Something Better Than His Presence
“It is expedient for you that I go away.” John xviiy.
OW could anything be better for them than i the continued presence of the Master? And yet He tells them that He is going to send them something better than if He Himself should still remain with them. Surely such an announcement must have staggered them, as much as if a mother were to tell her babes that her death would be a positive benefit to her orphaned children.
Have we not sometimes thought and wished that Jesus Christ were here on earth again and felt if only we could go to His blessed feet and pour into His living ears the story of our sorrow, it would bring us a realization of His help and presence that now we cannot know. And yet if our text be true Jesus has given us something better in the Holy Spirit than even His own visible and bodily presence among us could ever be. Oh! how this should enhance our realization of the preciousness of the Holy Spirit, that the Lord Himself says
He is of more value to us than the presence of Jesus in visible and bodily form.
A little reflection will show us that the Master was right and was not exaggerating when He said, ‘’It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away the Comforter will not come,” Let us bear in mind as we follow this train of thought that the Holy Spirit identifies Himself with the Lord Jesus and that the coming of the Comforter is just the coming of Jesus Himself to the heart.
In the first place if Jesus had continued with them in visible form He could only have been in one place at one time and His presence would have been local and individual. He could not have spoken to one here and another on the other side of the world. But now in His spiritual Presence He is omnipresent and able to give His whole attention to you, and at the same moment be in conscious fellowship with innumerable other hearts in all the world. There is nothing more wonderful than this universal Christ and His strange and unlimited power to give to us the sense of His undivided interest in us and His whole thought, attention and care for us and all we have to tell Him, while at the same moment innumerable other souls are claiming His interest and pouring their needs and sorrows into His ear. Yes, we do thank Him that
He has come back to us in this larger sense and this more universal and world-wide presence.
In the second place if Jesus had still remained with them He could only have communicated with them through His outward touch. His messages would still have been addressed through imperfect human language to their ears and understanding and it would have been an external presence and communion. But now He meets us in our deeper and higher nature by the communion of His Spirit with our mind and spirit, not only in actual words and thoughts but in those inarticulate and inexpressible influences and impulses which no words could ever fully convey. The presence of Christ and the fellowship of His life and love are ‘‘exceeding abundantly above all” that words could speak or heart could think. He imparts to us His very life and feeds us with the living Bread. He breathes into us the sweetness of His peace that passeth all understanding. He sheds abroad in our hearts the love of God. He rolls upon us the burden of His prayer and the fellowship of His sufferings. He even pours into our mortal frame the fullness of His resurrection life, healing our sick and suffering bodies and vitalizing all our being with His life and strength. All this and infinitely more could never have been if Jesus had not gone away and
V/HEN THE COMFORTER CAME
then come back to us through the presence of the Comforter.
Dear friend, have you come to know in this deep spiritual way the Spiritual and everpresent Christ? And do you recognize the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Jesus and in His blessed presence in your heart do you meet your beloved Lord? It was for this reason that the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus and resided in Him during His earthly ministry. All the works that Jesus did were done through the energy of the Holy Spirit. His preaching and teaching were through the anointing of the Holy Ghost. His miracles were wrought through the power of the Spirit. The gracious words He spake were the Spirit’s words. His acts of tenderness and love were the manifestations of the gentle heart of the Holy Ghost. And now that Spirit that dwelt in Him has come forth from Him to dwell in us and be to us the very Heart of Christ Himself.
A thoughtful writer has reminded us that the Holy Ghost does not now come to us only as the Spirit of the Father and with that majesty and glory which the Old Testament representations of God inspire, but rather as the Spirit of Jesus and clothed with all the tenderness of His humanity. The Spirit has no material body like Jesus, the Son
WHEN THE COMFaRTER CAME
of God, who became incarnate in mortal flesh, but yet, in another sense, the Spirit did become incarnate in Jesus, and now comes to us softened and humanized by His union with the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed Spirit of Christ, let us receive Him. Let us love Him. Let us trust Himx. And let us recognize in Him that other divine Personality who must ever be to the believer’s heart the sweetest of all names and the dearest of all friends, Jesus our Beloved Lord.
Yes, He is with us still, ‘’all the days even unto the end of the age.”
“What though His holy footsteps
Linger no longer here?
Still through His Spirit’s presence
Jesus is ever near.
What though your heart be lonely,
What though your friends be few,
He will not leave you orphans,
Jesus will come to you.”