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‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto My Father.’
Joh_14:12
I. What were the ‘greater works’?—On the first reading this saying of our Lord’s seems to apply to His miracles and to the miracles which His followers should work in His Name, and I suppose it was inevitable that those who first heard the saying must have understood it in this way. On this account it must have constituted some sort of embarrassment to those who were advocating the claims of Christianity. For we may note at once that the saying will not bear this interpretation. We should come nearer to our Lord’s true meaning if we reflect that this saying does not stand alone in the Gospel, but is one of many sayings in which our Lord refers to a great future in which the work of His own ministry was to be in some sense surpassed and transcended. It is in John’s Gospel that we find all the references to the Comforter, Who was the Holy Ghost, Who was to teach the Apostles all things. The day of greater things was yet to come.
II. Christ as the Sower.—Putting the miracles aside, let us consider what was the work of Jesus in the three years of His ministry. Surely it was the sowing of the seed rather than the reaping of the harvest. He did not found a new Church; He did not enrol multitudes as adherents to a new faith. He was more careful to impart His revelation to a few chosen witnesses, more careful for that than for what we should call numerous conversions. His teaching was indeed a leaven in the hearts of the people, but it was a leaven that needed time to work. Not until the Holy Ghost was given on the day of Pentecost could the Kingdom of God come with power.
III. The Holy Ghost the instrument of the ‘greater works.’—Christ connects His own departure with the coming of the Holy Ghost. The greater works are to be accomplished not because Christ has gone, but because the Holy Ghost has come. Therefore are the works of Christ in His ministry on earth surpassed not by any mere activity of man, but by that office of God the Holy Ghost which it is the part of the believer to promote. When we speak of God in us, God enabling us, God convincing us, God suggesting that which is good to us, we mean God the Holy Ghost; and when we try to do any good work for God and for Christ, to fulfil the will of the Father and to further the cause of the Son in the saving of souls, that upon which we rely is the Presence of God the Holy Ghost, that power within us both inspiring the good purpose and enabling us to bring it to good effect.
IV. The greatest miracle in the world.—The greatest miracle in the world is that by which the sinner becomes the saint. But though every saint is made a saint by the Holy Ghost, no saint is made a saint without his own co-operation with the Holy Ghost.
Prebendary Whitworth.
Illustration‘Men sometimes discuss the utility of Christian missions as if Christian missions meant human effort, and human influence, and human testimony, and no more. How different it all seems when we think of the human agent as being called and sent by the Holy Ghost, the same Holy Ghost continually working with him and in him to convince the believer of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. How melancholy would our position be, preaching Sunday after Sunday, if the only fruit of our labour were that which results from the wisdom or the foolishness of our own words. Rather we must rest upon the hope that we may be allowed to set in motion some of the operations of God the Holy Ghost. And how hopeless would our pastoral work be if we did not believe in the working of God the Holy Ghost! The work is not ours: it belongs to the Holy Ghost, and if it be taken out of our hands it is still in His hands. We must have faith to leave it to Him.’