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CHAP. XIV.

ET not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.

L'

a ver. 27. ch.

xvi. 22, 23.

1. "Ye believe in God, believe also." The translation is uncertain, owing to the word, "ye believe," in each clause being the same in mood and tense, and may be rendered either indicatively or imperatively. "Ye believe in God, ye believe also in Me," or, "Believe in God, believe also in Me."

1. "Let not your heart be troubled." Let not your heart be troubled at what I have just said: that I should be with you but "a little while," that "ye shall seek me," and that "whither I go ye cannot come."

These words seemed to be a final leave-taking; but He had somewhat qualified them by saying to Peter, "Thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards." And now He proceeds to show that the separation was but for a time, and that His departure would be their gain.

"Ye believe in God, believe also in me." Faith in God, and in Himself, will disperse all their trouble. They must have faith in God as the Father, and in Himself as the Son of the Father.

Let the reader notice how the Lord here sets Himself side by side with His Father, as the object of faith-of a faith, too, which should dispel all trouble from the hearts of His followers. Such a command to believe in Him, co-ordinately with His Father, is one of the strongest proofs of His Godhead.

There is considerable doubt respecting the exact translation of the verb in this sentence, because both the words "believe" in the original in each clause are the same in mood and tense. They may be rendered either, "Ye believe in God, ye believe also in me," or "Believe in God, believe also in me."

Either way of translating the verb yields a true and good sense. "Ye believe in God as the Father Who hath sent Me. Ye believe in Me as His very Son, Who, doing nothing of Himself, but by the will of His Father, hath chosen you. What room for distress or anxiety, if ye realize this? Ye are in His hands. Ye are also in Mine. Act on this faith, and dismiss your fears."

CHAP. XIV.]

MANY MANSIONS.

347 2 In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. to prepare b ch. xiii. 33,

"I go

36.

a place for you.

2. "Mansions;" abiding places.

"I go to prepare," &c. "For I go." "For" inserted by N, A., B., C., D., K., L., some Old Latin, Vulg., and Syriac.

Or if we take "believe" as involving a command, the sense is equally good.

"Believe in God." "Trust in His Love to Me, and to you as Mine, and accept His words implicitly. Believe in Me, and receive all My words implicitly as His words; and this will dispel all your trouble about your future, even though I leave you."

But, it is urged, to those who had from the first believed in God, and had also believed in Jesus, and shown their belief by giving up all and following Him, how could the Lord say, "Believe," as if they believed not? He said it not to them as if they believed not, so counting their faith as nothing, but He said it as marking the weakness and rudimentary nature of their faith. They had faith in God, they had faith in Him; but they must go on from faith to faith. Their faith in the Father and in the Son was as nothing to what it might be, and to what it would shortly be after His Ascension. Faith corresponds to its object. The faith in an infinite God, and in a Saviour Who, being the Son of that God, is one with Him in infinite power and goodness, never can come to an end, so that it should have nothing further to apprehend or realize. As God increasingly reveals Himself, so we should increase in the apprehension of Him—that is, in faith in Him. A Christian can always be bid to believe in God, just as he can be always urged to love God. But it is necessary to explain the words, "believe also in me," so that, if possible, there should not be that abruptness which there now seems to be in passing from the words "believe in me" to the words

2. "In my Father's house are many mansions." The line of thought seems to be somewhat of this sort: "Ye are troubled because of My departure. If ye believe in God as My Father and your Father, and if ye believe in Me as the true and beloved Son of God, then ye believe in Me as the Son over my Father's house, which being His is also mine (Hebrews iii. 6), and is under Me as His Son.

d

3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.

c ver. 18, 28. Acts i. 11.

d ch. xii. 26. & xvii. 24.

1 Thess. iv. 17.

That house has rooms [abiding places] for all God's children. There are places in it for the holy angels, for the servants of God, who from the beginning have served Him, for yourselves, and for those who will in future time believe in Me through your words."

"If it were not so, I would have told you [because] I go to prepare a place for you." And if there be no place for you in that sphere to which I am ascending, I would have told you, and not raised your hopes of being with Me where I shall be, but have bid you be content with the low expectations of some Paradise such as your countrymen entertain. But it is far different. The reality will be above your highest desires. I go to prepare a place for you where ye shall be with Me, and behold My glory."

3. "And if I go and prepare. . . . . I will come again, and receive you to myself; that where I am," not in some Paradisaical state, but in the highest heavens, receiving the worship of the angels,

"Ye may be also." We are reminded by these words of the Vision in the Revelation, where the Apostle beholds the abodes which Christ had prepared, when he saw the New Jerusalem "prepared as a bride adorned for her husband" (Rev. xxi. 2).

In this case, then, the Father's house means the final state of blessedness in the presence of God in the heaven of heavens; but there are some who take the "Father's house" to mean the whole kingdom of God with its various spheres or states, for those who are pressing on to perfection: some of these spheres or abiding-places in this world, in the various degrees of grace and service in the Church; some in the state between death and judgment; some in the final state, so that the removal of a soul from this scene is no more than the stepping out of one room into another in the same palace of the same Great King. If this latter be the interpretation, then the Lord's words, “I will come again,” are not to be limited to the Second Advent, but signify all the Lord's various comings to His people, as at Pentecost, or, it may be, at death-so that they may then be in a peculiar sense "with Him" (Phil. i. 23), and at the Second Advent.

CHAP. XIV.]

I AM THE WAY.

349

4 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 know the way?

6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, 'the

e Heb. ix. 8.

f ch. i. 17. & viii. 32.

4. "And whither I go ye know, [and] the way [ye know]." The words in brackets omitted by N, B., C., L.; retained by A., D., later Uncials, almost all Cursives, Vulg., and Syriacs.

4. "And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know." "I have told you that I go to the Father, and I have in many ways set before you Myself as the way to God and heaven, as when I said, 'I am the light,' 'I am the door,' 'I am the Shepherd,' 'I am the ladder which joins earth and heaven '" (John i. 51).

5. "Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how," &c. How is it that the Lord, Who knew all within them-their knowledge and their ignorance-tells them that they "knew whither He was going, and they knew the way?" And Thomas, apparently speaking for the rest, says, "How can we know the way, seeing we know not whither Thou goest?" They knew the way because they knew Him; but they knew not what it was to know Him, they realized not their knowledge, and what it involved. What they knew already was very blessed, but it was as nothing compared to what would be theirs, if they followed on to know the Lord fully. No created being can fully know God or the Son of God. "No one knoweth the Son, but the Father."

6. "Jesus saith, I am the way, and the truth, and the life," &c. "I am the way by which alone ye have access to God; but your way to God is not a road from one place to another, but it is a spiritual approach of your spirit to the Supreme Spirit, by faith and knowledge; and so "I am the Truth;" by believing in Me, the Truth, ye know Me, and so ye draw near to God; and "I am the Life," for the way of a redeemed spirit to God must not be a dead, but a living way; to approach God, ye must have Life, and I within you am the Life by which ye have the Life of God, and so come to God." The Life here is the climax. The acts of coming to God, and believing in God, are acts of Life, which men have in and through Jesus Christ. If we believe in the Son of God, and are united to Him, and follow Him, then we are in the way to God, we realize and feed upon the truth of God, we live by the Life of God.

truth, and

g ch. i. 4. &

xi. 25.

h ch. x. 9.

i ch. viii. 19.

h

the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

7 'If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.

7. Tischendorf, following & and D., against all other evidence, reads, "If ye have known Me, ye shall know," &c.

"No man cometh unto the Father, but by me." Let the reader mark these words. They set forth opening and closing. They show the open way in Christ. They close up all other ways. They show the Door to God and heaven; but they equally show that there is but one Door, one Way. No words of Christ are more destructive of modern Liberalism than these, for the Word of God here asserts that no man can come of himself to God, or of himself find God-not even the light of his conscience, or his moral sense, can bring him to the Father, except so far as that moral sense is to be identified with "the true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." (John i. 9.)

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7. "If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also." This is the answer to St. Thomas's remark, in the name of the rest. If ye had known Me, as from your long converse with Me ye ought to have done, ye would not have asked the question, for ye would have known My Father also, because I am in Him and He in Me. All that can be known of God is seen in Me. In My words, My works, My teaching, My character are seen the words, works, teaching, and character of God My Father; and knowing Me, ye would have known, and come to, My Father." Notice how the Lord had said, "The way ye know," meaning Himself; and yet here He says, "If ye had known me." The same may be said of knowledge as of belief. Christ, the Son of God, being infinite, there are no limits to our knowledge of Him, just as there is no end to our belief in Him. We know Him when we begin to know Him, but through all eternity it will be true, "No one knoweth the Son, but the Father."

"From henceforth ye know him, and have seen him." This "from henceforth" cannot mean from that moment, as if there had been a sudden influx of knowledge into them, but "from about that time"-the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus, and the coming of the

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