The Gospel of St. John: A Series of Discourses. / New Edition

by Frederick Denison Maurice

Then He repeats the words which He spoke before at the feast, but with an addition which deepens their force. 'Then said Jesus again unto them, I go my way, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sins: whither I go, ye cannot come.'

He would go away from them, and they could not follow Him. But how is that departure and that incapacity connected with their dying in sin? I believe the sense will become clearer as we read on in the chapter; but we shall not understand what follows, if we leave this question unconsidered. Throughout He has been teaching that the coming to Him with the feet, that the seeing Him with the eyes, was not that coming and that seeing which could do them any good, which could make them truer men. That belief which is not dependent upon sight—that belief which was in Him as the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever—that belief which would be in Him when He had gone away from the world—that, and that only, would raise them above themselves, would unite them to the Father, would make them partakers of His true and eternal life. Sin, the separation from God, must be the state of their spirits,—those spirits must gravitate to earth, and claim their portion with the flesh,—unless they could look upwards, and assert their share in their Lord's ascension, in His victory over the grave and hell.

The next verses will show, I think, that this is the force of the one upon which I have been commenting.

'Then said the Jews, Will He kill Himself? because He saith, Whither I go, ye cannot come. And he said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world. I said therefore unto you, That ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins.'

The Jews did not now suppose that He was going to the dispersed among the Gentiles. They perceived that His words pointed to a departure out of the world. 'But how could He know that He was going to leave it? Would He take the matter into His own hands? Did He mean that disappointment and anger at their rejection of Him would drive Him to self-murder?' The suggestion was not a serious one; merely the mock of some priest, thrown out for the sake of degrading Him in the minds of the people. Our Lord's words are not an answer to it, but an exposition of the sentence which had provoked it, and of the cause which had made that sentence unintelligible to them. They could only think of leaving the world as a descent, by one means or another, into the grave. The idea of an ascent, of a return of a spirit to its proper home, was utterly strange to them. This was a proof that they needed one to come from above, that they might be delivered from their downward, earthbound nature. This was a proof that they needed one who was not of this world to come, who might lift them above it; that they, too, might find their way to their Father's house. If they would not believe in Him as such a Messenger from the Father, as such a deliverer from the world, they must become the victims of sin, the heirs of death.

'They said therefore to Him, Who art thou?' 'What kind of being dost thou claim to be, who pronouncest judgment upon us,—who tellest us that we are to die in our sins?' There is a mixture, it seems to me, of indignation and of curiosity in the question. They want Him to tell them what He is, and what His right is to censure them and prophesy death to them. The reply, according to our translators, was, 'The same which I said unto you from the beginning.' I do not suppose they were satisfied with this rendering themselves, or that any one ever has been. Λαλεῖν is more properly to speak than to say. Λαλῶ must be the present tense, not the past. Yet I do not think we can better their version by giving, as some have done, a mystical force to the words τὴν ἀρχὴν; as if that was a name which Christ claimed for Himself. Some of the Gnostics, and some of the Fathers, no doubt, supposed that Christ is called The Beginning in the first chapter of this Gospel, as He is, undoubtedly, in the first chapter of the Apocalypse. But, were that so, I do not see what room there would be for this meaning here, or how the sentence could be construed if we introduced it. If we follow the order of the words, we may perhaps preserve the grammar of the sentence, and its connexion with the verses which follow, without deviating very widely from the signification which it conveyed to the minds of King James's translators. 'That in the beginning of which I am speaking to you. I have many things to speak and to judge concerning you. But He that sent me is true; and the things which I have heard from Him, those I speak to the world.' The answer may be either a direct one to the question, 'Who art thou?' 'I have always been that Light of the world of which I am speaking now;' or the emphasis may be on the word 'speak.' 'I am not speaking to you any different words from those which I have been always speaking to you. I am not pronouncing any judgment upon you which you have not heard pronounced in your consciences long ago. There are many dark spots in those consciences which I must bring to light; many harder speeches still which you must hear from me. I am come from a true Being; from Him who is true. I speak to the world that which I know to be His mind and will.' 'They did not understand,' says the Apostle, (this was their misery,) 'that it was the mind and will of a Father He was proclaiming to them; that it was from Him who loved them they were shrinking and turning away.'

'They understood not that He spake to them of the Father. Then said Jesus unto them, When ye have lifted up the Son of Man, then shall ye know that I am He, and that I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things.'

As He speaks of their lifting up the Son of Man, it is clear that He means here what He meant in the conversation with Nicodemus. 'As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so was the Son of Man to be lifted up.' They would be the means of raising Him to that throne. They would place Him on that cross which should declare in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, 'This is the King!' But as He adds then ye shall know, it is clear also that He must allude to the events which would succeed the crucifixion, and not to it merely. The cross would say, 'This is the Son of Man; one with all men.' The resurrection and ascension would say, 'This is the Son of God; one with the Father.' The Cross would afterwards be felt to gather the whole message into itself, to be the witness of the love of the Father to the world; of the eternal union of the Son with the Father; of the might of that Spirit which dwells in them, and proceeds from them, to bind all things into one. But what I said before applies also here. When Christ speaks of His departure from the world, the idea of ascension, of a return to the glory which He had with the Father before the worlds were, is always coming forth through the darkness of the passion.

And even that idea is not sufficient, unless this be added to it:—'And He that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please Him.'

His going to the Father is not enough without the assurance of His continual abiding in the Father. No change of place or circumstance, no progress in the world's history, no development of the Divine purpose, must interfere with the calm belief of a unity of the Father and the Son in the Spirit, which was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.