Chapter Sixteen

1–33. The conclusion of Christ’s farewell discourse with the apostles: on the impending persecutions; the removal of Christ to the Father; the activity of the Holy Spirit; the happy outcome of the trials through which the apostles will be subjected; the hearing of their prayers; the scattering of the disciples of Christ.

In the first 11 verses, which represent the conclusion of the second consoling discourse, Christ warns the apostles of the persecutions they will face from the Jews and then, announcing again His removal to the Father, He promises that in the case of His removal to the apostles will come the Comforter, who will convict the world hostile to Christ and the apostles.

John 16:1. These things I have spoken to you, so that you may not be caused to stumble. “These things,” that is, about the persecutions that await the apostles (John 15:18 and following). “So that you may not be caused to stumble.” To know about future sufferings is useful, because what we expect does not strike us so powerfully as what is unexpected.

John 16:2. They will make you outcasts from the synagogues; indeed, the hour is coming when anyone who kills you will think that he is offering service to God. “They will make you outcasts from the synagogues” – see the commentaries on John 9:22. In the eyes of the Jews the apostles will appear to be apostates from the ancestral faith. “Anyone who kills you.” From this it is clear that the apostles will be declared outside the law, so that anyone who meets them will have the right to kill them. Later in the Jewish Talmud it was directly established (tractate Bemidbar Rabba, a reference in Holtzmann – 329, 1), that whoever kills a wicked person thereby offers a sacrifice to God (cf. Acts 12:3 and following) 36.

John 16:3. And they will do these things because they have not known the Father or Me. Christ repeats (cf. John 15:21) that the cause of such a hostile attitude of the Jews to the apostles will be that they, the Jews, have not known as they ought either the Father or Christ.

John 16:4. But I have told you these things, so that when their hour comes, you may remember that I told you of them; and I did not tell you these things at the beginning, because I was with you. About the sufferings awaiting the apostles the Lord did not speak to them at the beginning of their following after Christ. The reason for this lay in the fact that He Himself was constantly with them. In case of any unpleasantness that might befall the apostles from the Jews, Christ could always comfort them. And besides, such unpleasantness did not happen to them then. But now He is leaving the apostles, and they must know everything that awaits them. From this there is ground to conclude that the evangelist Matthew in the discourse of Christ, spoken to the apostles when He sent them forth to preach (Matt 10:16-31), placed predictions to the disciples about the sufferings that await them, not because the Lord had already made the disciples acquainted with their awaiting fate, but simply because he wished in one section to unite all the instructions of Christ to the disciples as preachers of the Gospel.

John 16:5. Now I am going to Him who sent Me, and none of you asks Me: “Where are you going? John 16:6. But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts. The words of the Lord about His removal touched the disciples deeply, but first of all they pitied themselves. They thought about what would become of them, and concerning what fate awaits the Teacher, they did not ask themselves and did not ask Him. About the question of Thomas they seemed to have forgotten, depressed by grief about the removal of Christ (cf. John 14:5).

John 16:7. But I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. John 16:8. And when He comes, He will convict the world concerning sin, and concerning righteousness, and concerning judgment: The Lord condescends to such a state of the disciples and wishes to scatter their oppressive sorrow. “It is to your advantage,” He says to them, “that I now depart from you: in that case the Comforter will appear to you.” This Comforter, of whose activity in relation to the apostles and other believers Christ has spoken above (John 14:16), is now depicted in His significance for the unbelieving world. However, commentators are divided in their resolution of the question whether the Holy Spirit will appear as a convict or witness concerning Christ before the world or only before believers. Some say that here the Lord speaks of how, thanks to the activity of the Holy Spirit, the truth of Christ and the unrighteousness of the world will be clarified only for the consciousness of believers. “They will be shown all the sin of the world, all its unrighteousness and that doom upon which it is condemned... And what could the Spirit reveal to the deaf and spiritually blind, what could He tell to the dead? But concerning them He could point out to those who could receive Him” (Silchenkov). Such an interpretation cannot be agreed with, because, first, the Lord above (John 15:26) already said that the Spirit will bear witness to Christ before the world, and secondly, it would be strange to suppose that the world, which was so beloved by the Father (John 3:16-17) and for whose salvation the Son of God came (John 1:29), would be deprived of the action of the Holy Spirit. If some point out that the world did not heed the conviction, which is marked here, however, as a completed fact, as having come to fulfillment (“will convict,” verse 8), then to this one must say that the Greek verb used here ἐλέγχειν (“to convict”) does not mean “to bring a man to complete consciousness of his guilt,” but only “to bring weighty proofs, which, however, may not be heeded by the majority of listeners” (cf. John 8:46). In view of the foregoing, it is better to hold the opinion that the discourse here is chiefly about the relation of the Comforter to the unbelieving and hostile world in relation to Christ, before which the Comforter will appear as a witness. In what then will the Comforter convict or bear witness? Concerning sin in general, concerning righteousness in general, concerning judgment in general (all the Greek nouns standing here – ἀμαρτία, δικαιοσύνη, κρίσις – stand without the article and consequently denote something abstract). The world does not understand these three things as it should. It does evil and yet is sure that this is not evil but good, that it does not sin. It confuses good with evil and considers immorality a natural phenomenon, thereby showing that it has no idea of righteousness or moral virtue, does not even believe in its existence. Finally, it does not believe in divine judgment, on which the fate of each is to be decided according to his works. Here then are the truths, foreign to the understanding of the world, which the Spirit-Comforter is to clarify to the world and prove, that sin, and righteousness, and judgment exist.

John 16:9. concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; In what way then will the Spirit clarify all this to the world? The existence of sin can be clarified by the example of the unbelief which the world manifested toward Christ (instead of “because they do not believe” it is more correct to translate “because they believe not,” the particle ὁτι in the context of the discourse has the meaning of cause). Sin has not been revealed in anything so clearly as precisely in the world’s unbelief in Christ (cf. John 3:20). The world hated Christ not because there was anything in Christ worthy of hatred, but because sinfulness, which has taken hold of men, made them reject the high demands which Christ made to men (cf. John 5:44).

John 16:10. concerning righteousness, because I go to My Father and you will see Me no more; The Holy Spirit will also bear witness to the existence of righteousness, again in relation to Christ’s fate. The fact that Christ, in removing from His disciples, goes to the Father, clearly proves that righteousness exists both as a property of God, who rewards for great deeds with exaltation, and as a property or work of Christ, who by His exaltation will prove that He is righteous and holy (1 John 2:1; Acts 3:14; 1 Pet 3:18), though according to the view of the Jews He was a sinner (John 9:24). The Holy Spirit will mainly through the preachers of Christ reveal this significance of Christ’s removal from the sight of even those close to Him – the apostles – who now and of themselves attach a sorrowful, not a joyful, meaning to this removal. After the Spirit-Comforter descends upon them, they will begin to explain the true sense of Christ’s removal as proof of the existence of righteousness in general. With such explanations, the apostle Peter first came before the Jews (Acts 2:36).

John 16:11. concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. Finally, the existence of judgment in general the Holy Spirit will clarify to the world by the example of judgment over the perpetrator of Christ’s death (John 13:2) – the devil, the ruler of this sinful world. Since the Lord regards His death as already accomplished, He also speaks of the condemnation of the devil, which was pronounced by Divine justice over him for this bloody and unjust deed (he killed Him whom he had no right to deprive of life as sinless; cf. Rom 6:23), as of an existing fact (“is judged”). It is very likely that such a condemnation of the devil manifested itself in the first Church in those cases of the casting out of demons which occurred in the activity of the apostles, carrying out these miracles by the power of the Holy Spirit. Besides, in the apostolic Epistles the devil is depicted as already cast out from the fellowship of men who have believed in Christ: he walks only around the Church, like a roaring hungry lion (1 Pet 5:8), sets his snares again outside the Church to catch the believers who may go beyond the bounds of the Church (1 Tim 3:7). In a word, the condemnation of the devil, the victory over him, was for the consciousness of the believers a fact that had come to pass, and they convinced of this the whole world.

John 16:12. “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. From verse 12 to verse 33 there is the third consoling discourse of Christ. Here He speaks to the apostles, on the one hand, about the future sending to them of the Holy Spirit, who will enlighten them in all truth, and on the other hand – about His coming or return to the apostles after His resurrection, when they will learn much from Him that they did not know before. If they now feel themselves fairly strong in faith thanks to what they have already heard from Christ, yet this strength of faith in them is not so great as to save them from fear when they see what will happen to their Teacher. Christ concludes His discourse with a call to the disciples to courageously endure the coming trial. Christ now cannot tell the disciples all that He had to communicate to them. For the present, in their present state, it is difficult for them to perceive this “much” that Christ has in store. It is very likely that into this “much” enters what the Lord revealed to the disciples during His appearances in the course of forty days after the resurrection (Acts 1:3) and which later became the fundamental part of Christian Tradition.

John 16:13. However, when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but He will speak what He hears, and He will disclose to you what is to come. Above Christ spoke of the activity of the Holy Spirit for the world. Now He speaks of the significance of the Spirit for the personal life of the disciples of Christ. Here the activity of the Spirit will give so much that with it will be abundantly satisfied that thirst for knowledge of truth which it would have been impossible for the disciples to satisfy with the removal from them of the Teacher. The Holy Spirit, as the Spirit of truth (see John 14:17), will give them full knowledge of all truth or, more precisely, all (πᾶσα) truth, which before had been communicated to them by Christ only in general outline. However, these words do not mean that the disciples will assimilate actually all the content of the teaching about God, that there will be decidedly no defects in their knowledge. Christ says only that the Spirit will give them this, and whether they will receive all offered to them will still depend on how much they surrender themselves to the guidance of the Spirit. The Spirit will be their guide in the study of the realm of truth (instead of ὁδηγήσει some ancient codices read ὁδηγός ἔσται). “For He will not speak on His own initiative.” The property of the Spirit, by virtue of which He is a source of revelation, is based on the fact that He, as little as Christ (John 7:17), will speak “of Himself,” that is, initiate something new in teaching the disciples truth, but will, like Christ (John 3:32), speak only what He has received or “hears” (ἀκούει according to Tischendorf, 8th edition) from the Father (in our Russian translation – “will disclose,” future tense). “And He will disclose to you what is to come.” A special activity of the Spirit will consist in the revelation of eschatological teachings. The disciples of Christ could sometimes fall into a state of dejection under the influence of the victories which evil often achieved in the world, and then the Spirit revealed before them the curtain of the future and cheered them, depicting before their spiritual eyes pictures of the future final victory of good.

John 16:14. “He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. Christ again repeats that the Spirit will not establish some new Church, but only will “glorify Christ,” that is, bring to the desired revelation what, after Christ’s removal, remained still unrevealed and unfinished in the Church of Christ. From this it is evident that all the ideas of secular Russian theologians (for example, D.S. Merezhkovsky) about the possibility of the near opening of some new Church or Kingdom of the Spirit, which should become in place of the Kingdom of the Son or Church of Christ, are devoid of any support in Sacred Scripture (N. Rozanov. On the New Religious Consciousness. Moscow, 1908).

John 16:15. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you. Since in verse 13 it is said that the Spirit will proclaim what He hears from the Father, and in verse 14 it is said that He will take from the Son (“of Mine,” that is, what is Mine), to eliminate this apparent contradiction, Christ remarks that to the Son belongs everything that belongs to the Father (John 17:10; cf. Luke 15:31). Is not the dignity of the Holy Spirit diminished, however, when it is said that the Spirit proclaims only what He hears from God the Father and God the Son? The hearing of the speech of other Persons of the Holy Trinity does not exclude the Spirit’s own participation in the Divine counsel. Besides, the fact that the Spirit will proclaim the complete truth gives ground to conclude that He is one in essence with the Father and the Son (Silchenkov). Moreover, is there not contained in the words “all things that the Father has are Mine,” a hint that the Holy Spirit proceeds as much from the Son as He proceeds from the Father? No, the procession of the Spirit from the Father could not have been in mind here by Christ, because He throughout this section from verse 7 speaks of the activity of the Spirit, not of His personal Property as a divine Hypostasis; He has in mind not the relations of the Persons of the Holy Trinity among Themselves, but Their relation to the work of the salvation of mankind.

John 16:16. “A little while, and you will no longer see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me, because I go to the Father. Turning now again to the question of His removal to the Father, which so frightened the apostles, Christ, to comfort them, says that they will soon see Him again, because He is going to the Father. As in John 14:18-19, here there is discourse of the appearance of the Lord to the apostles after the resurrection. If the verse is read in the scope which it has in the Russian text, then for clarity the middle sentence, as introductory, should be enclosed in dashes and read as: “a little while and you will not see Me” – “and again” (that is, “and yet” or “however”) “a little while and you will see Me – because I go to the Father.”

John 16:17. Then some of His disciples said to one another: “What is this thing that He is saying to us, ‘A little while and you will not see Me, and again a little while and you will see Me’; and, ‘because I go to the Father’? John 16:18. So they were saying: “What is this that He says, ‘A little while’? We do not know what He is talking about. The disciples in no way could reconcile in their conception all the sayings of Christ about their future meeting with Him. Now He said that much time would pass before He saw them, that they would have to go through various sufferings first (John 16:2), and then He said that He would come to them soon, as soon as He had prepared dwellings for them in heaven (John 14:3), so that they could suppose that the separation would last only a few hours. Thus, the apostles were troubled already by this expression “a little while.” Then the words of the Lord troubled them: “I go to the Father.” Some, probably, were inclined to see in these words a hint of Christ’s glorious departure to heaven, like that to which the prophet Elijah was worthy, when his departure from earth was attended by “a chariot of fire and horses of fire” (2 Sam 2:11). With such an assumption it seemed incomprehensible what speedy return of His Christ was speaking of. Would His stay in heaven be of short duration? But this contradicted what the Lord had said to the apostles earlier (John 13:36-14:3). They could still imagine that Christ would appear to them at His last coming, when He will come to judge the world (Matt 19:28). But this “a little while” troubled all their preconceived notions.

John 16:19. Jesus perceived that they wished to ask Him, and He said to them: “Are you deliberating together about this – that I said, ‘A little while and you will not see Me, and again a little while and you will see Me’? John 16:20. “Truly, truly, I say to you, that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy. John 16:21. “Whenever a woman is in labor, she has pain, because her hour has come; but when she gives birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy that a child has been born into the world. John 16:22. “Therefore you too have grief now; but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you; Regarding the disciples’ confusion about the meaning of Christ’s saying “a little while and you will not see Me, and again a little while and you will see Me,” the Lord again repeats that weeping and lamentation over His death (in verse 20 the verb θρηνεῖν means mourning the dead; cf. Matt 2:18) will quickly be replaced by rejoicing among the disciples – by reason, of course, of the resurrection of Christ from the dead. The world will triumph, thinking it has achieved victory over Christ, and this joy of the world will grieve even more the disciples of Christ, already stricken by the death of the Teacher. But both will be very short-lived. The upheaval will come swiftly and unexpectedly. A woman unexpectedly, sometimes while feasting or being occupied with some work, feels the onset of painful labor pains! But Christ wishes to depict not only the unexpectedness of His resurrection to the disciples, but especially its joyful character. The joy of the disciples when they see the resurrected Christ may be compared to the fullness of joy that a woman who has been safely delivered from the burden feels. She immediately forgets all the pains she suffered during labor, and is full of joy at the sight of her child. Some commentators continue the comparison begun by the Savior further. They compare Him with a newborn, as having entered into new life by the resurrection, as the new Adam (1 Cor 15:45). But with such an expansion of the image taken by Christ, one cannot agree, because if Christ can be called a Newborn, then the disciples in no case can have relation to the new birth of Christ: they least of all, as having abandoned their Teacher, took part in His entry into new life.

John 16:23. “In that day you will not ask Me about anything. Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask the Father for anything in My name, He will give it to you. John 16:24. “Until now you have asked for nothing in My name; ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be made full. The Lord depicts the happy consequences of His coming to the disciples after the resurrection. “In that day” (cf. John 14:20), that is, during the conversations with the resurrected Lord. “You will not ask Me about anything.” We know that even after the resurrection the disciples asked the Lord about what particularly occupied them (for example, about the establishment of the kingdom of Israel; Acts 1:6). Therefore the expression οὐκ ἐρωτήσετε is better understood in the sense of “you will not be constantly asking with questions, about every My incomprehensible word and even constantly repeat the same questions, as you did during this My discourse with you” (verse 18). The position of the apostles at the present time – the position of inexperienced children, who ask their elders about everything – will change after they see the resurrected Christ, to the position of grown men. “If you ask the Father for anything in My name, He will give it to you.” Here is indicated another sign of the new position which the apostles will occupy after Christ’s resurrection in relation to God. Before, under the weight of thought about the fate of the Son of God, they felt some terror before that hand of the Lord which so terribly – for the sins of mankind – punishes the innocent Christ. Then they will look upon this hand as containing all mercies for those redeemed by the sufferings of Christ. “Until now,” that is, until such time as Christ has not entered to the Father and has not received eternal glorification also in His humanity, they have asked for nothing in His name (see John 14:13), that is, in their prayers they appealed directly to the Lord, God of their fathers, not relying on the “name” of their Teacher and Lord. Then, after the glorification of Christ, it will be especially joyful for them that in their prayers they will invoke the name of Christ, so dear to them, and in this closeness of His to them will find assurance that their prayers will not remain unfulfilled.

John 16:25. Up to now I have spoken to you in figures of speech; but the time is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech, but will tell you plainly about the Father. John 16:26. In that day you will ask in My name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father for you; John 16:27. for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came from God. Our Lord’s discourse is coming to a close. The Lord says that all the words He has spoken up to now during this farewell discourse—for example, John 13:32 and others—had the character of a figure of speech, that is, were similar to the parables which the disciples would ordinarily hear and then ask Christ to explain these parables to them (cf. Matt 13:36). But soon there will come a time when the Lord will speak “plainly” to the apostles about what they need to know, so that it will not be necessary for Christ to accompany His discourse with special explanations. What time, however, does Christ have in mind? The relatively brief period that passed from His resurrection until His ascension into heaven, or the entire time of the existence of His Church on earth? Since this discourse is directed first and foremost to the apostles—they, after all, had to learn everything at first under a certain figurative covering—it is better to see in Christ’s promise an indication only of His personal communication with the apostles after His resurrection, when He “opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” (Luke 24:45). “I do not say to you that I will ask the Father for you.” This does not mean that Christ’s intercession for the apostles will cease: love, as the apostle says, never ceases (1 Cor 13:8) and always continues to intercede for those who are loved. But the Lord wants to say by this that the apostles themselves will come into new intimate relations with God; for their love of Christ and faith in Him, they will be worthy of love from the Father’s side.

John 16:28. I came from the Father and have come into the world; again I leave the world and go to the Father. John 16:29. His disciples said to Him: Now You are speaking plainly, and not speaking any figure of speech. John 16:30. Now we see that You know all things, and have no need that anyone should ask You. For this reason we believe that You came from God. In order to finally make clear to the disciples the purpose of His departure from them, the Lord repeats once more that, as He came from the Father, so He must return to Him. The disciples were completely satisfied by such a declaration of their Teacher, because the Lord correctly understood their present disposition: they now felt the need for just such a brief and precise statement from Him. This ability of Christ to penetrate the very depths of the human heart prompts the disciples now to confess once more their faith that He really came from God and, consequently, possesses divine knowledge. He has no need to wait for questions in order to know what each person needs to know from Him.

John 16:31. Jesus answered them: Do you now believe? John 16:32. Behold, the hour is coming, and has already come, when you will be scattered, each to his own place, and will leave Me alone; but I am not alone, because the Father is with Me. In response to this confession, the Lord accepts their faith as a fact (instead of “do you now believe?” it is better to translate “yes, now you do believe”), but says that this faith in the apostles will soon become so weak that they will abandon Christ (cf. Mark 14:27). “However,” Christ remarks, as if to reassure the apostles for the future time when they will consider Christ’s whole work lost, “I will not remain alone; the Father is always with Me.”

John 16:33. I have told you this so that you may have peace in Me. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good courage: I have overcome the world. Here we have the conclusion to the discourses of chapters 15 and 16 (chapter 14 has its own particular conclusion in its 31st verse). The Lord held these additional discourses, placed in chapters 15–16, in order that the apostles might have “peace in Him,” that is, the peace which He has, with which He goes to His sufferings (cf. John 14:27). And this peace should have its foundation among the apostles in the same thing in which it rests in Christ—namely, Christ is confident in His victory over the world that is hostile to Him, which already, so to speak, now lies at His feet as defeated (cf. John 13:31). Thus the disciples should, in the thought of the victory achieved by their Teacher, draw strength to endure the coming tribulations (cf. verse 21). Some of the modern interpreters consider chapters 15 and 16 to be an insertion made by a later writer. The main basis for such an opinion is the circumstance that in John 14:31 the Lord invites the apostles to “rise and go” from the upper room, thus recognizing the farewell discourse as complete. But critics are unnecessarily troubled by such a circumstance. As was said above (see the commentary to John 14:31), the Lord could continue His discourse with the disciples, seeing that they were not at all in a state to follow His invitation, could not, so to speak, on account of their great sorrow rise from their places. In the same way, the other basis on which critics rely, not recognizing the authenticity of these chapters, has little force. Namely, they say that in these chapters some of what is already known from John 13:31-14:31 is partly repeated (Heitmuller). But what is remarkable if the Lord, comforting His disciples, repeats sometimes the same thoughts? It is clear that they needed such repetition, that they had not sufficiently understood some of these things the first time... * * * Notes It is remarkable that the inquisitors themselves called the burning of heretics a “work of faith” (auto-da-fé).