John 16

John 16:1

All this have I said to fortify you, that you should not be deterred from my service by the hazards which attend it.

John 16:2

They shall remove you from their assemblies, (see note [b] ch. ix.) and when they have done so, within a while, they shall think it not only lawful,

⁶ hath done, they should have no sin, πεποίηκεν, ἁμαρτίαν οὐκ the word written in their law might be fulfilled, they have, ἀλλ’ ἵνα ⁸ Paraclete shall come, ἔλθῃ ὁ παράκλητος. ¹ scandalized.

John 16:3

And the ground of their doing so is the great impiety of their hearts, (see note [d] ch. vi.) their not liking either the old commands of my Father, or those which I now bring from him. ᵃ Till this time that I am ready to depart from you, I did not think fit to say this to you, because, whilst I was here, all the malice of men bent itself wholly against me, letting you alone. 5, 6. But now as you come to be uppermost in this employment of revealing my Father’s will, the opposition will light on you. This departure of mine fills you with sadness, and you are so intent upon the sad thought of it, that you do not ask one question about the end of my journey, or about the benefit that may rebound to you by it, and shall certainly do so.

John 16:7

For let me tell you, the Holy Ghost is not to come till after my departing, and his coming shall be of more advantage to you than my staying would be. 8—11. And when he comes, he will plead my cause against the world, and lay against it all the three sorts of actions that are amongst the Jews usual in their courts, 1st, he shall charge it with the crime of not believing in me, by the gift of tongues, &c., evidencing, that I, that am to be preached by that means, am indeed the true Messias, and so likewise by the fulfilling those predictions which now I give you; 2dly, he shall vindicate and justify my mission and innocence, by my ascension to heaven, taking me away out of the reach of human malice, and rewarding my patience with his consolations; 3dly, he shall urge and work revenge upon Satan and his instruments who crucified me, and retaliate destruction back upon them. ⁸ offer God an oblation, or worship, λατρείαν προσφέρειν τῇ

Θεῷ. ⁴ But I spake not these things to you from, ταῦτα δὲ ὑμῖν ἐξ ἀρχῆς οὐκ εἶπον.

⁶ And he, when he comes, shall convince the world concerning sin, and concerning righteousness, and concerning judgment.

[a] Comforter] What is meant by the word Paraclete here attributed to the Holy Ghost, hath been mentioned, note on ch. xiv. 16, and will more fully be discernible by this place. For of the Paraclete, taken in the notion of an advocate, or actor, this is the office, to convince the κατήγορος or accuser, or as it is Tit. i. 9. ἐλέγχειν ἀντιλέγοντας, to justify the cause against all gainsayers, to convince them, or to convince others, that they have complained or acted unjustly. So that all that here follows must in any reason so be interpreted as shall agree with the customs of pleading causes among the Jews. Now there were three sorts of causes or actions among the Jews; 1. public judgments, περὶ ἁμαρτίας, לחשא, that is, concerning criminal matters, and those consisted in the condemnation and punishing of offenders against God, false prophets, &c.; 2dly, in the defending of the just or upright against all oppression, or invasion, or false testimony, and that is called לְצִדְקָה, concerning justice, or equity, or righteousness, περὶ δικαιουσύνης;

John 16:12

Beside all that I have yet said, I have many things concerning the Christian law to reveal to you, which being so distant from the law of the Jews, wherein ye have been brought up, and for which you are so zealous, ye cannot yet receive or be patient of them. (See Orig. cont. Cels. l. 2.)

John 16:13

But when the Holy Ghost comes, whose title it is to be the Spirit of truth, he shall instruct you what is to be done, teach you the full of my Father’s will for the laying aside of the ceremonial external law of the Jews, freeing all Christians from that yoke, &c. For it shall be no private doctrine of his own which he shall reveal to you, but either that which I have already taught, but you have either not observed or forgotten, or that which you have not yet but afterwards to do, (how you are to behave yourselves in the business of the Jews and Gentiles, when the Jews finally reject the gospel, &c.,) and which I have not yet revealed to you, as being not yet seasonable.

John 16:14

What he doth shall tend to the illustrating of me, for he, being sent from my Father by me, shall in all things accord with me, and thereby appear to have his message from me, and to declare nothing to you but what he hath from me.

John 16:15

And when I say this, I mean not so to appropriate to myself as to exclude my Father, but because all things are common to me and my Father, and because all my will depends on the Father, and because it is my work wholly to attend the will of my Father, therefore, whatsoever of this nature he shall reveal to you, I call that mine, and the revealing of this, his taking of mine and declaring to you.

John 16:16

Within a while I shall for a time be taken from you, then again within a little while after that I shall be with you again before my ascension, for it is not possible for me to be held by death, I must arise and go to my Father.

b See vv. 23 and 30.

John 16:20

[a] kept] The joining of εἰ ἐτήρησαν here with εἰ ἐδίωξαν makes it seem a little probable that τηρεῖν should be here taken in an ill sense, for an insidious observing or treacherous watching of Christ’s words, as τηρεῖν and παρατηρεῖν are sometimes used (see Luke xx. 26.) and so also the Hebrew שָׁמֶר (psalm lvi. 7, they observe, that is, watch my steps, when they lay wait for my soul,) and Job vii. 20. נָצַר, when God is said to be the observer of men. But the use of this phrase τηρεῖν λόγους in the New Testament, especially in the writings of St. John, ch. viii. 55, ch. xiv. 23, 24. ch. xvii. 6. 1 John ii. 5. Rev iii. 8 and 10. ch. xxii. 7, 9, and that with ἐντολὰς, commands, instead of λόγους, words, very often, (and particularly in this chapter, ver. 10, twice,) will be sufficient reason to reject this rendering, and to read it literally, If they have kept my word, they will also keep your word, that is, obey and observe it; making their not observing the word of Christ an argument that they will not observe the apostles’ neither; or that by this experiment of their dealing with Christ they may learn what kind of dealing or entertainment is to be looked for from the world for the disciples of Christ, agreeable perfectly to what was before said of the world’s persecuting them also.

John 16:21

All the persecutions that shall fall on you, being upon the score of their not believing that God hath sent me.

John 16:22

If I had not done what I have among them, they might have had the excuse of ignorance, but now they are utterly without excuse.

John 16:23

I have done so much to evidence my being sent from God, that now the opposing me is a malicious resisting of my Father himself.

[b] in that day] Ἐν ἐκείνῃ τῇ ἡμέρᾳ, in that day, here may possibly be mistaken, by assigning too restrained a sense to it. For if it be applied to that part only of the precedent verse, But I will see you

John 16:25

By this is fulfilled that of the psalmist, Ps. xxxv. 19, they have opposed me when they had all reason to have received and loved me.

26, 27. But at the coming of the Holy Ghost, that pleader or advocate of my cause, (see note [b] ch. xiv.) whom I will send from the Father, that Spirit which proceedeth from the Father, and who by his coming will open men’s eyes, and give them a right understanding of me, he shall maintain my cause against all opposers, by coming down on you shall give you assurance of my being sent from God, and by the gift of tongues shall enable you to convince all others, and shall constitute you witnesses of it to all, as being the fittest to do so by your having been eyewitnesses of all that I have done, having been with me at the first, and never departed from me since.

CHAP. XVI. THESE things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be ¹ offended.

My discourse to you hitherto may have had some darkness in it, which I designed on purpose, but the Holy Ghost shall set all before you plainly, (see note [a] ch. vii.) according as it is my Father’s pleasure to have things ordered in the church, see ver. 13. 26, 27. And one benefit that by my ascension and the descent of the Spirit shall come to you is, that you shall not need my offering up your prayers for

[b] without a cause] The Greek δωρεὰν which properly signifies gratis, without any hire, freely, without intuition of wages, and is so taken Matt. x. 8, Rom. iii. 24, 2 Cor. xi. 7, Rev. xxi. 6, xxii. 17, is here, and Gal. ii. 21, taken for without a cause, whether impellent (as here, They hated me without any motive, or impulsive, to hatred on my part offered to them) or final, as in the Galat. Then did Christ die in vain, or to no purpose. The reason of these various acceptions of the word, beyond its native extent, is to be fetched from the like use of the Hebrew חָנֵּב, which signifies both these; and proportionably the Greek, though naturally it do not extend to these, is, according to the custom of these writers, used in the same largeness as the Hebrew is.