John 14:18-19

“ I will not leave you orphans: I come again to you. 19. Yet a little while, and the world shall see me no more; but you shall see me; because I live, you shall live also. ”

The term orphans is in harmony with the address my little children (John 13:33); it is the language of the dying father. The asyndeton between John 14:18 and the preceding verse is sufficient to prove the essential identity of thought between these words and those of John 14:16-17. This form, as we have seen, indicates in general a more emphatic affirmation of the thought already expressed. This observation consequently sets aside every other explanation of the words: I come again to you, than that which refers them to the return of Jesus through the Holy Spirit (John 14:16-17). This is the explanation of almost all the modern writers (even of Meyer and Luthardt, 2d ed.). Moreover, this explanation is the only possible one, because of the entire following passage, John 14:19-23, which can only be the development of the 18th verse (see especially John 14:21; John 14:23).

Nevertheless, some refer this promise to the appearances of the risen Jesus (Chrysostom, Erasmus, Grotius, Hilgenfeld). Even Weiss joins them, abandoning thus his own explanation of ἔρχομαι, I come, in John 14:3. But these appearances had a momentary character and were not a true return of Jesus; comp. the remarkable expression, Luke 24:44: “while I was yet with you.” The purpose of these appearances was only to establish the faith of the disciples in the resurrection of Jesus, and thereby to prepare for His return in spirit into their hearts, but not to accomplish it. How could these appearances be His return, since His ὑπάγειν, His departure, includes at once His death and His ascension (John 14:28, John 13:1)? The return must be, therefore, posterior to the latter.

The application of John 14:18 to the Parousia (Augustine, Hofmann, Luthardt, 1st ed.) is also impossible; comp. John 14:19; John 14:23: in John 14:19, the seeing of Jesus again coincides with His disappearance for the world; and according to John 14:23, the return to believers is described as purely inward, while of the final coming it is said: “ And every eye shall see him. ” All that can and must be granted is, that the appearances of the Risen One served to prepare for and render possible His return through the Holy Spirit, and that this spiritual coming of Christ will have its consummation in the coming of the glorified Saviour.

The Spirit is, no doubt, another support in that His action differs from that of Jesus as visible; but His coming is, nevertheless, the return of Jesus Himself. The Spirit is not the substitute for Jesus, as Weiss asserts: otherwise the promise of the Paraclete would answer only imperfectly to the need of the disciples, whose hearts demanded the return of the Master Himself. If then Weiss alleges that the word I come can only denote a personal coming, we say in reply that it is indeed Christ in person whom the Holy Spirit gives to us. As to John 16:22, which Weiss also alleges, see on that passage. Tholuck has concluded from the expression I come, that the Holy Spirit is only the person of Jesus Himself spiritualized, and Reuss affirms that “although the literal exegesis argues for the distinction of persons (between Christ and the Spirit), practical logic refuses to admit it.” He “even hazards the opinion that in the discourses of Jesus the abstract notion of the Word is replaced by the more concrete notion of the Spirit.” John is innocent of such serious confusion. As no writer of the old covenant would have used the terms Spirit of God and Angel of the Lord one for the other, so the confounding of the Word with the Spirit is inadmissible in a writer of the new covenant. No doubt, St. Paul says: “ The Lord is the Spirit ” (2 Corinthians 3:17).

But he does not for this reason confound the person of the glorified Lord with the Holy Spirit. This is a region in which it is of importance to take account of shades of thought. According to John 16:14, the Spirit is, not the Lord, but the power which glorifies Him, which makes Him appear, live and grow within us, and that by taking what is His and communicating it to us. The parts of each are perfectly distinct. They are as distinct in the work of Pentecost as in that of the incarnation. In begetting Jesus in the womb of Mary, the Holy Spirit did not become the Christ. After the same manner, the Holy Spirit, by glorifying Jesus and making Him live in us, does not for this reason become Jesus. The Word is the principle of the outward revelation, the Spirit that of the inward revelation. Jesus is the object to be assimilated; the Spirit is the power by which the assimilation is accomplished. Without the objective revelation given in Jesus, the Spirit would have nothing to fertilize in us; without the Spirit, the revelation granted in Jesus remains outside of us and is like a parable which is not understood. Hence it follows that the Spirit who comes is, in a sense, Jesus who comes again; from one without us, Jesus becomes one within us. The consummated work of the Spirit is Christ formed in the believer, or, what expresses the same idea, it is the believer having reached the perfect stature of Christ (Galatians 4:19, Ephesians 4:13). How can Weiss say that this idea is Pauline, not Johannean? Jesus' being in the believer is of the same nature as God's being in the person of Christ, according to John 17:22-23. This idea includes that which we have just developed. It is contained in the expression ἐν χριστῷ, which has no other meaning in Paul than it has in John.

The words: Yet a little while (John 14:19), are in accordance with the present I come. They reduce to nothing, so to speak, the duration of the separation.

The asyndeton leads us to see in what follows a development of the promise of John 14:18.

The sight of which Jesus speaks is to be permanent, as is indicated by the present θεωρεῖτε, you see me; it is that constant inward contemplation which St. Paul describes in the words which are so similar to the ones before us, 2 Corinthians 3:18: “ We who behold the glory of the Lord with unveiled face. ” While the world, which has only known Jesus after the flesh, sees Him no more after He has physically disappeared, He becomes, from that moment, visible to His own in the spiritual sphere into which they are transported by the Spirit and in which they meet Him. The difference in the application of the word θεωρεῖν, see, in the two clauses proves nothing against this meaning; it is precisely on this intentional difference that the meaning of the phrase rests; comp. John 14:22-23. This intimate intercourse is the source of all the strength of the Christian in his conflict with himself and with the world. This is the reason why, in what follows, the idea of living is, without any transition, substituted for that of seeing.

In the following phrase, the two clauses may be made dependent on ότι : “You see me because I live and because you also shall live.” This is what is done by Meyer, Luthardt, Weiss, either in that they apply the whole to the new life produced by the Holy Spirit (Christ and the believers seeing each other again inasmuch as they are transported into the same sphere of life); or, as Weiss, by referring the seeing again to the appearances of the Risen One: “You see me again because you and I then live again.” But the contrast between the present I live and the future you shall live is not sufficiently explained in these two interpretations. And in that of Weiss how are we to explain the word: You shall live? The appearances of the Risen One did not make the disciples live (ζῆν); they renewed their courage.

Life, throughout our entire gospel, is communicated by the Holy Spirit (John 7:39). A second construction consists in making the first clause alone depend on ὅτι, and explaining: “ You see me (then), because I live; and (as a consequence of this sight of me living) you also shall live. ” Our spiritual sight of Jesus results from His heavenly life, and this sight produces life in us. But the strongly accentuated opposition between the ἐγώ, I, and the καὶ ὑμεῖς, and you or you also, causes us to prefer a third construction: that which makes the ὅτι depend on the following verb ζήσεσθε, you shall live: But you see me (in opposition to the world sees me no more); because I live, you shall live also. ” They see Him; and, as He whom they thus behold is living, this beholding communicates life to them.

By the present I live, Jesus transfers Himself, as in John 14:3; John 14:18, to the approaching moment when death shall be finally vanquished for Him and when He will live the perfect, indestructible life; and by the future, you shall live, to the still more remote time when His glorified life will become theirs. Thus is the relation between I live and you shall live naturally explained; comp. the similar relation between I come and I will take, in John 14:3. The present designates the principle laid down once for all, the future the daily, gradual, eternal consequences.