John 16:7

CHRIST AND HIS PEOPLE

‘It is expedient for you that I go away.’

John 16:7

We are almost tempted to wonder whether He could not have remained with us, as He remained with the disciples during those forty days. Then, perhaps, when our hearts were heavy we might have hoped to meet Him just where the road is lonely, or just when our only chance seems to be to lose ourselves in the hard solace of daily work. So we wonder and dream; but His words are clear, ‘It is expedient for you that I go away.’

I. If He had remained we could hardly have dissociated Him from the limits of space and time.—We should have learned to associate Him with certain places, with certain moments, with certain material experiences; and the general level of our lives would be all the lower and the lonelier because once perhaps we had seen Him, and now for the rest of our lives there would seem so little left for us except the perplexing uncertainty as to where or how we might ever meet again. The sense of general absence would be more real than the glow of an occasional appearance. There would grow upon us a restlessness and unquiet born of the doubt as to when we might see Him and where we might expect Him. And the future would be dark; there would be no great forward look of the soul, since all the stimulus and inspiration of our being would be the places and the hours of earth.

II. The moral distance from Him would become intolerable.—Perfection is a desperate vision to those who have little but their own skill and their own strength to help them. And if Christ were here to-day and gone to-morrow we could hardly help telling over between each visit the dreary tale of our own failure. At each arrival, even if in our lifetime He should not seldom return to us, the shock would be repeated of our startling unlikeness to Himself. And so we should be tempted to rest the real weight of our soul upon something less than Himself. Not many of us can endure for very long the strain of high spiritual exaltation. The reaction sets in as soon as we have to face the daily round and the drudgery of the common task. And even if we continued to persevere in His track, we should be tempted to depend, not upon Him, but upon some truth about Him. We might, perhaps, take some principle of His teaching which we thought we could grasp, some rule which the average disciple might, perhaps, hope to keep, but He Himself would dwell apart, to our mind and conscience, in a world of His own, far away from the interest and struggle of our daily pilgrimage.

III. ‘It is expedient’ for us that He has gone to the Father.—We need some form in which to think of God. Abstract words, like providence, and wisdom, and goodness, convey very little to us until they are illuminated by the life and colour of some character in whom we can recognise what they mean. But if the life and character of Christ on earth is not merely the supreme effort of some human soul exalted to the highest by virtue of some rare and unique development of human nature, if this life is the revelation of God Himself, so far as He can be expressed in human conditions and for human minds—if we can be sure of this because Christ has not merely disappeared from earth, but has been welcomed into His own place in Heaven—now we can tell what God is like. God’s providence and wisdom and goodness, God’s mercy and judgment, have received their interpretation, and, instead of dazing our souls and hearts by wondering how we can rise to any idea of the Almighty, we can simply take our Lord’s own words to build our faith upon: ‘He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.’

IV. It is expedient for us that we see Him no more; for He is ascended not into some distant region, but into the invisible; not into a higher world of space, but into the loftiest state. After all, it is the invisible which comes nearest to us. The spirit within us is never stirred, except by some spiritual reality, which may indeed use some outward sign to call attention to its presence, but which remains itself for ever unseen. It is in the power of invisible spirit that a friend gets home into our hearts and dwells there. We gain some impression of him from his words and his acts, from his form and gesture; but it is that strange, mysterious power of life which we call his personality which attracts us, and wakes our own spirit into an answer, until at last he becomes a real part of our own selves.

So it is in the region of spirit, in a real spiritual experience within our own souls, that Christ makes His Presence felt. It is no dream, but the blessed experience of many a man, that Christ is actually living in him, and he in Christ.

Rev. H. P. Cronshaw.

Illustration

‘There is undeniably much that is deep and mysterious about the contents of this verse. We can only speak with reverence of the matter it unfolds. It seems clearly laid down that the Holy Ghost’s coming down into the world with influence and grace was a thing dependent on our Lord’s dying, rising again, and ascending into heaven. It seems to be part of the eternal covenant of man’s salvation that the Son should be incarnate, die, and rise again; and that then, as a consequence, the Holy Spirit should be poured out with mighty influence on mankind, and the Gentile nations be brought into the visible Church, and Christianity spread over a vast portion of the world. This seems plainly taught, and this we must simply believe. If any one asks “why the Holy Ghost could not be poured down without Christ’s going away?” it is safest to reply that we do not know.’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE GUIDANCE OF THE SPIRIT

If what men most need is a Visible Ruler and Guide, a Ruler Who plainly declares His will to all the world, a Guide Whose counsel can never be misunderstood, then it is not too much to say that the Ascension of Jesus is the most perplexing and disheartening episode in the history of mankind. For His departure removed from the eyes of men the Eternal Wisdom, the very Light of the world.

I. Men throughout the Christian centuries have longed with an unceasing longing for such guidance; and some have persuaded themselves that it is, indeed, still offered to those who sincerely seek.

(a) Such a guide, infallible, authoritative, impossible to mistake, has been found by some in the voice of the Church. The desire for such guidance is, in truth, entirely natural to every one who feels the difficulties of life, whether of belief or of conduct. The most powerful force which draws men and women into the bosom of the great Latin Church is the promise which she unfalteringly offers of such infallible direction. And yet we ask ourselves, What guidance can she possibly promise which would not have been offered, if it were indeed so best for men, by Him Whom she worships as Master and Lord? ‘It is expedient for you that I go away.’ The unmistakable voice of the Lord is a lesser gift than the secret stirring of His Spirit. Must not that be still more true of the voice of the Church?

(b) Or, once more, the guidance of the Bible alone, if we could be sure that we should always interpret it aright, would indeed be sufficient for us. But men who sincerely believed themselves to follow it have been led into many strange and divergent paths. The diversity of the many Christian bodies who reverently esteem Holy Scripture sufficiently shows that it is a guide which, though given to us by the Supreme Himself, does not so plainly lead that we may not mistake its guidance. ‘It is expedient for you that I go away.’ The unmistakable voice of the Incarnate Word is a lesser gift than the striving of His Spirit. Must not that be true also of the written Word?

II. Does this mean, then, that guidance was no longer needed, that self-discipline is the best, that self-reliance breeds the strongest character, that the men whose nature the Lord took upon Him when He came down from heaven for their redemption are in the end left to themselves to ‘work out their own salvation’? Nay! The gifts of God are none the less real that they are, for the most part, unseen. Guidance and strength are placed within man’s reach, though reason and faith be taxed to the utmost to perceive the one, to appropriate the other. The Church and the Bible alike have guidance and strength for us, not their own, but of God, which we shall not reject, if we be wise, because we do not always in our blindness perceive the Divinity of the Spirit from Whom they come. Visible guidance is withdrawn that invisible grace may issue in fruitful and patient service.

—Dean J. H. Bernard.

Illustration

‘There are certain weaknesses in human nature which explain in part the need for discipline in a condition where the Master’s voice is not ever in our ears to keep us in the right way. Our Lord’s method of educating men was not the method of spiritual direction which demands the blind obedience of the judgment as of the will. But certainly it is not self-reliance which Jesus commends to us in the striking words which follow the text. It is trust in Him, though unseen, and in His Spirit which is ever at work in the world and in the Church to guide and to confirm.’