'Whither I go, ye cannot come,' says He to His enemies, with no
limitation, with no condition. The 'cannot' is absolute and permanent,
so long as they retain their enmity. To His friends, on the other hand,
He says, 'So now I say to you,' the law for to-day, the law for this
side the flood, but not the law for the beyond, as He explains more
fully in the subsequent words: 'Thou canst not follow Me now, but thou
shalt follow Me afterwards.'
So, then, Christ is somewhere. When He passed from life it was not into
a state only, but into a place; and He took with Him a material body,
howsoever changed. He is somewhere, and there friend and enemy alike
cannot enter, so long as they are compassed with 'the earthly house of
this tabernacle.' But the incapacity is deeper than that. No sinful man
can pass thither. Where has He gone? The preceding words give us the
answer. 'God shall glorify Him in Himself.' The prospect of that
assumption into the inmost glory of the divine nature directly led our
Lord to think of the change it would bring about in the relation of His
humble friends to Him. While for Himself He triumphs in the prospect,
He cannot but turn a thought to their lonesomeness, and hence come the
words of our text. He has passed into the bosom and blaze of divinity.
Can I walk there, can I pass into that tremendous fiery furnace? 'Who
shall dwell with the everlasting burnings?' 'Ye cannot follow Me now.'
No man can go thither except Christ goes thither.
There are deep mysteries lying in that word of our Lords,—'I go to
prepare a place for you.' We know not what manner of activity on His
part that definitely means. It seems as if somehow or other the
presence in Heaven of our Brother in His glorified humanity was
necessary in order that the golden pavement should be trodden by our
feet, and that our poor, feeble manhood should live and not be
shrivelled up in the blaze of that central brightness.
We know not how He prepares the place, but heaven, whatever it be, is
no place for a man unless the Man, Christ Jesus, be there. He is the
Revealer of God, not only for earth, but for heaven; not only for time,
but for eternity. 'No man cometh unto the Father but by Me,' is true
everywhere and always, there as here. So I suppose that, but for His
presence, heaven itself would be dark, and its King invisible, and if a
man could enter there he would either be blasted with unbearable
flashes of brightness or grope at its noonday as the blind, because his
eye was not adapted to such beams. Be that as it may, 'the Forerunner
is for us entered.' He has gone before, because He knows the great
City, 'His own calm home, His habitation from eternity.' He has gone
before to make ready a lodging for us, in whose land He has dwelt so
long, and He will meet us, who would else be bewildered like some
dweller in a desert if brought to the capital, when we reach the gates,
and guide our unaccustomed steps to the mansion prepared for us.
But the power to enter there, even when He is there, depends on our
union with Christ by faith. When we are joined to Him, the absolute
'cannot,' based upon flesh, and still more upon sin, which is a radical
and permanent impossibility, is changed into a relative and temporary
incapacity. If we have faith in Christ, and are thereby drawing a
kindred life from Him, our nature will be in process of being changed
into that which is capable of bearing the brilliance of the felicities
of heaven. But just as these friends of Christ, though they loved Him
very truly, and understood Him a little, were a long way from being
ready to follow Him, and needed the schooling of the Cross, and Olivet,
and Pentecost, as well as the discipline of life and toil, before they
were fully ripe for the harvest, so we, for the most part, have to pass
through analogous training before we are prepared for the place which
Christ has prepared for us. Certainly, so soon as a heart has trusted
Christ, it is capable of entering where He is, and the real reason why
the disciples could not come where He went was that they did not yet
clearly know Him as the divine Sacrifice for theirs and the world's
sins, and, however much they believed in Him as Messiah, had not yet,
nor could have, the knowledge on which they could found their trust in
Him as their Saviour.
But, while that is true, it is also true that each advance in the grace
and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour will bring with it capacity to
advance further into the heart of the far-off land, and to see more of
the King in His beauty. So, as long as His friends were wrapped in such
dark clouds of misconception and error, as long as their Christian
characters were so imperfect and incomplete as they were at the time of
my text being spoken, they could not go thither and follow Him. But it
was a diminishing impossibility, and day by day they approximated more
and more to His likeness, because they understood Him more, and trusted
Him more, and loved Him more, and grew towards Him, and, therefore, day
by day became more and more able to enter into that Kingdom.
Are you growing in power so to do? Is the only thing which unfits you
for heaven the fact that you have a mortal body? In other respects are
you fit to go into that heaven, and walk in its brightness and not be
consumed? The answer to the question is found in another one—Are you
joined to Jesus Christ by simple faith? The incapacity is absolute and
eternal if the enmity is eternal.
State and place are determined yonder by character, and character is
determined by faith. Take a bottle of some solution in which
heterogeneous substances have all been melted up together, and let it
stand on a shelf and gradually settle down, and its contents will
settle in regular layers, the heaviest at the bottom and the lightest
at the top, and stratify themselves according to gravity. And that is
how the other world is arranged—stratified. When all the confusions of
this present are at an end, and all the moisture is driven off, men and
women will be left in layers, like drawing to like. As Peter said about
Judas with equal wisdom and reticence, 'He went to his own place.' That
is where we shall all go, to the place we are fit for.
God does not slam the door of heaven in anybody's face; it stands wide
open. But there is a mystic barrier, unseen, but most real, more
repellent than cherub and flaming sword, which makes it impossible for
any foot to cross that threshold except the foot of the man whose heart
and nature have been made Christlike, and fitted for heaven by simple
faith in Him.
Love Him and trust Him, and then your life on earth will be a blessed
seeking and a blessed finding of Him whom to seek is joyous effort,
whom to find is an Elysium of rest. You will walk here not parted from
Him, but with your thoughts and your love, which are your truest self,
going up where He is, until you drop 'the muddy vesture of decay' which
unfits you whilst you wear it for the presence-chamber of the King, and
so you will enter in and be 'for ever with the Lord.'