With the meaning and the issue of the great contest on which He was about to enter thus clearly before Him, did He now go forth to meet the last assault of the Prince of this World.' [5748] But why that fierce struggle, since in Christ he hath nothing?' To exhibit to the world' the perfect love which He had to the Father; how even to the utmost of self-exinanition, obedience, submission, and suffering He was doing as the Father had given Him commandment, when He sent Him for the redemption of the world. In the execution of this Mission He would endure the last sifting assault and contest on the part of the Enemy, and, enduring, conquer for us. And so might the world be won from its Prince by the full manifestation of Christ, in His infinite obedience and righteousness, doing the Will of the Father and the Work which He had given Him, and in His infinite love doing the work of our salvation. [5749]
2. The work of our salvation! To this aspect of the subject Christ now addressed Himself, as He rose from the Supper-Table. If in the Discourse recorded in the fourteenth chapter of St. John's Gospel the Godward aspect of Christ's impending departure was explained, in that of the fifteenth chapter the new relation is set forth which was to subsist between Him and His Church. And this - although epigrammatic sayings are so often fallacious - may be summarised in these three words: Union, Communion, Disunion. The Union between Christ and His Church is corporate, vital, and effective, alike as regards results and blessings. [5750] This Union issues in Communion - of Christ with His disciples, of His disciples with Him, and of His disciples among themselves. The principle of all these is love: the love of Christ to the disciples, the love of the disciples to Christ, and the love in Christ of the disciples to one another. [5751] Lastly, this Union and Communion has for its necessary counterpart Disunion, separation from the world. The world repudiates them for their union with Christ and their communion. But, for all that, there is something that must keep them from going out of the world. They have a Mission in it, initiated by, and carried on in the power of, the Holy Ghost - that of uplifting the testimony of Christ. [5752]
As regards the relation of the Church to the Christ Who is about to depart to the Father, and to come to them in the Holy Ghost as His Representative, it is to be one of Union, corporate, vital, and effective. In the nature of it, such a truth could only be set forth by illustration. When Christ said: I am the Vine, the true one, and My Father is the Husbandman;' or again, Ye are the branches' - bearing in mind that, as He spake it in Aramaic, the copulas am,' is,' and are,' would be omitted - He did not mean that He signified the Vine or was its sign, nor the Father that of the Husbandman, nor yet the disciples that of the branches. What He meant was, that He, the Father, and the disciples, stood in exactly the same relationship as the Vine, the Husbandman, and the branches. That relationship was of corporate union of the branches with the Vine for the production of fruit to the Husbandman, Who for that purpose pruned the branches. Nor can we forget in this connection, that, in the old Testament, and partially in Jewish thought, [5753] the Vine was the symbol of Israel, not in their national but in their Church-capacity. Christ, with His disciples as the branches, is the Vine, the true One' - the reality of all types, the fulfilment of all promises. They are many branches, yet a grand unity in that Vine; there is one Church of which He is the Head, the Root, the Sustenance, the Life. And in that Vine will the object of its planting of old be realised: to bring forth fruit unto God.