John 14:28

Ye heard how I said unto you, I go away, and I come unto you. If ye loved me, ye would have rejoiced, because I go unto the Father: for the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye may believe.

Jesus' constant purpose that night was to strengthen the disciples against the ordeal through which they would pass. This was the purpose of his foretelling the treachery of Judas and the denial by Peter. Here he stressed the fact of his going away unto the Father by means of his death, resurrection and ascension.

The Father is greater than I ... is not a denial of the deity and Godhead of Jesus Christ but a contrast of the Father's state in glory with that of the Lord in the depths of his humiliation. If the apostles had understood what a glorious thing it was for Jesus to leave the wretched scenes of his humiliation and return to the glory he had enjoyed with the Father from times eternal, they would have rejoiced. Westcott agreed that no denial of Jesus' Godhead is in this verse. He wrote:

The superior greatness of the Father must therefore be interpreted in regard to the absolute relations of the Father and the Son without violation of the one equal Godhead ... if we may so speak of mysteries which transcend human knowledge.[20]