John 16

John 16:28-33

Section 6. (Vers. 28-33.)A note of victory. A brief note of triumph closes His speech with the disciples. He repeats finally that, having come from the Father into the world, He now goes back from the world to the Father. It might seem as if He was returning with His great purpose unaccomplished, and with regard to Israel, it was in some sense really so: “I have labored in vain, and spent My strength for nought,” is His own complaint through the prophet (Isaiah 49:4): yet, He adds, “Surely My judgment is with the Lord, and My work with My God.” The answer accordingly comes from God to Him: and we know how that Cross which was then the symbol of His rejection has become the symbol of a wider and higher triumph. New purposes were to be disclosed: mysteries hidden in God through all the former ages were to reveal the unsuspected wonder of His work, and fill heaven as well as earth with the display in them of the divine glory. The Lord is full, as we are permitted to see when He turns presently to His Father, with the light beyond the gloom; but the disciples are not ready for the communication of it to them. For a moment, indeed, a gleam seems to have pierced the darkness.

As He speaks of going to the Father, they have got already, they say, beyond the allegories into the plain speech they longed for and of which He had spoken. But even in the words in which they say this, they show how far the gloom had shrouded them. “Now we know,” they say, that Thou knowest all things: -by this we believe that Thou earnest forth from God." Patiently and sadly He replies to this: “Do ye now believe? Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is come, that ye shall be scattered every one to his own, and shall leave Me alone: and yet,” He adds, “I am not alone, but My Father is with Me.” Amid all, He knows that the victory is sure: and sure for them: “These things have I spoken unto you, that in Me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good courage: I have overcome the world.”