'I will not leave you comfortless,' or, as the Revised Version has it,
'desolate—I come to you.' Now, most of us know, I suppose, that the
literal meaning of the word rendered 'comfortless,' or 'desolate,' is
'_orphans_.' But that is rather an unusual form in which to represent
the relation between our Lord and His disciples, and so, possibly, our
versions are accurate in giving the general idea of desolation rather
than the specific idea conveyed directly by the word. But still it is
to be remembered that this whole conversation begins with 'Little
children'; and there seems to be no strong reason for suppressing the
literal meaning of the word, if only it be remembered that it is
employed not so much to define Christ's relation to his brethren as to
describe the comfortless and helpless condition of that little group
when left by Him. They would be like fatherless and motherless children
in a cold world. And what is to hinder that? One thing only. 'I come to
you.' 'Then, and only then, will you cease to be desolate and orphans.
My presence will change everything and turn winter into glorious
summer.'
Now, what is this 'coming'? It is to be observed that our Lord says,
not 'I will,' as a future, but 'I come,' or 'I am coming,' as an
immediately impending, and, we may almost say, present, thing. There
can be no reference in the word to that final coming to judgment which
lies so far ahead; because, if there were, then there would follow from
the text, that, until that period, all that love Him here upon earth
are to wander about as orphans, desolate and forsaken; and that
certainly can never be. So that we have to recognise here the promise
of a coming which is contemporaneous with His absence, and which is, in
fact, but the reverse side of His bodily absence.
It is true about Him that He 'departs from' His people in bodily form
'for a season, that they may receive Him' in a better form 'for ever.'
This, then, is the heart and centre of the consolation here, that
howsoever the external presence may be withdrawn, and the 'foolish
senses' may have to speak of an absent Christ, we may rejoice in the
certainty that He is with all those that love Him, and all the more
with them because of the very withdrawal of the earthly manifestation
which has served its purpose, and now is laid aside as an impediment
rather than as a help to the full communion. We confound _bodily_ with
_real_. The bodily presence is at an end; the real presence lasts for
ever.
I do not need to insist, I suppose, upon the manifest implication of
absolute divinity which lies in such words as these. 'I come.' 'Being
absent, I am present in all generations. I am present with every single
heart.' That is equivalent to the Omnipresence of deity; that is
equivalent to or implies the undying existence of the divine nature,
and He that says, when He is leaving earth and withdrawing the
sweetness of His visible form from the eyes of men, 'I come,' in the
very act of going, 'and I am with you always, with all of you to the
end of the ages,' can be no less than God, manifest in the flesh for a
time, and present in the Spirit with His children for ever.
I cannot but think that the average Christian life of this day wofully
fails in the simple, conscious realisation of this great truth, and
that we are all far too little living in the calm, happy, strengthening
assurance that we are never alone, but have Jesus Christ with each of
us more closely, more truly, in a more available fashion, and with more
omnipotence of influence, than they had who were nearest Him during the
days that He lived upon earth.
Oh, brethren! if we really believed, not as an article of our creed
which has become so familiar to us that it produces little impression
upon us, but as a vital and ever-present conviction of our souls, that
with us there was ever the real presence of the real Christ, how all
burdens and cares would be lightened, how all perplexities would begin
to smooth themselves out and be straightened, how all the force would
be sucked out of temptations, and how sorrows and joys and all things
would be changed in their aspect by that one conviction intensely
realised and constantly with us! A present Christ is the Strength, the
Righteousness, the Peace, the Joy, and as we shall see, in the most
literal sense, the Life of every Christian soul.
Then, note, further, that this coming of our Lord is identified with
that of His divine Spirit. He has been speaking of sending that 'other
Comforter,' but though He be Another, He is yet so indissolubly united
with Him who sends as that the coming of the Spirit is the coming of
Jesus. He is no gift wafted to us as from the other side of a gulf, but
by reason of the unity of the Godhead and the divinity of the sent
Spirit, Jesus Christ and the Spirit whom He sends are inseparable
though separate, and so indissolubly united that where the Spirit is,
there is Christ, and where Christ is, there is the Spirit. These are
amongst the deep things which the disciples were 'not able to carry' at
that stage of their development, and which waited for a further
explanation. Enough for them and enough for us, to know that we have
Christ in the Spirit and the Spirit in Christ; and to remember 'that if
any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.'
We stand here on the margin of a shoreless and fathomless sea; and for
my part I venture to think that the men who talk about the
incredibilities and the contradictions of the orthodox faith would show
themselves a little wiser if they were more conscious of the limitation
of human faculty, and remembered that to pronounce upon contradictions
in the doctrine of the divine Nature implies that the pronouncer stands
above and goes round about the whole of that nature. So, for my part,
abjuring omniscience and the comprehension of Deity, I accept the
statement that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit come together
and dwell in the heart.
Then, note, further, that this present Christ is the only Remedy for
the orphanhood of the world. The words had a tender and pathetic
reference to that little, bewildered group of followers, deprived of
their Guide, their Teacher, and their Companion. He who had been as
eyes to their weak vision, and Counsellor and Inspirer and everything
for three blessed years, was going away to leave them unsheltered to
the storm, and we can understand how forlorn and terrified they were,
when they looked forward to fronting the things that must come to them,
without His presence. Therefore He cheers them with the assurance that
they will not be left without Him, but that, present still, just
because He is absent, He will be all that He ever had been to them.
And the promise was fulfilled. How did that dis-spirited group of
cowardly men ever pluck up courage to hold together at all after the
Crucifixion? Why was it that they did not follow the example of John's
disciples, and dissolve and disappear; and say, 'The game is up. It is
no use holding together any longer'? The process of separation began on
the very day of the Crucifixion. Only one thing could have stopped it,
and that is the Resurrection and the presence with His Church of the
risen Christ in His power and in all the fullness of His gifts. If it
had not been that He came to them, they would have disappeared, and
Christianity would have been one more of the abortive sects forgotten
in Judaism. But, as it is, the whole of the New Testament after
Pentecost is aflame with the consciousness of a present Christ, working
amongst His people. And although it be true that, in one aspect, we are
absent from the Lord when we are present with the body, in another
aspect, and an infinitely higher one, it is true that the strength of
the Christian life of Apostles and martyrs was this, the assurance that
Christ Himself—no mere rhetorical metaphor for His influence or His
example, or His memory lingering in their imaginations, but the
veritable Christ Himself—was present with them, to strengthen and to
bless.
That same conviction you and I must have, if the world is not to be a
desert and a dreary place for us. In a very profound sense it is true
that if you take away Jesus Christ, the elder Brother, who alone
reveals to men the Father, we are all orphans, fatherless children, who
look up into an empty heaven and see nothing there. It is only Christ
who reveals to us the Father and makes our happy hearts feel that we
are of His children. And in the wider sense of the word 'orphans,' is
not life a desolation without Him? Hollow joys, fleeting blessednesses,
roses whose thorns last long after the petals have dropped, real
sorrows, shows and shams, bitternesses and disappointments—are not
these our life, in so far as Christ has been driven out of it? Oh!
there is only one thing that saves us from being as desolate,
fatherless children, groping in the dark for the lost Father's hand,
and dying for want of it, and that is that the Christ Himself shall
come to us and be with us.