In verse 3 the Lord said, “If I go...I am coming.” I like this sentence very much. This word proves that the Lord’s going (through His death and resurrection) is His coming (to His disciples—vv. 18, 28). The tense here is very strange to the English language. It means that His going was His coming, that He was coming by going. The Lord’s going was not His departure but actually another step of His coming. The Lord’s death and resurrection were a further step of His coming. His going to die was His coming into us. The Lord’s intention was to get into His disciples. He came in the flesh (1:14) and was among His disciples, but while He was in the flesh He could not get into them. He had to take the further step of passing through death and resurrection that He might be transfigured from the flesh into the Spirit, that He might come into them and dwell in them, as is revealed in verses 17 through 20. After His resurrection He came to breathe Himself as the Holy Spirit into the disciples (20:19-22). Therefore, His going was just His coming.
Let me use as an illustration a story of something that happened in Taiwan many years ago. One day I bought a huge watermelon. When I brought it home and put it on the dining table, all my children were excited. Then we took this watermelon into the kitchen. One of the children cried out, “Don’t take the watermelon away!” I told them to be quiet, for the taking away of the watermelon was that they might eat it, that the big melon might get into them. The melon had to be processed, to be cut and sliced. After a few minutes the big melon came back to the children in slices. Every child was happy. In less than an hour the entire watermelon was gone. Where did it go? It went into the children. Eventually, all the children became watermelon children. The taking away of the watermelon was not its going away. Its taking away was a further coming of the watermelon into the children. Jesus was like that watermelon. How could the disciples swallow Him? It was impossible. He had to be processed, to be cut in pieces. He went to the cross and there He was cut and processed, not only into slices, but into watermelon juice good for drinking. Now Jesus is no longer just the watermelon but also the juice. Whoever drinks Jesus gets Jesus into him. Jesus went through death that He might come back as Christ in His resurrection.
The Lord said, “I am coming again and will receive you to Myself” (v. 3). This does not mean that the Lord receives us into a place but that He receives us into Himself. For the Lord to receive His disciples to Himself was to put them into Himself, as is indicated by the words you in Me in verse 20.
In verse 3 the Lord said that He would receive us to Himself that “where I am you also may be.” Where is the Lord? Is He in heaven? No, He is in the Father. The Lord wants His disciples to also be in the Father (vv. 17, 21). Since the Lord is in the Father, He will also bring us into the Father. By being in the Lord, we, the disciples, are also in the Father. The Lord was in the Father. Through His death and resurrection the Lord has brought us into Himself. By being in Him we are also in the Father because He is in the Father. Where He is, there we are also. This was made possible through the Lord’s death and resurrection. Before His death and resurrection the Lord Jesus was in the Father, but the disciples were not. After His death and resurrection all the disciples got into the Father, just as the Lord was and is in the Father. At that time the Lord could say, “Where I am you also may be.”
The way for us to get into God is the Lord Himself. Since the way is a living person, so the place to which the Lord brings us must also be a living person, God the Father Himself. The Lord Himself is the living way to bring man into God the Father, the living place. Like us, the disciples thought that both the place and the way were places, not persons. Notwithstanding, the Lord said to them, “I am the way.”
In verse 6 the Lord Jesus also said that He was the reality. The way needs the reality. Unless the Lord is your reality, He can never be your way. Reality becomes the way.
The reality needs the life. The Lord Himself is the life to us. This life brings us the reality, and the reality becomes the way for us to enter into the Father. First, Christ is our life. Then this life brings us all the reality of the Godhead. Eventually, this reality of the Godhead is the way for us to get into the Father. When the Lord is life to us, then we have reality. When the Lord is our reality, then we have the way for us to get into the Father.
For many years I did not understand why the Lord put the way first, the truth or reality second, and the life last. Finally I understood the meaning of the order. If the Lord is going to be our way, He must be our reality, and if He is going to be our reality, He must be our life. By having Him as life, we have Him as our reality, and by having Him as our reality, we have Him as our way into the Father. The Lord Himself is the way, this way is the reality, and the reality is in the life.
In verse 6 the Lord did not say, “No one comes to heaven except through Me.” No, He said, “No one comes to the Father except through Me.” The Lord’s intention is not to bring us into heaven but to bring us into God, into the Father. The Lord is not the way to bring the believers into heaven but the way to bring them into the Father.
The Father, the living person, is the destination, and the Son, the living person, is the way. Neither the way nor the destination is a place. The way is the Son and the destination is the Father. Through the Son we get into the Father. Both the way and the destination are living persons. Through the Son’s death and resurrection we have all come into the Father. Now the Son is in the Father, and we also are in the Father because we are in the Son.