'I will' has a strange ring of authority. It is the expression of His
love to men, and of His longing for their presence with Him in His
glory. Not till they are with Him there, shall He 'see of the travail
of His soul and be satisfied.'
We have here a glimpse of the blessed state of the dead in Christ.
(_a_) Local presence with Christ. His glorified body is somewhere. The
value of this thought is that it gives solidity to our ideas of a
future life. There they _are_. We need not dwell on the metaphysical
difficulties about locality for disembodied spirits.
If a spirit can be localised in a body, I suppose it can be localised
without a body; but passing by all that, we have the hope held out here
of a real local presence with the glorified humanity of our Lord. We
speak of the dead as gone _from us_, and we have that idea far more
vividly in our minds than that of their having gone _to Him_. We speak
of the 'departed,' but we do not think of them as 'arrived.' We look
down to the narrow grave, but we forget 'He is not here, He is risen.
Why seek ye the living among the dead?' Ah! if we could only bring home
to our hearts the solid prose of the conviction that where Christ is
there His servants are, and that not in the diffused ubiquity of His
Divine Omnipresence, it would go far to remove the darkness and vague
mist which wrap the future, and to set it as it really is before us, as
a solid definite reality. We see the sails glide away out into the west
as the sun goes down, and we think of them as tossing on a midnight
sea, an unfathomable waste. Try to think of them more truly. As in that
old miracle, He comes to them walking on the water in the night watch,
and if at first they are terrified, His voice brings back hope to the
heart that is beginning to stand still, and immediately they are at the
land whither they go. Now, as they sink from our sight, they are in
port, sails furled and anchor dropped, and green fields round them,
even while we watch the sinking masts, and cannot yet rightly tell
whether the fading sail has faded wholly.
(_b_) Communion with Christ.
Our Lord says not only 'that where I am, they also may be,' but adds
'with Me.' That is not a superfluous addition, but emphasises the
thought of a communion which is more intimate and blessed than local
presence alone would be.
The communion here is real but imperfect. It is perfected there on our
part by the dropping away of flesh and sin, by change of circumstances,
by emancipation from cares and toils necessary here, by the development
of new powers and surroundings, and on His side by new manifestations.
(_c_) Vision of His glory.
The crown of this utterance of Christ's will is 'that they may behold
My glory.' In an earlier part of this prayer our Lord had spoken of the
'glory which I had with Thee before the world was.' But probably the
glory 'given' is not that of essential Divinity, but that of His
mediatorial work. To His people 'with Him where He is,' are imparted
fuller views of Christ as Saviour, deeper notions of His work, clearer
perception of His rule in providence and nature. This is the loftiest
employment of the spirits who are perfected and lapped in 'pleasures
for evermore' by their union with the glorified Jesus.
Surely this is grander than all metaphorical pictures of heaven.