“HIS DEPARTURE”
Luke 9: 28-36, 51-56
John 13: 1-8; 14: 1-3
PM In seeking guidance for these meetings I have been affected by five words that are recorded in Luke 9, “who … spoke of his departure”. I wondered, dear brethren, if we could enquire together, and get some impression of what was before the Lord Jesus, and see its bearing on our present position in the dispensation. We are on the eve of our departure; the departure of the church to be with Christ takes character from His departure. His departure was distinctive and glorious but the character is the same; it is glorious. It is noticeable that in these four passages we have read the Lord Jesus does not directly refer to His death, neither do Moses and Elias on the mount, but they refer to His departure. The disciples were receiving an impression of the glory of the One who was departing. Peter says in his epistle they were “eyewitnesses of his majesty” (2 Pet 1: 16): they saw the majesty and glory of the One who was leaving this scene. What a Person: He was transfigured before them. We can enquire into that, because the One who was heavenly and did not belong to this scene was moving here, and as we have later in the chapter, setting His face stedfastly to go to Jerusalem. If He was to depart from this scene, it was the scene in which He was being rejected. He was not received here; Luke gives us that character right from His incoming: there was no room for Him in the inn, chap 2: 7. That is the character of the scene through which we are passing today. There is no room for Christ and no room for His own, but He sets His face stedfastly.
When we come to John 13, it says as to the Lord Jesus, “knowing that his hour had come that he should depart out of this world to the Father”. He did not belong to this world: He says that in chapter 17, “they are not of the world, as I am not of the world”, v 14. Think of the movements of the Lord Jesus “knowing that his hour had come that he should depart out of this world”, the world in which He did not belong. But He was going to the Father, and then the writer says later, “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he came out from God and was going to God, rises from supper and lays aside his garments”. Not only did He know that He was departing out of this world to the Father, but also that “he came out from God and was going to God”. It is in the light of that that He “rises from supper and lays aside his garments” and washes the feet of the disciples. He has a place in mind in His departure, “I go to prepare you a place”. The longings of His heart come out in John 14, “I go to prepare you a place”. It was a place where He could have His own at home in association with Himself.
JW I think it is very good. I was thinking in this first chapter that you read they were speaking of His departure but it is interesting that in the second scripture in Luke it speaks of the days of His receiving up. It is obvious that He was departing from this world but He had another world in view.
PM Yes, the world into which He was received. Paul tells us in Timothy He has “been received up in glory”, 1 Tim 3: 16. There was no glory in the scene through which He passed save what permeated that pathway, “a glory as of an only-begotten with a father” (John 1: 14), but He was going to be received in a world pervaded by glory.
JW I wondered what you would say about “the days of his receiving up”. Is that the receiving up in the beginning of Acts? Luke says, “And it came to pass when the days of his receiving up were fulfilled”.
PM The Lord anticipated that time and His movements from this moment, in Luke’s gospel, were in the light of that, but they were also days of rejection here. I think it has been said by another that the days from Luke 9 onwards were really what Paul refers to as to “the dying of Jesus”, 2 Cor 4: 10, JT vol 60 p523. He did not belong in this scene: He was rejected here because His face was set as going to Jerusalem.
TM Is it not interesting that at the end of Luke we have His departure? I was thinking of what you said as to the two on the road to Emmaüs. He says, “Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory?”, chap 24: 26. His departure began to cause their hearts to burn within them, but before He departs He blesses the disciples and they go back to Jerusalem with great joy, v 50, 52.
PM Yes, He lifted up his hands and blessed them. In the book of the Acts, Luke says that ten angel said that He will come again in the same manner, chap 1: 11. His hands are still lifted up, and right through this dispensation His hands have never ceased to be lifted up in blessing. What a glorious Person!
RB Although always personally suited to return to heaven, it was the divine order that He should depart by this suffering way.
PM If you and I were to be brought into blessing, it required that He had to go that way: if the purpose of God was to be established on the basis of redemption, it required that He had to go that way. Think of all that had proceeded in the Old Testament in which God went on with His people, He went on with them in the light of the fact that the Lord Jesus was going to die and that His precious blood was going to be shed. What a wealth of food for our souls in these movements. As you say, personally He could have gone from the mount of transfiguration to glory; He belonged there, but for the will of God it required that He set His face stedfastly to go to Jerusalem.
RB Do you think the Spirit of God had shone out to Isaiah: so there was some impression of this in chapter 53? There was nothing for the Lord in this scene.
PM You are referring to the fact that He grew up before God “as a tender sapling, and as a root out of dry ground”, v 2. The Lord Jesus did not belong here; He belonged in another world, and His own do not belong here. We have often been taught that the assembly does not belong here: it is here for testimony. The assembly is heavenly in origin, in character and in destiny. It takes nothing from the world through which we pass.
BWL Do we get at the mount of transfiguration a preview, really, of His receiving up in glory? I am thinking about what Mr Stoney says; we often speak of the Lord’s steps from the manger to the cross but he says it is from the manger to glory, and from the glory to the cross, JBS vol 2 p348, vol 7 p167.
PM I wondered that. They have a view of the Lord Jesus in a condition in which they will know Him in a day yet to come. They were accustomed to seeing the One who was here in humility and lowliness, but they shall see Him as the Centre of a scene that is above this world altogether. These disciples see Him, you might say, speaking carefully, in relation to a spiritual order of life in which these men, Moses and Elias could be seen with the Lord Jesus. And these three disciples received an impression of what that order of life would be in which not only His departure would be fulfilled, but ours also. You think that would be right?
JL Is there something specially appealing then about the words used here, “which he was about to accomplish”? I was thinking of the certainty of all that lay ahead. James, in his epistle, warns us in regard to our movements that we are to be subject to the mind and will of the Lord, and how we should live (chap 4: 15), but is there something very glorious connected with the departure of the Lord Jesus? Does it give positive assurance in relation to the coming glory?
PM Very fine. There was no doubt that His departure was going to be accomplished. It was in the hands of the Lord Jesus, the Son of God: it was His departure. The second passage we read is His reception: no doubt a reference to the Father’s appreciation of Him, but this was His own action, the Son of God, moving forward, about to depart out of this scene. What movements they were! It would be right to say that the One who was here needed no moral change. He was just as suited to the heavenly realm into which He was going to enter as He was when He was with them here upon the earth. Everything was morally perfect.
EJM From here on in this gospel, the Lord emphasises what is of heaven. He “beheld Satan as lightning falling out of heaven”, chap 10: 18. Then they were rejoicing in the success of their service and He says, “rejoice not, that the spirits are subjected to you, but rejoice that your names are written in the heavens”, v 20.
PM He was drawing the attention of His disciples to that character of life, was He not? It belongs to another world altogether. We may, if we are not careful, become earthly. The book of Revelation speaks of judgment falling upon “them that dwell upon the earth”, chap 3: 10. Is my life in another scene?
EJM Do you think the truth of justification then bears on that, “being justified freely by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus” (Rom 3: 24), not for this scene, for another world altogether?
PM Justified for the world in which Jesus has been glorified. How wonderful that is! He was not justified publicly on the earth, was He? He has been received up in glory: the One who is justified in the Spirit.
JW Why were Moses and Elias not the focal point, but they appear with Him?
PM I wondered that. When He came in, angelic beings had to worship Him. We might just contemplate that. The heavenly host were praising God, angels spoke to the shepherds, but here it is persons in whom God has wrought. They had looked on to Christ in their service here and testified as to this glorious Person. Moses, the meekest man of all the earth (Num 12: 3) says, “A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up to you .... like me”, Acts 3: 22. Think of the light that Moses had, and Elias also. The footnote (note c) says, ‘they were no other than’, they were recognised, as Moses and Elias in whom certain features of the work of God had been formed and could be recognised. They could speak with Jesus about His departure.
JW I think that is helpful. I suppose these were the best of the men that could be found. Mr James Taylor says Moses was probably the greatest man in the Old Testament (vol 2 p121), but, however great the men were, they were not to compare with the Lord Jesus, and in his epistle, Peter does not refer to these men at all.
PM These men representing the law and the prophets: all that had gone before which had looked on to this glorious Person; they are able intelligently to enter into conversation with Him, without in any way detracting from the distinctiveness of Jesus.
JL May I suggest that Moses was used to introduce the representation of the heavenly things, and Elias specially used to recover the people to it following a time of departure? But Christ is the great accomplisher of all for God.
PM So that all is centered in and held by this blessed Man.
JD Do you think His departure would that involve a consideration both of His glory and His sufferings? You also linked it with the departure of the church from this scene. That would be the link, do you think, the matter of glory and sufferings, so that the bride is the Lamb’s wife?
PM I wondered that. There is a good deal of suffering in the spirits of the saints, and we may yet be called on to suffer actually in the testimony, as many are, but whether that is so or not, the suffering and the glory must go together, must they not? “The sufferings of the Christ” and “the glory about to be revealed”, (1 Pet 5: 1): we cannot ignore the suffering side but it is not the emphasis here. The emphasis is on the One who was here who did not belong here but He was departing to another world. We know that He went that way by way of suffering.
RJF The word that is used here is “departure which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem”. It implies to me that it is a heavenly view of things, looking on to His ascension and glorification, but there was so much that was to be accomplished at that time. It is a heavenly view of things here rather than an earthly view. I just wonder perhaps if we could look into that a little further.
PM What you draw attention to is important and gives us some impression of what was before divine Persons in these days in which the Lord Jesus was moving here. The cry was, “When will he die, and his name perish”, Ps 41: 5. Men thought His death was the end but the divine view was that this blessed Person was departing out of this scene and departing gloriously. Majesty was His; greatness was His. The fact that He suffered and died does not in any sense diminish the glory and greatness of the Person that was here, but in going into death He broke its power.
In John 12 He had secured something in the little company in Bethany that was of such a character that He could pronounce after that: “Now is the judgment of this world”, v 31. That comes between the beginning of chapter 12 and what we have in chapter 13. He secured something in the company that gave Him a basis, we might say, reverently, to pronounce judgment on the scene through which He passed. It is a principle that God never pronounces judgment until He has what He delights in. That was so in Simon the Pharisee’s house, Luke 7: 36-50. He does not say anything to Simon by way of condemnation until the woman anointed His feet, and I think we can see that as we trace it through scripture that when He reaches what delights His heart, He has the basis, we might say reverently, to say what needs to be judged.
TWL I was wondering about this in the light of what has been said. Is this not Christ as the Man of purpose? He is moving for God here. We often speak about the feelings He has for man, but here He is moving for God. What He was about to accomplish was for God.
PM Yes, very much so. The Lord Jesus always considered for God, even when He was twelve years old. There may be young people here at the age of twelve, but when the Lord Jesus was twelve He said, “did ye not know that I ought to be occupied in my Father’s business?”, Luke 2: 49. That was always His motive here, and He lived “on account of the Father”, John 6: 57. And the Man of God’s purpose was the only One who could make known all that was in God’s heart. That really is what we have in chapter 13 of John, that not only was He departing “out of this world to the Father”, but He knew that “he came out from God and was going to God”. These are deep things; we need help talking over them. The Father could not have anyone being compared here with Christ; He stands alone.
PEH There is no comparison “but having fully awoke up they saw his glory”. It says, “Moses and Elias, who, appearing in glory, spoke of his departure which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem”, but for the disciples “having fully awoke”, the glory of the Lord was distinctive.
PM It was distinctive, and finally He was left alone with themselves. What a result! We have an incomparable Christ. Not only is He unique but He is distinctive and glorious in every way.
PEH The delight of the Father - “This is my beloved Son: hear him” - in the light of what has just transpired!
PM Peter says, “this voice we heard uttered from heaven, being with him on the holy mountain”, 2 Pet 1: 18. What a voice, the Father’s voice! It was heard at the waters of baptism, not in a corrective way. It was heard there because, you might say, speaking reverently, the Father could no longer keep silent as to His delight in this blessed One, but it is heard here to draw attention to the One who stands alone in the Father’s affections. He says, “hear him”: what a privilege we have in this dispensation to hear God’s beloved Son!
DAB Did you think that contemplating His glory, as these persons did on the mount, is to have a moral effect upon us so that, when our departure is complete, it is only a change of bodily condition? That would be the effect upon us of what this passage would bring in.
PM We should link it with what we have in 2 Corinthians 3: “But we all, looking on the glory of the Lord, with unveiled face, are transformed according to the same image”, v 18. How wonderful that is! It is what is open to us now; it is not only what will be. When we see Him actually, “we shall be like him” (1 John 3: 2), but at the present moment, we can be “transformed according to the same image”. I think we have some touch of that at the Supper.
DAB And John’s view was, “we have contemplated his glory, a glory as of an only-begotten with a father”, John 1: 14. That could be taken as a reference to this passage, and I have often thought that that comment by John really covered his ministry. It was an experience that this man had that he would never forget.
PM I have wondered if John finding that place in the bosom of Jesus saw there the glory of the Person that he had never seen anywhere else, the attractiveness of the Person that he had never met before.
ADM I was thinking of what was said as to the matter of purpose: is that confirmed by “which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem”? It is not here what men were going to do to Him, which very sadly they did. Do you think it is the holy resolve of the Lord Jesus to carry out the divine will? We see through the gospels that nothing could deflect Him from that. That is a special glory which we can feed on, and in our measure seek to be coloured by.
PM Does not Peter take that up when he begins to preach in the Acts? He speaks of “the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God”, chap 2: 23. He says, ‘You had wicked hands but God was over it all’, “the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God”. Everything was in divine control. How wonderful that is! We may look, and we do, at the breakdown of the church and we weep over it, but there is the other side that everything is under the Father’s hand, under the hand of Christ. That does not make any excuse for the breakdown, but divine Persons are forming features of the Lamb’s wife in suffering conditions in view of our departure.
RB I was wondering if you think the writer to the Hebrews in chapter 3 had something of this before him when he says, “Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest” (v 1), and he goes on to impress upon their minds that there is a whole heavenly system of things in testimony here now which is a manifestation of what is in heaven.
PM Yes; we may touch on that later.
DGC In relation to what has been said as to suffering and glory, do you think Stephen’s experience of his departure when he was gazing into heaven was something akin to this? “He saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God”, Acts 7: 55. Is that the side of what is sovereign? What was given for him to see and appreciate was something very distinctive. You might say it was a foretaste of what was said about the assembly position.
PM That is helpful. Stephen does not speak of his own sufferings, though he must have felt them; he speaks of the Man who eclipsed them all. “Lo, I behold the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God”, v 56. Heaven was open to a man who was standing for the Lord in the testimony. Paul says, “At my first defence no man stood with me, but all deserted me … But the Lord stood with me, and gave me power”, 2 Tim 4: 16, 17. It is a wonderful thing to be conscious in any little part that we have in testifying as to our blessed Lord, that divine Persons are there to stand with us, to support.
JL Would it not being an overshadowing cloud have some direct connection with that? There is an interesting footnote given in Matthew’s gospel to the significance of the word “overshadowed” (note ‘b’ to Matthew 17: 5) which gives us to understand that there is a peculiar brightness and blessedness with that cloud as it was in Stephen’s case, to help us to get free of every element and be wholly absorbed by the glory of the Person.
PM That is very important. Being conscious of the shining of divine glory is to be known by us in the scene of testimony through which we pass. It “overshadowed”; it did not darken; it shed a light upon them, a light that they had not noticed or seen before; it was here but what it was drawing attention to was the One who was going to pass through death, break its power, be the Centre of the world from which every divine communication would come. How wondrous that is, “a bright cloud overshadowed them”, Matt 17: 5!
JD I was just thinking of the cloud. How near the Father was to be to the Lord Jesus always; He says in John, “but I knew that thou always hearest me”, John 11: 42. But here I was thinking that as Peter “was saying these things”, suggesting three tabernacles, it just seems immediately there was a cloud. It says, “But as he was saying these things, there came a cloud and overshadowed them”; as if the Father was right there. Peter was saying something that was out of place, but the Father was there to keep things in order. Do you think that would be right?
PM I am sure. The Father and the Son were always close together, but it says here, “they feared as they entered into the cloud”. It has come close to us too.
RJC Would we be encouraged in relation to the superlatives? I was thinking again in relation to what Peter could speak of in relation to “the excellent glory”, 2 Pet 1: 17. The hymn says -
Thy glory fills our sight (Hymn 35).
PM Well, these are experiences that Peter found hard to put into words. He speaks of “the holy mountain”. No one had ever identified “the holy mountain” before, but Peter speaks of it: “the holy mountain”; “the excellent glory”, the majesty that belonged to Christ. The Lord Jesus went out by way of suffering, but the One who went out was none less than majestic and glorious. He had a majesty and it will be seen publicly in a day to come before which the kings of the earth will leave their thrones and lay their crowns at His feet. There is a majesty in Christ that the world knows nothing about. He moved here in lowly humiliation.
JW “They feared as they entered into the cloud”. Are you going to say a word about that?
PM They were entering into a new experience. They had not yet received the Spirit. They were entering into an experience of what was heavenly and in a sphere in which divine affections for one another were being expressed. They feared in relation to it. How wonderful that we have the gift of the Holy Spirit and we can know what it is to be seated, sat “down together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus”, Eph 2: 6.
RB They feared because they could not sustain that glory. There is only one Man who could sustain that glory, but the assembly in the coming day will have the glory of God, Rev 21: 10.
PM Yes, she will have those moral features that are suited to God, that had come from God, and she will be formed in the divine nature.
RB I said that because I was thinking of what has already been drawn attention to: that what Stephen saw was Jesus. Is that not the characteristic of this whole dispensation, “we see Jesus” (Heb 2: 9), and as looking upon that glory, we can take on these features.
PM What you say is very exercising because it is the character of the dispensation. When did I last have that experience? We can sit here and say these things, and they are right, and I believe the Holy Spirit would exercise us as to whether what is true for us might be true in us. I hope I am not being too harsh.
RB No, you are certainly not; it is a very needful word and I take it to myself. But does it not enhance to us the service of the Spirit at the present time? If we are in the good of the Spirit, Christ will always be attractive to us, but are we in the good of the Spirit?
PM Therefore in the dispensation in which we are, which is the greatest of the dispensations that there have been, we have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. That is a wonderful thing, that we should know a divine Person indwelling, and the delight of that divine Person is to magnify Christ.
EJM That was one of Stephen’s credentials: he was “a man full of … the Holy Spirit”, Acts 6: 5.
PM He was, and therefore even in the most difficult circumstances there was something that shone out in Stephen. They “saw his face as the face of an angel”, v 15. A man who was moving here, they had seen “his face as the face of an angel”, but in the conditions of suffering Stephen was not occupied with the pain he must have been passing through.
TWL I was just wondering about what the Father says here, “hear him”. At the end of Luke’s gospel the Lord says to the two, “Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory?”, chap 24: 26. Hearing Him involves possibly what is in the next part of the scripture you read when there was affliction. The Lord says, “Ye know not of what spirit ye are”. When the Lord said, “Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things”, we should expect that, should we not? “Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory?”. That is the “hear him” and so we should do the same.
PM “But as ye have share in the sufferings of Christ” (1 Pet 4: 13); that is what is normal in the believer’s pathway. The measure of the suffering is not what Peter speaks of there, but he says, “ye have share”. Let us take up our part in relation to the sufferings of the Christ and, as we do so, the spirit that marked Him in the face of suffering is to be the spirit that marks us.
TWL I wondered that because when He speaks about entering into His glory, that was destination. The question for us is, “What is our destination?”. Do we have before us that we have a heavenly destination? If we do, we will ordinarily find that this scene is nothing but suffering, and that is a test: do I find that here? Does that fit in with your thoughts?
PM Yes, it does, and would lead us onto John 13. The One we have read of in John 13 is the One who earlier said that the world was under judgment, and He is departing out of this world. Dear brethren, we are about to depart out of this world. He was departing to the Father. He was not loved here save by a few, but He was departing into the scene in which the Father’s affection for Him could be expressed in a new way. Jehovah said, “Sit at my right hand”, Ps 110: 1. What a moment!
TM Is there a certain dignity connected with departure? I was thinking of Paul’s “desire for departure and being with Christ”, Phil 1: 23. I was thinking of the departed saints; there is a certain dignity.
PM Well, we have reference to it. When the Lord comes, He will call “each in his own rank”, 1 Cor 15: 23. There is a dignity about that. When the Lord comes for us at the rapture He will call, “we, the living who remain” (1 Thess 4: 15); there will be no disunity. We shall depart to be with Christ. That is a very blessed moment, is it not?
I wondered whether this section in John 13 has in mind our part here until He comes. He knew that “his hour had come that he should depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world”. That has not changed; He still loves His own who are in the world. But He knew also “that the Father had given him all things into his hands, and that he came out from God and was going to God”. That is a further thought. The brethren may help as to that. It is not exactly that He was going out of this world to God. “He came out from God and was going to God”. It involves the revelation of Himself so fully made known, and the Lord’s longings that it might be answered to by men who have part with Him. Would that be right?
JL I was just wondering about the wonder of the Lord’s reception into glory. He speaks about His departure “out of this world” and then further down that He “came out from God and was going to God”. That was accomplished in His ascension, was it not? In resurrection He came out of the grave and proved His victory over death but at His ascension He went up into glory and was received and honoured there.
PM Yes, indeed, He was; and what a moment for heaven, a Man sitting there, but that One none less than God, blessed Man entering into heaven; He belonged there because of who He was.
JL The link with 2 Corinthians 3 that was referred to earlier is the same. We are helped by the Spirit to view Him there.
PM Yes, and to see that, God as having been made known, the Lord Jesus has in mind that He should not go out alone. He came in alone; He came out from God; no one else could accompany Him on that, but what is in view here is that men should be with Him in going to God. We are also to know what it is even in the present time to be with God in a priestly way here in the scene of His absence. The feet washing will not be needed for heaven. We will not need feet washing there; feet washing is needed now in view of part with Him.
JD Do you think this matter of going to God could be linked with what Hebrews speaks of as “bringing many sons to glory”, Heb 2: 10?
PM Yes, go on.
JD The Lord was really bringing His own into the light of the revelation of God, doing that in the conscious sense of the Father’s love in His own service to them, do you think?
PM That is just what was in my heart. He came out from God; what a movement that was! The One who Himself came out to make God known. Nothing could be added to that revelation, so full and so complete, but He came out in view of going to God. It does not say that He was going back here, but God was before Him in the movements of divine grace. It has been said that in His ascending movement He was going in order that men might be with Him in the very scene in which God was known. There was to be an answer in men to the revelation of God.
BWL Does coming out from God involve declaration? As you say, going to God involves there is an answer secured.
PM An answer secured in persons that are for God. Paul says, in 1 Corinthians 8 “to us there is one God, the Father ... and we for him”. We are living in a time when sadly, many are happy to know merely that God is for us; that in itself is a wonderful thing, but it is a very blessed thing to know what it is to be here for God: that is priesthood. The food of the priests is to set man up for God. We can rest in the blessings of all that God is as having made Himself known but if there is to be an answer to that it must involve that there are men here who live for the pleasure of God.
RB Mr Raven has a remark that, as Son, He comes out to express God; and as Son of man He takes everything up on behalf of man, FER vol p69. When He came out from God, He had in His heart the whole declaration of God, and that the Father would be revealed. How wonderful that is; He was acting for God in a scene where God had been disowned but He was going to God in order to establish the whole system of things and bring us into it. He is there on our behalf. Is that not a great comfort to us at the present time? He has gone back to establish new ground for man so that there is a place for you and me in it - “part with me”.
PM I am very thankful that you say that because it is important for us to lay hold of, that the Son of God is really Christ on behalf of God, but as Son of man He is there on behalf of men and that is a very wide thought. It includes not only the saints of this dispensation but it involves what God will secure throughout every dispensation, and it is all held by the Son of man. Wonderful blessed Man that He is! And here in His lowly grace He lays aside His garments. Think of the One who we are speaking of, the Creator of the universe, Son of God, glorious Son of man: He lays aside His garments and washes the feet of the disciples. Why? Because He loved them so much that He wanted them to be at home in the scene in which He was going to be at home, and He wanted them to be here in the testimony in purity as He was here in testimony but He was intrinsically holy.
RJF Does the Lord loving His own, loving them to the end, fit with going to God? It speaks here of “having loved his own who were in the world” - but then He loved them to the end. As the note implies, it goes beyond the realm of time (note a). I wondered if that fits with going to God. It shows the immense strength of divine love, and what He did in washing the feet of His disciples was one of the steps of loving them to the end, do you think?
PM I am sure of that, and it is almost as if John would say as writing this book (as we would understand the last of the books of the Bible to be written), ‘I have proved it through every circumstance’: He has loved us, not only in view of keeping us calm in the scene of His rejection, as thankful as we might be for that, but He has loved us through every circumstance in order that we might be here for God with affection for God, so that the One who was His God might practically become our God.
TM Is there profit for us in the Lord’s departure? In John 16 He says, “If I do not go away, the Comforter will not come to you”, v 7. So that the Lord’s departure also involved the coming in of the Spirit.
PM How essential that was if man was to be set up for God. Priesthood involves that the believer is indwelt by the Spirit and is to be regulated by the Spirit. That is essential if there is to be a priestly state here that considers for God. I think the disciples had this sense that the Lord Jesus was considering for God; He would leave that impression on the company and that there was to be a company here that was considering for God. If you walk around with bare feet you soon pick up some dust, but the Lord served that everything that may be picked up of the character of the world, might be removed that we might be in liberty in serving God.
Fraserburgh
27th April 2019
Key to Initials:
R Bain, Buckie; D A Brown, Grangemouth; D G Coull, Aberdeen; R J Cumming, Aberdeen; J Drummond, Aberdeen; R J Flowerdew, Sunbury; P Hogan, Grangemouth; J Laurie, Brechin; T W Lock, Edinburgh; B W Lovie, Aberdeen; E J Mair, Buckie; T Mair, Cullen; P Martin, Colchester; A D Munro, Grangemouth; J Webster, Fraserburgh