'I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you. Yet a little
while, and the world seeth Me no more; but ye see Me: because I live,
ye shall live also.'—JOHN xiv. 18,19.
The sweet and gracious comfortings with which Christ had been soothing
the disciples' fears went very deep, but hitherto they had not gone
deep enough. It was much that they should know the purpose of His
going, whither He went, and that they had an interest in His departure.
It was much that they should have before them the prospect of reunion;
much that they should know that all through His absence He would be
working in them, and that they should be assured that, absent, He would
send them a great gift. But reunion, influence from afar, and gifts
from the other side of the gulf were not all that their hearts needed.
And so here our Lord gives yet more, in the paradoxes that, absent He
will be present, unseen visible, and dying will be for them for ever,
living and life-giving. These great thoughts go to the centre of their
needs and of ours; and on them I now touch briefly.
There are then in the words I have read, though they be but a fragment
of a closely-linked-together context, these three great thoughts: the
absent Christ the present Christ; the unseen Christ the seen Christ;
the Christ who dies the living and life-giving Christ. Let us look at
these as they stand.