in an apostolic church, in books or in philanthropic institutions, in the character of descendants, scholars, or hearers.

When the two requirements are taken as applying to all believers in Christ, the term “much” must be understood relatively. It is not required of all indiscriminately to produce an absolutely large quantity of fruit, but only of those who, like the apostles, have been chosen and endowed to occupy distinguished positions. Of him to whom little is given shall little be required. For men of few talents it is better not to attempt much, but rather to endeavor to do well the little for which they have capacity. Aspiration is good in the abstract; but to aspire to exceed the appointed dimensions of our career, is to supply a new illustration of the old fable of the frog and the ox. The man who would be and do more than he is fit for, is worse than useless. He brings forth, not the sweet, wholesome fruits of the Spirit, but the inflated fruits of vanity, which, like the apples of Sodom, are fair and delicious to the eye and soft to the touch, but are yet full of wind, and, being pressed, explode like a puff-ball.Robinson, Biblical Researches, i. 523.

The demand for much fruit, while very exacting as towards the apostles, to whom it in the first place refers, has a gracious aspect towards the world. The fruit which Jesus expected from His chosen ones was the conversion of men to the faith of the gospel — the ingathering of souls into the kingdom of God. A demand for much fruit in this sense is an expression of good — will to mankind, a revelation of the Saviour’s loving compassion for a world lying in sin, and error, and darkness. In making this demand, Jesus says in effect to His apostles: Go into the world, bent on evangelizing all the nations; be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it. Ye cannot bring too many to the obedience of faith; the greater the number of those who believe on me through your word, the better I shall be pleased. We have here, in short, but an echo of the impassioned utterances of that earlier occasion, when Jesus welcomed death as the condition of abundant fruitfulness, and the cross as a power by whose irresistible attraction He should draw all unto Him.John xii. 24, 33.

From the high requirements of the Lord, we pass on to the arguments with which He sought to impress on the disciples the duty of bringing forth much and abiding fruit. Of these there are no less than six, grouped in pairs. The first pair we find indicated in the words: “Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit, and that ye may be my disciples.”John xv. 8. Vide various reading, γένησθε instead of γενήσεσθε. The sense is the same ultimately, whichever reading we prefer. In other words, Jesus would have His chosen ones remember that the credit, both of the divine Husbandman, and of Himself, the vine, largely depended on their behavior. The world would judge by results. If they, the apostles, abounded in fruitfulness, it would be remarked that God had not sent Christ into the world in vain; and their success would be ascribed to Him whose disciples they had been. If they failed, men would say: God planted a vine which has not thriven; and the vine produced branches which have borne no fruit; or in plain terms, Christ chose agents who have done nothing.

The force of these arguments for fruitfulness is more obvious in the case of these apostles, the founders of the Church, than in reference to the present condition of the Church, when the honor of Christ and of God the Father seems to depend in a very small measure on the conduct of individuals. The whole stress then lay on eleven men. Now it is distributed over millions. Nevertheless, there is great need, even yet, for spiritually fruitful life in the Church, to uphold the honor of Christ’s name; for there is a tendency at the present time to look on Christianity as used up. The old vine stock is considered by many to be effete, and past fruit-bearing; and a new plant of renown is called for. This idea can be exploded effectually only in one way, viz. by the rising up of a generation of Christians whose life shall demonstrate that the “true vine” is not one of the things that wax old and vanish away, but possesses eternal vitality, sufficient not only to produce new branches and new clusters, but to shake itself clear of dead branches, and of all the moss by which it may have become overgrown in the course of ages.

A second pair of motives to fruitfulness we find hinted at in the words: “These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be fulfilled.”John xv. 11. Jesus means to say, that the continuance of His joy in the disciples, and the completion of their own joy as believers in Him, depended on their being fruitful. The emphasis in the first clause lies on the word “remain.” Jesus has joy in His disciples even now, though spiritually crude, even as the gardener hath joy in the clusters of grapes when they are green, sour, and uneatable. But He rejoices in them at present, not for what they are, but because of the promise that is in them of ripe fruit. If that promise were not fulfilled, He should feel as the gardener feels when the blossom is nipped by frost, or the green fruit destroyed by mildew; or as a parent feels when a son belies in his manhood the bright promise of his youth. He can bear delay, but He cannot bear failure. He can wait patiently till the process of growth has passed through all its stages, and can put up with all the unsatisfactory qualities of immaturity, for the sake of what they shall ripen into. But if they never ripen, — if the children never become men, if the pupils never become teachers, — then He will exclaim, in bitter disappointment: “Woe is me! my soul desired ripe fruit; and is this what I find after waiting so long?”

In the second clause the stress lies on the word “fulfilled.” It is not said or insinuated that a Christian can have no joy till his character be matured and his work accomplished. The language of Jesus is quite compatible with the assertion that even at the very commencement of the spiritual life there may be a great, even passionate, outburst of joy. But, on the other hand, that language plainly implies that the joy of the immature disciple is necessarily precarious, and that the joy which is stable and full comes only with spiritual maturity. This is a great practical truth, which it concerns all disciples to bear in mind. Joy in the highest sense is one of the ripe fruits of the Holy Spirit, the reward of perseverance and fidelity. Rejoicing at the outset is good, so far as it goes; but all depends on the sequel. If we stop short and grow not, woe to us; for failure in all things, and specially in religion, is misery. If we be comparatively unfruitful, we may not be absolutely unhappy, but we can never know the fulness of joy; for it is only to the faithful servant that the words are spoken: “Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” The perfect measure of bliss is for the soldier who hath won the victory, for the reaper celebrating harvest, home, for the athlete who hath gained the prize of strength, skill, and swiftness.

The two last considerations by which Jesus sought to impress on His disciples the duty of being fruitful, were — the honorable nature of their apostolic calling, and the debt of gratitude they owed to Him who had called them, and who was now about to die for them. The dignity of the apostleship, in contrast to the menial position of the disciple, He described in these terms: “Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.”John xv. 15. In other words, the disciples had been apprentices, the apostles would be partners: the disciples had been as government clerks; the apostles would be confidential ministers of the king: the disciples had been pupils in the school of Jesus; the apostles would be the treasurers of Christian truth, the reporters and expositors of their Master’s doctrine, the sole reliable sources of information concerning the letter and spirit of His teaching. What office could possibly be more important than theirs? and how needful that they should realize their responsibilities in connection with it!

While endeavoring to walk worthy of so high a vocation, it would become the apostles also to bear in mind their obligations to Him who had called them to the apostolic office. The due consideration of these would be an additional stimulus to diligence and fidelity. Hence Jesus is careful to impress on His disciples that they owe all they are and will be to Him. “Ye did not choose me, but I chose you,”Ver. 16. He tells them. He wishes them to understand that they had conferred no benefit on Him by becoming His disciples: the benefit was all on their side. He had raised them from obscurity to be the lights of the world, to be the present companions and future friends and representatives of the Christ. Having done so much for them, He was entitled to ask that they would earnestly endeavor to realize the end for which He had chosen them, and to fulfil the ministry to which they were ordained.

One thing more is noteworthy in this discourse on the true vine, — the reiteration of the commandment to love one another. At the commencement of the farewell address, Jesus enjoined on the disciples brotherly love as a source of consolation under bereavement; here He re-enjoins it once and again as a condition of fruitfulness.Ver. 12, 17. Though He does not say it in so many words, He evidently means the disciples to understand that abiding in each other by love is just as necessary to their success as their common abiding in Him by faith. Division, party strife, jealousy, will be simply fatal to their influence, and to the cause they represent. They must be such fast friends that they will even be willing to die for each other. Had Christians always remembered the commandment of love, on which Christ so earnestly insisted, what a different history the Church would have had! how much more fruitful she would have been in all the great results for which she was instituted!

From apostolic duties Jesus passed on to speak of apostolic tribulations. The transition was natural; for all great actors in God’s cause, whose fruit remains, are sure to be more or less men of sorrow. To be hated and evil entreated is one of the penalties of moral greatness and spiritual power; or, to put it differently, one of the privileges Christ confers on His “friends.”

Hatred is very hard to bear, and the desire to escape it is one main cause of unfaithfulness and unfruitfulness. Good men shape their conduct so as to keep out of trouble, and through excess of cowardly prudence degenerate into spiritual nonentities. It was of the first importance that the apostles of the Christian faith should not become impotent through this cause. For this reason Jesus introduces the subject of tribulation here. He would fortify His disciples for the endurance of sufferings by speaking of them beforehand. “These things,” saith He, in the course of His address on the unpleasant theme, as if apologizing for its introduction, “have I spoken unto you that ye should not be scandalized,”John xvi. 1; see also ver. 4. that is, be taken by surprise when the time of trouble came.

To nerve the young soldiers of the cross, the Captain of salvation has recourse to various expedients, among which the first is to tell them, without disguise, what they have to expect, that familiarity with the dark prospect may make it less terrible. Of the world’s hatred Jesus speaks as an absolutely certain matter, not even deeming it necessary to assert its certainty, but assuming that as a thing of course: “If the world hate you”John xv. 18. — as of course it will. Farther on He describes, without euphemism or circumlocution, the kind of treatment they shall receive at the world’s hands: “They shall put you out of the synagogues; yea, but the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he offereth service unto God.”John xvi. 2; so in R. V. The idea is that the murderers will imagine they are offering an acceptable religious service or sacrifice unto God. Harsh, appalling words; but since such things were to be, it was well to know the worst.

Jesus further tells His disciples that whatever they may have to suffer, they can be no worse off than He has been before them. “If the world hate you, ye know that it has hated me before you.” Poor comfort, one is disposed to say; yet it is not so poor when you consider the relative position of the parties. He who has already been hated is the Lord; they who are to be hated are but the servants. Of this Jesus reminds His disciples, repeating and recalling to their remembrance a word He had already spoken the same evening.John xv. 20; comp. xiii. 16, also xii. 26. The consideration ought at least to repress murmuring; and, duly laid to heart, it might even become a source of heroic inspiration. The servant should be ashamed to complain of a lot from which his Master is not, and does not wish to be, exempted; he should be proud to be a companion in tribulations with One who is so much his superior, and regard his experience of the cross not as a fate, but as a privilege.

A third expedient employed by Jesus to reconcile the apostles to the world’s hatred, is to represent it as a necessary accompaniment of their election.John xv. 19. This thought, well weighed, has great force. Love ordinarily rests on a community of interest. Men love those who hold the same opinions, occupy the same position, follow the same fashions, pursue the same ends with themselves; and they regard all who differ from them in these respects with indifference, dislike, or positive animosity, according to the degree in which they are made sensible of the contrast. Hence arises a dilemma for the chosen ones. Either they must forfeit the honor, privileges, and hope of their election, and descend into the dark world which is without God and without hope; or they must be content, while retaining their position as called out of darkness, to accept the drawbacks which adhere to it, and to be hated by those who love the darkness rather than the light, because their life is evil. What true child of light will hesitate in his choice?

To show the disciples that they have no alternative but to submit patiently to their appointed lot as the chosen ones, Jesus enters yet more deeply into the philosophy of the world’s hatred. He explains that what in the first place will be hatred to them, will mean in the second place hatred to Himself; and in the last place, and radically, ignorance of and hostility to God His Father.John xv. 21. In setting forth this truth, He takes occasion to make some severe reflections on the unbelieving world of Judea, in which He had Himself labored. He puts the worst construction on its unbelief; declares it to be utterly without excuse; accuses those who have been guilty of it, of hating Him without a cause, that is, of hating one whose whole character and conduct, words and works, should have won their faith and love; and in their hatred of Him He sees revealed a hatred of that very God for whose glory they professed to be so zealous.Vers. 22-25.

How painful is the view here given of the world’s enmity to truth and its witnesses! One would like to see, in the bitterness with which the messengers of truth have been received (not excepting the case of Jesus), the result of a pardonable misunderstanding. And without doubt this is the origin of not a few religious animosities. There have been many sins committed against the Son of man, and those like-minded, which were only in a very mitigated degree sins against the Holy Ghost. Were it otherwise, alas for us all! For who has not persecuted the Son of man or His interest, cherishing ill-feeling and uttering bitter words against His members, if not against Him personally, under the influence of prejudice; yea, it may be, going the length of inflicting material injury on the apostles of unfamiliar, unwelcome truths, in obedience to the blind impulses of panic fear or selfish passion?

If there be few who have not in one way or another persecuted, there are perhaps also few of the persecuted who have not taken too sombre views of the guilt of their persecutors. Men who suffer for their convictions are greatly tempted to regard their opponents as in equal measure the opponents of God. The wrongs they endure provoke them to think and speak of the wrong-doers as the very children of the devil. Then it gives importance to one’s cause, and dignity to one’s sufferings, to conceive of the former as God’s, and of the latter as endured for God’s sake. Finally, broadly to state the question at stake as one between God’s friends and God’s foes, satisfies both the intellect and the conscience, — the former demanding a status questionis which is simple and easily understood; the latter, one which puts you obviously in the right, and your adversaries obviously in the wrong.

All this shows that much candor, humility, and patience of spirit, is needed before one can safely say, “He that hateth me hateth God.” Nevertheless, it remains true that a man’s real attitude towards God is revealed by the way in which he treats God’s present work and His living servants. On this principle Jesus judged His enemies, though He cherished no resentment, and was ever ready to make due allowance for Ignorance. In spite of His charity, He believed and said that the hostility He had encountered sprang from an evil will, and a wicked, godless heart. He had in view mainly the leaders of the opposition who organized the mob of the ignorant and the prejudiced into a hostile army. These men He unhesitatingly denounced as haters of God, truth, and righteousness; and He pointed to their treatment of Himself as the conclusive evidence of the fact. His appearance and ministry among them had stripped off the mask, and shown them in their real character as hypocrites, pretending to sanctity, but inwardly full of baseness and impiety, who hated genuine goodness, and could not rest till they had got it flung out of the world and nailed to a cross. With the history and the sayings of Christ before our eyes, we must beware lest we carry apologies for unbelief too far.

Jesus having spoken, as in a brief digression, of His bitter experience in the past, very naturally goes on next to express the hope which He cherishes of a brighter future. Hitherto He has been despised and rejected of men, but He believes it will not always be so. The world, Jewish and Gentile, will ere long begin to change its mind, and the Crucified One will become an object of faith and reverence. This hope He builds on a strong and sure foundation, even the combined testimony of the Spirit of truth and of His own apostles. “But,” saith He, His face brightening as He speaks, “when the Comforter (of whom He had spoken to His little ones, and to whom He now alludes as His own Comforter not less than theirs) is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of me.”John xv. 26. What results the Spirit would bring about by His testimony He does not here state. To that point He speaks shortly after, on discovering that His hearers have not apprehended His meaning, or at least have failed to find in His words any comfort for themselves. Meantime He hastens to intimate that the disciples as well as the Spirit of truth will have a share in the honorable work of redeeming from disgrace their Master’s name and character. They also should bear witness, as they were well qualified to do, having been with Him from the beginning of His ministry,Ver. 27. Hofmann takes μαρτυρεῖτε in ver. 27 as an imperative: And do ye also bear witness of me: tell the world what I am. — Schriftbeweis, 2te Hälfte, 2te Abtheilung, p. 19. and knowing fully His doctrine and manner of life.

In this future witness-bearing of the Spirit and of the apostles, Jesus sought comfort to His own heart under the depressing weight of a gloomy retrospect, and the immediate prospect of crucifixion. But not the less did He mean the disciples also to seek from the same quarter strength to encounter their tribulations. In truth, no considerations could tend more effectually to reconcile generous minds to a hard lot, than those implied in what Jesus had just said, viz. that the apostles would suffer in a cause favored by Heaven, and tending to the honor of Him whom they loved more than life. Who would not choose to be on the side for which the Divine Spirit fights, even at the risk of receiving wounds? Who would not be happy to be reproached and evil-entreated for a name which is worthy to be above every name, especially if assured that the sufferings endured contributed directly to the exaltation of that blessed name to its rightful place of sovereignty? It was just such considerations which more than any thing else supported the apostles under their great and manifold trials. They learned to say: “For Christ’s sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. But what does it matter? The Church is spreading; believers are multiplying on every side, springing up an hundred-fold from the seed of the martyrs’ blood; the name of our Lord is being magnified. We will gladly suffer, therefore, bearing witness to the truth.”

Having premised these observations concerning the aids to endurance, Jesus proceeded at length to state distinctly, in words already quoted, what the apostles would have to endure.John xvi. 2. On these words we make only one additional remark, viz., that the disciples would learn from them not only the nature of their future tribulations, but the quarter whence they were to come. The world, against whose hatred their Master forewarns them in this part of His discourse, is not the irreligious, sceptical, easy-going, gross-living world of paganism. It is the world of antichristian Judaism; of synagogue-frequenting men, accustomed to distinguish themselves from “the world” as the people of God, very zealous after a fashion for God’s glory, fanatically in earnest in their religious opinions and practices, utterly intolerant of dissent, relentlessly excommunicating all who deviated from established belief by a hair’s-breadth, and deeming their death no murder, but a religious service, an acceptable sacrifice to the Almighty. To this Jewish world is assigned the honor of representing the entire kosrnos of men alienated from God and truth; and if hatred to the good be the central characteristic of worldliness, the honor was well earned, for it was among the Jews that the power of hating attained its maximum degree of intensity. No man could hate like a religious Jew of the apostolic age: he was renowned for his diabolic capacity of hating. Even a Roman historian, Tacitus, commemorates the “hostile odium” of the Jewish race against all mankind; and the experience of the Christian apostles fully justified the prominence given to the Jew by Jesus in discoursing on the world’s hatred. It was to the unbelieving Jews they mainly owed their knowledge of what the world’s hatred meant. The pagan world despised them rather than hated them. The Greek laughed, and the Roman passed by in contemptuous indifference, or at most opposed temperately, as one who would rather not. But the persevering, implacable, malignant hostility of the Jewish religionist! — it was bloodthirsty, it was pitiless, it was worthy of Satan himself. Truly might Jesus say to the Jews, with reference thereto, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.”

What a strange fruit was this wicked spirit of hatred to grow upon the goodly vine which God had planted in the holy land! Chosen to be the vehicle of blessing to the world, Israel ends by becoming the enemy of the world, “contrary to all men,” so as to provoke even the humane to regard and treat her as a nuisance, whose destruction from the face of the earth would be a common cause of congratulation. Behold the result of election abused! Peculiar favors minister to pride, instead of stirring up the favored ones to devote themselves to their high vocation as the benefactors of mankind; and a divine commonwealth is turned into a synagogue of Satan, and God’s most deadly foes are those of His own house. Alas! the same phenomenon has reappeared in the Christian Church. The world that is most opposed to Christ, Antichrist itself, is to be found not in heathendom, but in Christendom; not among the irreligious and the skeptical, but among those who account themselves the peculiar people of God.

The announcement made by Jesus concerning their future tribulations, produced, as was to be expected, a great sensation among the disciples. The dark prospect revealed by thy momentary lifting of the veil utterly appalled them. Consternation appeared in their faces, and sorrow filled their hearts. To be forsaken by their Master was bad enough, but to be left to such a fate was still worse, they thought. Jesus noticed the impression He had produced, and did what He could to remove it, and help the poor disciples to recover their composure.

First, He makes a sort of apology for speaking of such painful matters, to this effect: “I would gladly have been silent concerning your coming troubles, and I have been silent as long as possible; but I could not think of leaving you without letting you know what was before you, which accordingly I have done now, as the hour of my departure is at hand.”John xvi. 4. The kind feeling which dictated the statement thus paraphrased is manifest; but the statement itself appears inconsistent with the records of the other Gospels, from which we learn that the hardships connected with discipleship in general, and with the apostleship in particular, were a frequent subject of remark in the intercourse of Jesus with the twelve. The difficulty has been variously dealt with by commentators. Some admit the contradiction, and assume that such earlier discourses concerning persecutions as are found — e.g. in the tenth chapter of Matthew — are introduced by the evangelist out of their chronological order. Others insist on the difference between the earlier utterances and the present in respect to plainness: representing the former as vague and general, like the early illusions made by Jesus to His own death; the latter as particular, definite, and unmistakable, like the announcements which Jesus made respecting His passion towards the end of His ministry. A third class of expositors make the novelty of this discourse on the world’s hatred lie in the explanation given therein of its cause and origin;Stier. while a fourth class insist that the grand distinction between this discourse and all that went before is to be found in the fact that it is a farewell discourse, and therefore one which, owing to the situation, made quite a novel impression.Luthardt.

Where so much difference of opinion prevails, it would be unbecoming to dogmatize. Our own opinion, however, is, that the peculiarity of the present utterance concerning apostolic tribulations lies in the manner or style, rather than in the matter. On former occasions, especially on the occasion of the trial mission of the twelve, Jesus had said much the same things: He had spoken of scourging in synagogues at least, if not of excommunication from them, and had alluded to death by violence as at least a possible fate for the apostles of the kingdom. But He had said all things in a different way. There He preached concerning persecution; here He makes an awfully real announcement. There is all the difference between that discourse and the present communication that there would be between a sermon on the text, “It is appointed unto men once to die,” and a special intimation to an individual, “This year thou shalt die.” The sermon may say far more about death than the intimation, but in how different a manner, and with what a different effect!

The next expedient for curing grief to which Jesus has recourse is friendly remonstrance. He gently taunts the disciples for their silence, which He regards as a token of hopeless, despairing sorrow. “But now I go my way to Him that sent me; and none of you asketh me, Whither goest Thou? But because I have said these things unto you, sorrow hath filled your heart.”John xvi. 5, 6. Olshausen joins the first part of ver. 5 to the preceding, and supposes a pause after the words are uttered. “Why,” He means to say, “are you so utterly cast down? have you no questions to ask me about my departure? You were full of questions at the first. You were curious to know whither I was going. I would be thankful to have that question asked over again, or indeed to have any question put to me, whether wise or foolish. The most childish interrogations would be better than the gloom of speechless despair.”

As the question, “Whither guest Thou?” had been sufficiently answered already, it might have been superfluous to ask it again. There were, however, other questions, neither superfluous nor impertinent, which the disciples might have taken occasion to ask from the communication just made to them concerning their future lot, and which they probably would have asked had they not been so depressed in spirit. “If,” they might have said, “it is to fare so ill with us after you go, why do not you stay? While you have been with us you have sheltered us from the world’s hatred, and you tell us that when you, our leader and head, are gone, that hatred will be directed against us, your followers. If so, how can we possibly regard your departure as any thing but a calamity?”

These unspoken questions Jesus proceeds in the next place to answer. He boldly asserts that whatever they may think, it is for their good that He should go away.John xvi. 7. The assertion, true in other respects also, is made with special reference to the work of the apostleship. In the early part of His farewell address, Jesus had explained to His disciples how His departure would affect them as private persons or individual believers. He had assured them that when “the Comforter” came, He would make them feel as if their departed Master were returned to them again; yea, as if He were more really present to them than ever He had been. Here His object is to show the bearing of His departure on their work as apostles, and to make them understand that His going away would be good for them as public functionaries.

The proof of this assertion follows;John xvi. 7-15. its substance is to this effect: “When I leave you and go to my father,ἀπέλθω, πορευθῶ. two desiderata of essential importance for the success of your work as apostles will be supplied. Then you will have receptive hearers, and you yourselves will be competent to preach. Neither of these desiderata exists for the present. The world has rejected me and my words; and you, though sincere, are very ignorant, and understand not what I have taught you. After my ascension, there will be a great alteration in both respects: the world will be more ready to hear the truth, and you will be able to declare it intelligently. The change cannot come till then; for it will be brought about by the work of the Comforter, the Spirit of truth, and He cannot come till I go.”

In the section of His discourse of which we have given the general meaning, Jesus sketches in rapid outline, first the Spirit’s converting work in the world,John xvi. 8-11. and then His enlightening work in the minds of the apostles.John xvi. 12-15 The former He describes in these terms: “When He is come, He will convince (produce serious thought and conviction in) the world about sin, righteousness, and judgment.” Then He explains in what special aspects the Spirit will bring these great moral realities before men’s minds; and here He but expounds what He has already said concerning the Spirit’s testimony in His own behalf.John xv. 26. He tells His disciples that the Comforter, witnessing for Himself in the hearts and consciences of men, will convince them of sin specially as unbelievers in Him; of righteousness in connection with His departure to the Father; and of judgment (to come), because the prince of this world is judged already (that is, shall have been, when the Comforter commences His work).

The second and third explanatory remarks are enigmatical, and instead of throwing light on the subject in hand, seem rather to involve it in darkness. They have given rise to so much dispute and diversity of opinion, that to expatiate on them were vain, and to dogmatize presumption. One great point of dispute has been: What righteousness does Jesus allude to, — His own, or that of sinners? Does He mean to say that the Spirit will convince the world, after He has left the earth, that He was a righteous man? or does He mean that the Spirit will teach men to see in the Crucified One the Lord their righteousness? Our own opinion is, that He means neither, and both. Righteousness is to be taken in its undefined generality: and the idea is, that the Spirit will make use of the exaltation of Christ to make men think earnestly on the whole subject of righteousness; to show them the utterly rotten character of their own righteousness, whose crowning feat was to crucify Jesus; to bring home to their hearts the solemn truth that the Crucified One was the Just One; and ultimately to put them on a track for finding in Jesus their true righteousness, by raising in their minds the question, Why then did the Just One suffer?

The meaning of the third explanatory remark we take to be to this effect: “When I am crucified, the god of this world shall have been judged. Both this world and its god, indeed, but the latter only finely and irreversibly, — the world, though presently following Satan, being convertible. When I am ascended, the Spirit will use the then past judgment of Satan to convince men of a judgment to come; teaching them to see therein a prophecy of a final separation between me and all who obstinately persist in unbelief, and so, by the terrors of perdition, bringing them to repentance and faith.”

What Jesus says of the enlightening work of the Spirit on the minds of the disciples, amounts to this: He will fit you to be intelligent and trustworthy witnesses to me, and to be guides of the Church in doctrine and practice. For these high purposes two things would be necessary: that they should understand Christian truth, and that they should possess the gift of prophecy, so as to be able to foretell in its general outlines the future, for the warning and encouragement of believers. Both these advantages Jesus promises them as fruits of the Spirit’s enlightening influence. He assures them that, when the Comforter is come, He will guide them unto all the truth He had himself taught them, recalling things forgotten, explaining things not understood, developing germs into a system of doctrine which was entirely above their present power of comprehension.John xvi. 12. He further informs them that this same Spirit will show them things to come, — such as the rise of heresies and apostasies, the coming of Antichrist, the conflict between light and darkness, and their final issue, as described in the Book of Revelation.

Such were the changes to be brought about in the world and in the disciples by the advent of the Comforter. Great beneficent changes truly; but why cannot they take place before Jesus leaves the world? The answer to this question is hinted at by Jesus, when He says of the Spirit: “He shall not speak of Himself,”Ver. 13. and “He shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you.”Ver. 14. The personal ministry of Jesus behoved to come to an end before the ministry of the Spirit began, because the latter is merely an application of the former. The Spirit does not speak as from Himself: He simply takes of the things relating to Christ, and shows them to men, — to unbelievers, for their conviction and conversion; to believers, for their enlightenment and sanctification. But till Jesus had died, risen, ascended, the essentials about Him would remain incomplete; the materials for a gospel would not be ready to hand. There could be neither apostolic preaching, nor the demonstration of the Spirit with power accompanying it. It must be possible for the apostles and the Spirit to bear witness of One who, though perfectly holy, had been crucified, to show the world the heinousness of its sin. They must have it in their power to declare that God hath made that same Jesus whom they have crucified both Lord and Christ, exalted to heavenly glory, before their hearers can be pricked in the heart, and made to exclaim in terror, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” Only after Jesus had ascended to glory, and become invisible to mortal eyes,Ver. 10: “And ye see me no more,” = I am no longer seen on earth; suggesting the idea that earth was Christ’s place of sojourn, heaven His home, therefore inferentially asserting his divinity. could men be made to understand that He was not only personally a righteous man, but the Lord their righteousness. Then the question would force itself upon their mindes: What could be the meaning of the Lord of glory becoming man, and dying on the cross? and by the teaching of the Spirit they would learn to reply, not as in the days of their ignorance, “He suffers for His own offences,” but, “Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; He was wounded for our transgressions.”

Finally, not till the apostles were in a position to say that their Lord was gone to heaven, could they bring to bear with full effect on the impenitent the doctrine of a judgment. Then they could say, Christ is seated on the heavenly throne a Prince and a Saviour to all who believe, but also a Judge to those who continue in rebellion and unbelief. “Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him.”

All this the disciples for the present did not understand. Of the Spirit’s work on the conscience of the world and in their own minds, and of the relation in which the third person of the TrinityThe personality of the Holy Ghost is assumed throughout this discourse. See ver. 13, ἐκεῖνος. stood to the second, they had simply no conception. Hence Jesus does not enlarge on these topics, but restricts Himself to what is barely necessary to indicate the truth. But the time came when the disciples did get to understand these matters, and then they fully appreciated the eulogium of their Lord on the dispensation of the Comforter. Then they acknowledged that the assertion was indeed true that it was expedient for them that He should go away, and smiled when they remembered that they had once thought otherwise; yea, they perceived that the word “expedient,” far from being too strong, was rather a weak expression, chosen in gracious accommodation to their feeble spiritual capacity, instead of the stronger one “indispensable.” Then they felt, as we imagine good men feel about death when they have got to heaven. On this side the grave

But to those on the other side how insignificant a matter must death seem, and how strange must it appear to their purged vision, that it should ever have been needful to prove to them that it was better to depart to heaven than to remain in a world of sin and sorrow!

The eulogium on the dispensation of the Comforter winds up with a paradox. Jesus has been telling His disciples that His departure will be beneficial for them in various respects, but particularly in this, that they shall attain thereafter to a clear, full comprehension of Christian truth. In effect, what He has said is: It is good for you that I go, for not till I become invisible physically, shall I be visible to you spiritually: I must be withdrawn from the eye of your flesh, before I can be seen by the eye of your mind. Hence He fitly ends His discourse on the Comforter by repeating a riddle, which He had propounded in a less pointed form in His first farewell address: “A little while, and ye no longer see me: and again a little while, and ye shall see me; because I go to the Father.”

This riddle, like all riddles, is very simple when we have the key to it. As in that other paradoxical saying of Jesus, concerning losing and saving life,Matt. xvi. 25. the principal word, “see,” is used in two senses,There are two words in the Greek — θεωρεῖτε, ὄψεσθε. — first in a physical, and then, in the second clause, in a spiritual sense. Hence the possibility of one event, the departure of Christ to the Father, becoming a cause at once of not seeing and of seeing. When Jesus ascended to heaven, the disciples saw Him no more as they saw Him then in the supper-chamber. But immediately thereafter they began to see Him in another way. The idea of His life did sweetly creep into the eye and prospect of their soul. And the sight was satisfying: it justified the glowing language in which their Master had spoken of it before He left them. Though they saw Him no more in the flesh, yet, believing in Him, to quote the words of the Apostle Peter, they rejoiced with joy unspeakable and full of glory.

For the present, however, the disciples have no conception of the vision and the joy which await them. Their Lord’s words have no meaning for them; they are a riddle indeed, yea, a contradiction. Standing around the inspired speaker, they whisper remarks to each other concerning the strange enigmatical words He has just uttered about a little while, and about seeing and not seeing, and about going to the Father. The riddle has evidently served one purpose at least: it has roused the disciples out of the stupor of grief, and awakened for a little their curiosity. That, however, is the amount of the service it has rendered: it has created surprise, but it has conveyed no sense; the hearers are constrained to confess, “We cannot tell what He saith.”John xvi. 18. Yet we observe, they ask no questions of Jesus. They would like to do so at this point, but they do not feel able to take the liberty; restrained, we imagine, by respect for the lofty sustained tone in which their Master has been addressing them in the second part of His farewell discourse. Jesus, however, reads a question in their countenances, and kindly favors them with a word of explanation.Vers. 19-21.

That word does not, strictly speaking, explain the riddle. Jesus does not tell His disciples what the little while means, nor does He distinguish the two kinds of seeing: He leaves the enigma to be solved, as it only can be, by experience. All He attempts is to make it conceivable how the same event which in immediate prospect causes sorrow, may, after its occurrence, be a cause of joy. For this purpose He compares the crisis through which the disciples are about to pass, not, as we have already done, to the solemn event by which a Christian makes his exit out of this world into a better, but to the event with which human life begins.Vers. 20-22.

The comparison is apt to the purpose for which it is introduced; but we cannot with certainty, not to say propriety, pursue it into detail. Interpreters who aspire to understand all mysteries and all knowledge, have raised many questions thereanent, such as: Who is represented by the mother in the parable — Christ, or the disciples? When does the sorrow begin, and when and in what does it end? The answers given to these questions are very various. According to one, Jesus Himself is the new man, and the sorrow He alludes to is His own death, viewed as the redemption of sinful humanity. Another will have it that Jesus represents His own disciples as with child of a spiritual Christ, who will be born when the Comforter comes. Most make the time of sorrow begin with Christ’s passion, but there is much difference of opinion as to when it ends. One makes the joy date from the resurrection, which, after a little while of painful separation, restored Jesus to His sorrowing disciples; another extends the “little while” to Pentecost, when the Church was born into the world a new man in Christ; a third makes the little while a long while indeed, by making the words “I will see you again” refer to Christ’s second coming, and to the blessed era when the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness, for which the whole creation groans, shall at length come into being.See, for the various opinions on these points, Stier, Luthardt, Lange, Olshausen, Alford, etc.

We do not think it necessary to pronounce on these disputed points. As little do we think it necessary to give the analogy a doctrinal turn, and find in it a reference to regeneration. What Jesus has in view throughout this part of His discourse is not the new birth, either of the disciples or of the Church, but the spiritual illumination of the apostles; their transition from the chrysalis into the winged state, from an ignorant implicit faith to a faith developed and intelligent; their initiation into the highest grade of the Christian mysteries, when they should see clearly things presently unintelligible, and be Epopts in the kingdom of heaven.One who had been introduced into the highest (third) grade of the Eleusinian mysteries was called ἐπόπτης. See Plato, Convivium (Socrates reporting discourse of Diotime on Ἔρως). For them, as for Christians generally (for there is a sense in which the experience of the apostles repeats itself in the spiritual history of many believers), this crisis is not less important than the initial one by which men pass from death into life. It is a great thing to be regenerated, but it is a not less great thing to be illuminated. It is a great, ever-memorable time that, when Christ first enters the heart, an object of faith and love; but it is an equally important crisis when Christ, after having departed perhaps for a season, leaving the mind clouded with doubt and the heart oppressed with sorrow, returns never to depart, driving away wintry frosts and darkness, and bringing light, gladness, summer warmth, and spiritual fruitfulness to the soul. Verily one might be content that Christ, as he first knew Him, should depart, for the sake of having his sorrow after a little while turned into such joy!

Having shown, by a familiar and pathetic analogy, the possibility of present sorrow being transmuted into great joy, Jesus proceeds next to describe, by a few rapid strokes, the characteristics of the state at which the apostles will ere long arrive.John xvi. 23, 24. First among these He mentions an enlarged comprehension of truth; for it is to this He refers when He says, “In that day ye shall ask me nothing.” He means that they will then ask Him no questions such as they had been asking all along, and especially that night, — child’s questions, asked with a child’s curiosity, and also with a child’s incapacity to understand the answers. The questioning spirit of childhood would be replaced by the understanding spirit of manhood. The truths of the kingdom would no longer, as heretofore, be inscrutable mysteries to them: they should have an unction from the Holy One, and should know all things.

Some think this too much to be said of any Christian, not even excepting the apostles themselves, while in the earthly state, and therefore argue that the day alluded to here is that of Christ’s second coming, or of His happy reunion with His own in the kingdom of His Father.So Luthardt, ii. 348, who holds that the first clause of ver. 23 refers to the final condition of the Church, and the second to its imperfect state, on the ground that the two cannot be contemporaneous. He says where there is praying there is asking, and vice versâ. Yet it is also true that the less a man needs to ask questions, that is, the more enlightened he is, the more he will pray. And without doubt it is true that in that final day only shall Christians know as they are known, and have absolutely no need to ask any questions. Then,

as it can never gladden them here below. Still, the statement before us has a relative truth in reference to this present life. While, in comparison with the perfect state, the clearest vision of any Christian is but a seeing in a glass darkly, the degree of illumination attained by the apostles might be described, without exaggeration, in contrast to their ignorance as disciples, as that of men who needed not any longer to ask questions. In promising His disciples that they would ere long attain this high degree, Jesus was but saying in effect, that as apostles they would be teachers, not scholars, — doctors of divinity, with titles conferred by Heaven itself, — capable of answering questions of young disciples, similar to those which they once asked themselves.

The second feature of the apostolic illumination mentioned by Jesus is unlimited influence with God through prayer. Of this He speaks with much emphasis: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, He will give it you.”John xvi. 23. The verb translated ask in this clause is not the same as that rendered by the same English word in the first. In the first clause it is ἐρωτήσατε; in the second, αἰτήσητε. That is to say, the apostles were to have at command the whole power of God: the power of miracles, to heal diseases; of prophecy, to foretell things to come bearing on the Church’s interest, and which it was desirable that believers should know; of providence, to make all events subservient to their well-being, and that of the cause in which they labored. The promise in its substance, though not in its miraculous accidents, is made to all who aspire to Christian manhood, and is fulfilled to all who reach it.

In the next sentence, Jesus, if we mistake not, particularizes a third feature in the state of spiritual maturity to which He would have His disciples aspire. It is a heart enlarged to desire, ask, and expect great things for themselves, the Church, and the world. “Hitherto,” He says to them, “have ye asked nothing in my name.” There was a reason for this, distinct from the spiritual state of the twelve. The time had not yet come for asking any thing in Christ’s name: they could not fitly or naturally make “Christ’s sake” their plea till Christ’s work was completed, and He was glorified. But Jesus meant more than this by His remark. He meant to say, what was in fact most true, that hitherto His disciples had asked little in any name. Their desires had been petty, their ideas of what to ask obscure and crude; any wishes of large dimensions they had cherished had been of a worldly character, and therefore such as God could not grant. They had been like children, to whom a penny appears greater than a thousand pounds does to a wealthy man. But Jesus hints, though He does not plainly say, that it will be otherwise with the apostles after the advent of the Comforter. Then they will be poor boys grown to rich merchants, whose ideas of enjoyment have enlarged with their outward fortunes. Then they will be able to pray such prayers as that of Paul in his Roman prison in behalf of the Ephesian Church, and of the Church in all ages; able to pray the Lord’s prayer, and especially to say, “Thy kingdom come,” with a comprehensiveness of meaning, a fervency of desire, and an assurance of faith, whereof at present they have simply no conception. Hitherto they have been but as children, asking of their father trifles, toys, pence: then they shall make large demands on the riches of God’s grace, for themselves, the Church, and the world.

Along with this enlargement, Jesus promises, will come fullness of joy. What is asked, the Father will grant; and the answer to prayer will fill the cup of joy to the brim. Hope may be deferred for a season, but in the end will come the unspeakable joy of hope fulfilled. “Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.” So it turned out in the experience of the apostles. They had fulness of joy in the Holy Ghost, in His work in their own hearts and in the world. The law ought to hold good still. But why, then, is the cause of Christianity not progressing, but rather, one might almost say, retrograding? We must answer this question by asking others: How many have large hearts cherishing comprehensive desires? How many with their whole soul desire for themselves above all things sanctification and illumination? How many earnestly, passionately desire the conversion of the heathen, the unity and peace and purity of the Church, the prevalence of righteousness in society at large? We are straitened in our own hearts, not in God.

The farewell discourse is now at an end. Jesus has said to His disciples what time permits, and what they are able to hear. He does not imagine that He has conveyed much instruction to their minds, or that He has done much for them in the way of consolation. He has a very humble idea of the character and practical effect of the address He has just delivered. Casting a glance backwards at the whole, while perhaps specially alluding to what had been said just before, He remarks: “These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs.” A few parables or figurative sayings about the house of many mansions, and about the Divine Trinity coming to make their abode with the faithful, and about the vine and its branches, and about maternal sorrows and joys: such, in the speaker’s view, is the sum of His discourse.

Conscious of the inevitable deficiency not only of the present discourse, but of His whole past teaching, Jesus takes occasion for the third time to repeat the promise of future spiritual illumination, this time speaking of Himself as the illuminator, and representing the doctrine of the Father as the great subject of illumination. “The time cometh when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall show you plainly of the Father.” The time referred to is still the era dating from the ascension. Shortly thereafter the disciples would begin to experience the fulfilment of Philip’s prayer, to understand what their Lord meant by His going to the Father, and to realize its blessed consequences for themselves. Then would their exalted Lord, through the Spirit of truth, speak to them plainly of these and all other matters; plainly in comparison with His present mystic, hidden style of speech, if not so plainly as to falsify the statements in other places of Scripture concerning the partiality and dimness of all spiritual knowledge in this earthly state of being.

Of the good time coming Jesus has yet another thing to say; not a new thing, but an old thing said in a new, wondrously kind, and pathetic way. It has reference to the hearing of prayer, and is to this effect: “In the day of your enlightenment you will, as I have already hinted, pray not less than heretofore, but far more, and you will use my name as your plea to be heard. Let me once more assure you that you shall be heard. In support of this assurance, I might remind you that I will be in heaven with the Father, ever ready to speak a word in your behalf, saying, ‘Father, hear them for my sake, whose name they plead in their petitions.’ But I do not insist on this, not only because I believe you do not need to be assured of my continued interest in your welfare, but more especially because my intercession will not be necessary. My Father will not need to be entreated to hear you, the men who have been with me in all my temptations,Luke xxii. 28. Vide p. 18, note. who have loved me with leal-hearted affection, who have believed in me as the Christ, the Son of the living God, while the world at large has regarded me as an impostor and a blasphemer. For these services to His Son my Father loves you, is grateful to you — in a sense accounts Himself your debtor.”John xvi. 26, 27. What heart, what humanity, what poetry is in all this! — poetry, and also truth; truth unspeakably comforting not only to the eleven faithful companions of Jesus, but to all sincere believers in Him.

Having alluded to the faith of His disciples, — so meritorious, because so rare, — Jesus takes occasion, in closing His discourse, and at the close of His life, solemnly to declare its truth. “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again I leave the world, and go to the Father.”Ver. 28. The first part only of this statement the disciples believed; the second they did not yet understand: but Jesus puts both together, as the two halves of one whole truth, either of which necessarily implies the other. The declaration is a most momentous one: it sums up the history of Christ; it is the substance of the Christian faith; it asserts doctrines utterly incompatible with a merely human view of Christ’s person, and makes His divinity the fundamental article of the creed.

These last words of Jesus burst on the disciples like a star suddenly shining out from the clouds in a dark night. At length one luminous utterance had pierced through the haze of their Master’s mysterious discourse, and they fancied that now at last they understood its import. Jesus had just told them that He came forth from the Father into the world. That, at least, they understood; it was because they believed it that they had become disciples. Delighted to have heard something to which they could give a hearty response, they make the most of it, and inform their Master that the intelligible, plain speaking on His part, and the intelligent apprehending on theirs which He had projected into the future, were already in existence. “Lo,” said they, with emphasis on the temporal particle, “now Thou speakest plainly, and speakest no proverb. Now are we sure that Thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask Thee: in this we believe that Thou camest forth from God.”

Alas, how impossible it is for children to speak otherwise than as children! The disciples, in the very act of professing their knowledge, betray their utter ignorance. The statement beginning with the second “now” indicates an almost ludicrous misapprehension of what Jesus had said about their asking Him no questions in the day of their enlightenment. He meant they would not then need to ask questions as learners: they took Him to mean that He Himself had no need to be asked questions as to who He was and whence He came, His claim to a heavenly descent being already admitted, at least by them. And as to the inference drawn from that statement, “By this we believe,” we can make nothing of it. After many attempts to understand the logic of the disciples, we must confess ourselves utterly baffled. The only way by which we can put a tolerable sense on the words, is to regard the phrase translated by “this” as an adverb of time, and to read “at this present moment: “Meanwhile, whatever additional light may be in store for us in the future, we even now believe that Thou camest forth from God. This translation, however, is not favored, or even suggested, by any of the critics.Winer, Neutest. Grammatik, states that he knows no clear example of the use of ἐν τούτῳ = by this, or because of. Of its use = intereâ he gives several examples from classic authors, pp. 361–2 (Moulton’s translation, p. 484).

That the disciples did honestly believe what they professed to believe, was true. Jesus had just before admitted as much. But they did not understand what was involved in their belief. They did not comprehend that the coming of Jesus from the Father implied a going thither again. They had not comprehended that at the beginning of the discourse; they did not comprehend it when the discourse was finished; they would not comprehend it till their Lord had taken His departure, and the Spirit had come who should make all things plain. In consequence of this ignorance, their faith would not carry them through the evil hour that was now very near. The death of their Master, the first step in the process of His departure, would take them by surprise, and make them flee panic-stricken like sheep attacked by wolves. So Jesus plainly told them. “Do ye now believe?” He said; “behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone.”The commentators tell us that ἄρτι πιστεύετε is not a question. If not, why is there no adversative particle in next clause (ἔρχεται δὲ)? The clause is undoubtedly interrogative in effect. Christ calls in question not the reality, indeed, but the sufficiency, of the faith of His disciples.

Stern fact sternly announced; but however stern, Jesus is not afraid to look it in the face. His heart is in perfect peace, for He has two great consolations. He has a good conscience: He can say, “I have overcome the world.” He has held fast His moral integrity against incessant temptation. The prince of this world has found none of his spirit in Him, and for that very reason is going to crucify Him. But by that proceeding Satan will not nullify, but rather seal, His victory. Outward defeat by worldly power will be but the index and measure of His spiritual conquest. The world itself knows well that putting Him to death is but the second best way of overcoming Him. His enemies would have been much better pleased if they had succeeded in intimidating or bribing Him into compromise. The ungodly powers of the world always prefer corruption to persecution as a means of getting rid of truth and righteousness; only after failing in attempts to debauch conscience, and make men venal, do they have recourse to violence.

Christ’s other source of consolation in prospect of death is the approval of His Father: “I am not alone, because the Father is with me.” The Father has been with Him all along. On three critical occasions — at the baptism, on the hill of transfiguration, in the temple a few days ago — the Father had encouraged Him with an approving voice. He feels that the Father is with Him still. He expects that He will be with Him when He is deserted by His chosen ones, and all through the awful crisis at hand, even in that darkest, bitterest moment, when the loss of His Father’s sensible presence will extort from Him the cry: “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” He expects that His Father will be with Him then, not to save Him from the sense of desertion (He would not wish to be saved from that, for He would know by experience that sorest of all sorrows, that in this, as in all other respects, He might be like His brethren, and be able to succor them when they are tempted to despair), but to sustain Him under the sore affliction, and enable Him with filial faith to cry “My God” even when complaining of being forsaken.

Free from all anxiety for Himself, Jesus bids His disciples also be of good cheer; and for the same reason why He Himself is without fear, viz., because He has overcome the world. He will have them understand that His victory is theirs too. “Be of good cheer: I have overcome the world, therefore so have ye in effect;.” — such is His meaning. Men of Socinianizing tendencies would interpret the words differently. They would read: I have overcome the world, therefore so may ye. Follow my example, and manfully fight the battle of righteousness in spite of tribulations.On the Socinian theory of Atonement, vide The Humiliation of Christ (sixth series of Cunningham Lectures), Lect. VII. p. 296, 2d ed. The meaning is good enough, so far as it goes. It does nerve one for the battle of life to know that the Lord of glory has been through it before him. It is an inspiring thought that He has even been a combatant at all; for who would not follow when the divine Captain of salvation leads through suffering to glory? Then, when we think that this august combatant has been completely victorious in the fight, His example becomes still more cheering. His victory shows that the god of this world is not omnipotent; that it is always in the power of any one to overcome him simply by being willing to bear the cross. Looking at Jesus enduring the contradiction of sinners even unto death, and despising the shame of crucifixion, His followers get more heart to fight the good fight of faith.

But while this is true, it is the smallest part of the truth. The grand fact is that Christ’s victory is the victory of His followers, and insures that they too shall conquer. Jesus fought His battle not as a private person, but as a public character, as a representative man. And all are welcome to claim the benefits of His victory, — the pardon of sin, power to resist the evil one, admission into the everlasting kingdom. Because Christ hath overcome, we may say to all, Be of good cheer. The victory of the Son of God in human nature is an available source of consolation for all who partake of that nature. It is the privilege of every man (as well as the duty) to acknowledge Christ as his representative in this great battle. “The Head of every man is Christ.” All who sincerely recognize the relationship will get the benefit of it. Claim kindred with the High Priest, and you shall receive from Him mercy and grace to help in your hour of need. Lay it to heart that men are not isolated units, every one fighting his own battle without help or encouragement. We are members one of another, and above all, we have in Christ an elder brother. We have at least a human relationship to Him, if not a regenerate one. Let us therefore look up to Him as our Head in all things: as our King, and lay down the weapons of our rebellion; as our Priest, and receive from Him the pardon of our sins; as our Lord, to be ruled by His will, defended by His might, and guided by His grace. If we do this, the accuser of the brethren will have no chance of prevailing against us. The words of St. John in the Apocalypse will be fulfilled in our history: “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.”

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Gracia Soberana Orizaba

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Cap 25 - El Encargo Final

Chapter 25. Dying Charge to the Future Apostles

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