“leave” =  aphiemi = this is a strong term which could be translated as “abandon.”

“orphans” (NIV) = “comfortless” (AV) = orphanos = literally means “without a father.” It was also used of disciples and students who had lost their teacher. Plato said that when Socrates died, his disciples “thought that they would have to spend the rest of their lives forlorn as children bereft of a father, and they did not know what to do about it.” (qt’d in Barclay) This word is also used in (James 1:27) in a literal sense. Notice how well this word fits with what Jesus has just called His disciples in (13:33). How encouraging it is to know that Jesus thinks so tenderly of His disciples, which includes you and me!

James 1:27  Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

John 13:33  “My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.

Jesus has spoken several times about going away (13:33, 36, 14:2) and He has told them that He was coming back (14:3), which was probably a reference to the second coming, but here He is speaking of an eminent return which will meet their immediate needs, and must be referring in a physical sense to his post-resurrection appearances. The word “come” is in the present tense, however, and speaks of His presence being with them in a continuous sense. This would indicate that Jesus is coming back to them after His resurrection, but He is also coming to them after His ascension to be with them and all believers forever (Matt 28:20).

John 13:33  “My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.

John 13:36  Simon Peter asked him, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus replied, “Where I am going, you cannot follow now, but you will follow later.”

John 14:2  In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you.

John 14:3  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.

Matthew 28:20  and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Indeed, Jesus did come to them after His resurrection and comforted and inspired them, but He also came to them to be with them in a spiritual sense for all time or else they would have gone the way of John’s disciples who simply dispersed after his death. That dispersal of Jesus’s disciples began on the day of His crucifixtion and the only thing that could have stopped it was His appearance to them after His resurrection and the subsequent eternal presence of the risen Christ with them in all of His power and with His various gifts. Though in one respect, to be present in the body is to be absent from the Lord, in a fuller sense, we are with Him now because Christ is with His Church and with each of us now and forever.