John 16:5

CHRIST’S SORROWFUL SURPRISE

‘None of you asketh Me, Whither goest Thou?’

John 16:5

As we think over these words, spoken by our Lord on the night before He died, we may seem to discern through them a tinge of many feelings, no one of which completely characterises them. Sorrow and reproof and pity all occur to us as we try to imagine what may have been foremost in His thoughts as He spoke. And yet we feel, perhaps, that all these are held back and checked, as it were, from becoming predominant in the words, that they are flowing round rather than uttered through them.

But it can scarcely be doubted, I think, that there is in the complex and mysterious feelings that the words bear some element of surprise, and something that sounds almost like disappointment.

He had been preparing them for His departure. Two great groups of thoughts had been constantly before Him, constantly throbbing through His words: thoughts of His goal, thoughts of their need. And it was strange to Him that their minds should be so wholly absorbed in the latter, so unexcited and unconscious about the former.

I. The teaching of the words bears plainly on us all.—They bid us ask ourselves whether the great truth of our Lord’s victory and exultation, the disclosure of the height to which He has lifted manhood, has ever told on our thoughts and lives as He would have it tell. ‘None of you asketh Me, Whither goest Thou?’ We may almost imagine Him, brethren, speaking so to us with our poor views of human life, our subjection to sorrow, our despondency. Our loss of heart, our halting, timid aspiration show so little sense of His great victory of our sins, so little energy of thought and care about the glory whither He has entered.

II. The answer to the question, ‘Whither goest Thou?’ can indeed be given in this life, but partially and very gradually. So then let us ask, ‘Lord, whither goest Thou?’ and let us hear the reply in His own words, ‘To Him that sent Me.’

(a) The true calling of the human soul is into the very presence of Almighty God. It is for that that we somehow, somewhere, are beginning to prepare ourselves. Whatever hope we have must ultimately mount, if it is to be realised at all, to that height. There is no lower point at which it can in the end abide. The gap that must be spanned is indeed of inconceivable vastness. We may have given up thinking; we may never, perhaps, have adequately thought how far our present character falls below our ideal; and our ideal, confused and sinful as we are, must be very far below what once it might have been.

‘Lord, whither goest Thou?’ Again His words give the answer: ‘Unto My Father and your Father, to My God and your God.’ ‘To prepare a place for you; that where I am, there ye may be also.’

(b) Out of all misery and persecutions and oppressions the hearts of men in every age have been lifted up by that hope, by the revelation of their victorious Redeemer, waiting to bid them enter into His joy. ‘Behold, I see heaven opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God.’ ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’ Those words of the first martyr Stephen have sounded on, more or less plainly and anxiously, through the manifold patience of the saints. We may wonder sometimes how men ever found the strength and courage that they showed for His Name’s sake; how, for instance, they ever bore to stand alone in the glaring space of the great amphitheatre, ringed round with hatred and contempt and laughter, waiting for the wild beasts to be let out on them. We may wonder at the quiet unconquerable love with which long years of trial are turned to means of grace and ways of witnessing for God.

(c) The minds of those mho so endured followed Christ in His ascending. They have dwelt on the disclosure of that Kingdom which He has opened for them. They have looked to Him, away from all that this world offers or inflicts. There is the secret of their independence and tranquillity. And perhaps we too may find that sorrow would have less power to fill our hearts, that anxiety would be less apt to hinder our prayers, that we could rise more freely above the cares of this life if we more often thought of our Lord beckoning to us, as it were, from the throne of His glory, holding out to us the hope He died to win for us, the joy of those who have tried to keep close to Him in this life, are led on to be with Him where He is in the life to come.

—Bishop F. Paget.

Illustration

‘How can the Christian busied only with earth ascend whither Christ has ascended? How can he who has all his treasure on earth find treasure also in heaven? How can he triumph if he has not suffered? How can he be glorified if he has not been humiliated? How can he be exalted if he has not been abased? How can he tread the Royal Courts of Heaven if he has not trodden the royal road of the Cross? What the Church of God needs to-day is not numbers, but consistent faithful followers: not addition, but subtraction. It needs not so much grafting as pruning; not planting, but weeding. It needs men and women who will do their duty without coaxing and wheedling; men and women who can stand alone, who, when they have done their duty, will not be expecting the praise of men, but who will find their reward in their service.’