28 “You heard me say, 'I am going away and I am coming back to you.' If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.”
Good-bys are never easy are they? Someone you have loved and cherished - poured into and prayed for – must leave and it rips at the heart. Love is costly. Here we see the disciples saddened over Jesus’ words - muddled in their lack of complete understanding. They certainly got the part about Jesus leaving and they simply could not get past that dismay to achieve clarity. Their thoughts were focused on the announcement of His imminent departure and it loomed over their heads like a dark cloud. Seemingly clueless of their Lord’s reason for leaving, they remained in distress, saddened by His Words. They had not fully understood His person, or His nature or His work. Had they comprehended, they would have rejoiced over His departure since it demonstrated the thorough completion of the work He had been sent to accomplish. They loved Him much but understood Him or His agenda little. How like many still.
Jesus the God man – both fully God and fully man – seems almost oxymoronic does it not? Yet our Lord fulfills both roles perfectly. The God became the man – leaving His cloak of glory by His Father’s side - becoming flesh – and dwelling among His creation – living His life as an example for all mankind to follow – giving His life for all mankind’s salvation. In His incarnation and humiliation, Jesus willingly became temporarily inferior to the Father taking on the form of a servant. Hence He could say, “the Father is greater than I”. Laying aside His glory for thirty-three years, dwelling in a body inferior to the Father, Jesus was standing at the ready to resume that which He had rightly had before the world was. He was about to depart once more to be Almighty with the Almighty. Paul gives us the following tribute to Jesus’ incarnation, impressing upon our Lord’s followers to have this same attitude:
5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death-- even death on a cross! 9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Phil 2:5-11 (NIV)
“The end of learning is to know God, and out of that knowledge to love Him and imitate Him.” John Milton
In the first four verses of the Gospel of John, we are also given a clear preamble of the Deity of Christ written from the pen of “the one whom Jesus loved”:
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of men. John 1:1-4 (NIV)
Robert J. Morgan writes the following regarding these verses:
Paul also gives us the following description of our Lord in Colossians:
9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form. Col 2:9 (NIV)
Indeed, Jesus Himself states His Oneness with the Father earlier in John:
30 “I and the Father are one.” John 10:30 (NIV)
Jesus had tabernacled in inferiority for the thirty-three years of His incarnation being in the form of a humble servant. In leaving the world He would take up again the equal position of glory and honor with the Father.
“No one has ever lost out by excessive devotion to Christ.” H. A. Ironside