John 14:28

Jesus’ impending departure still disturbed the Eleven. He explained that their fear was also a result of failure to love Him as they should. They should have rejoiced that even though His departure meant loss for them it meant glory and joy for Him. We experience a similar conflict of emotions when a believing friend dies. We mourn our loss, but we should rejoice more that our loved one is with the Lord.

It should be obvious by now that Jesus did not mean that He was less then God or an inferior god when He said that God was greater than He was. Jehovah’s Witnesses and other Arians interpret Jesus’ words here this way. Arius was a heretic in the early church who denied Jesus’ full deity. Jesus was not speaking ontologically (i.e., dealing with essential being) since He had affirmed repeatedly that He and the Father were one ontologically (John 1:1-2; John 10:30; John 14:9; John 20:28). Rather He was speaking of the Father’s glory. Jesus had laid His heavenly glory aside in the Incarnation, but the Father had not done so and consequently enjoyed greater glory than the Son during Jesus’ earthly ministry. However now Jesus was about to return to the Father and the greater glory that He would again share with the Father. This glorification should have caused the disciples to rejoice, but they sorrowed instead because they focused on themselves too much.

This interpretation of the Father’s superiority does not negate the functional superiority of the Father over the Son within the Godhead. However, that distinction does not seem to be primary in the logic of this verse.

". . . the Son, being begotten of the Father, is ’inferior’ to Him in the sense that He that is begotten is secondary to Him who begets (see i. 14)." [Note: Tasker, p. 173.]