Where I am going you cannot come.
If Jesus were merely alluding merely to the fact that he was going to die there would be nothing to prevent anyone from following him if, for some reason, they wanted to do so. But Jesus was not talking about killing himself. He meant something different from death in the general sense that applied to everyone who belongs to what is below.
That is why I told you that you will die in your sins.
Jesus did not merely go to die. Because he had no sin it was impossible for death to hold him (see Acts 2:24). It was a direct road to the resurrection. Even his disciples were not yet prepared to go by this road.
Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus answered him, “Where I am going you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward” (see John 13:36).
Jesus went by the way of the greatest possible love, by which he gave his life for his friends (see John 15:13). Peter and the others were no yet ready to go by this way. They still needed the transformation of Pentecost. They needed needed the power of the resurrection of Jesus before they could offer their own lives with the hope of the resurrection in view.
The key being able to go where Jesus was, to being able to follow him as the way, was to be clear about who he was. No mere prophet or sage could bridge the gap between selfishness and love, between death and life. Only if he was who he said he was could we trust him enough to follow him even unto death.
For if you do not believe that I AM,
you will die in your sins.
We could not follow him during his Passion, but his Passion was the proof of everything he said, and it contained the power to follow his invitation. Seeing the Son of God take up his cross could give us the grace and conviction necessary to take up our own.
When you lift up the Son of Man,
then you will realize that I AM,
and that I do nothing on my own,
but I say only what the Father taught me.
The Son of Man was lifted up on the cross, but also in the resurrection and the ascension. As we behold these events we come to realize more and more that he spoke truly when he said that "I AM". The more we realize that truth the more we are empowered to follow him. But the core of what the revelation is not simply the miraculous power displayed, it is love of the greatest kind outpoured. It is strong enough to woo and overcome hearts that had been hitherto given over to impatience and selfishness.
“Make a saraph and mount it on a pole,
and whoever looks at it after being bitten will live.”
Only because the cross was an act of love can we now bear to look upon it, seeing in it as we do the conviction of our own sinfulness. Yet in the cross we realize definitively that conviction is not condemnation. It is rather the way forward. Let us believe in the name of Jesus and let us follow the path he opened to us.
“The LORD looked down from his holy height,
from heaven he beheld the earth,
To hear the groaning of the prisoners,
to release those doomed to die.”
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