55. After the explanation that love is the
source of this joy, because love rejoices that Jesus is to be confessed
in the glory of God the Father, He next expresses His claim to receive
back that glory, in the words, For the prince of this world cometh,
and he hath nothing in Me St. John xiv. 30.. The prince
of this world hath nothing in Him: for being found in fashion as
a man, He dwelt in the likeness of the flesh of sin, yet apart from the
sin of the flesh, and in the flesh condemned sin by sin Rom. viii. 3. Here Hilary’s de
pecccato peccatum…condemnans must mean ‘by means of
sin.’ In Latin of this date de is often
instrumental.. Then, giving obedience to the
Father’s command as His only motive, He adds, But that the
world may know that I love the Father, even as the Father gave Me
commandment, so I do. Arise, let us go hence St. John xiv. 31. The words ‘but that the
world…even so I do,’ are generally connected with the
previous sentence, and the last sentence, ‘arise, let us go
hence,’ is regarded as the breaking off of the discourse.
But the words, ‘But that the world,’ &c., do not stand
in very clear connection with the previous sentence, and the view here
suggested has much to be said for it.. In His zeal to do the
Father’s commandment, He rises and hastens to complete the
mystery of His bodily passion. But the next moment He unfolds the
mystery of His assumption of flesh. Through this assumption we
are in Him, as the branches in the vinestock St. John xv. 1, 2.;
and unless He had become the Vine, we could have borne no good
fruit. He exhorts us to abide in Himself, through faith in His
assumed body, that, since the Word has been made flesh, we may be in
the nature of His flesh, as the branches are in the Vine. He
separates the form of the Father’s majesty from the humiliation
of the assumed flesh by calling Himself the Vine, the source of unity
for all the branches, and the Father the careful Husbandman, Who prunes
away its useless and barren branches to be burnt in the fire. In
the words, He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father also, and
The words that I say unto you, I speak not of Myself, but the Father
abiding in Me, He doeth His works, and Believe Me, that I am in
the Father, and the Father in Me, He reveals the truth of His birth
and the mystery of His Incarnation. He then continues the thread
of His discourse, until He comes to the saying, The Father is
greater than I; and after this, to complete the meaning of these
words, He hastens to add the illustration of the husbandman, the vine,
and the branches, which directs our notice to His submission to bodily
humiliation. He says that, because the Father is greater than
Himself, He is going to the Father, and that love should rejoice, that
He is going to the Father, that is, to receive back His glory from the
Father: with Him, and in Him, to be glorified not with a
brand-new honour, but with the old, not with some strange honour but
with that which He had with Him before. If then Christ shall not
enter into Him with glory, to abide in the glory of God, you may
disparage His nature: but if the glory which He receives is the
proof of His Godhead, recognise that it as Giver of this proof that the
Father is the greater.