'Little children, yet a little while I am with you. Ye shall seek Me:
and as I said unto the Jews, Whither I go ye cannot come; so now I say
to you.'—JOHN xiii. 33.
The preceding context shows how large and black the Cross loomed before
Jesus now, and how radiant the glory beyond shone out to Him. But it
was only for a moment that either of these two absorbed His thoughts;
and with wonderful self-forgetfulness and self-command, He turned away
at once from the consideration of how the near future was to affect
Him, to the thought of how it was to affect the handful of helpless
disciples who had to be left alone. Impending separation breaks up the
fountains of the heart, and we all know the instinct that desires to
crowd all the often hidden love into some one last token. So here our
Lord addresses His disciples by a name that is never used except this
once, 'little children,' a fond diminutive that not only reveals an
unusual depth of tender emotion, but also breathes a pitying sense of
their defencelessness when they are to be left alone. So might a dying
mother look at her little ones.
But the words that follow, at first sight, are dark with the sense of a
final and complete separation. 'Ye shall seek Me'—and not only so, but
He seems to put back His humble friends into the same place as had been
occupied by His bitter foes—'as I said to the Jews, whither I go ye
cannot come; so now I say to you.' There was something that prevented
both classes alike from keeping Him company; and He had to walk His
path both into the darkness and into the glory, alone.
The words apply in their fullness only to the parenthesis of time
whilst He lay in the grave, and the disciples despairingly thought that
all was ended. It was a brief period: it was a revolutionary moment;
and though it was soon to end, they needed to be guarded against it.
But though the words do not apply to the permanent relation between the
glorified Christ and us, His disciples, yet partly by similarity, and
still more by contrast, they do suggest great Christian blessedness and
imperative Christian duties. These gather themselves mainly round two
contrasts, a transitory 'cannot' soon to be changed into a permanent
'can'; and a momentary seeking, soon to be converted into a blessed
seeking which finds. I now deal only with the former.
We have here a transitory 'cannot' soon to be changed into a permanent
'can.'
'Whither I go ye cannot come.' Does not one hear a tone of personal
sorrow in that saying? Jesus had always hungered for understanding and
sympathetic companions, and one of His lifelong sorrows had been His
utter loneliness; but He had never, in all the time that He had been
with them, so put out His hand, feeling for some warm clasp of a human
hand to help Him in His struggle, as He did during the hours
terminating with Gethsemane. And perhaps we may venture to say that we
hear in this utterance an expression of Christ's sorrow for Himself
that He had to tread the dark way, and to pass into the brightness
beyond, all alone. He yearned for the impossible human companionship,
as well as sorrowed for the imperfections which made it impossible.
Why was it that they could not 'follow Him now'? The answer to that
question is found in the consideration of whither it was that He went.
When that bright Shekinah-cloud at the Ascension received Him into its
radiant folds, it showed why they could not follow Him, because it
revealed that He went unto the Father, when He left the world. So we
are brought face to face with the old, solemn thought that character
makes capacity for heaven. 'Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord,
or who shall stand in His holy place?' asked the Psalmist; and a
prophet put the question in a still sharper form, and by the very form
of the question suggested a negative answer—'Who among us shall dwell
with the devouring fire; who among us shall dwell with everlasting
burnings?' Who can pass into that Presence, and stand near God, without
being, like the maiden in the old legend, shrivelled into ashes by the
contact of the celestial fire? 'Holiness' is that 'without which no man
shall see the Lord.' And we, all of us, in the depths of our own
hearts, if we rightly understand the voices that ever echo there, must
feel that the condition which is, obviously and without any need for
arguing it, required for abiding with God, and so going into the glory
where Christ is, is a condition which none of us can fulfil. In that
respect the imperfect and immature friends, the little children, the
babes who loved and yet knew not Him whom they loved, and the scowling
enemies, were at one. For they had all of them the one human heart, and
in that heart the deep-lying alienation and contrariety to God.
Therefore Christ trod the winepress alone, and alone 'ascended up where
He was before.'
But let us remember that this 'cannot' was only a transitory cannot.
For we must underscore very deeply that word in my text 'so _now_ I say
to you,' and a moment afterwards, when one of the Apostles puts the
question: 'Why cannot I follow Thee now?' the answer is: 'Thou canst
not follow Me now; but thou shalt follow Me afterwards.' The text, too,
is succeeded immediately by the wonderful parting consolations and
counsels spoken to the disciples, through all of which there gleams the
promise that they will be with Him where He is, and behold His glory.
Set side by side with these sad words of our Lord in the text, by which
He unloosed their clasping hands from Him, and turned His face to His
solitary path, the triumphant language in which habitually the rest of
the New Testament speaks of the Christian man's relation to Christ.
Think of that great passage: 'Ye are come unto the city of the living
God, the heavenly Jerusalem, … and to God the Judge of all, … and to
Jesus the Mediator of the new Covenant.' What has become of the
impossibility? Vanished. Where is the 'cannot'? Turned into a blessed
'can.' And so Apostles have no scruple in saying, 'Our citizenship is
in Heaven,' nor in saying, 'We sit together with Him in heavenly places
in Christ Jesus.' The path that was blocked is open. The impossibility
that towered up like a great black wall has melted away; and the path
into the Holiest of all is made patent by the blood of Christ. For in
that death there lies the power that sweeps away all the impediments of
man's sin, and in that life of the risen, glorified, indwelling Christ
there lies the power which cleanses the inmost heart from 'all
filthiness of flesh and spirit,' and makes it possible for our mortal
feet to walk on the immortal path, and for us, with all our
unworthiness, with all our shrinking, to stand in His presence and not
be ashamed or consumed. 'Ye cannot come' was true for a few days. 'Ye
can come' is true for ever; and for all Christian men.
But let us not forget that the one attitude of heart and mind, by which
a poor, sinful man, who dare not draw near to God, receives into
himself the merit and power of the death, and the indwelling power of
the life, of Jesus Christ, is personal faith in Jesus Christ. To trust
Him is to come to Him, and it is represented in Scripture as conferring
an instantaneous fitness for access to God. People pray sometimes that
they may be made 'meet for the inheritance of the saints in light,' and
the prayer is, in a sense, wise and true. But they too often forget
that the Apostle says, in the original connection of the words which
they so quote: 'He _hath_ translated us from the tyranny of the
darkness, and _hath_ made us meet for the inheritance of the saints in
light.' That is to say, whenever a poor soul, compassed and laden with
its infirmity and sin, turns itself to that Lord whose Cross conquers
sin, and whose blood infused into our veins—the Spirit of whose life
granted to us—gives us to partake of His own righteousness, that moment
that soul can tread the path that brings into the presence of God, and
'has access with confidence by the faith of Him.' So, brethren, seeing
that thus the incapacity may all be swept away, and that instead of a
'cannot,' which relegates us to darkness, we may receive a 'can' which
leads us into the light, let us see to it that this communion, which is
possible for all Christian men, is real in our cases, and that we use
the access which is given to us, and dwell for ever in, and with, the
Lord.
I have said that the act of faith, by associating a man with Jesus
Christ in the power of His death and of His life, makes any who
exercise it capable of passing into the presence of God. But I would
remind you, too, that to make us more fit for more full and habitual
communion is the very purpose for which all the discipline of our
earthly life, its sorrows and its joys, its tasks and its repose, is
exercised upon us—'He for our profit, that we might be partakers of His
holiness.' Surely if we habitually took that point of view in reference
to our work, in reference to our joys, in reference to our trials,
everything would be different. We are being prepared with sedulous
love, with patient reiteration of 'line upon line, precept upon
precept,' with singularly varied methods but a uniform purpose, by all
that meets us in life, to be more capable of treading the eternal path
into the eternal light. Is that how we daily think of our own
circumstances? Do we bring that great thought to bear upon all that we,
sometimes faithlessly, call mysterious or murmuringly think of—if we
dare not speak our thought—as being cruel and hard? What does it matter
if some precious things be lifted off our shoulders, and out of our
hearts, if their being taken away makes it more possible for us to
tread with a lighter step the path of peace? What matters it though
many things that we would fain keep are withdrawn from us, if by the
withdrawal we are sent a little further forward on the road that leads
to God? As George Herbert says, sorrows and joys are like battledores
that drive a shuttlecock, and they may all 'toss us to His breast.' In
faith, however infantile it may be, there is an undeveloped capacity, a
germ of fitness, for dwelling with God. But that capacity is meant to
be increased, and the little children are meant to be helped to grow up
into full-grown men, 'the measure of the stature of the fullness of
Christ,' by all that comes here to them on earth. Do you not think we
should understand life better, do you not think it would all be flashed
up into new radiance, do you not think we should more seldom stand
bewildered at what we choose to call the inscrutable dispensations of
Providence, if this were the point of view from which we looked at them
all—that they were fitting us for perpetual abiding with our Father
God?
Nor let us forget that there was a transient 'cannot' of another sort.
For 'flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God.' So, as life is
changed when we think of it as helping us toward Him, death is changed
when we think of it as being, if I may so say, the usher in attendance
on the Presence-chamber, who draws back the thin curtain that separates
us from the throne, and takes us by the hands and leads us into the
Presence. Surely if we habitually thought thus of that otherwise grim
chamberlain, we should be willing to put our hands into His, as a
little child will, when straying, into the hands of a stranger who
says, 'Come with me and I will take you home to your father.' 'As I
said unto the Jews … so now I say to you, whither I go, ye cannot
come.'
Let us press on you and on myself the one thought that comes out of all
that I have been saying, the blessed possibility, which, because it is
a possibility, is an obligation, to use far more than most of us do,
the right of access to the King who is our Father. There are nobles and
corporate bodies, who regard it as one of their chief distinctions that
they have always the right of _entree_ to the court of the sovereign.
Every Christian man has that. And in old days, when a baron did not
show himself at court, suspicion naturally arose, and he was in danger
of being thought disaffected, if not traitorous. Ah! if you and I were
judged according to that law, what would become of us? We can go when
we like. How seldom we do go! We can live in the heavens whilst our
work lies down here. We prefer the low earth to the lofty sky. 'We are
come'—ideally, and in the depths of our nature, our affinities are
there—'unto God, the Judge of all, and to Jesus the Mediator of the new
Covenant.' Are we come? Are we day by day, in all the pettiness of our
ordinary lives, when compassed by hard duties, weighed upon by sore
distress—still keeping our hearts in heaven, and our feet familiar with
the path that leads us to God? 'Set your affection on things above,
where Jesus is, sitting at the right hand of God.' For there is no
'cannot' for His servants in regard to their access to any place where
He is.