Run through this Gospel with that fresh in your mind, and it is
perfectly fascinating to find how much like a magnet it is, picking out
to itself so many bits from the Master's lips that fit exactly into it.
Jesus' constant thought was that He used to be with the Father; He came
down on an errand to the earth. By and by when the errand was done He
would go back home again.

This sentence becomes a simple, exact, comprehensive outline of the
entire Gospel. Notice: "_I came out from the Father_": that is chapter
one, verses one to eighteen. There Jesus is seen coming down from His
Father's own presence. Then chapter one, verse nineteen through to the
close of the twelfth chapter is fully described and covered by the next
clause, "_and am come into the world_." Here He is seen in the world, in
the midst of its crowds and contentions and oppositions.

"_Again, I leave the world_,"--chapters thirteen to nineteen. In chapters
thirteen to seventeen He is tenderly leaving the inner circle. In
chapters eighteen and nineteen He is going out of the world by the
terrible doorway of the cross it had carpentered for Him. How quietly He
says the words, though the terrible going is yet to come, and is now so
near that He can already feel the shame and the thorns and the nails.

And as quietly He looks beyond and adds, "_and go unto the Father_." In
chapters twenty and twenty-one He lingers a little for the sake of these
being left behind, but His face is already turned homeward. They would
hold Him in their midst. He quietly tells them that He is going back
home to the Father to get things ready for them, as He had said.