"PART WITH ME"
“PART WITH ME”
John 13:1 - 8; John 14: 15 - 26
JT I believe that this section has largely in view the procedure and possibilities connected with the assembly, the saints as in assembly position. The leading thought in my mind is having part with Christ. What is to be observed is that what happened was before the passover. John avoids mentioning the actual occasion of the Supper in the chapter. The allusion is to the Lord being there during supper and that before the feast of the passover, and then that He was departing out of this world to the Father and that He had come from God and was going to God. The setting and facts presented would indicate that the public religious observances are wholly ignored; that they have nothing to do with what enters into these chapters, which lead on to the very highest thoughts of the relations between divine Persons and what share we have in these relations. That is found in chapter 17. The position involves the type of Aaron and his sons, Aaron being seen alone in the prayer in chapter 17. Chapter 13 would therefore correspond with the court as preliminary, as the place of sacrifice, the preliminaries of entering in.
AMH Is that why you have connected the feet-washing with the movable lavers in Solomon’s court?
JT I have thought of that. I think it is right. It is that side that we get here; a movable vessel, not a sea containing a large quantity of water, but more like the laver with wheels.
AMH The lavers were for washing the sacrifices.
Does that imply that we are brought into accord with what we are saying as presenting Christ?
JT Quite so. I suppose the wheels would point to portability, that love might be freer to move about [p. 207] in its service. The Lord moved around the table evidently at supper time; He would move round to where they lay. The chapter contemplates the court, what is within man’s view, but also looking toward the holiest, the inner parts of the tabernacle; but love is to be amongst themselves. The chapter requires that.
AMH Is your thought that the supper here is just a time of family liberty? Is that as far as the figure goes?
JT That is how it stands. It is an occasion for love and the display of familiarity and the Lord shows how a lead may be given in such circumstances, so that love radiates as preliminary to the higher thoughts and privileges accorded us. So that, following the thought, our meetings are not regulated by ordinary religious observances at all. Sometimes, of course, the brethren meet at the same time as other persons who are so regulated, but not in any sense as having a time for the observance, but according to what is convenient and affording the most advantage. There is one thought attaching to the assembly, that it is not regulated by ordinary religious customs and observances at all, that is, if we view it from a spiritual standpoint. It has its place, of course, here in the public testimony of God. Rebecca is led into Sarah’s tent — that was the public position — and loved in it, but John is not concerned with that side. Luke is, and I suppose Matthew and Mark are, but John is concerned about life and the inner side of things, what leads inward to eternity. Hence he gives us so much from the Lord at this particular juncture. These chapters all enter into the time immediately before the Lord’s death.
Ques What do we gather from the fact that Peter did not understand what the Lord was doing at that moment?
JT It refers to the fact that he had not [p. 208] the Spirit. You find as looking through the section references to “that day”, also it says “the Spirit was not yet”. The full position of Christianity is alluded to. “That day” in John 14: 20 refers to the Spirit.
EBMcC You said the type of this is Aaron and his sons, and the thought is to have “part with me”. Does that go on continuously as far as the Lord is concerned, answering to Aaron in the type?
JT It runs on to chapter 17 which involves our most exalted privileges. The facts mentioned preclude our being too strict and literal regarding the Lord’s presence in assembly. If He be amongst us these chapters would show that He is in charge, as Aaron was at the sanctuary, and that it is a question of what He may lead in. Chapter 13 is preliminary and I think involves the moral side of our position. He must attend to that. We must not assume that everything is ready-made in the assembly. Whilst we are down here the state of things changes. We must leave room for the Lord to take account of all that, and conditions that may exist. He has the means of dealing with all incongruities.
Rem Peter’s condition suggests an ignorance of the Lord’s service.
JT That is right. Peter represents that side; he would not at first allow the Lord to wash his feet. That was assuming that he was more spiritual than others, and if others denied the Lord he would not. The Lord has to put up with and deal with all these things amongst us. The Lord goes on; He is not going to be stopped; He has the means of dealing with all these things.
EBMcC It means continuous service for the Lord and also for the saints. The saints go on, too, in the service.
JT We go on, although we sometimes have to wait as Israel had to wait for Miriam (Numbers 12: 15), and we are enjoined to tarry for one another.
[p. 209] AMH Are you viewing the assembly as convened?
JT Just so, as to the principle.
AMH I was just wondering how you applied this washing of the feet. Is it done by some member or is it the Lord’s own act?
JT It is done mediately now, it might come in at the outset. We come in and sit down and various conditions are amongst us. This chapter announces that the Lord has knowledge of everything. It is stressed: knowing everything, knowing how matters stood. In a general way the position is clear; He is going to the Father; He came from God and is going to God. Judas was there, supper was there, and it was a time of privilege, and it is how He moves and how the whole position is met by Him.
Ques Is all this that He knew involved in having “part with me”?
JT You are assured at the outset that everything is fixed from His point of view. The matter is clear; He is going to the Father; that is the leading thought. It is not here going to heaven, but to the Father; not ascending, but that He came from God and went to Him. He is going to Him, and it is not a fixed feast, not an external celebration. It is before the passover. In chapter 12 He came to Bethany six days before the passover. Here it is just stated that it is “before the passover”. So that it is His own selection of circumstances, outside of all religious matters. It is from His own point of view; it is what He has in mind and how things are to be done.
Rem It is a great thing to be in the current of His mind.
JT That is what we are coming to. There is a strong current flowing here, and He would draw us in. You begin with the thought that you do not belong to the religious world at all, neither are you doing anything in that relation.
[p. 210] Ques Is that why the doors are shut at the end of the gospel?
JT That is the thought carried through. Here they are not shut but the facts show that what is current is outside all religious observances. In chapter 20 we are on such exalted ground that what is Jewish must be shut out.
JM Would you explain the difference between going to God and to the Father?
JT That raises the question of the appellation ‘Father’, what it means in this gospel. It is used some fifty times in chapters 14 to 17. That is enough to show what is in mind, that the Lord is keeping the Father before us. We have been noticing elsewhere that in the types in the chapters in Genesis you have the Trinity (see Genesis 18); three men come to Abraham — three. And then we have opened up the history of the patriarchs, the three patriarchs, or fathers as they are called constantly in Scripture.
Evidently the Spirit of God in the type there is stressing that the Deity is now to be known in that relation, in that family setting, and I think John is used by the Spirit of God to bring this before us. It is the dispensation in which the Father is especially seen. The term not only involves family relationships, but involves grace, and excludes judgment. “Neither does the Father judge any one”, John 5:22. So that going to the Father would mean a relation into which God has come. He has come into that relation, a relation already known among men from the outset; from Adam down the relation was known and it is somewhat more limited, but more familiar at the same time, than the full title of the Deity, when we say God, involving the full thought of God, including judgment. God judges, the Father does not, and this leads up to the absolute relations of the Deity, as the Lord says, “The glory which I had along with thee before the world was”, John 17: 5. That must [p. 211] allude to the absolute relations of the Persons of the Deity. But we have the Father first here, that the Lord should depart out of this world to the Father, and then in verse 3, that He came out from God and was going to God. Coming out from God is more the moral side of the position, I think, God having to say to everything.
JM Does neither of them suppose His going back to heaven, neither going to God nor to the Father?
JT Well, it is not put that way. He was departing out of this world to the Father (verse 3); He “came out from God and was going to God”; it does not say ‘going to heaven’. The position is so clear. The Father has given all things into His hands, so that it is a dispensation of grace administered.
Ques Does it suggest what we can enter into at the present time? He is not going to heaven but to the Father.
JT Quite so, in view of having part with Him.
But notice it is the Father first and then God and that is the order you get later: “My Father and your Father, my God and your God”; until chapter 20 He never says ‘your’ Father to us, always “my” Father, or “the” Father. So that the thought is rather education in grace, until chapter 20. This education in grace enables us to take up the relationship that the Lord indicates.
JM So that in each case it is moral and relational rather than positional.
Ques Is the whole of this section we are considering connected with the thought of the Father and does it involve the idea of the family?
JT I think it is more to stress the thought of grace in the Father, for, after all, we know very little of God and we need the education and the instruction as to grace to know God in this relation in His dealings with us. “The Father himself has affection for you”.
[p. 212] JW Is the thought that the Father would be available as the Lord had been?
JT Yes. The Lord says in the next chapter “He that has seen me has seen the Father” (verse 9).
That is why we should become acquainted with what the Father is because if we skip these chapters and go direct to John 20 we shall be stilted. We must get to know God in grace. One says, “Show us the Father”, and the Lord says, “He that has seen me has seen the Father”; and yet He does not mean that He is personally the Father but He is setting out what the Father is. The Father is a Person as well as the Son. It is to stress what the Father is as brought so near to us in Jesus, in a Man; in seeing Him you see the Father.
Ques Is that the meaning of chapter 1: 14, “the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us”?
JT That is His relation as the Only-begotten, it is His relation with the Father as an only One. But chapter 14 is that that Person in manhood represents the Father. We shall never understand chapter 20 unless we become acquainted with the Father as seen in testimony here; what He is. It is not so much who He is as what He is in chapter 14. What Jesus was, He was.
Rem “I and my Father are one”.
JT That means that They are one in thought and purpose; not the same Person but two Persons, and the Son perfectly represents the Father in character; not the Person of the Father because He, the Father, speaks from heaven. “Am I so long a time with you, and thou hast not known me, Philip? He that has seen me has seen the Father”. It is very important not to assume that the Lord means there that the Father and Son are one Person. They are two Persons, but One, the Son, perfectly represented the Other, the Father, in character.
[p. 213] Rem Is the Father known in grace somewhat akin to the thought of God known covenant-wise?
JT That is not properly John’s ministry at all. The covenant is between God and the people, not between a Father and a family, so that it is not properly John’s ministry. Still, all that God is in grace shone out in Christ, and that is what we need to be instructed in to have part in chapter 20.
RS “I will be to you for a Father, and ye shall be to me for sons and daughters”, 2 Corinthians 6: 18. Is that a different idea of Father from this?
JT That is what He is in His care for us in everyday life, so it is not merely sons, but sons and daughters. It all comes in, it is what God is in grace. The Father judges no man. That helps as to what is meant. It is not God fully, not God in all His attributes; it is God in a more limited way but in a way more intimate and more intelligible to us, tending to promote confidence.
AMH We have to give careful attention to chapter 12 and perhaps particularly to the signs, to understand the Father. I was thinking of the second chapter in which the Lord shows how He can bring in what altogether surpasses nature. That is in relation to the Father, a spiritual realm, bringing our souls into what surpasses all that nature could ever enjoy here, an initial apprehension.
JT Your thought is that is runs through from chapter 12. In the end of chapter 12, the Lord says, “I know that his commandment [that is, the Father’s commandment] is life eternal”. That gives you a clue as to the first twelve chapters. Life eternal is a commandment, showing how strong it is in the mind of God, that it must come about. It is not simply a gift but a commandment. These chapters are education in grace mainly, to qualify us for chapter 20, which leads into eternity. It is a question of our relationships with God eternally. But these chapters [p. 214] are to form us and to build up a constitution in us so that we might be equal to chapter 20.
JM Would you say that He came out from God and the Father to reveal Him under those two names and went back that the revelation might be made good in us?
JT His going back would mean the coming of the Spirit. Here He is going to the Father and to God and so the implication is that I must become acquainted with the Father, in so far as the thought applies, and I must think of God, the moral effect of God here. Jesus came out from Him and now He is going back, and He is opening up a way for others, showing that part with Him has a place. Part with Him is not being translated as in chapter 14, but having part with Him during this dispensation. The whole dispensation is in His mind with the saints having their part with Him in what He is going on with, outside religious circles and observances. He has inaugurated something of His own altogether, ignoring all that man is doing.
EBMcC Do you get the agreement of that in verse 31? He is glorified in that company, is He not?
JT It involved that He would die, that He would be betrayed into the hands of men and in that position glorify God. The Son of man would be glorified in glorifying God. I think that is what He had in mind: “Now is the Son of man glorified”.
AMH Following up your reference to Aaron, might this be the ark coming into view?
JT That is just what it is; the power and glory of God going into death to overthrow it. Judas going out implied that that was now the moment, and if Christ glorified God, God would glorify Him and do it at once. The glorification at once is not only His exaltation but what He has during the [p. 215] dispensation, what He is going on with, involving the assembly here.
EBMcC “Come from God, and went to God” — is that a certain Person of the Godhead, or God in the absolute, involving His own place?
JT It is God in the ordinary sense of the word God, involving the three Persons, but the revelation in the economy implies that one of the Persons has remained in the absoluteness of Deity, and that is the Father. That is how the matter stands. The Son and the Spirit are here in subservience to that.
JM Does the Son of man glorified (verse 31) and God glorified mean that They would now be known as They could not have been known before?
JT Yes, known through death. God could never have been known really except in this way.
Ques The question has been raised as to whether part with Me would take us much beyond covenant relationships.
JT I think it does. It involves all He is going on with, and enters into our position in the assembly, which opens up much. Our wisdom is to discern the Lord as come in and then see what He proceeds with. That is why I suggested the passage in chapter 14, because it brings in the Spirit. In order to know all that the Lord is going on with we must recognise the Spirit. The Spirit is the medium here for all that He is going on with inasmuch as He has now gone to the Father. When He was here literally what He went on with is what is described in chapter 13, but chapter 14 contemplates His going up, and if we are to have part in all that He is going on with now we must be dependent on the Spirit, the Spirit of truth, the Comforter.
RD Does that passage in Ephesians, “through him we have both access by one Spirit to the Father” link together both these passages?
[p. 216] JT Yes. Christ is the High Priest, and the Spirit is the power in us.
RD We need both; the help of both these divine Persons in this matter.
JT That is what we should learn in the introduction of the Spirit in John 14: 16. Chapter 13 generally speaking is the court, involving the moral state in us which needs adjustment; whilst the opening of chapter 14 is to encourage us in an objective way “Let not your heart be troubled”. The Lord assures us as to our place above and that He is coming for us, but then the knowledge of God, the knowledge of the Father — His character, what He is, not who He is — follows on that. So that we know Him as we see Him, as it were. All this is needed for our testimony here, as well as for our place eternally. What the Father is — that is, it is not that you see the Person of the Father, who He is — but you see what He is in the Son.
JM Would you explain a little more the difference between who He is and what He is?
JT Who He is is the Supreme. It is God, but coming into the more limited relation of Father, not to judge, but to minister grace and form us in that, having given all things into the hands of the Son. The Son ministers to us so as to form us in the knowledge of the Father.
JM Would what He is be more connected with His attributes, as revealed?
JT More than the attributes here, because the Lord says the Father is in Him. The Father works that is the idea. We have to follow all these expressions, what the Father is and then that He is there personally in an inscrutable way in the Son. The very works the Son did are of the Father. All that brings out the Father’s dispensation and establishes the fullest confidence in our hearts.
JW Is the Father peculiar to this dispensation?
JT [p. 217] I think the thought runs on including the millennium. I suppose the term in Isaiah 9, the Father of eternity, will be the thought of Father expressed in Christ in the age to come; He will represent that thought. Moreover it is said that the Father names all families. Every family in the heaven and on the earth is named of the Father. I suppose, therefore, that the Father will regulate all in giving the assembly its peculiar place and Israel its peculiar place, and angels their peculiar place and even the nations the peculiar place they will have in the universe. John, by the Spirit of God, is aiming at instructing us as to the Father, not simply our Father, but God known in that relation. The Lord explained that He does not judge any one and so we are in the presence of unmixed grace. That is what is needed in our hearts, to be established in grace.
JM Does the Father of eternity imply that all that is suggested in the name Father will be seen only in Christ?
JT That is the meaning of it. He uses parental terms. In chapter 13 He addresses the disciples as children.
JM “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father”. Do you apply the word ‘representative’ there?
JT Representative is the proper word to use there, but when He says, “The Father that dwelleth in me”, you have the Person of the Father in some way dwelling in the Son. “Ye in me”, we are in His affections; “I in you”, He is in our affections.
Rem It is more intimate.
JT The Son is dwelling in the Father and we are in the Son. You are impressed with the need of subjection and spirituality to take in all these things. What is opened up to us here is all in view of our education so that we may take up the relations in chapter 20, “my Father and your Father, ... my God and your God”; so that there is no discrepancy, we are not stilted in using that wonderful scripture, but built up in the knowledge of divine Persons. What is so needed is to be built up in grace, to banish all this hardness of spirit and to be formed in what God is in the name of Father.
Rem The knowledge of the Father as known in grace would help us to move freely in that relationship.
JT That is right. You are equal to it.
EBMcC In chapter 4, where the Lord is speaking of the Father seeking such to worship Him, and saying that God is a spirit, you get the two thoughts, My Father and your Father, My God and your God.
JT You might bring chapter 20 into that passage. The Father seeks worshippers — the persons He is seeking are in that attitude. But “God is a spirit; and they who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth”, John 4: 24. I think that we might emphasise a little the position of the Comforter in relation to all this. The Father is known in character in grace, and then the Comforter is introduced. The word means that another divine Person has come down and He is here to take charge of matters. At a meeting like this the Comforter is present. He makes everything that is said go for good; He works everything in and makes it profitable; and then in virtue of this fact that He is here, the Son can come to us and the Father can come to us (verses 15 - 23).
Ques Why is it the Father that sends the Comforter?
JT He is the Supreme, although the Son does, too. In the end of chapter 15 we read, “when the Comforter is come, whom I will send to you”. The Son sends Him too. We can see how the Persons are bound up together and that the idea of the Deity attaches to each One.
JW Is it that the three divine Persons spoken of are moving in unity to gain a divine [p. 219] end?
JT That is it. You feel that is what runs through these passages.
JM Is there a sense in which Christ receives the Comforter as from the Father before giving Him to us?
JT Well, “I will beg the Father, and he will give you another Comforter”. The Father sends Him there and then in chapter 15 the Son sends Him. It does not say the Son received Him here, but it does in the Acts, “having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit”.
JM “From the Father” it says in one place.
JT In chapter 15: 26. In Acts 2 Christ receives Him and sends Him forth Himself.
AMH “From with the Father”, is it not? Is that another reference to the Spirit’s place as introducing this relationship? The Father is seen and enjoyed in the Son here, the Spirit being the link.
JT It is a remarkable form of expression, “whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes forth from with the Father”. From with the Father seems as if what is in mind is that the Spirit has first-hand knowledge of what is there, all the Father’s thoughts of the Son. The Spirit witnessing means that what He has to present is infinite. The twelve also are to witness, “because ye have been with me from the beginning”. They would witness to what they saw, which was necessarily limited to what was within their range, but the Spirit comes out from with the Father with infinite capacity to convey all that is up there; to bring down here all that is up there.
Rem It is not apart from the Father. His going forth is from with the Father.
JT The word means that. Firstly the Lord says I will send Him to you from the Father. You may introduce into that Acts 2, where He received of the Father the promise of the Spirit and sent Him forth.
[p. 220] But here you have an additional thought, “the Spirit of truth who goes forth from with the Father”. That is, the Spirit Himself moves from with the Father and as having knowledge of what is up there — His thoughts of Christ up there, and hence the heavenly side of the truth has been fully unfolded, involving, I believe, Paul’s ministry. What a marvellous range! He searches all things, even the depths of God. What a range of things is available for us in the presence of the Spirit here, as coming forth from with the Father!
DB Ephesians refers to the Father’s Spirit.
JT Quite so, the Spirit of the Father. No doubt that alludes to the Holy Spirit.
JM It might help us to think of the Son in the inscrutability of His Person, though we are not able to pry into it.
JT It is right to think of Him.
JM Both the Son and the Father — it does us good to think of Them both though we are not privileged to look into the ark, as it were.
JT You know it is there. He has come into our range as a Man, sitting, walking, talking with us, but inscrutability is always there: “If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is”, John 4: 10.
JM The angels on the mercy-seat would imply that somewhat: “Which things the angels desire to look into”, 1 Peter 1: 12.
JT These angels, these cherubim, are symbolic of divine authority. They saw God in the incarnation, they did not see Him before. “Seen of angels” is the incarnation. The point therefore is that they did not represent the angelic family there in the holiest, but represented the divine attributes and authority.
EBMcC The Father sends the Spirit in the Son’s name, and then you have the expression “my Father is greater than I”, showing, I suppose, how divine Persons work together (John 14: 26, [p. 221] 28).
JT How remarkable He should be sent in the Son’s name! It refers to remnant times. The change comes in in verses 21 to 26 and involves remnant times. It is significant that it is in His name. Philadelphia has not denied Christ’s name and the Spirit is here in that setting and teaches us all things so as to render us independent of the hierarchical system. The reason of all these meetings is to make room for the Spirit to bring to our remembrance and teach us all things.
AMH “From with the Father”: is it that the Spirit brings to us the Father’s thoughts and pleasure in the Son as down here? Of course He comes from heaven, but He bears witness to the time of this relationship, does He not?
JT Quite so, the Spirit presents that side, what heaven’s thoughts were, and the twelve testify to what they saw in Him (chapter 15: 27).
Ques Would the passage we have been considering, “from with the Father” imply that whilst the Spirit is here in a representative way, still He is on terms of absolute equality with the Father?
JT Quite so. He is a divine Person who took a lower place of subservience. The economy is one of the greatest things to get hold of if we are to be blessed in our outlook and service. God has been pleased to come into this economy. He has come into these relations in order to get near to us. They did not exist before.
JM Would it be right to say these chapters prior to the seventeenth were like the Urim on the breastplate while the seventeenth is the Thummim?
JT Quite so. Both thoughts are seen in Christ.
The Urim is light, the Thummim perfection. In the allusion to Levi in Deuteronomy 33, the Thummim is put before the Urim; I suppose it refers to Christ as representing the true Aaronic thought; perfection was there before He started out in testimony. It is [p. 222] remarkable that this comes in at the end of the wilderness journey in the type, meaning that God had wrought something; He had reached some formation. The Thummim was there and the Urim seen — light shining from perfection. At the beginning of this gospel we have, “in him was life”. That would be substance, a perfect state of things in a Man, and the life was the light.
JM I suppose we are moving today in the fragrance of that prayer, in chapter 17.
JT It runs right down to us. We can say it comes even to us, as Peter said of the sheet — it “came even to me”.