You heard me say to you, I am going away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it takes place, so that when it does take place you may believe. I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me, but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Rise, let us go from here.
Comment: Why did Jesus say ‘If you loved me’ and not ‘if you love me’? Was it to stir up the fledgeling love that they already had? If Jesus is co-equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit why does He say that the Father is greater than Him? I suspect that in His Manliness as it says in Philippians ‘Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.’ And after His Resurrection He took that position which He had laid aside all back? And reading the end of this short passage -Jesus says that the Devil is coming near but Jesus isn’t under the Devil’s power. Thus the Jewish Hierarchy, Pilate, the howling mob, the Roman soldiers, Satan himself although sharing responsibility were not the ones who put Jesus on the Cross. God was totally in charge. Jesus was about to do His Father’s command!
Prayer: Father God, Thank You for sending Jesus into the world. May my understanding of the why be ever increasing!
I am not disagreeing but the phrase in the text “the Father is greater than I” does have a fairly Islamic sound to it. Their abject to the Trinity could well come from a reading of that verse.
LikeLike
As you know, Islam sees Jesus as a prophet and not as God. I write on short passages as devotional bits but taken in its context of the whole of this discourse Jesus negates any concept that He is not God. At that point of time, while Jesus was still on earth, the ‘Father being greater’ takes into into account that Jesus laid His personal glory aside when He came from heaven to earth (Phil 2). That is a glory which He took back at His ascension.
LikeLike