John 14

1,2. LET not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to 3 prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and 4 receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. 5 Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we 6 know the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man 7 cometh unto the Father, but by me. If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him. 8, 9 Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me, hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the 10 Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself: but the Father, that dwelleth in me, he 11 doeth the works. Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else 12 believe me for the very works’ sake. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; 13 because I go unto my Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, 14 that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.

No one will read aright these sublimest discourses of the Lord who does not read them under the shadow of the Cross. Whether that which is reported in the fourteenth chapter was spoken in the upper chamber, or after leaving it, while pausing by the way on the solemn and memorable walk to the Mount of Olives, is not a question of importance, though the reference to the many abiding-places in the vast and glorious House of the Father seems to take more vivid significance if we think of it as uttered under the clear and shining heavens, with the Passover moon riding through them at its full. But both this and those which follow were certainly spoken after the traitor had left the company, and had gone into the “night,” the momentary sense of whose prophetic chill, through the opening door, has left so natural and indelible a trace on the record of John. They were spoken when the Lord was thus left free to unfold to those essentially sympathetic with himself the last thoughts which he was to speak before advancing to the garden and to Calvary. Days before he has given the final warning to the people, and his mission to them as a divine Teacher is now accomplished. Here he speaks only to disciples: from a soul at once supremely full of the Messianic consciousness, and perfectly prescient of the unsearchable darkness and anguish through which it is to pass for man’s redemption.

He speaks in foresight of the terrible shock which shall break upon those who have been so long companions of his life when they see the hands from which miracles have sprung transfixed by nails, and the head that was lately radiant on the mount scarred with the acanthine crown. He seeks, therefore, to give them all the truth, and more than all, which their insensitive and dim-seeing minds, represented by Thomas, Philip, and Jude, can receive. He seeks to unveil to them the celestial experience, which already is present to him: that they may have not comfort only, or steadiness of purpose, or an heroic hardihood of will; that they may have supremest peace, of souls thenceforth insphered in God, of souls made “partakers,” not of the divine thought alone, but “of the divine nature.” If one ever wonders at that great mystical word of Peter (Second Epistle 1:4), he has only to recur to these discourses, and see the root from which it sprang. More than even the Transfiguration must these have shown to that imperfect but responsive apostle what intimacy of union had now become possible between God’s mind and his; how shadowy the bounds between the divine life known on earth and that attained in immortal realms.

When thus set in their circumstances, how infinitely sad become those late, long-lingering words: “The hour is come that ye shall be scattered, and shall leave me alone!” But what a picture it is of the divine peace which he would give them which lies unfolded in that last word—that martyred saints so often have spoken, that every Christian is permitted to repeat amid the awful solitudes of death: “I am not alone, because the Father is with me!” R. S. S.

DISCOURSE AT THE TABLE, AFTER SUPPER.—This portion of the evangelical history we may call its Holy of Holies. It is the record of the last moments spent by the Lord in the midst of his disciples before his passion, when words full of heavenly thought flowed from his sacred lips. All that his heart, glowing with love, had still to say to his friends, was compressed into this short season. At first (from chap. 13:31) the intercourse took the form of conversation; sitting at table, they talked familiarly together. But when (14:31) the repast was finished, the language of Christ assumed a loftier strain; the disciples, assembled around their Master, listened to the words of life, and seldom spoke a word. At length, in the Redeemer’s sublime intercessory prayer, his full soul was poured forth in express petitions to his heavenly Father on behalf of those who were his own. It is a peculiarity of these last chapters, that they treat almost exclusively of the most profound relations—as that of the Son to the Father, and of both to the Spirit; that of Christ to the Church, of the Church to the world. Moreover, a considerable portion of these sublime communications surpassed the point of view to which the disciples had at that time attained; hence the Redeemer frequently repeats the same sentiments in order to impress them more deeply upon their minds, and because of what they still did not understand, points them to the Holy Spirit, who would remind them of all his sayings, and lead them into all truth. O.

He knows that within an hour or two he shall be lying in the great agony of the garden; that he shall never close his eyes again till he closes them in death; that to-morrow there await him all the mockeries of the judgment-hall, all the shame and suffering of the cross; that the shades of the next day shall darken round his sepulchre. But the prospect of all this, though so near, so vividly seen, so awfully dark, has not power to withdraw his thoughts from his disciples, or keep him from bestowing upon them those last hours given for earthly intercourse. As he speaks to them his whole heart seems absorbed with the one desire, to soothe, to comfort, to warn, to fortify, to encourage. If he speak of his own departure, it is as if the thing about it that grieved him most was, that they should be left exposed to so many difficulties and trials when he was gone. Their very ignorance of what was awaiting them quickens his compassion and gives deeper pathos to his words. H.

1. The Evangelist John has portrayed Jesus before our eyes as the Word, the Life, the Light; and now, that our joy may be full, he shows him to us as Love—as him who reveals his glory in love to his own. Let not your heart be troubled. The true heading to the whole consolatory discourse; for it flows on in one channel of love, and ends at last with the word, “Be of good cheer!” R. B.

Believe in me. Christ does not merely say to us, Believe this and the other doctrine about me; accept this and the other promise; hope for this and the other future thing. All these come with but are not the central act. He says, “Believe: believe in me! I am the way, and the truth, and the life; he that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth in me shall never thirst.” The whole feeling and attitude of a man’s mind is different, according as he is trusting a person, or believing something about a person. And this is the first broad truth that lies here. Faith has reference not merely to a doctrine, not to a system; but deeper than all these, to a living Lord—“faith that is in me.” It is a relation which is expressed not more clearly but perhaps more forcibly by substituting another word, and saying, Faith is trust. McLaren.—“Have the same trust in me!” What less and what else can these words mean? This is no transfer of trust from its proper object. It is the concentration of our trust in the unseen Father upon his own incarnate Son, by which that trust acquires a conscious reality, warmth, and power. B.

2. Many mansions. Literally, abiding-places, there are in the Father’s house; mansions for many, for the multitude of many thousand angels, and for the great company of redeemed sinners. As many members from one body, so the heavenly mansions, although many, are yet one house. Augustine beautifully says: “Because God is love, so by means of love it happens that whatever the glorified individually possess, is likewise common to all.” This power of becoming God’s housemates the Saviour here bids his disciples contemplate. The Father’s house spoken of in this passage is heaven, the real archetype of the Old Testament temple, where God dwells, and where, full of grace and truth, he shares his dwelling with his people, as the epistle to the Hebrews so richly teaches us. God’s typical house upon earth became desolate when Christ went away; but God’s real, heavenly house, since the departure of the Son of man, since the return home of the Son of God, shall be filled with many children, whom he leads to glory. R. B.

If it were not so, I would have told you. These words are a parenthesis in the midst of one of our Lord’s greatest promises. His disciples already cherished high hopes of a glorious future through him, and now what he says is above all they could ask or think—eternal mansions in heaven, where they shall see and share the glory which the Father bestows on the only-begotten and well-beloved Son. There might be some misgivings in their minds, as if such hopes were beyond hope, and these words are thrown in to quiet them. “I know,” as if he had said, “what you are expecting, and you need cherish no apprehension lest you come short of it.” Ker.

3. I will come again. He has come again as the risen Prince of Life. He has come again in the Comforter, the Holy Ghost, and made us sharers in his peace and life. That which will be openly revealed at the last day, we have already in the hidden life of faith; as Paul says, we are “made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” R. B.

And receive you unto myself. Strictly, at his personal appearing; but in a secondary and comforting sense, to each individually. Mark again the claim made—to come again to receive his people “to himself, that where he is there they may be also.” He thinks it enough to be assured that they shall be where he is and in his keeping. B.—We picture death coming to destroy; let us rather picture Jesus Christ coming to save. We think of death ending; let us think rather of life beginning. We think of losing; let us think of gaining. We think of parting; let us think of meeting. We think of going away; let us think of arriving. If Jesus comes for us, we do not go forth into a world of mystery and darkness, knowing not where. We simply go with and to Jesus. N. M.—The one all-comprehensive fact, itself sufficient though it were alone, will be that this everlasting home is to be with him we love, with him who hath loved us; who wears our nature and takes us to himself as his redeemed brethren. H. C.

It is the blessed presumption of our Christianity that there is a heaven for the people of God. If it had not been expressly revealed, it could have been plainly inferred from the whole Christian system; not that the eye hath seen it, though it hath seen Sinai on fire and Jesus transfigured in his robes of light; not that the ear hath heard it, though it hath heard the anthem of angels at Bethlehem. But God hath revealed it unto us, not only in the written word, but in the Christian heart also, by the Spirit. They who receive Christ at all do understand that it is for a deliverance which looks beyond the grave; that it is for an inheritance which would be despoiled of its excellence and beauty if it did not lie far beyond the reach of this present evil world. So he announced himself as the Way to some other region, and the Truth in open refutation of the world’s errors, and the Life in its highest sense, and beyond all this dying life of ours. And wherever he went it was as if odors from the Isles of the Blest were emptied upon the air—the sick revived, the dying were healed, the dead were raised, and all pointed to a superior department of being. It was as if the whole host of angels had been sent down to open to view that other circle of society and that upper world of light. Jacobus.

The glimpses we have in the Apocalypse of heavenly employments always disclose Him to us as the life of the place. Construct whatever other theory of immortality we may, so far as we look to revelation for our guide, and to him who alone brings life and immortality to light, we have no glimpse or ray of light on any other heaven than that which is created for us by the living and risen Redeemer of our souls, opened by his cross, and entered through repentance and faith toward him.

A few more bright or clouded sunsets fading along the western walls of our earthly sanctuary, and then the curtains will be lifted up. Then no longer as through a glass darkly, but face to face; then the vision of the countenance which no eye hath seen—and the new song before the throne, that no ear hath heard! We know not what we shall be, but we shall be with Him, and we shall see Him as He is! F. D. H.

5. How can we know? Not the cold, painless doubt of a God-emptied mind, indifferent to the heavenly inheritance (as Pilate’s was), but the doubt of a mind which cannot succeed in making its way, amid the gainsaying of earthly reason, into the heavenly blessing—this was Thomas’s doubt. Such souls the Saviour treats with all tenderness. He esteems the dull disciple worthy of those sweet words which have ever since blossomed in the hearts of all Christians, both of the unlearned and the wise. R. B.

6. I am. In the I ams which fell from the lips of Jesus himself, as given by John, is summed up the fullest possible exhibition of his person and work, and of that perfect satisfaction for the spiritual wants of all men which is to be found only in him. To the woman of Samaria he said, “I that speak unto thee am” the Messiah; to the disciples in the storm on the sea, “It is I (literally I am); be not afraid.” To the Jews he declares, “I am the bread of life;” “I am the bread which came down from heaven.” In presenting his relation to the Father he says, “I am from him and he hath sent me.” “I am the light of the world.” “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.” Still more tenderly does he present himself to his own. “I am the door of the sheep.” “I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.” “I am the resurrection and the life.” “Ye call me Master and Lord; and ye say well; for I am.” “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” “I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.” “I am the vine, ye are the branches.” So completely does Jesus, according to John’s gospel, present himself as the centre of all things—of self-existence, of eternity, of immutability, of omnipotence, of all the resources that are found in God; the source of all things—of light, of life, of comfort, of strength, of blessedness, of immortality, of all the treasures that the Christian soul can desire. D. S. G.

The way, the truth, the life. I am the way to the Father—by my atoning death I open a way to heaven. But men are in ignorance and error—they do not know the way. I am the truth, the light of the world: I show the way I have opened up. But men are dead. I am the life: I quicken the dead, and enable them both to see the way, and to walk in it. J. B.

Whenever the soul is most deeply stirred by penitence, or strained by agony, or kindled into holy aspiration, the spiritual nature craves a more intimate communion with God than would be possible if that God had not mysteriously manifested himself in flesh; not a sovereign in the skies, but a beating and friendly bosom in Bethany. It cries out for the Christ, who, by bearing to us the pity and pardon of the Father, is Way and Truth and Life. F. D. H.

The Way, else untrodden and impassable, between earth and heaven, between the region of selfishness and sin and the pure region of eternal calm and rest, Jesus hath consecrated by the shedding of his precious blood, so that all who will may have boldness to enter in. It is no mere local distance, no outward or material obstacle, that separates the sinful soul from its true home and rest in God. The heaven which God’s presence brings is already in local contiguity to saint and sinner alike. What keeps the sinner out of it is not material but moral barriers: break down these, and heaven’s sweet rest would stream into the spirit. Guilt and sin separate the soul from God as the widest wastes of untravelled space could never separate. Remove these, and the distance is at once annihilated. A purified soul flies to its rest in the bosom of God. And guilt Jesus only can remove. He offers purity to the defiled, peace, joy, hope, heaven, to the wretched, or that which includes them all—that strange unearthly blessing—rest to the weary and heavy-laden soul! C.

Jesus stands before us as Himself the Truth, making upon all that hear him the impression that he knows that of which he speaks, knows it truly, knows it deeply, knows it fully, and utters it from his inmost soul. Hence what he says is always fresh, and constant repetition cannot make it old. If he speaks of purity of heart, we know that he himself is pure; if he commands us to love one another, we feel that he himself is love; if he speaks of God, he produces the conviction that he knows the Father as the Father knows him. His very words carry with them the assurance that he is the Truth. J. P. T.

But by me. An unanswerable argument against the modern notion that it does not matter what a man believes—that all religions [or beliefs] will lead men to heaven if they are sincere, and that the Fatherhood of God is enough to save all at last, of all sects, kinds, and characters! Our Lord’s words should never be forgotten: “There is no way to the Father but by me.” God is a Father to none but those who believe on Christ. J. C. R.—Every one who comes through him, comes truly to the Father; he is passed from death unto life, from sin and damnation into guiltlessness and justification, from sorrow and anguish into everlasting joy and blessedness. R. B.

Jesus is the new and living way, wherein faith causes us to walk; the infallible truth of good things to come, for which we must hope; and the eternal life, which must be the sole object of our love. Out of this way, there is nothing but wandering; without this truth, nothing but error and deceit; and without this life, nothing but death. Q.

7. But yet—let not your heart be troubled—“from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.” How differently the Saviour speaks to souls who are truly turned toward the light, and to those who love darkness rather than light! Yonder, the proud, self-righteous Jews lie under the sentence, “Ye neither know me nor my Father;” but here, the poor, unlettered disciples are lifted up from their ignorance; for the Lord’s love discovers in them a faith which, though a glimmering spark, would shortly, when blown upon by the Holy Ghost, burst forth into a bright flame.

8. In this request there is a marvellous mixture of nature and grace, of an earthly and a heavenly mind. Philip means to take the Lord at his word: “Yea, Lord, thou art the way, and through thee only do we come to the Father: shew us then the Father, and it sufficeth us.” This is his longing desire—face to face to behold the Father. What a Moses and a David once longed for—to see God’s face—is here desired by Philip, with an eager heart desired. If he might have one look into the Father’s glory, he would then be satisfied. R. B.—9. Philip applied these words to a sensible theophany. This misunderstanding led Christ again to impress upon their minds the same truth, that whoever obobtained a just spiritual intuition of him saw the Father in him; the Father, with whom he lived in inseparable communion, and who manifested himself in his words and works. N.

He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. By reason of the consummate unity which subsists between us, just as the soul, in itself invisible, is seen by what it does through the body. Beng.—With the life of Jesus before us—as the revealer of the Father to men; the perfect representation of the Father’s character, of the Father’s compassion for sinners, of his love for the penitent and believing, of his patience, sympathy, and eternal faithfulness in all his promises—we have the very Father himself brought home to our mind’s conception and to our heart’s sensibility in every possible phase in which we can need to see or feel a present God. H. C.

He has shown us the Father: one whom we can love without measure, without end, and without fear; one who can fill our whole heart, and who in filling pacifies, purifies, and ennobles it; a God of happiness and holiness, a God whom we cannot know and contemplate without becoming at once both happier and better. A. V.—If this revelation took place in some degree during Christ’s humiliation, how much more when he shall come again the second time, without sin, unto salvation. Even then, the indwelling glory of Jehovah will be in Christ. Even in heaven the fulness of the Godhead shall dwell in him bodily. J. W. A.

10. It is then to faith that the Father is shown. Not only is the Father in him, but he also is in the Father. Never had the Lord spoken out more freely concerning his eternal Godhead than he does here. R. B.—I have seen the Father in thee, Jesus my Lord. For in thee my faith has a Christ, enthroned with the Father, come from the Father, zealous for the Father, bowed under the Father, and—oh love!—once hanging on the cross apart from (forsaken by) the Father. Bernhard.

Here is nothing human, nothing carnal. Let reason submit itself to faith, to adore mysteries it cannot comprehend. A God, who is the very same being with his Son, and yet is not the same person; a Son, who dwelleth in his Father, and his Father in him, and who yet are really distinct one from the other. A Son, who receives everything from his Father, without the least indigency, dependence, or posteriority; and a Father, who gives and communicates whatever he is to his Son, without giving him beginning, and without parting with anything which he gives to his coeternal and consubstantial Son, and working together with him by the same almighty power. These are truths, in attempting to fathom which reason loses itself. Q.

12. Miracles the apostles wrought, though wholly in his name and by his power, and the “greater” works—not in degree, but in kind—were the conversion of thousands in a day, by his Spirit accompanying their words. B.—All the works of his quickening power, both spiritual and bodily, which Christ had hitherto done for the purpose of destroying the works of the devil, were but first-fruits and pledges of future works; it was not until after his glorification that the windows of heaven were to be fully opened, when the streams of living water should be poured forth upon the thirsty world, and from thenceforth should perpetually flow forth from the Spirit-filled body of believers. R. B.

I go unto my Father. This refers simply to the withdrawal of his bodily presence—the disappearance of that form of Hebrew flesh and blood, through which he had hitherto been manifested to the world, but which, if suffered to remain longer, would prove a veil before his real and spiritual glory, and contract the universality of his religion. F. D. H.

13. The disciples were to enter into new relations with Christ. He therefore specially taught them to pray in his name. As they had before, during his bodily presence, expressed their wants to him personally, so now, trusting in him and conscious of the new relations in which through him they stood to the Father, they were to apply to the Father in his name. N.—Observe here how the discourse returns back to the theme: “No man cometh unto the Father but by me.” No prayer really enters into God’s ear and heart, except that which is offered in the name of Jesus, because it is the Father’s eternal desire to be glorified in the Son; but whoever prays in this name will be satisfied, for to him God’s Father-heart stands open, and together with the only-begotten Son, he has a child’s place in the Father’s bosom. R. B.

14. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it. This promise carries with it its own limitations: all there are—all there need be. The blessings sought must be blessings—not curses; must be such as can be asked in Jesus’ name—for the glory of God in the scheme of human salvation. Countless things of an earthly nature—health, prolonged life, food, raiment, comforts of varied sort—these may be prayed for in sympathy with Christ, for the ends of his kingdom according to our honest judgment; and if God should judge as we do, he will grant them; otherwise, we ought not to wish him to do so. Those things—a large class—which on the great whole may be or may not be blessings, must find their necessary limitation in God’s wisdom. But those things which, in their very nature, must be blessings, and never can be evils, fall entirely within the range of this promise. If we ask them in true sympathy with Jesus, asking really in his name, so that in giving them the Father may be glorified in the Son, they are sure. This promise, therefore, is as free from limitation as we ought to wish; is as broad, as rich, as sure, as it can be reasonable for us to desire. H. C.

Section 142.—Last Discourse: Another Comforter.

The Guest-Chamber.

15,16. If ye love me, keep my commandments: and I will pray the Father, and he shall give 17 you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye 18 know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you com- 19 fortless: I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but 20 ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also. At that day ye shall know that I am in 21 my Father, and ye in me, and I in you. He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me, shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. 22 Judas saith unto him (not Iscariot), Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself 23 unto us, and not unto the world? Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and 24 make our abode with him. He that loveth me not, keepeth not my sayings: and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s which sent me.

25,26. These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you. But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. 27 Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto 28 you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me ye would rejoice, 29 because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I. And now I have 30 told you before it come to pass, that when it is come to pass, ye might believe. Hereafter I will not talk much with you: for the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me. But that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us go hence.

WHAT precious, wondrous words are these—peace, comfort, the coming of Christ, the indwelling of the Spirit, the manifestation of the Father! We long for peace; we seek for peace; and, paradoxical as it seems, we strive for peace; but Christ here promises to give peace—even the perfect, the ineffable peace which kept his heart through all his conflicts, trials, and sufferings. J. P. T.

Obviously what we want ourselves, is to be somehow with him, and to know that he is with us; to have a knowledge of him, a presence and society with him, that we can carry with us, and have as the secret joy, and strength, and conscious blessing of our inmost life itself; that we may see him, when we are blind; that we may hear him, when we are deaf; that we may walk with him, when we cannot walk at all; rise with him when he rises, reign with him when he reigns; never away from him, even when beyond the sea, or passing through the valley of the shadow of death. Just this relation he undertakes to fill when he goes away. H. B.

15. Jesus prefaces the promise of the Comforter by an injunction to keep his commandments, because he wishes the disciples to understand that the fulfilment of the promise and the keeping of the commandments go together. This truth is reiterated under various modes of expression in this passage. As in his first great sermon (on the mount) Jesus had said, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God; so in his farewell discourse to his own, he says in effect: Be pure in heart, and through the indwelling Spirit of Truth ye shall see me, even when I am become invisible to the world. A. B. B.

To keep his commandments, to abide in his word, to keep his word, all describe the same thing which in the next chapter is expressed by, “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you.” The commands of Jesus require that which he imparts—viz., a divine life; so that they are no cause of terror like Moses’s commandments, which place us in the position of insolvent debtors. “Give that which thou dost demand, and demand what thou wilt”—in Augustine does Love pray; while in John’s words she confesses: “His commandments are not grievous.” R. B.

16. As said here, Jesus prays to the Father, and the Father, in answer to his prayer, gives the Comforter. In another passage (14 : 26) Jesus says—“Whom the Father will send in my name;” and in yet another (15 : 26), “Whom I will send unto you from the Father;” and also (16 : 7), “If I depart, I will send him unto you.” These various modes of expression are seen to be in harmony when we consider that the Father and the Son act jointly and coordinately in the sending of the Spirit. In certain aspects the sending may be ascribed to the Father; in certain other aspects to the Son. The great discussion of the middle ages—whether the Spirit proceeds from the Father and from the Son, or only from the Father—has been mostly a war of words. H. C.

Comforter. Paraclete, advocate. Among the Romans, it was usual for those who had any great lawsuit to call their relations and friends to their assistance, who in this office were named advocates. These attended the parties in the court, some assisting them with counsel, others pleading for them, and others barely by their presence giving weight to their cause. Hence the word came to signify not only an advocate who pleads the cause of another, but a counsellor, a friend, a patron. In this passage the Holy Ghost is called paraclete or advocate, in the largest sense: because he was to espouse the apostles’ cause, to accompany them, to defend them from their enemies, and to plead for them by the discourses which he inspired them to deliver, and by the miracles which he enabled them to work, so that he was in the properest sense their friend, counsellor, advocate, patron, and protector. M.

The word Comforter or Paraclete is used only by John: in his Gospel with reference to the Holy Spirit, in his first Epistle (2:1) with reference to Christ himself. Its proper sense is an “advocate,” “patron,” “helper.” In this sense it is plainly meant of Christ, and in this sense it comprehends all the comfort as well as aid of the Spirit’s work. The Spirit is here promised as one who would supply Christ’s own place in his absence. B.—The two divine personages bear in the scheme of mediation the same title; they are both Paracletes—comforters, teachers, exhorters, helpers, and advocates. The work of intercession, which, perhaps, the title mainly implies, is expressly said to be carried on by both. As Christ is the consolation of Israel, so the Spirit is the other Comforter (still the same term); expressions that imply the complete adaptation of both to human nature in all its misery and wants. J. A.

A personality is attributed to the Holy Spirit as distinct from the Father and the Son. I will pray “the Father;” and “he” (i. e., the Father) “shall give you another Comforter”—a helper in the stead of Jesus; that he, this Comforter thus distinguished from the Father and the Son, may “abide with you forever.” All the teaching of Christ concerning the Holy Ghost assumes or implies both the divinity of the Spirit and his distinct personality. He spoke of the Spirit not as a thing, an attribute, an influence, a property, but as a person. He ascribed to the Spirit such acts and offices as can be affirmed only of a person. He spoke of the Spirit—thus defining one distinct Spirit; the Holy Spirit, designating the Spirit by a personal and moral characteristic. J. P. T.

17. He shall be in you.** They had already received several gifts, which none can receive except from the Holy Ghost. These, like the gifts which had proceeded from him during the earlier dispensation, were in the main external, such as the power of working miracles. The higher gifts of the Holy Ghost—that transforming power of faith, which nothing can awaken except a lively insight into the sacrifice and mediation of the Saviour, and those spiritual graces whereby the life of Christ is fashioned in our souls—had not yet been vouchsafed to them. The Holy Ghost was to come to them, and to dwell in them, converting their earthly tabernacles into living temples of God. Hare.

18. I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.** Where the Greek has the word “orphanous,” equal to orphans, our translators put it “comfortless,” to keep up the harmony with the word “Comforter.” “Orphans” gives the more exact sense. They would be as children left alone in the world. But Jesus would not leave them so. “I will come to you,” he said—manifestly with reference to sending the Spirit to dwell with them as a near and dear and perfect friend. The Spirit would fill the place of his own presence. They would have no occasion to regret the change by which Jesus should go (bodily) and the Spirit come (spiritually). H. C.

We are not shut in from the influences of our Lord’s Spirit, here, where we need them so much—fighting temptation, or bearing hardship and pain and sorrow. The heavens over us are not brass, even if the earth under us seems sometimes to be iron. The fainting and weary soul of the disciple has her refreshment. All her fresh springs are near at hand. Working on, as we may often think, to little purpose, suffering with no clew to the mystery of our pain, finding the ordinary path parched as Baca, and our own spirits almost as dry, nevertheless heaven lies around us. Now and then its dew moistens our thirst. We are able to hold on our way by its invigoration. Life is not the horrible mockery it would be if this world were all. The land we are travelling through is not comfortless or forgotten of its Father; it is a part of Emmanuel’s country. “I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you.” And so, with all its sicknesses and graveyards and the crimes that are worse than either, this world where we are, to a Christian resident in it, is an outer room at least, and one of the many mansions, of God’s house. F. D. H.

19. Because I live.** It is his unextinguishable, divine life of which he speaks, in view of which his death and resurrection were but as shadows passing over the sun’s glorious disk. And this grand saying Jesus uttered with death immediately in view. What a brightness does this throw over the next clause, “Ye shall live also!” B.—He is indeed life; he is the Living One (Rev. 1:18); and therefore as a necessary consequence he swallowed up death in victory by rising from the dead. But in respect to believers, he says, “Ye shall live,” because their life grows not out of themselves, but as the fruit out of Christ’s life, as the life of the branch, which receives its life from the vine. R. B.

20. At that day ye shall know.** The soul—visited as he presently declares with the very presence of the Son and of the Father—cannot but know, as said here, both that Jesus is in the Father and also in his people. It is the knowledge of experience, using this word in its broadest sense—a knowing that comes of the witnessing presence of God in Christ to the human soul. H. C.—This first clause, “I in the Father,” was calculated to give them perfect confidence in the cause of Christ, that it came from God; the second, “Ye in me,” revealed to them their fellowship with Christ, and their interest in the whole of his redemption; the third, “I in you,” gave them strength and courage to go forth with their ministry and witness to attack the world, knowing that Christ was working in them. Much there is to learn in these three short sentences: God in Christ—I, in the sight of God, found in his Son—and Christ in me, because he has given me of his Spirit. Rieger.

21. Hath my commandments, and keepeth them.** To “have the commandments” of Jesus implies diligent inquiry and docility. To “keep them” involves the true spirit of obedience—the one deep, changeless purpose to do all his known will. This is the legitimate evidence of true love to Christ. He will joyfully accept this evidence, and give every obedient, loving soul the testimony that he accepts it. This is what he declares here. “He that loveth me shall be loved of my Father.” H. C.—Where there is no obedience to Christ, there is no love. Without this obedience, profession, talk, knowledge, even feeling and weeping, are all worthless. J. C. R.

Will manifest myself. It is the essential property of love to share everything with the beloved object, and thus Christ desires to manifest himself to his disciples, that his life may become their life, his glory their glory; everything will he confide to them his friends.

22,23. What had happened, that instead of a glorious kingdom of Christ before which the world should bow, there was only to be a small insignificant band of Christians, despised and persecuted by the world? Nothing had happened, as Judas thought, which had changed the plan of Christ’s kingdom; rather it was his purpose to raise up through his gracious word a kingdom which should come to those who keep his word and who love him, but which should keep aloof from those who reject his word and who love him not. R. B.

To love Christ is to have the heart go forth to him when, in his wonderful life, and still more wonderful death, he has become the object of faith to the soul. It is love not to an abstraction, but to a great living personality—“the man Christ Jesus”—“God manifest in the flesh.” To keep his words is not merely to preserve them in the memory, but to put them into the heart, and, deeper still, into the conscience, and then to let them come forth in the life as visible and practical things. We must begin to love Christ before we can keep his words. Christ is the law-giver of God’s world, and before we can obey his laws we must be on terms of amity with himself. This implies that we know him to be at peace with us, for as we are made, we cannot love where we dread. God’s friendship must come before God’s service.

That Christ should here lay down love to himself as the foundation of all our fidelity to him, does not, indeed, of itself, prove his atonement; but it is in the firmest bond of union with it, and taken in connection with all his teaching and life and death, it receives a power of meaning which no other view of Christ can give to it. Love to him can face every duty and dare every danger and endure every sacrifice, when it sees him filling the universe from the throne of heaven to the grave of earth, with self-sacrifice for man, and self-sacrifice to save him from the most terrible of all evils, exclusion from the favor and life of the God who made him. Ker.

Tenderly does the Lord comfort his desolate disciples; and plainly does he point out to us the sure and simple way to perfect peace! To love him and to keep his word—it is that which will bring into our souls an eternal pentecostal rejoicing, and nothing else ever can. R. B.

I will come; I and my father will come. We will come. Was ever such a plural used as that! Who is he who associates himself in this way with the omnipresent and omnipotent Jehovah, who engages for the Father, and what he engages for the Father undertakes equally himself? We will come to him, not to pay a transient visit, to tarry but a night. We will take up our abode with him. To have these words of Jesus realized in our daily, hourly life, to know and believe that he is indeed with us, beside us, has taken up his abode with us, this is our comfort and our strength. Nothing short of this will do. H.

25,26. Teach you all things, and bring all to remembrance.** As the Son came in the Father’s name, so the Father shall send the Spirit “in my name,” says Jesus, i. e., with like divine power and authority to reproduce in their souls what Christ taught them. B.—Their Helper, their Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, would bring to their remembrance not only the consolatory words of this his last evening, but all things that he had ever said to them. This is to be the Holy Spirit’s office, for he is sent by the Father in the name of Jesus Christ. The place which the Saviour had hitherto filled with his disciples, when he fed them with the words of eternal life, was from henceforth after a new way to be supplied by the other Comforter, the Holy Ghost; for he is the true vicar and vicegerent of Christ upon earth. R. B.

He would lead them into all truth; whereas now they are constantly misapplying the plain words of Christ. He would bring all things to their remembrance; whereas now they often forget in a day or two the most remarkable teaching, or the most amazing miracles. He would take the things of Christ, the things of the Father, and reveal them unto them; whereas now they constantly misapprehended his relation to the Father, and that of the Father to him, misapprehended his person, his mission, and his kingdom. And he would abide with them forever, not for “a little while.” Whatever, therefore, Christ’s personal presence and teaching had been to them, the presence of the Spirit would be more. Arthur.

27. All that the Lord had said to his disciples, to be afterward brought to their remembrance by the Holy Ghost, he now in parting sums up in this one word—peace. It was the custom in Israel, both in meeting and parting, to greet one another by wishing peace. This form of greeting here becomes new and full of grace and truth in the mouth of the Saviour going now to the Father. R. B.

It is no wonder he emphasizes the pronoun, and says, “My peace.” It is a peace obtained by the drops of blood and the cross; Gethsemane and Calvary; by a life in which there was no place to lay the head. It is not a superficial peace; it is not what we call pleasure, nor a happy temperament, nor gratified sensibilities. It is something deeper and stronger. It is an attainment; it is a victory; it is tribulation overcome. It is the mightiest powers of our nature balanced, reconciled, and harmonized at last, through we know not what struggles and sufferings, till, by the perfect sway of one supreme principle of faith, there are the equipoise and serenity that pass all understanding. F. D. H.

Peace is not merely quiet upon the surface, but a deep-seated rest of the inner life. It is such an inward reality—quiet within the soul—a restful life beneath all other life—that Christ gives to them that are his. It is something deeper than sense, or intellect, or passion, or all the shows of that life which we can see, or hear, or touch. It is no mere harmony of natural powers—although it is also this—but it is a positive spiritual endowment, a gift from the divine, something which settles and stays the spirit on a foundation that cannot be moved. It is the spirit returning to God from weary and vain voyaging after other good; the soul cleaving unto God with the strong pinions of faith and hope. It is nearness to God; the blessed assurance which God himself alone can give, that He is there, whatever our doubts may say—that the everlasting arms are around us, though we may not feel their quiet strong embrace. Tulloch.

Not only is it the gift of God, but it is his very presence. Sickness cannot destroy it; poverty cannot rob it of its incorruptible riches; bereavement only makes it more real, and the approach of death more deep. The world, which cannot give it, cannot take it away; its root is in the immovable assurance of the divine acceptance and favor, through the blood and righteousness of the Saviour. It gradually spreads its roots over the entire spiritual being, through the sanctifying power of the eternal Spirit; and while the only thing that can ruffle it is the silent reproach of a wounded conscience, the only thing in all the world to destroy it is sin. A. W. T.

Not as the world giveth. Their peace was to work through patience and suffering. It was not only to be compatible with conflict and danger and toil, but in and through these it was to come. What we think of most naturally in connection with such a subject is our Lord’s own life—so majestic in its repose—with such a pervading depth of calm in it—yet so troubled outwardly. And here no doubt is the key to the meaning. Our Lord’s own life—his spiritual manifestation in life and death—is the best interpreter of all his profoundest sayings. For the Christian lives only in Christ. All Christian thought is hid in him. All Christian experience grows out of him. Tulloch.

28. Ye would rejoice, because I go unto the Father.** Before, the Lord has been explaining that his departure, the announcement of which so greatly troubled the disciples, was expedient for them; now he proceeds to say that his departure would be glorious for him. After telling them that his departure would be no loss to them, he now adds that to him it would be gain. In the foregoing discourse he has been comforting the disciples by bidding them not to be alarmed on their own account; now he comforts them by bidding them not be alarmed on his. Gerhard.

Of all his many hard words to his disciples, none were so hard as those in which he strove to assure them that his going away would be for their gain, no explanation at first so disappointing as that by which he maintained it. He was going away, but he was coming back. The world should not see him, but they should see him and their joy should abide. It was not, however, to be a sight of the senses as it was then, but the beholding of him by faith in the power of the Spirit. His coming back to be with them was not so much his return to the world for forty short days, but his coming with his Father to those who loved his words, to take up an abode in their hearts. He would teach them that he was always at hand, always thinking of them and watching over them, absent in the body, he was present in the spirit, and in the fulness of his divine power. A. W. T.

For my Father is greater than I. None but a being who, in some sense, “thought it not robbery to be equal with God,” would be so presumptuous as thus to make a comparison of himself with the Most High. His disciples were liable to forget, amid the impressions which his power and love had made on their hearts, that he was acting in a subordinate capacity, and they needed to feel that their Saviour’s personal presence was not the greatest and best thing for them; that the Father was engaged in the work of redemption and acted as its head, and that the Holy Spirit also must come and do his part of the divine work. Acting, even in his complex nature, in a subordinate capacity, the words are natural and appropriate. N. A.

In the words of the Athanasian Creed, Christ is “equal to the Father as touching his Godhead, and inferior to the Father as touching his manhood.” When the Word was “made flesh” he took on him “the form of a servant.” This was temporary inferiority. J. C. R.—Provided a compensation be made to you for my departure, you ought to rejoice at it, because for myself it will be gain, inasmuch as I shall then be exalted to the Father, who is greater than I in my present state of humiliation on earth, but with whom my departure and exaltation will place me on an equality (compare chap. 17 : 5). The Lord adds (verse 29) that, by this prediction of his exaltation, he intended to strengthen their faith in that event, when it had taken place, and in all resulting from it. C. B.

29. The word is the seed, faith (together with peace and joy) is the fruit. Beng.—It did come to pass that the Lord went away and came again, and the disciples believed. But as it came to pass not for the disciples only, but for us also, so the Holy Ghost would fain teach and increase our faith likewise. R. B.

31. Arise, let us go hence. At his command they rise and are ready to follow him. But he does not immediately go forth. As they cluster round him, he continues his address. At last it closes with these comforting words: “These things have I spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace.” H.

Section 143.—Christ the Vine. Abiding in Him.

The Guest-Chamber.