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#5.
"Sanctify them through Thy truth" (John 17: 17).
pp. 88 - 92
The Gospel according to John falls into two great divisions: 1:-12:, and 13:-21:
There are naturally sub-divisions, but for our present purpose they can be ignored. Both
of these sections refer to "His own", and to the Lord's relationship with the Father before
His coming to the earth, and to both His own and His disciples' relationship with the
world:--
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"
(John 1: 1).
"When Jesus knew that His hour was come that He should depart out of this world
unto the Father . . . . . and that He was come from God and went to God" (John 13: 1-3).
"He came unto His own, and His own received Him not" (John 1: 11).
"Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end"
(John 13: 1).
From chapter 1:-12: the great fact insisted upon is that Christ is the Sent One, but
from 13: to 21: the Sent One speaks in view of a work finished and His return to the
glory with the Father. The words of Heb. 3: 1 could be well taken as a summary of this
double aspect of John's Gospel:--
"Consider the Apostle (the Sent One) and High Priest (the One Who went within the
veil, `heaven itself') of our profession" (Heb. 3: 1).
The section from John 1:-12: we may sum up as the Lord's intent, that He came to
give life.
It is our immediate concern to discover the intention of the second half of the Gospel,
but let us first sort out some of the material. The Lord was soon to depart out of this
world (13: 1), whereas His own were in the world (13: 1). In a little while the world
should see Him no more (14: 19). But He would not leave His disciples comfortless: He
would, through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, manifest Himself unto them as He could
not manifest Himself unto the world, sending them the Spirit of truth which the world
could not receive, and leaving them a peace given not as the world gives (14: 16-27).
The disciples' relationship to the world was to be the same as that of their Lord. Soon,
He told them, the prince of this world would come and have nothing in Him (14: 30),
and in 14: 18, 19 He speaks of a similar attitude towards His disciples also:--
"If the world hate you, ye know that it hated Me before it hated you. If ye were of the
world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the word, but I have
chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you."
It is evident that these disciples were in, yet not of, this world. In 16: 28 the Lord
brings together in one verse the two aspects of John's Gospel, saying: "I came forth from
the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father."