John 14:12

John 14:12. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth in me, the works that I do shall he also do; and greater works than these shall he do, because I go unto the Father. It seemed to the disciples that, by the departure of Jesus, all the glorious manifestations of the Divine which they had beheld in Him would be brought to an end. So far is this from being the case that these shall not only continue but become even more glorious than before. By ‘works' we are obviously to understand something wider than miracles, for the promise is to all believers, and it cannot be said that they in any age have wrought greater miracles than their Lord. What Jesus speaks of is the general power of the spiritual life, not only as it exists in the breast of the believer, but as it shows itself in all life and action corresponding to its nature. What He had been and had done was to be exhibited in the disciples themselves. They were to be put into His position, to take His place, to be sustained in all inward strength and outward manifestation as He had been. Nay more, He was going to the Father, not the verb of chaps, John 13:33; John 13:36; John 14:4-5, but another, suggesting less the thought of what He was leaving than the thought of what He was going to; and He was going to ‘ the' Father, not His own Father only, but One who stood in the same relation to all the members of His body. Therefore what He had been and had done would be still more gloriously unfolded in them than it had been as yet in Him. When He went to the Father, His life would be set free from the struggles and sufferings by which its power and glory had been obscured on earth. But His disciples were one with Him, and what He was they should be. They are the organs not of a humbled only but of an ascended Lord; and through what He is at the right hand of the Father they shall do ‘greater works' than He did in the world. The same great truth is expressed in 1 John 4:17, ‘Because as He is' (not was), ‘so are we in this world.' How little do Christians realise their position and their privileges!