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I. THE DEPARTURE OF THE LORD IS A FOUNTAIN OF JOY TO THOSE WHO LOVE HIM.

1. Christ's going is Christ's coming. The word "again" is a supplement, and somewhat destroys the true flow of thought. But if you strike it out and read the sentence as being what it is, a description of one continuous process, you get the true idea. "I go away, and I come to you." There is no moment of absolute absence. To the eye of sense, the "going away" was the reality, and the "coming" a metaphor. To the eye enlightened to see things as they are, the dropping away of the visible corporeal was but the inauguration of the higher and the more real.

2. Christ's going is Christ's exaltation. Hitherto we have been contemplating Christ's departure simply in its bearing upon us, but here He unveils another aspect of it, and that in order that He may change His disciples' sadness into joy.

(1). What a hint of self-sacrifice lies in this thought, that Christ bids His disciples rejoice with Him because the time is getting nearer its end, and He goes back to the Father! And what shall we say of the nature of Him to whom it was martyrdom to live, and a supreme instance of self-sacrificing humiliation to "be found in fashion as a man"?

(2) The context requires that for Christ to go to the Father was to share in the Father's greatness. Why else should the disciples be bidden to rejoice in it? or why should He say anything about the greatness of the Father? The inferiority, of whatever nature it may be, to which He here alludes, falls away when He passes hence. Now these words are often quoted triumphantly, as if they were dead against the doctrine of the Divinity of Christ. But the creed which confesses that is not to be overthrown by pelting this verse at it; for this verse is part of that creed, which as fully declares the Father is greater than the Son as it declares that the Son is One with the Father. We can dimly see that the very names "Father" and "Son" imply some sort of subordination, but as that subordination is in the timeless and inward relations of Divinity, it must be supposed to exist after the Ascension, as it existed before the Incarnation; and, therefore, any such mysterious difference is not that which is referred to here. What is referred to is what dropped away from the Man Jesus Christ when He ascended up on high. As Luther has it, "Here He was a poor, sad, suffering Christ"; and that garb of lowliness falls from Him, like the mantle that fell from the prophet as he went up in the chariot of fire, when He passes behind the brightness of the Shekinah cloud that hides Him from their sight. Therefore we, as His followers, have to rejoice in an ascended Christ, beneath whose feet are foes, and far away from whose human personality are all the ills that flesh is heir to.

3. On both these grounds Christ's ascension and departure is a source of icy.

(1) There can be no presence with us, man by man, through all the ages, and in every land, unless He, whose presence it is, participated in the absolute glory of Divinity.

(2) And surely if our dearest one was far away from us, in some lofty position, our hearts and our thoughts would ever be flung thither, and we should live more there than here. And if we love Jesus Christ, there will be no thought more sweet to us than the thought of Him, our Brother and Forerunner, who has ascended up on high; and in the midst of the glory of the throne bears us in His heart, and uses His glory for our blessing.

II. HIS DEPARTURE AND HIS ANNOUNCEMENT OF HIS DEPARTURE AS THE GROUND AND FOOD OF FAITH (ver. 29). He knew what a crash was coming, and with exquisite tenderness He gave Himself to prepare the disciples for the storm, that, forewarned, they might be forearmed. And when my sorrows come to me, I may say about them what He says about His departure. Aye! He has told us before, that when it comes we may believe. But note —

1. How Christ avows that the great aim of His utterances and of His departure is to evoke our faith. And what does He mean by faith?

(1) A grasp of the historic facts, His death, resurrection, ascension.

(2) The understanding of these as He Himself has explained them.

(3) And, therefore, as the essence of faith, a reliance upon Himself as thus revealed, sacrifice by His death, victor by His resurrection, King and interceding Priest by His ascension — a reliance upon Himself as absolute as the facts are sure, as unfaltering as His eternal sameness.

2. These facts, as interpreted by Himself, are the ground and the nourishment of our faith. How differently they looked when seen from the further side and when seen from the hither side. "We trusted," said two of them, with such a sad use of the past tense, "that this had been He which should have redeemed Israel." But after the facts were all unveiled, there came back the memory of His words, and they said to one another, "Did He not tell us that it was all to be so? How blind we were not to understand Him!"

3. Faith is the condition of the true presence of our absent Lord.

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

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KJV: Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I.

WEB: You heard how I told you, 'I go away, and I come to you.' If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I said 'I am going to my Father;' for the Father is greater than I.