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THE KING’S BUSINESS
Words they would have rejoiced even at the startling statement that He was going to leave them, for leaving them meant that He was going to the Father; and if we understood what it me.ant when our believ ing friends leave us, if we only realized that they were going to the Father we too would rejoice rather than be sad at their going. Jesus has made a full claim in the early part of the chapter of equality with the Father, such absolute equality that to see Him was to see the Father, and to know Him was to know the Father. Now He makes an equally clear statement of His subordination to the Father. He says without qualification, “The Father is greater than Iff Many are so taken up with the great truth of the Deity of Christ that'they lose sight of another truth just as true, the subordination of the Son to the Father. Jesus is the Son of God in the most absolute sense, a sense in which none other is the Son of God. But while He is the Son of God, He is the Son, and the Son is subordinate to the Father. In God the Father we'see Deity in its origin, in Jesus Christ we see Deity in its out flow; in the Father we see Deity in its spring and source, in the Lord Jesus we see Deity in the- river that flows from the Spring. All the perfection of the spring is in the river, nevertheless the river is not the source. The Father is greater than the Son, though all the fulness of the Godhead resides in the Son (Col. 2:9). It is difficult for the average man to keep the balance of truth, to see qlearly the absolute equality of the Son with the Father in that He is possessed of all the perfections of the Father, and at the same time to see clearly His subordination to the Father. One man sees nothing but the Deity of Christ, another man sees nothing but the subordination of the Son, or the real humanity of the Son. The Bible teaches both, and in this the Bible is superior to all our human philosophies and exhibits, as in many other things, its Divine origin. The reason why the Lord Jesus told His disciples, before His depart ure, that He was going was in order that
when they stood face ~to face with the apparent overwhelming disaster of His death, they might not be staggered by, it, but “believe” because of it, seeing in it only a fulfillment of the Lord’s own words. The time had come for the Lord to cease His teaching of His disciples, 1 for the prince of the world was now to have His hour. He was to come and search the Second Adam and to discover that he had nothing in him, that there was absolutely nothing upon which he could lay his hand. The one thing that the Lord Jesus desired the world to ‘know about Him was that He loved the Father and that He had but one object in life, to do as the Father bade Him. Sunday, July 30 . John 15 : 1 - 3 . “I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman,” Jesus said, and in these words we have the central truth of verses 1 to 11. All the wonderful teaching of the verses that follow circles about this great thought, or is a development of it. Christ Himself is the vine, we are the branches! that is all we are, branches, and that is. enough. All our life and power and fruit age result from our union with Him. God the Father is the vine cultivator, who by His wise care brings each branch to its highest possibilities, or if it has no real union with the vine, removes it. It would be difficult to find in the whole Word of God a passage that on the one hand has more comfort and encouragement in it for those who are in Christ, and, on the other hand, has more solemn warning in it for those who have a mere outward, formal connection with Christ, and into whose lives there is no real flow of the life of Christ, showing itself in fruitage. Our life, our power to | bear fruit, is from Christ; our training into highest fruitful ness is from the Father. Union with Christ brings life and power to bear fruit, glad submission to the Father’s pruning, and training brings larger measure of fruitful ness. How glad we ought to be that it is "the Father” who is the husbandman. This
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