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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadPaul Kretzmann Commentary - John 14:18 - 14:20
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Further encouragement:
v. 18. I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you.
v. 19. Yet a little while and the world seeth Me no more; but ye see Me. Because I live, ye shall live also.
v. 20. At that day ye shall know that I am in My Father, and ye in Me, and I in you.
The Lord repeats His comforting assurance from another angle. He promises not to leave His disciples orphans, without a guide, deprived of all comfort. In addition to the fact that He will provide the Comforter for them, He Himself will not abandon them and leave them to the fate of children bereft of their parents. It may seem to them that His departure means as much, but because of this very fact that He is entering into His glory, He will be able to be present with them just as surely as before, and for all times. He will return to them in the means of grace, where His presence is always certain, and He will shortly return to them in person. It is but a little while, and the world, the unbelieving, hostile children of unbelief, would see Him no more, neither with the eyes of the body nor with those of the spirit. But His disciples would and will see Him, the eyes of their understanding being enlightened; they would understand Him, His person and work, better than ever before. For with His resurrection His human body would enter into a new mode of existence, His mortal body would be transfused with divinity, it would be transfigured for all times. Jesus lives, and they shall live. When Christ comes to them in the spirit and they learn to know and understand Him better with each new day, then they become partakers of the new spiritual life of Jesus. They will also understand more and more what that wonderful union and communion means which obtains between Father and Son, between the believers and Christ. And the day will come when the last shred of the veil will be taken from their eyes, and they will know their Savior and the mystery of the Triune God even as they are known. In the mean time they should rest assured that the relation between the Savior and the believers is just as intimate and blessed as that between the Father and the Son. The presence of Jesus in the believers assures them of the fullness of both His grace and power in them, grace and mercy for their sins and power for their sanctification.