[Yet a little wMle 1 am with you.] This seems to mean, " I am only staying a very little longer with you. The time is short. The hour approaches when we must part. Give me your best attention while I talk to you for the last time before I go."
[Ye sJiall seek Me.] It is not quite clear what this means. Of course it cannot refer to the time after the resurrection, when the disciples were fully convinced that " the Lord had risen." Much less can it refer to the time after the ascension. I can only suppose it means, " After my death ye shall be per- plexed, amazed, and confounded for a little season, wanting Me, seeking Me, wishing for Me, and wondering where I am gone. The very moment the little child is left alone by mother or nurse, it begins to cry after her and want her. So will it be with you." ^
[And as 1 said unto the Jews, etc.] This sentence can only mean, " The words that I said to the Jews will soon apply to you also, though in a very different sense. Whither I am going you cannot follow Me. You will follow Me hereafter; but at present there is a gulf between us, and you will not see Me."
Of course the words applied to the Jews meant that Jesus was going to a place where spiritually and morally the Jews were unfit to go, and in their impenitent state could not go. The words applied to the disciples only meant that Jesus was going into a world where they could not follow Him till they died. They were remaining on earth, and He was going to heaven.
Hengstenberg observes, that this is the only place in which Jesus ever spoke to His disciples concerning " the Jews." Else- where He uses the expression in speaking to the Samaritan woman (John iv. 22) and before Caiaphas and Pilate.
34. — [A new commandment, etc.] The immense importance of Christian love or charity cannot possibly be shown more strik- ingly than by the way that it is urged on the disciples in this place. Here is our Lord leaving the world, speaking for the last tim.e, and giving His last charge to His disciples. The very first subject He takes up and presses on them, is the great duty of loving one another, and that with no common love ; but after the same patient, tender, unwearied manner that He has loved them. Love must needs be a very rare and important grace to be so spoken of I The want of it must needs be a plain proof that a man is no true disciple of Christ. How vast the extent of Christian love ought to be ! The measure and standard of it is the love wherewith Christ loved us. His was a love even to death.
Melancthon points out our Lord's great desire to promote unity and concord among professing Christians, by His dwelling so much on love before He left the world.