Thursday
Thursday
The Advantages of Jesus’s Departure
Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away.
John 16:7 RSV
How could it possibly have been to the apostles’ advantage that Jesus should leave them? They had had three marvelous years in his company. We look upon them with envy. If only we could have been with Jesus! If only we could have watched him feed the hungry, heal the sick, and raise the dead! What can Jesus have meant?
Well, the apostles experienced two major drawbacks. Firstly, while Jesus was with them on earth, his presence was localized. So they were sometimes separated from one another, for example, when they were in the boat and he was praying on the mountain. They could not enjoy uninterrupted fellowship with him. Suppose, then, that he had not gone away. Let me update how Henry Drummond, the nineteenth-century Scottish author and evangelist, put it: Suppose Jesus was still in Jerusalem. Every ship and plane would be crowded with Christian pilgrims. Suppose you were in one of them. With much difficulty you land. But every road is congested. Between you and Jerusalem lies a dark, seething mass of people. You have come to see Jesus, but you will never see him.
It was to avoid just such a frustration that Jesus went away and sent the Holy Spirit to take his place. For what the Holy Spirit has done is to universalize the presence of Jesus and to make him accessible to everybody everywhere.
The apostles’ second disadvantage was that while Jesus was with them on earth, his presence was not only local but also external. He was unable to enter their personality or change them from within, getting at the source of their thoughts, motives, and desires.
But later he would be able to, Jesus said, “for he dwells with you, and will be in you” (14:17 RSV). Thus the Holy Spirit internalizes the presence of Jesus so that Christ dwells by his Spirit in our hearts and transforms us into his likeness. It is, therefore, greatly to our advantage that Jesus went away, for in his place the Holy Spirit came. And the Holy Spirit has made the presence of Jesus no longer local but universal, no longer external but internal. The Spirit both universalizes and internalizes the presence of Jesus Christ.
For further reading: John 16:5–11