Once more, Jesus reminds his disciples that he is going away and then coming back to them. In this context, the coming back seems to be referring to his second coming and not his post-resurrection time with them. This is a recurring theme in the upper room and Jesus is relating it directly to the mission he is sending his disciples into. In that way, it relates directly to us today as his church.
1. If you loved me, you’d be glad
This repeated talk of Jesus’ departure has been deeply distressing to the disciples, as we’ve seen. In v.27 Jesus speaks his peace to the disciples and urges them not to be troubled or afraid any longer.
But he doesn’t leave it there. The challenge he gives – that they should not allow themselves to be fearful and troubled – is now advanced by Jesus as he addresses their self-pity by speaking of their love for him (or apparent lack of it). If they loved him (which they ought to do and no doubt would claim to do) then they would be glad about this departure.
We’ll come to the reason for that gladness in a moment but we do need to stop and pick up on what Jesus is saying here. The disciples are understandably distressed and Jesus has tried to comfort them with his words and has challenged them to apply what he has said to them. But that isn’t enough. It would be so easy for the disciples to get the impression that their feelings were what really mattered, that they were at the centre of everything – and that would be so wrong.
They need help in their distress but they need also to be pointed away from themselves and to the Lord; they need to see again his pre-eminence and their call to love and serve him. It’s so easy, when we feel troubled and afraid, to think that the Lord ought to comfort us and patch us up and so on, and at the same time fail to see that we have a duty and a calling to love him.
Our feelings and struggles are not at the centre of everything. Yes, we feel things keenly and desperately need the Lord’s help but a significant part of the help we need is to have our eyes lifted to the high and holy calling we have: to love the Lord.
In our sorrow and as we experience the trials of life as disciples of Jesus, we can become self-interested; Jesus will comfort us but he also calls us to a love for him that rises above our self-interest and self-pity and instead leads us on the path of joy and gladness. That is an extremely valuable lesson to learn.
2. Why they should be glad
But just why should the disciples be glad that Jesus is leaving them? For this reason: “the Father is greater than I”. But what does Jesus mean by that and why should that cause the disciples to be glad?
Jesus is not saying that he is a lesser being than the Father. That is simply impossible in the light of what he has elsewhere said about himself and the Father and what John has said about Jesus. Jesus and the Father are one; they are both God, both eternal, both fully divine. So Jesus is not speaking here of a difference in their essential being. As someone has said, “the Father is God sending and commanding; the Son is God sent and obedient”.
What Jesus is pointing to is that relationship of sender and sent – he is the obedient Son who does all his Father’s will. The Father is greater than the Son in terms of the mission Jesus came to perform – it is a greatness that relates to function and not to being.
But why should joy and gladness be the order of the day for the disciples as Jesus returns to the Father? Because that is where he belongs, at the right hand of the Father; because his return will mean his mission is completed, his suffering and deep humiliation over; because the Father will be glorified in the Son and the Son in him.
Could there be any greater reason for joy than this? If they loved Jesus, could they want anything less for him than to return to his Father? They would of course be deeply distressed but if their love was genuinely more than self-interest, how could they not rejoice?
We perhaps can relate to that in terms of loved ones who die and go to be with the Lord. We are understandably distressed and grieve deeply over the loss – but our loss is truly their gain since they are at home with the Lord and any approach to grief that doesn’t at least try to handle that runs the danger of sliding into harmful self-pity.
Relating this to our own relationship with the Lord, I think we can draw the lesson that John Piper has majored on in his ministry: that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him; that God’s love for us consists in calling us to share his own joy in himself. And so we need very much to learn this lesson: his disciples should rejoice that he is returning to the Father with his job done.
But it isn’t just about Jesus’ own joy in returning home. The Father is greater than he and the return of Jesus will herald the pouring out of the Spirit who, as we’ve seen, will enable the disciples to do those greater works Jesus spoke about. Jesus will personally be present with his disciples by the Spirit – indeed, both Father and Son will come to make their home with all believers.
So the sadness of the disciples is short-sighted in terms of their own situation and mission. It is for their good that Jesus goes away (16:7). That is a lesson for us to take to heart – we need to take the long view, the Christ-centred view.
Our immediate sorrow and grief in all sorts of trials needs to be set in the context of the work of God and the progress of his mission in the world. Where that mission is being forwarded and Jesus glorified, our own sorrows which might arise directly from being involved in that mission, are put into their true light. That’s why Paul and Silas were found singing praise to God at midnight in the jail in Philippi.
3. What the world must know
Jesus has told his disciples this so that when the time comes they will believe. And that time is now upon them: “I will not speak with you much longer, for the prince of this world is coming.” (v.30)
Jesus is acutely aware of Satan and his evil schemes. He takes him seriously but there is a careful balance in what he says here: he neither plays him down nor talks him up. Yes, he is the prince of this world; he has power and seeks to govern the nations and keeps people in the darkness and blinds their eyes to the truth about God.
But – and this crucial – he has no hold on Jesus. That is something only God’s Son could ever say; no other man or woman could make such a claim.
Jesus Christ, the Righteous One, is not under Satan’s sway; there are no accusations that can be made against him that will stand. He faced Satan in the wilderness and won and now he is going to the cross to complete that victory.
And yet, to the eyes of most, including the disciples, the cross would seem to show that Satan has had the last word, the last laugh. But that simply isn’t so. Jesus goes as a willing victim in complete obedience to his Father’s will. The cross is, paradoxically, the scene of Jesus’ great triumph over the devil.
And this is something the world needs to know – it needs to see the one truly righteous man over whom the devil has no hold and it needs to see him because there is no other hope for the world.
Jesus goes to the cross to effect salvation and to witness to the world that the devil is not ultimate. Yes, he has power but Jesus has greater power, the power of godliness and loving self-sacrifice.
How utterly terrible it would be for the whole world if there was no-one worthy of bringing God’s plans to fulfilment (remember John’s weeping when no-one was found able to take the scroll and open its seals?). But that is not the reality; Jesus is worthy because he shed his blood and was obedient to death – and the world needs to know that.
It needs to know it in order to be saved; it needs to know it that Jesus would receive the praise he is due. But how will the world learn it? Not by accident; the world will only learn of Jesus and his majestic grace and matchless obedience if we bear witness to it – in our words and by our deeds.
