John 16

Jesus tells the eleven plainly why He is saying all of this on the last night: These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended (v. 1). The word rendered offended means to be made to stumble, to be tripped into falling away. He is trying to keep them on their feet. He knows that a faith blindsided by suffering can shatter, while a faith forewarned can hold. So He names the hardship before it arrives: They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service (v. 2).

This is the most chilling kind of persecution - from people convinced they are serving God by it. The early church would feel the full weight of these words. And Jesus traces the cause to its root: because they have not known the Father, nor me (v. 3). Hostility to His people springs, finally, from not knowing the One who sent Him.

There is a tender purpose behind the warning: But these things have I told you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them (v. 4). The point of foretelling the storm is so that, in the middle of it, the disciples will recall that He saw it coming and was not taken by surprise - and so their trust in Him will be steadied rather than wrecked. Then He explains why He has waited until now to speak so starkly: these things I said not unto you at the beginning, because I was with you. While He walked among them, He shielded them, bore the brunt of the conflict Himself, drew the opposition onto His own person.

Now that He is about to go, the shelter of His bodily presence is being withdrawn, and they must be readied to stand in it themselves. The warning, then, is an act of care - the parting words of One who will not leave His friends unprepared for what He knows is coming.

Jesus turns to His own going and to the grief it has stirred: But now I go my way to him that sent me; and none of you asketh me, Whither goest thou? (v. 5). Earlier in the discourse they had asked exactly that - Peter said, Lord, whither goest thou? - but now, crushed by what they have heard, they fall silent. But because I have said these things unto you, sorrow hath filled your heart (v. 6).

This is the honest emotional center of the passage: their hearts are full of sorrow, so full that they cannot lift their eyes past their grief to ask where He is going or why it might be good. It is a deeply human moment. Bad news arrives, and the mind locks onto the loss and cannot yet imagine the gain hidden inside it. Jesus meets them in the sorrow. The very next words He speaks - It is expedient for you that I go away - are spoken into this grief, gently turning their faces toward the gift His leaving will bring.

He sees the sorrow that has filled their hearts, and He answers it by unveiling the greater thing on its other side.

Now comes the saying that overturns the disciples' grief: Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you (v. 7). The word expedient means profitable, advantageous - it is actually better for them that He leave. This must have sounded impossible to men whose hearts were full of the thought of losing Him.

How could His going possibly be gain? The answer lies in the kind of presence that is coming. While Jesus walked the earth in a body, He could be in one place at one time; the disciples in Galilee could not be with Him in Jerusalem. The Comforter He will send reaches each of them, and all who would believe in every age and every land, dwelling within each of them. The trade runs upward: the bodily company of Jesus in one location exchanged for the indwelling presence of the Spirit everywhere at once.

His departure is the doorway to a nearness His physical presence could never have given.

Jesus describes the Comforter's work toward the watching world: when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment (v. 8). To reprove is to convict - to expose, to bring to light, to press the truth upon a conscience until it can no longer be ignored. And He spells out the three things the Spirit makes plain. Of sin, because they believe not on me (v. 9): the deepest sin the Spirit exposes is the refusal to believe in the One God sent.

Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more (v. 10): the world judged Jesus a sinner and condemned Him, but His going to the Father vindicates Him - His righteousness is proved by the welcome He receives home. Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged (v. 11): the powers of darkness, which seemed to triumph at the cross, are in fact themselves sentenced there. The Spirit's convicting is the unmasking of how things truly stand - who the real sinner is, where true righteousness lies, and who has actually been judged.

Jesus turns from the Spirit's work in the world to His work in the disciples: I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth (vv. 12-13). There is more they need to know than they can hold on this heavy night, and the Spirit will carry them the rest of the way.

Notice how the Spirit is described - he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak. He faithfully conveys what He receives, always leading into truth. And the climax of the passage names His chief aim: He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you (v. 14). His whole ministry is bent toward the Son - taking what belongs to Jesus and making it known.

Then Jesus adds the breathtaking sweep behind it: All things that the Father hath are mine (v. 15). What the Father has is the Son's; what is the Son's the Spirit takes and shows - Father, Son, and Spirit moving together in a single work of revealing.

Jesus speaks a riddle that leaves the disciples baffled: A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father (v. 16). They cannot make sense of it - What is this that he saith… we cannot tell what he saith (vv. 17-18). The two little whiles mark the rhythm of what is about to happen. The first is short and dark: in a few hours He will be taken, crucified, laid in a tomb, and they will not see Him.

The second is the dawn on its far side: after a little while more they will see Him again, risen. Knowing their confusion before they voice it, Jesus gives them something better than an explanation - a promise about how the whole experience will feel when it is over. The disciples want the timetable decoded. Jesus gives them the meaning. The not-seeing is real but brief; the seeing-again is coming; and in between lies a sorrow that will not have the last word.

Jesus tells them plainly what the next days hold, and then reframes them entirely: ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy (v. 20). The world will celebrate at the cross, certain it has won; the disciples will weep, certain they have lost. But their sorrow is destined to be turned into joy, the very grief transformed. And He reaches for the perfect image: A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world (v. 21).

Labour is real pain, sharp and not to be minimized while it lasts. Yet when the child is born, the pain is swallowed up in a joy so great that the anguish loses its grip on the memory. So it will be with the cross. The agony is real. But on the far side lies a birth - the resurrection, the new life of all who believe - and a joy that turns the very memory of the sorrow into part of the gladness.

The pain is the labour through which the joy is born.

The promise grows even surer: And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you (v. 22). The seeing-again is centered on His seeing them - I will see you again - the risen Lord coming to find His scattered friends. And the joy of that reunion has a quality the world's joys never have: no man taketh it from you. Every other gladness can be stolen - circumstances change, possessions are lost, even life is taken.

But the joy grounded in a risen Christ who has come to find you is beyond the reach of any thief. Then Jesus opens a new thing for the days ahead: in that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you (v. 23). A new access to the Father is being thrown open - prayer offered in the Son's name.

The grief of His going gives way not only to the joy of His rising but to a nearness in prayer they have never had before.

Jesus tells them that a season of clearer understanding is coming: These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall shew you plainly of the Father (v. 25). Much of what He has said has come wrapped in figures and riddles the disciples cannot yet penetrate; but after the resurrection and the gift of the Spirit, the veil will lift and they will see plainly.

And the new access to the Father grows warmer still: At that day ye shall ask in my name: and I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you: for the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God (vv. 26-27). This is a tender thing. He is making sure they do not picture the Father as a reluctant judge who must be talked round by a kinder Son.

The Father himself loves them - directly, gladly - because they have loved the Son and believed He came from God. Prayer in Jesus' name is coming to a Father who already loves them, in the name of the Son who has joined them to that love.

In a single sentence Jesus traces the whole arc of His mission: I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father (v. 28). It is the gospel in miniature - a coming and a going. He came forth from the Father: His origin is the very presence of God, from which He was sent. He came into the world: He entered our humanity, took our flesh, walked our roads.

He will leave the world: through the cross He is about to depart. And He will go to the Father: the going is home, back to the One who sent Him. The disciples seize on the plainness of it: Lo, now speakest thou plainly… Now are we sure that thou knowest all things… by this we believe that thou camest forth from God (vv. 29-30). Their faith, real but still fragile, is awakened by hearing Him say it so clearly.

Jesus simply tells them the truth about how thin it will prove under pressure: Do ye now believe? (v. 31). The coming and the going He has just named is the very thing their faith will soon be tested against.

Jesus foretells the collapse that is only hours away: Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone (v. 32). He has no illusions about His friends. Within the night they will scatter; the men who just professed faith will flee, each to his own, leaving Him to face the cross deserted. And yet - this is the steadying word - and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me. Even abandoned by every human companion, He is not truly alone, for the Father remains with Him.

There is something both bracing and comforting here. Bracing, because Jesus tells the disciples the unflattering truth about their own weakness before it happens, so that their later failure will not destroy them. Comforting, because He shows them where He Himself finds steadiness when everyone falls away: in the presence of the Father, which holds when the loyalty of friends gives out. The same will hold for them in their own scattered hours. When human support gives out, the deepest companionship remains.