Verse-by-Verse Bible Commentary
John 16:31

Clarke's Commentary

Verse John 16:31. Do ye now believe? — And will ye continue to believe? Ye are now fully convinced; and will ye in the hour of trial retain your conviction, and prove faithful and steady?

Bridgeway Bible Commentary

147. Difficulties ahead for the disciples (John 16:16-33)

Within the next twenty-four hours Jesus would be taken from his disciples, but three days later, after his resurrection, they would see him again. Their sorrow would be replaced by joy, just as a woman’s pains before giving birth are replaced by joy after the child is born (John 16:16-22). Jesus’ victory through death and resurrection would give them a confidence in God that they never had before. They would see Jesus Christ as the mediator through whom they could confidently pray to the Father and thankfully receive the Father’s blessings (John 16:23-24).

After his resurrection Jesus would no longer need to speak to the disciples in figurative language, because the resurrection would give them a clearer view of the purpose of his mission. Also, no longer would they depend on Jesus to do their praying for them. They would learn to approach the Father personally and with confidence. Yet even this would be possible only because of who Jesus was and what he had done (John 16:25-28).

The disciples’ faith was strengthened by Jesus’ words, but they did not realize that a few hours later their faith would be put to the test. Frightened and confused they would forsake their Lord in his final hours. But the lapse would only be temporary; through his victory, they also would triumph (John 16:29-33).

Coffman's Commentaries on the Bible

Jesus answered them, Do ye now believe? Behold the hour cometh, yea, is come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.

Do ye now believe? … is not a questioning of their faith, which was genuine enough; but it was a warning against overconfidence. The Old Testament prophet had written, "Smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered" (Zechariah 13:7), and Mark (Mark 14:27) identified the scattering of the apostles during the Passion as the fulfillment of that prophecy. There is infinite pathos in these words. The scattering of the apostles, the smiting of the Shepherd, the Saviour's being left alone, and his comment that he would not be really alone, for God was with him — the thoughts that tug at the heart as one contemplates such events on the night of our Saviour's Gethsemane with the cross looming on the morrow are wholly tragic. Utterly no human consolation would be available for the Son of God when he would "tread the winepress alone" (Isaiah 63:3) to redeem men from sin.

Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible

Do ye now believe? - Do you truly and really believe? This question was evidently asked to put them on a full examination of their hearts. Though they supposed that they had unshaken faith - faith that would endure every trial, yet he told them that they were about to go through scenes that would test them, and where they would need all their confidence in God. When we feel strong in the faith we should examine ourselves. It may be that we are deceived; and it may be that God may even then be preparing trials for us that will shake our faith to its foundation. The Syriac and Arabic read this in the indicative as an affirmation - “Ye do now believe.” The sense is not affected by this reading.

Calvin's Commentary on the Bible

31.Do you now believe? As the disciples were too highly pleased with themselves, Christ reminds them that, remembering their weakness, they ought rather to confine themselves within their own little capacity. Now, we never are fully aware of what we want, and of our great distance from the fullness of faith, till we come to some serious trial; for then the fact shows how weak our faith was, which we imagined to be full. Christ recalls the attention of the disciples to this matter, and declares that they will ere long forsake him; for persecution is a touchstone to try faith, and when its smallness becomes evident, they who formerly were swelled with pride begin to tremble and to draw back.

The question put by Christ is therefore ironical; as if he had said, “Do you boast as if you were full of faith? But the trial is at hand, which will disclose your emptiness.” In this manner we ought to restrain our foolish confidence, when it indulges itself too freely. But it might be thought, either that the disciples had no faith at all, or that it was extinguished, when they had forsaken Christ, and were scattered in all directions. I reply, though their faith was weakened, and had almost given way, still something was left, from which fresh branches might afterwards shoot forth.

Smith's Bible Commentary

Shall we turn to John's gospel, chapter 16.

Now, these words in the sixteenth chapter have to be understood with the background as Jesus has been in the upper room with His disciples. He has told them as He had the Lord's supper with them that He would not drink of the fruit of the vine until He drank it anew in the kingdom. After supper, He has washed their feet, giving to them an example of what the ministry is all about; it's that of a servant. And then there in the upper room He speaks to them of that beautiful relationship that they would have with the Father and with the Son, through the Holy Spirit; that He is going away, but He's going to come again. And He's going to the Father. And then they leave the upper room. Now, the cross is in front of Him. At this point He knows it. They're not sure. But He realizes that this will be His last chance to just really talk with them of the things that are in His heart. And so, in the fifteenth chapter, somewhere between the upper room and the Garden of Gethsemane, maybe while they're walking, Jesus is talking to His disciples, declaring that He is the vine, the true vine, the Father, the husbandman, and that God's purpose for their lives was that they might bring forth fruit. And that fruit that God is looking for is love. He wants us to love one another even as He loves us. And this emphasis upon bearing fruit, bringing forth that love one for another. Now in chapter 16 Jesus said,

I'm telling you these things, so that you'll not be offended ( John 16:1 ).

Telling them, actually, of the things that are going to happen to them. "When you go out into the world, they're going to persecute you. They're not going to receive you. If you are of the world, then they would receive you and accept you, but you're not of the world. Now, I'm telling you this," Jesus said, "so that you won't get wiped out when you are not received by the world." It is interesting how that somehow in our minds we are idealists and we're prone to think if a person lives an honest, righteous kind of a life, everybody will respect them and appreciate them. But if you ever read of the hassles that these people have to go through who find money and turn it in, and are honest enough to turn it in, how that they get all kinds of hate mails, threatening...a lot of them have just had to move from their neighborhoods. Their neighbors were so totally upset with them for being honest. Harassed them, called them fools and harassed them, because of their honesty. And so, Jesus said, "Look, I'm going to tell you this before it happens, telling you these things now, so that you won't be offended."

For they're going to put you out of their synagogues: yes, the time is coming, when whoever kills you will think that he is doing God's service ( John 16:2 ).

This was surely true with Paul the apostle when he was a zealous Pharisee. And as they were stoning Stephen, Paul said, "I consented unto his death." Paul was holding the coats of those that were throwing the stones, urging them on, no doubt, in the stoning to death of Stephen. Declaring in Philippians chapter 3 that it was a part of his zeal towards God was persecuting the church. He thought he was doing God's service.

And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me ( John 16:3 ).

Interesting that these people who were so steeped in traditions of the Hebrew religion. Jesus said of them, "They really don't know the Father." I believe that it is possible to become steeped in the traditions of Christianity so much so that you don't really know the Son. You know all of the traditions. You know all of the church traditions and you're bound up and caught up in the traditions. But it is possible to be very religious in a Christian sense as far as attendance in church and all, and be very religious, but not really know Jesus in a true and intimate way. And we've got to guard against that. That we don't get caught up in religion, but we get caught up in Jesus Christ, in the relationship, the personal relationship with Him. And many times, becoming religious is a real barrier to that relationship. God, keep us open! God, keep us flexible! Not rigid in a religious system and, God, prevent that we should ever devolve into a religious system and lose the real relationship with Jesus.

Jesus said, "They're going to do this thinking they're doing God a service when they kill you, but it's because they really don't know the Father, nor His Son."

But these things I have told you, that when the time shall come, you will remember that I told you them. And these things I did not tell you in the beginning, because I was with you ( John 16:4 ).

"I was there to shield, I was there to take their buffeting and to answer their charges, and I didn't tell you this at the first because you had me with you. But I'm going away now. You're going to be on your own. And now they're going to be persecuting you for My sake, because of what you're going to be doing in My name." And truly, as we read the book of Acts, we find out that this did indeed happen. They were persecuted for the name of Jesus Christ, and for their ministry in His name.

But now I am going my way to him that sent me ( John 16:5 );

Going back to the Father.

and none of you have asked me, Where are you going? ( John 16:5 )

Now, Jesus said to the disciples in the fourteenth chapter, "I'm going away, and if I go I will come again and receive you unto Myself, that where I am there you may be also. And where I go you know and the way, you know." And Thomas said unto Him, "Lord, we don't know where You are going and how can we know the way?" He didn't say, "Where are You going?" He just said, "Lord, we don't know where You are going." None of them asked, "Well, Lord, where are You going?" He kept saying, "I am going away." But they didn't say, "Where are You going?" And He said,

But because I have said these things unto you, sorrow has filled your heart ( John 16:6 ).

"Now, I said, 'I'm going,' and you're all sorry, but you haven't asked, 'Where are you going?'" If they'd asked, "Where are you going?" and they knew that He was going to the Father and, of course, it's revealed here in the seventeenth chapter, then they would not be so sorry for Him. In fact, they would rejoice for Him, though they would still probably be sorry for themselves.

Nevertheless I tell you the truth; [It is necessary,] it's expedient for you that I go away ( John 16:7 ):

This is necessary.

for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you ( John 16:7 ).

Now, when Jesus took on a human body, of necessity He took on certain limitations of a human body. And one of the limitations of a human body is that of locality. Your body can only be in one place at one time. Now, that is frustrating at times. There are times when I wish my body could be two or three places at the same time, but as long as I am in this body I can't be. Now, there are sometimes my body is one place and my mind is another. And that happens to you sometimes when you're sitting here. I see your bodies, but sometimes I wonder, "Where are you?" But the body is limited to locality. Now, they are soon to be dispersed. They're to take the gospel into all the world. And it would be impossible for Jesus to be with them all if He were still in the body.

When Paul was heading out for Cypress and for Ephesus and all, if the Lord went with Paul, He couldn't be with Peter and John back in Jerusalem. So, the fact that they were now to take the gospel and go out with it, it was necessary that Jesus leave them and go back to the Father, back to the spiritual state no longer limited by the body, in order that He might send the Holy Spirit who can be with them wherever they go, because He is not bound to locality. And Jesus now in the Spirit is not bound to locality. So He said to His disciples, "Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world . . . the end of this age. But it's necessary in order to be with you in this manner that I go away to be relieved from the limitations of this body." In order that again, as God, He might be omnipresent. And so, in order that the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, might come. "When I depart," He said, "I will send Him unto you." He said, "I'm going to pray the Father and He will give you another Comforter, even the Spirit of truth, that He may abide with you forever." And so here again, the promise of the Spirit.

And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment ( John 16:8 ):

Now Jesus at that point, amplifies what He said the reproof of the Holy Spirit would be and, to me, the amplification is very interesting because it's not at all what I would think in just reading of the Spirit reproving the world of sin. When He reproves the world of sin, I think of all the horrible things that men are doing. I think of the murders, the cheating, the lying and all of these things. But Jesus said,

Of sin, because they believed not on me ( John 16:9 );

Interesting statement. Because you see, there is only one deadly sin, and that is the sin of not believing in Jesus Christ. I care not what you have done; it isn't necessary that I know what you have done, what your past may hide. I know this, that the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses a man from all sin, no matter what's there. There is only one sin that really condemns a man when they stand before God, and that is the sin of not believing in Jesus Christ. "He will reprove the world of sin because they believed not in Me."

Jesus said to Nicodemus, "For I did not come into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through might be saved. And he who believeth is not condemned, but he who believes not is condemned already" ( John 3:17-18 ). Not because he's a cheater, a thief, an adulterer, a murderer; he's condemned already seeing he hath not believed on the only begotten Son of God. This is the condemnation. Light came into the world, but men would not come to the light. So that thing for which God will bring you into judgment is your not believing in His provision for your salvation through Jesus Christ. He will testify of righteousness.

Now, it would seem to me that the testimony of righteousness to us would be saying, "Now, this is the way a person should walk. You should walk in love, you should walk in truth, you should walk in mercy, you should walk in honesty..." and all of these things, showing us the right path and the right relationship that we should have to each other, testifying or reproving the world of righteousness. But, Jesus said,

Of righteousness, because I go unto the Father, and you see me no more ( John 16:10 );

Interesting statement. What Jesus means by that is that we have many varying standards of righteousness that men have established today. And even within the church body, there are different standards of righteousness. In some church bodies, it is very unrighteous for a woman to wear any kind of makeup or try to make herself look halfway decent at all. I'm glad I don't belong to those churches. But, to them that constitutes unrighteousness. Oh, the guys dress flashy, to be sure. But they try to put the women in very dull and unattractive garb and hair pulled back in a bun and so forth. And that to them is righteousness.

It is interesting to me that overall the church here in the United States is opposed to drinking any alcoholic beverage. I personally am. But in Sweden, the Christians there see nothing wrong with drinking beer, and when we were in Sweden and we were out to dinner with the ministers and all, they always said, "Do you want a beer?" And I always was shocked by that. But some of them were very shocked that my wife drank coffee. "Oh, my! Brother, we'll pray for you. What a poor witness, your wife drinking coffee!" While they were drinking their beer!

So, there are different standards of righteousness that quite often are cultural. The morals of a particular society and the standards of righteousness by which men set are usually standards of comparison. When I think of a righteous standard, I look around and I say, "Well, I'm better than he is. I wouldn't do that." And by looking at the faults of others, I can sometimes feel very smug and self-righteous. "Father, I thank you that I am not like other men, because I don't do the things they're doing and I do this, Lord." But Jesus said, "You do err when you compare yourself with men." Because I don't care how righteous you are, or how righteous I am, unless our righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, we're not going to enter the kingdom of heaven. And as far as outward righteousness and as far as a righteousness according to the law, they were so far beyond anything we ever dreamed of being, they practiced their whole lives trying to obey the finest points of the law, interpreting them and obeying the finest points of the law. And Paul the apostle was able to testify of his own experience as a Pharisee concerning the righteousness which is in the law. He said, "I was blameless." Jesus, though, said, "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you're not going to enter into the kingdom of heaven" ( Matthew 5:20 ). Don't you know that that blew the mind of the disciples? And caused them to say, "Well, pooph, what's the use? Let's go back fishing again. No way we're going to make that. I give up!" If you think that's tough, Jesus ended that message by saying, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect" ( Matthew 5:48 ). That does it, I'm through! Washed up! Hate to admit it, but I'm not perfect. And you don't have to take my word for it. My wife will be glad to confirm that.

Now, if my righteousness must exceed the scribes and the Pharisees, if I can't create a standard looking around at men, where is the standard of righteousness that God will accept? If He won't accept that rigid standard of the scribes and Pharisees, what standard will He accept? And Jesus said, "The Holy Spirit will reprove the world of righteousness because I go to the Father." Now, Jesus, ascending into heaven unto the Father, the Holy Spirit bears witness by that that this is the righteousness that God can accept. So, the righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees is the righteousness of Jesus Christ, which is imparted to us by our faith in Him. And so, when Paul talked of the righteousness of the law being blameless, he then said, "Yet those things which were gain to me, this righteous standing I had as a Pharisee, blameless, those things which were gain to me I counted loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ; for whom I suffered the loss of all things and do count them but dung that I may know Him and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness which is of the law, but the righteousness which is of Christ through faith" ( Philippians 3:7-9 ). The righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, and the righteousness that the Father will accept. If I want the Father to accept me, if I want to enter the kingdom of heaven, I must enter in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Nothing less will do.

Now that, for the moralist, once and for all declares that no matter how moral, honest, good a person, benevolent, charitable you may be, you cannot make it on your own. We all need Jesus Christ. We all need to believe in Him. For believing in Him, my sins are forgiven. I'm no longer condemned. Believing in Him, I now have the righteousness of Christ imputed unto me. And,

Of judgment ( John 16:11 ),

Jesus said. Now, I read in Revelation that there is a great white throne judgment where God sits upon the throne to judge the world. "And the nations, small and great, will stand before Him. And death and hell will give up the dead which are in them; the sea will give up the dead which are in them, and all the small and great will stand there before God to be judged out of the things that are written in the books. Whosoever's name is not found written in the book of life will be cast into the lake burning with fire, and this is the second death" ( Revelation 20:11-14 ). That's not the judgment that the Spirit is testifying about. Well, there's another judgment.

There's the judgment seat of Christ, before which all of the Christians have to appear to receive the things done in their bodies, whether good or evil. Where our works are to be judged by fire and whatever remains will be rewarded for, what sort of works we have done. There will the motives of the hearts be tested. Jesus said, "Take heed to yourself, that you do not your righteousness before men to be seen of men. For I say unto you, you have your reward."

If you're only doing it for a show so people can look at you and say, "Oh, my, isn't he sweet, isn't he wonderful? Isn't he good?" And if that's your motive in doing it, those plaudits and applause and all that you receive from men is all the reward you'll ever get. We are to do our righteousness before God in such a way as to not try to draw attention to ourselves. "Let your light so shine before men, that when they see your good works, they will glorify your Father which dwells in heaven" ( Matthew 5:16 ).

And so, we will all stand before the judgement seat of Christ. And there we will be rewarded for the way that we have run the race. But that isn't the judgment that the Holy Spirit is speaking about.

"Of judgment," Jesus said,

because the prince of this world is judged ( John 16:11 ).

Interesting. He doesn't talk about our judgment, but He talks about the prince of the world being judged. And where was the prince of the world judged? He was judged upon the cross. Paul tells us in Colossians, chapter 2, that Jesus spoiled those principalities and powers, which are rankings of evil spirits. He spoiled them there on the cross, making an open display of His victory, triumphing over them through the cross. Therefore, let no man judge you. The prince of this world has been judged. There on the cross Christ defeated Satan.

Satan has tremendous power. When God created the world and placed man upon it, God gave to man the dominion over the world. God said unto Adam, "You're to have dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, over every living and moving and creeping thing; for I have given it unto you." But man, in the Garden of Eden, gave it unto Satan. So that man was no longer the ruler of the world, but Satan became the ruler over the world. And we see today the disastrous consequences of Satan's rule, in the wars, the suffering. All of these things, disastrous consequences of Satan's rule. We pray, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven." But you do not see that yet. As in Hebrews, we read God has put all things into subjection unto Jesus, but we do not yet see all things in subjection unto Him. We still see a world in rebellion against God, and we still see the fruit of that rebellion in this world in which we live.

One day, by the grace of God, we will live in a world that God intended. And there are marvelous descriptions of that world in the Old Testament, where the lion will lie down with the lamb, and a little child will lead them, and the deserts will blossom like a rose, and there will be streams in the deserts and rivers in dry places, and the lame will leap for joy and the dumb will be singing praises unto God, and the blind shall behold the glory of our Lord. No physical maladies, for the former things will be passed away and all things become new. And there'll be no sorrow or suffering, for you'll see the world in harmony with God, and you'll see the world as God intended it and wants it to be. But right now, we see a world in rebellion. And we see men under Satan's control. The Bible tells us that Satan has taken them captive even against their wills. Paul said "that we might take them from the captivity of the enemy, who has taken them captive against their wills" ( 2 Timothy 2:26 ). Paul tells us that the God of this world has blinded their eyes that they cannot see the truth. There are men today who cannot see the truth; they are bound by Satan's power. They are blinded by him.

We see men in bondage of corruption, bondage of sin. We see it holding men in its power and we've seen the vain futile struggle of man to try and free himself from that power of darkness.

Now, the Holy Spirit is reproving the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment because the prince of this world was judged. What that means is that you don't have to be under Satan's power. You don't have to be under the bondage of corruption. But because of the cross of Jesus Christ, His victory over Satan there at the cross can become your victory. And through the power of Jesus Christ, you can have complete victory and power over the world, the flesh and the devil. You don't have to be under his power. Actually, what Satan holds today, he holds by what is called "usurped power and authority." It's not really his. He still usurps it.

You remember that when God rejected Saul from being the king of Israel, because of his disobedience, God said to Samuel, "How long are you going to grieve for Saul? Let's move on. Go down to the house of Jesse and anoint one of his sons to be the king over Israel." So Samuel snuck down to the house of Jesse for fear of Saul. And he said to Jesse, "Would you bring your sons before me?" And the first son Eliab came in, a big guy and handsome, and Samuel thought, "Alright, this surely is the one that God has chosen for the king." And God said unto Samuel, "Samuel, don't look on the outward appearance. For I don't look on the outward appearance, I look on the heart." Eliab's not the one. So, one by one the sons of Jesse marched in and marched past Samuel, and each one the Lord said, "No." Finally, Samuel turned to Jesse and he said, "Don't you have any other sons?" "Oh, yeah, I have one more, but he's just a kid, he's out watching the sheep." "Well, call him in." And when David came in, this ruddy little kid, the Lord said to Samuel, "That's the one." And he took his oil and he poured it over David's head, and anointed him as king of Israel.

Now, as far God was concerned, David was the king. God anointed him as king. However, Saul didn't believe that. And we read in the next few chapters how that Saul did his best to destroy David and to hang on to the kingdom which God had taken away. "Because you have rejected God from ruling over you, God has rejected you from the kingdom," the prophet had told him. But he did his best by force to hold on to that which God had taken away.

Now, the same is true today in the lives of people. Jesus, you see, has died for the world. But Satan still holds people under his power, but it is like Saul; it's usurped power, it's no longer legally, rightfully his. Jesus has purchased them by His blood. And therefore, we can enter into that victory of Jesus over Satan, and we can also lay claim to lives that Satan is holding, that we might take them from the captivity of the enemy who has taken them captive. And I can bring these people before the Lord, case by case, and I can say, "Now, Lord, I claim the power of Jesus Christ and His victory over the power of Satan that is holding them and blinding them. Lord, deliver them from the power of the enemy and from the blindness."

Now, I can't save them through my prayers, but I can at least bring them to the freedom of choice. We talk about free moral agency, and it's almost a misnomer. There is no way you can say of a sinner that he is a free moral agent. He's the most bound person in the universe. His eyes are blind and he's being held by the power of Satan. How can you say he's a free moral agent? He's a slave unto the tyranny of the enemy! But through prayer, I can make him a free moral agent. Through prayer, I can break the bondage in which he is held by Satan's power, and through prayer, I can open his eyes to the truth. At that point, being a free moral agent, he can then choose, without this oppressive work of Satan blinding his eyes and twisting and perverting his logic. And so, that really is the thrust of prayer towards the sinner, is that of setting them free from this bondage of Satan, because Satan was judged at the cross and he has no legal rights over them any more. And we can claim the victory of Christ life after life, setting them free from the bondage of darkness.

Jesus said,

I have many things to say, but you can't bear them now ( John 16:12 ).

They're not ready for them.

So, when he, the Spirit of truth, has come, he will guide you into all truth: for he will not speak of himself ( John 16:13 );

Talking of the Holy Spirit, He declares that He will be a guide for us into all truth, and He will not testify of Himself,

for whatsoever shall he hear, that shall he speak: and he will show you things to come. He will glorify me ( John 16:13-14 ):

So, the ministry of the Holy Spirit is not to exalt Himself. And I do think that when as a church we start making a big emphasis upon the Holy Spirit, we are placing an emphasis where God hasn't placed an emphasis. For the emphasis of the Holy Spirit is upon Jesus Christ. He doesn't testify of Himself, but He glorifies and seeks to glorify Jesus Christ. "And He will tell us things to come." Paul the apostle was directed by the Holy Spirit in his ministry. And he was shown by the Spirit the things that were going to happen in his life. I have had a very marvelous experience of having the Holy Spirit lay out for me the things that God had in store and was planning to do in my life. And the Holy Spirit will testify of things to come and will glorify Jesus Christ.

for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you ( John 16:14 ).

In other words, "He will receive from Me and reveal to you."

All things that the Father hath are mine: therefore I said, that he shall take of mine, and will show it to you. A little while, and you will not see me: and again, a little while, and you shall see me, because I go to the Father ( John 16:15-16 ).

Now He's talking about the cross and about His death. "A little while and you're not going to see Me, but yet, a little while and you will see Me, because I go to the Father."

Then said some of his disciples among themselves, What in the world is he trying to say to us, A little while, and you will not see me: and again, a little while, and you will see me: Because I go to the Father? And they said therefore, What is this that he is saying, A little while? ( John 16:17-18 )

I don't know what he's saying.

Now Jesus knew that they were desirous to ask him, and he said unto them, Do you inquire among yourselves of what I said, A little while, and you will not see me: and yet a little while, and you shall see me? Verily, verily, I say unto you, That you are going to weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice ( John 16:19-20 );

Talking again of His crucifixion. "You're going to weep, you're going to lament, and the world around you is going to be rejoicing."

and you shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy ( John 16:20 ).

Can you imagine the joy of Easter morning? The resurrection, when they saw the risen Lord? Their sorrow turned into joy.

A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour has come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembers no more the anguish, for the joy that a man is born into the world ( John 16:21 ).

And so, Jesus uses this as a graphic illustration of what He was about to go through; the travail of His soul, the anguish of the cross. But in order that men might be born into the kingdom, all of the pain and the suffering and all is so quickly forgotten when you're swallowed up in the joy of the birth of a new child. You forget. They say that it is one of the hardest pains to bear, and one of the easiest to forget. A child has been born into the kingdom. "And for the joy that was set before Him, Jesus endured the cross though He despised the shame" ( Hebrews 12:2 ). And so, He's talking really of Himself, the anguish that He was to go through. But for the joy of those being born into the kingdom He was willing to do it.

Ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man can take from you ( John 16:22 ).

You're going to go through this time of sorrow, but, oh, you're going to rejoice because I'm going to see you again.

And in that day you will ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it to you ( John 16:23 ).

"You're not to ask Me, your prayers are to be unto the Father. They are to be in the name of Jesus Christ." And our prayers today should actually be addressed to the Father in the name of Jesus.

Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name: ask ( John 16:24 ),

In the Greek it's imperative, "Please ask..." intensive.

and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full ( John 16:24 ).

So, the Lord is saying, "If you'll ask in My name, you will receive." And through this prayer life, receiving, brings such fullness of joy to the life of the believer.

These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time is coming, when I will no longer when I will no longer speak unto you in proverbs, but I will show you plainly of the Father. And that day you will ask in my name: and I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you: for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God ( John 16:25-27 ).

And so our prayer is to the Father. We have direct access to the Father. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we might make our needs known before God. In the name of Jesus, I can approach the Father, and yet, I really fear and tremble for those who think that they have direct access to the Father apart from Jesus Christ. They have lost the consciousness of the holiness of God. The Jewish people today say, "We do not need Jesus. We can go directly to the Father." They forget that their fathers did not go directly to the Father, but they came through much sacrifices through the priests. And the priests went to the Father for them. Jesus said, "I'm not going to say that I'm going to ask the Father for you. You can go directly to the Father." If I can go directly to the Father, then surely I don't need to go to Mary to ask Jesus to go to the Father for me. Or any of the other saints. And prayers to Mary and the saints are church dogma and tradition without scriptural foundation. There's no value in praying to Mary. In fact, I would be a little hesitant to do so, lest Jesus said, "Who is my mother?" For when Mary was outside and could not make her way to Jesus because of the crowd, she sent a message in and said, "Tell my son I'm out here...his mother is out here with his brothers." And Jesus, when they brought the message, "Your mother's outside, she wants you," He said, "Who is my mother? Who is my brother?" Now, if I was going to Mary in heaven and said, "Dear Mary, intercede for me," and Jesus would say, "Who is my mother?" I would be in trouble. I don't have to go through Mary. I can come directly to the Father through and in the name of Jesus.

I came forth from the Father, and I am coming to the world: again, I am leaving the world, and going to the Father ( John 16:28 ).

"I came from the Father, I came into the world." "He who was in the beginning with God thought it not robbery to be equal with God" ( Philippians 2:6 ). "In the beginning was the Word," ( John 1:1 ). "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us" ( John 1:14 ). "I came into the world . . . " "The world was made by Him, but the world knew Him not. He came to His own, His own received Him not." " . . . but I am going back now to the Father." You see, He said, "You haven't asked Me where I'm going." Now, He's telling them, "I'm going back to the Father."

His disciples said unto him, Lo, now you are speaking to us plainly, and not in a proverb. Now we are sure that you know all things, and you need not that any man should ask you: by this we believe that you came forth from God ( John 16:29-30 ).

You see, they were asking among themselves, "What is He talking about, 'You're going to see Me in a little while'?" And then He says, "Why is it that you're inquiring among yourselves what am I talking about when I say this?" And they said, "Hey, we don't know what's going on, and you don't need that any man should ask thee."

Jesus answered them, Do you now believe? Behold, the hour is coming, yes, is now come, when you're going to be scattered, every man to his own, and you're going to leave me alone ( John 16:31-32 ):

Here they are affirming, "Lord, we believe." And Jesus said, "Well, yes, but in just a little while you're going to be scattered. Your faith is going to be tested like you can't believe. And you're going to leave Me alone." And Jesus said,

yet I'm not alone, because the Father is with me. These things I have spoken unto you, that ye might have peace. In the world you will have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world ( John 16:32-33 ).

And so, Jesus said, "I'm telling you these things because I want you to have peace. In the world, you're going to have tribulation." Now, He is not saying here that the church is going through the Great Tribulation. And there's a vast difference between the tribulation that I experience as a child of God and the Tribulation that the world is going to experience as a rebel against God. "In the world you will have tribulation." Why? Because you're not of the world. Where does the tribulation originate against the child of God? From Satan. From the world itself. Where does the Great Tribulation originate? Its origin is God, as God comes to judge the world for the rejecting of His Son. So there's a vast difference between the tribulation that the church faces in the world and the Great Tribulation that the world will face when God has removed His righteous remnant out of the world, and then begins to judge it for its rejection of His Son.

X "

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

8. The clarification of Jesus’ destination 16:25-33

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

Jesus questioned the fact that the disciples now believed fully because of what He had just explained. The NIV translation, "You believe at last!" is an interpretation that the reader should understand as ironical. The events surrounding Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion would show that their faith was still weak. They would desert Him in His hour of testing. That hour was coming very soon, but Jesus could speak of it as already present because Judas was even then planning with the religious leaders for His arrest. Jesus’ confidence in His Father comes through in that He found consolation in the fact that the Father would not desert Him even though the disciples would. Jesus gave this gentle rebuke because the disciples again overestimated themselves (cf. John 13:38).

It is true that Peter and probably John followed Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest. It is also true that John stood near Jesus’ cross during His crucifixion (John 18:15; John 19:26-27). Nevertheless all the disciples abandoned Jesus at His arrest and returned to their own things temporarily (Matthew 26:56; Mark 14:50; John 18:17; John 18:25-26; John 21:3). It is also true that the Father abandoned Jesus on the cross (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34). However that was only temporary too. The Father remained with Jesus throughout all His trials and only departed from Him when He judged sin, which Jesus took on Himself as our substitute (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Barclay's Daily Study Bible

Chapter 16

WARNING AND CHALLENGE ( John 16:1-4 )

16:1-4 "I have spoken these things to you in case you should be caused to stumble in the way. They will excommunicate you from the synagogue. Yes, a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think that he is rendering a service to God; and they will do these things because they did not recognize the Father or me. But I have spoken these things to you, so that when their time comes, you will remember that I spoke them to you."

By the time John was writing it was inevitable that some Christians should fall away, for persecution had struck the Church. Revelation condemns those who are unbelieving and fearful ( Revelation 21:8). When Pliny, the governor of Bithynia, was examining people to see whether or not they were Christians, he wrote to his emperor Trajan to say that some admitted "that they had been Christians, but they had ceased to be so many years ago, some as much as twenty years ago." Even amidst the heroism of the early Church, there were those whose faith was not great enough to resist persecution and whose endurance was not strong enough to stay the course.

Jesus foresaw this and gave warning beforehand. He did not want anyone to be able to say that he had not known what to expect when he became a Christian. When Tyndale was persecuted and his enemies were out for his life because he sought to give the Bible to the people in the English language, he said calmly: "I never expected anything else." Jesus offered men glory, but he offered them a cross as well.

Jesus spoke of two ways in which his followers would be persecuted.

They would be excommunicated from the synagogue. This for a Jew would be a very hard fate. The synagogue, the House of God, had a very special place in Jewish life. Some of the Rabbis went the length of saying that prayer was not effective unless it was offered in the synagogue. But there was more to it than that. It may be that a great scholar or a great theologian does not need human company; he may be able to live alone and solitary, keeping company with the great thoughts and adventures of his mind. But the disciples were simple folk; they needed fellowship. They needed the synagogue and its worship. It would be hard for them to be ostracized, with all doors shut against them. Men have sometimes to learn, as Joan of Arc said, that: "It is better to be alone with God." Sometimes loneliness among men is the price of fellowship with God.

Jesus also said that men would think they were rendering a service to God when they killed his followers. The word Jesus uses for service is latreia ( G2999) , which is the normal word for the service that a priest rendered at the altar in the Temple of God and is the standard word for religious service. One of the tragedies of religion has been that men have so often thought that they were serving God by persecuting those whom they believed to be heretics. No man ever more truly thought that he was serving God than Paul did, when he was trying to eliminate the name of Jesus and to wipe out the Church ( Acts 26:9-11). The torturers and judges of the Spanish Inquisition have left a name which is loathed; yet they were quite sure that they were serving God by torturing heretics into accepting what they considered to be the true faith. As they saw it, they were saving men from hell. "O Liberty." said Madame Roland, "what crimes are committed in thy name!" And that is also true of religion.

It happens, as Jesus said, because they do not recognize God. The tragedy of the Church is that men have so often laboured to propagate their idea of religion; they have so often believed that they have a monopoly of God's truth and grace. The staggering fact is that it still happens; that is the barrier to union and unity between the Churches. There will always be persecution--not necessarily killing and torture, but exclusion from the house of God--so long as men believe that there is only one way to him.

Jesus knew how to deal with men. He was in effect saying: "I am offering you the hardest task in the world. I am offering you something which will lacerate your body and tear out your heart. Are you big enough to accept it?" All the world knows Garibaldi's proclamation at the siege of Rome in 1849, when he appealed for recruits in these terms: "I offer neither pay, nor quarters, nor provisions; I offer hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles and death. Let him who loves his country in his heart, and not with his lips only, follow me." And join they did in their hundreds. When the Spaniards were conquering South America Pizarro presented his men with a choice. They might have the wealth of Peru with its dangers, or the comparative poverty of Panama with its safety. He drew a line in the sand with his sword and he said: "Comrades, on that side are toil, hunger, nakedness, storm, desertion and death; on this side is ease. There lies Peru with its riches; here lies Panama with its poverty. Choose, each man, what best becomes a brave Castilian. For my part, I go to the south." There was silence and hesitation; and then an old pilot and twelve soldiers stepped across to Pizarro's side. It was with them that the discovery and the conquest of Peru began.

Jesus offered, and still offers, not the way of ease, but the way of glory. He wants men who are prepared with open eyes to venture for his name.

THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT ( John 16:5-11 )

16:5-11 "I did not tell you these things at the beginning, because I was with you. But now I am going away to him who sent me, and none of you asks me: 'Where are you going?' But grief has filled your hearts because I have spoken these things to you. But it is the truth I am telling you--it is to your interest that I should go away, for If I do not go away the Helper will not come to you. But when he has come, he will convict the world of sin, and convince it of righteousness and judgment; of sin, because they do not believe in me; of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and you no longer see me; of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged."

The disciples were bewildered and grief-stricken men. All they knew was that they were going to lose Jesus. But he told them that in the end this was all for the best, because, when he went away, the Holy Spirit, the Helper, would come. When he was in the body he could not be everywhere with them; it was always a case of greetings and farewells. When he was in the body, he could not reach the minds and hearts and consciences of men everywhere, he was confined by the limitations of place and time. But there are no limitations in the Spirit. Everywhere a man goes the Spirit is with him. The coming of the Spirit would be the fulfilment of the promise: "Lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age" ( Matthew 28:20). The Spirit would bring to men an uninterrupted fellowship for ever; and would bring to the Christian preacher a power and an effectiveness no matter where he preached.

We have here an almost perfect summary of the work of the Spirit. The word that John uses of the work of the Spirit is the word elegchein ( G1651) , translated convince by the Revised Standard Version. The trouble is that no one word can translate it adequately. It is used for the cross-examination of a witness, or a man on trial, or an opponent in an argument. It has always this idea of cross-examining a man until he sees and admits his errors, or acknowledges the force of some argument which he had not yet seen. It is, for instance, sometimes used by the Greeks for the action of conscience on a man's mind and heart. Clearly such cross-examination can do two things--it can convict a man of the crime he has committed or the wrong that he has done; or it can convince a man of the weakness of his own case and the strength of the case which he has opposed. In this passage we need both meanings, both convict and convince. Now let us go on to see what Jesus says the Holy Spirit will do.

(i) The Holy Spirit will convict men of sin. When the Jews crucified Jesus, they did not believe that they were sinning; they believed that they were serving God. But when the story of that crucifixion was later preached, they were pricked in their heart ( Acts 2:37). They suddenly had the terrible conviction that the crucifixion was the greatest crime in history and that their sin had caused it. What is it that gives a man a sense of sin? What is it that abases him in face of the Cross? In an Indian village a missionary was telling the story of Christ by means of lantern slides flung on the white-washed wall of a village house. When the picture of the Cross was shown, an Indian stepped forward, as if he could not help it: "Come down!" he cried. "I should be hanging there not you." Why should the sight of a man crucified as a criminal in Palestine two thousand years ago tear the hearts of people open throughout the centuries and still today? It is the work of the Holy Spirit.

(ii) The Holy Spirit will convince men of righteousness. It becomes clear what this means when we see that it is Jesus Christ's righteousness of which men will be convinced. Jesus was crucified as a criminal. He was tried; he was found guilty; he was regarded by the Jews as an evil heretic, and by the Romans as a dangerous character; he was given the punishment that the worst criminals had to suffer, branded as a felon and an enemy of God. What changed that? What made men see in this crucified figure the Son of God, as the centurion saw at the Cross ( Matthew 27:54) and Paul on the Damascus Road ( Acts 9:1-9)? It is amazing that men should put their trust for all eternity in a crucified Jewish criminal. It is the work of the Holy Spirit. It is he who convinces men of the sheer righteousness of Christ, backed by the fact that Jesus rose again and went to his Father.

(iii) The Holy Spirit convinces men of judgment. On the Cross evil stands condemned and defeated. What makes a man feel certain that judgment lies ahead? It is the work of the Holy Spirit. It is he who gives us the inner and unshakable conviction that we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God.

(iv) There remains one thing which at the moment John does not go on to mention. When we are convicted of our own sin, when we are convinced of Christ's righteousness, when we are convinced of judgment to come, what gives us the certainty that in the Cross of Christ is our salvation and that with Christ we are forgiven, and saved from judgment? This, too, is the work of the Holy Spirit. It is he who convinces us and makes us sure that in this crucified figure we can find our Saviour and our Lord. The Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin and convinces us of our Saviour.

THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH ( John 16:12-15 )

16:12-15 "I have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of Truth has come, he will lead you into all the truth. For he will not speak on his own authority and out of his own knowledge, but he will speak all that he will hear, and he will tell you of the things to come. He will glorify me, for he will take of the things which belong to me, and will tell you of them. All things that the Father has are mine. That is why I said that the Spirit will take of the things which belong to me, and tell them to you."

To Jesus the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth, whose great work is to bring God's truth to men. We have a special name for this bringing of God's truth to men; we call it revelation, and no passage in the New Testament shows us what we might call the principles of revelation better than this one.

(i) Revelation is bound to be a progressive process. Many things Jesus knew he could not at that moment tell his disciples, because they were not yet able to receive them. It is only possible to tell a man as much as he can understand. We do not start with the binomial theorem when we wish to teach a boy algebra; we work up to it. We do not start with advanced theorems when we wish to teach a child geometry; we approach them gradually. We do not start with difficult passages when we teach a lad Latin or Greek; we start with the easy and the simple things. God's revelation to men is like that. He teaches men what they are able and fit to learn. This most important fact has certain consequences.

(a) It is the explanation of the parts of the Old Testament which sometimes worry and distress us. AT that stage they were all of God's truth that men could grasp. Take an actual illustration--in the Old Testament there are many passages which call for the wiping out of men and women and children when an enemy city is taken. At the back of these passages there is the great thought that Israel must not risk the taint of any heathen and lower religion. To avoid that risk, those who do not worship the true God must be destroyed. That is to say, the Jews had at that stage grasped the fact that the purity of religion must be safeguarded; but they wished to preserve that purity by destroying the heathen. When Jesus came, men came to see that the way to preserve that purity is to convert the heathen. The people of the Old Testament times had grasped a great truth, but only one side of it. Revelation has to be that way; God can reveal only as much as a man can understand.

(b) It is the proof that there is no end to God's revelation. One of the mistakes men sometimes make is to identify God's revelation solely with the Bible. That would be to say that since about A.D. 120, when the latest book in the New Testament was written, God has ceased to speak. But God's Spirit is always active; he is always revealing himself. It is true that his supreme and unsurpassable revelation came in Jesus; but Jesus is not just a figure in a book, he is a living person and in him God's revelation goes on. God is still leading us into greater realization of what Jesus means. He is not a God who spoke up to A.D. 120 and is now silent. He is still revealing his truth to men.

(ii) God's revelation to men is a revelation of all truth. It is quite wrong to think of it as confined to what we might call theological truth. The theologians and the preachers are not the only people who are inspired. When a poet delivers to men a great message in words which defy time, he is inspired. When H. F. Lyte wrote the words of Abide with me he had no feeling of composing them; he wrote them as to dictation. A great musician is inspired. Handel, telling of how he wrote The Hallelujah Chorus, said: "I saw the heavens opened, and the Great White God sitting on the Throne." When a scientist discovers something which will help the world's toil and make life better for men, when a surgeon discovers a new technique which will save men's lives and ease their pain, when someone discovers a new treatment which will bring life and hope to suffering humanity, that is a revelation from God. All truth is God's truth, and the revelation of all truth is the work of the Holy Spirit.

(iii) That which is revealed comes from God. He is alike the possessor and the giver of all truth. Truth is not men's discovery; it is God's gift. It is not something which we create; it is something already waiting to be discovered. At the back of all truth there is God.

(iv) Revelation is the taking of the things of Jesus and revealing their significance to us. Part of the greatness of Jesus is his inexhaustibleness. No man has ever grasped all that he came to say. No man has fully worked out all the significance of his teaching for life and for belief, for the individual and for the world, for society and for the nation. Revelation is a continual opening out of the meaning of Jesus.

There we have the crux of the matter. Revelation comes to us, not from any book or creed, but from a living person. The nearer we live to Jesus, the better we will know him. The more we become like him, the more he will be able to tell us. To enjoy his revelation we must accept his mastery.

SORROW TURNED TO JOY ( John 16:16-24 )

16:16-24 "In a little while you will not see me any more; and again in a little while you will see me." Some of his disciples said to each other: "What is the meaning of this that he is saying to us--'In a little while you will not see me, and again in a little while you will see me'? And what does he mean when he says: 'I am going to my Father'? What does he mean when he talks about 'A little'? We do not know what he means." Jesus knew that they wished to ask him their questions, and he said to them: "You are discussing among yourselves what I meant when I said: 'In a little while you will not see me, and again in a little while you will see me.' This is the truth I tell you--you will weep and you will lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be grieved, but your grief will turn into joy. When a woman bears a child she has grief, because her hour has come. But, when the child is born, she does not remember her pain because of her joy that a man is born into the world. So you too for the present have grief. But I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you. In that day you will not have any questions to ask me. This is the truth I tell you--the Father will give you in my name whatever you will ask him. Up till now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may stand complete."

Here Jesus is looking beyond the present to the new age which is to come. When he does, he uses a conception deeply rooted in Jewish thought. The Jews believed that all time was divided into two ages--the present age and the age to come. The present age was wholly bad and wholly under condemnation; the age to come was the golden age of God. In between the two ages, preceding the coming of the Messiah, who would bring in the new age, there lay the Day of the Lord; and the Day of the Lord was to be a terrible day, when the world would be shattered into fragments before the golden age would dawn. The Jews were in the habit of calling that terrible between-time "the birth travail of the days of the Messiah."

The Old Testament and the literature written between the Testaments are both full of pictures of this terrible between-time. "Behold the Day of the Lord comes, cruel with wrath and fierce anger, to make the earth a desolation and to destroy its sinners from it" ( Isaiah 13:9). "Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble; for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness" ( Joel 2:1-2). "And honour shall be turned into shame, and strength humiliated into contempt, and probity destroyed, and beauty shall become ugliness" (2Baruch 27). "The Day of the Lord will come as a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and the works that are upon it will be burned up" ( 2 Peter 3:10). Such was the picture of the birthpangs of the coming of the Messiah.

Jesus knew the scriptures and these pictures were in his mind and memory. And now he was saying to his disciples: "I am leaving you; but I am coming back; the day will come when my reign will begin and my kingdom will come; but before that you will have to go through terrible things, with pain like birthpangs upon you. But, if you faithfully endure, the blessings will be very precious." Then he went on to outline the life of the Christian who endures.

(i) Sorrow will turn to joy. There may be a time when it looks as if to be a Christian brings nothing but sorrow, and to be of the world brings nothing but joy. But the day will come when the roles are reversed. The world's careless joy will turn to sorrow; and the Christian's apparent sorrow will turn to joy. The Christian must always remember, when his faith costs him dear, that this is not the end of things and that sorrow will give way to joy.

(ii) There will be two precious things about this Christian joy. (a) It will never be taken away. It will be independent of the chances and changes of the world. It is the simple fact that in every generation people who were suffering terribly have spoken of sweet times with Christ. The joy the world gives is at the mercy of the world. The joy which Christ gives is independent of anything the world can do. (b) It will be complete. In life's greatest joy there is always something lacking. It may be that somehow there lingers some regret; that there is a cloud no bigger than a man's hand to mar it; that the memory that it cannot last is always at the back of our minds. In Christian joy, the joy of the presence of Christ, there is no tinge of imperfection. It is perfect and complete.

(iii) In Christian joy the pain which went before is forgotten. The mother forgets the pain in the wonder of the child. The martyr forgets the agony in the glory of heaven. As Browning wrote of the martyr's tablet on the wall:

"I was some time in being burned.

At last a hand came through

The flames and drew

My soul to Christ whom now I see;

Sergius a brother writes for me

This testimony on the wall.

For me--I have forgot it all."

If a man's fidelity costs him much, he will forget the cost in the joy of being for ever with Christ.

(iv) There will be fullness of knowledge. "In that day," said Jesus, "you will not need to ask me any questions any more." In this life there are always some unanswered questions and some unsolved problems. In the last analysis we must always walk by faith and not by sight; we must always be accepting what we cannot understand. It is only fragments of the truth that we can grasp and glimpses of God that we may see; but in the age to come with Christ there will be fullness of knowledge.

As Browning had it in Abt Vogler:

"The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound;

What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good

more;

On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist;

Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power

Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist

When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.

The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,

The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,

Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;

Enough that he heard it once we shall hear it by-and-by."

When we are fully with Christ the time of questions will be gone and the time of answers will have come.

(iv) There will be a new relationship with God. When we really and truly know God we are able to go to him and ask him for anything. We know that the door is open; we know that, his name is Father; we know that his heart is love. We are like children who never doubt that their father delights to see them or that they can talk to him as they wish. In that relationship Jesus says we may ask for anything. But let us think of it in human terms--the only terms we have. When a child loves and trusts his father, he knows quite well that sometimes his father will say no because his wisdom and his love know best. We can become so intimate with God that we may take everything to him, but always we must end by saying: "Thy will be done."

(v) That new relationship is made possible by Jesus; it exists in his name. It is because of him that our joy is indestructible and perfect, that our knowledge is complete, that the new way to the heart of God is open to us. All that we have, came to us through Jesus Christ. It is in his name that we ask and receive, that we approach and are welcomed.

THE DIRECT ACCESS ( John 16:25-28 )

16:25-28 "I have spoken these things to you in sayings that are hard to understand; but the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in sayings that are hard to understand, but I will tell you plainly about the Father. In that day you will ask in my name. I do not say that I will ask the Father for you, because the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came forth from the Father. I came forth from the Father, and I came into the world; I am leaving the world again, and I am going to the Father."

The Revised Standard Version has it that up till now Jesus has been speaking to his disciples in figures. The Greek is paroimia ( G3942) ; it is the word used for Jesus' parables, but basically it means a saying that is hard to understand, a saying whose meaning is veiled to the casual listener, a saying which demands thought before its meaning can become clear. It can, for instance, be used for the pithy sayings of wise men with whose pregnant brevity the mind must grapple; it can be used for a riddle whose meaning a man must guess as best he can. Jesus is saying: "So far I have been giving you hints and indications; I have been giving you the truth with a veil on it; I have been saying things which you had to think your way through; but now I am going to speak the truth in all its stark clarity." Then he tells them plainly that he came from God, and that he is going back to God. Here is a tremendous claim--that he is none other than the Son of God and that the Cross is not for him a criminal's death, but the way back to God.

Then Jesus says something we must ever remember. His men can approach God direct, because God loves them; he does not need to take their requests to God; they can take their own. Here is the final proof of something which must never be forgotten. Often we tend to think in terms of an angry God and a gentle Jesus; what Jesus did is presented in a way which seems to mean that he changed the attitude of God to men, and made him a God of love instead of a God of judgment. But here Jesus is saying: "You can go to God, because he loves you," and he is saying that before the Cross. He did not die to change God into love; he died to tell us that God is love. He came, not because God so hated the world, but because he so loved the world. Jesus brought to men the love of God.

He tells them that his work is done. He came from the Father, and now, by way of the Cross, he goes back. And for every man the way is open to God. He does not need to take their prayers to God; they can take their own. The lover of Christ is the beloved of God.

CHRIST AND HIS GIFTS ( John 16:29-33 )

16:29-33 His disciples said: "See! now you are speaking clearly, and you are not speaking in hard sayings. Now we know that you know all things, and that you do not need that anyone should ask you anything. Because of this we believe that you came forth from God." Jesus answered them: "So you believe at this moment? See! the hour is coming--it has come--when each of you will be scattered to your own homes, and you will leave me alone. And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me. I have spoken these things to you that you might have peace in me. In the world you will have tribulation. But courage! I have conquered the world."

There is a strange light here on how the disciples finally surrendered to Jesus. They suddenly leapt into full belief because they realized that Jesus did not need to ask any man anything. What did they mean? Back in John 16:17-18 we find them puzzled by what Jesus had said. Beginning in John 16:19 Jesus begins to answer their questions without asking them what they were. In other words he could read their hearts like an open book. That is why they believed in him. A traveller in Scotland in the old days described two preachers whom he had heard. Of one he said: "He showed me the glory of God." Of the other he said: "He showed me my whole heart." Jesus could do both of these things. It was his knowledge of God and his knowledge of the human heart which convinced the disciples that he was the Son of God.

But Jesus was a realist. He told them that, in spite of their belief, the hour was coming when they would desert him. Here is perhaps the most extraordinary thing about Jesus. He knew the weakness of his men; he knew their failure; he knew that they would let him down in the moment of his direst need; and yet he still loved them; and what is even more wonderful--he still trusted them. He knew men at their worst and still loved and trusted them. It is quite possible for a man to forgive someone and, at the same time, to make it clear that he is never prepared to trust that person again. But Jesus said: "I know that in your weakness you will desert me; nevertheless I know that you will still be conquerors." Never in all the world were forgiveness and trust so combined. What a lesson is there! Jesus teaches us how to forgive, and how to trust the man who was guilty of failure.

There are four things about Jesus which this passage makes very clear.

(i) There is the loneliness of Jesus. He was to be left alone by men. And yet he was never alone, because he still had God. No man ever stands alone for the right; he always stands with God. No good man is ever completely forsaken, for he is never forsaken by God.

(ii) There is the forgiveness of Jesus. Of that we have already thought. He knew that his friends would abandon him, yet at the moment he did not upbraid them, and afterwards he did not hold it against them. He loved men in all their weakness; saw them and loved them as they were. Love must be clear-sighted. If we idolize a person and think him faultless, we are doomed to disappointment. We must love him as he really is.

(iii) There is the sympathy of Jesus. One verse here at first sight seems out of place: "I have said this to you, that in me you may have peace." The point is this--if Jesus had not foretold the weakness of the disciples, afterwards when they realized how they had failed him, might well have been driven to utter and absolute despair. It is as if he said: "I know what's going to happen; you must not think that your disloyalty came as a shock to me; I knew it was coming; and it does not make any difference to my love. When you think about it afterwards, don't despair." Here is divine pity and divine forgiveness. Jesus was thinking, not of how men's sin would hurt him, but of how it would hurt them. Sometimes it would make all the difference if we thought, not of how much someone has hurt us, but of how much the fact that they hurt us has driven them to regret and the sorrow of an aching heart.

(iv) There is the gift of Jesus--courage and conquest. Very soon something was going to be unanswerably proved to the disciples. They were going to see that the world could do its worst to Jesus and still not defeat him. And he says: "The victory which I will win can be your victory too. The world did its worst to me, and I emerged victorious. Life can do its worst to you, and you too can emerge victorious. You too can possess the courage and the conquest of the Cross."

-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)

Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible

Jesus answered them, do ye now believe?] Not as calling their faith in question; or as denying they had any; or as despising it for the smallness of it; but as reproving them for their security, vain confidence and boasting, as if their faith was so very strong that it would never be moved; and perhaps for the lateness of it too: the words may be read affirmatively, without an interrogation, "ye do believe now"; they are in the Syriac and Arabic versions read imperatively, "believe ye now". Though the "now" is left out by the former, which is not to be spared, for the emphasis lies on it; and a regard seems to be had both to time past and to come. The words carry in them a tacit reproof, that they believed no sooner, or were not before this time more established in their faith, when he had been so long with them, and they had heard so many discourses from him, and had seen so many miracles wrought by him: however, it was not too late, and they would do well to go on believing; but it is suggested to them they would meet with something that would try their faith: and it is as if Christ had said, ye believe in me now, while I am with you, and all things go according to your mind; but what will you do anon, when I shall be taken from you, be apprehended by mine enemies, be delivered into the hands of the Gentiles, be crucified, die, and be laid in the grave? will ye believe then? one of you will betray me, another deny me, and all will forsake me, and some express their doubts about me.

Henry's Complete Commentary on the Bible

      28 I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.   29 His disciples said unto him, Lo, now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb.   30 Now are we sure that thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask thee: by this we believe that thou camest forth from God.   31 Jesus answered them, Do ye now believe?   32 Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.   33 These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

      Two things Christ here comforts his disciples with:--

      I. With an assurance that, though he was leaving the world, he was returning to his Father, from whom he came forth John 16:28-32; John 16:28-32, where we have,

      1. A plain declaration of Christ's mission from the Father, and his return to him (John 16:28; John 16:28): I came forth from the Father, and am come, as you see, into the world. Again, I leave the world, as you will see shortly, and go to the Father. This is the conclusion of the whole matter. There was nothing he had more inculcated upon them than these two things--whence he came, and whither he went, the Alpha and Omega of the mystery of godliness (1 Timothy 3:16), that the Redeemer, in his entrance, was God manifest in the flesh, and in his exit was received up into glory.

      (1.) These two great truths are here, [1.] Contracted, and put into a few words. Brief summaries of Christian doctrine are of great use to young beginners. The principles of the oracles of God brought into a little compass in creeds and catechisms have, like the beams of the sun contracted in a burning glass, conveyed divine light and heat with a wonderful power. Such we have, Job 28:28; Ecclesiastes 12:13; 1 Timothy 1:15; Titus 2:11; Titus 2:12; 1 John 5:11; much in a little. [2.] Compared, and set the one over against the other. There is an admirable harmony in divine truths; they both corroborate and illustrate one another; Christ's coming and his going do so. Christ had commended his disciples for believing that he came forth from God (John 16:27; John 16:27), and thence infers the necessity and equity of his returning to God again, which therefore should not seem to them either strange or sad. Note, The due improvement of what we know and own would help us into the understanding of that which seems difficult and doubtful.

      (2.) If we ask concerning the Redeemer whence he came, and whither he went, we are told, [1.] That he came from the Father, who sanctified and sealed him; and he came into this world, this lower world, this world of mankind, among whom by his incarnation he was pleased to incorporate himself. Here his business lay, and hither he came to attend it. He left his home for this strange country; his palace for this cottage; wonderful condescension! [2.] That, when he had done his work on earth, he left the world, and went back to his Father at his ascension. He was not forced away, but made it his own act and deed to leave the world, to return to it no more till he comes to put an end to it; yet still he is spiritually present with his church, and will be to the end.

      2. The disciples' satisfaction in this declaration (John 16:29; John 16:30): Lo, now speakest though plainly. It should seem, this one word of Christ did them more good than all the rest, though he had said many things likely enough to fasten upon them. The Spirit, as the wind, blows when and where, and by what word he pleases; perhaps a word that has been spoken once, yea twice, and not perceived, yet, being often repeated, takes hold at last. Two things they improved in by this saying:--

      (1.) In knowledge: Lo, now speakest thou plainly. When they were in the dark concerning what he said, they did not say, Lo, now speakest thou obscurely, as blaming him; but now that they apprehend his meaning they give him glory for condescending to their capacity: Lo, now speakest thou plainly. Divine truths are most likely to do good when they are spoken plainly, 1 Corinthians 2:4. Observe how they triumphed, as the mathematician did with his heureka, heureka, when he had hit upon a demonstration he had long been in quest of: I have found it, I have found it. Note, When Christ is pleased to speak plainly to our souls, and to bring us with open face to behold his glory, we have reason to rejoice in it.

      (2.) In faith: Now are we sure. Observe,

      [1.] What was the matter of their faith: We believe that thou camest forth from God. He had said (John 16:27; John 16:27) that they did believe this; "Lord" (say they) "we do believe it, and we have cause to believe it, and we know that we believe it, and have the comfort of it."

      [2.] What was the motive of their faith--his omniscience. This proved him a teacher come from God, and more than a prophet, that he knew all things, which they were convinced of by this that he resolved those doubts which were hid in their hearts, and answered the scruples they had not confessed. Note, Those know Christ best that know him by experience, that can say of his power, It works in me; of his love, He loved me. And this proves Christ not only to have a divine mission, but to be a divine person, that he is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, therefore the essential, eternal Word, Hebrews 4:12; Hebrews 4:13. He has made all the churches to know that he searches the reins and the heart, Revelation 2:23. This confirmed the faith of the disciples here, as it made the first impression upon the woman of Samaria that Christ told her all the things that ever she did (John 4:29; John 4:29), and upon Nathanael that Christ saw him under the fig-tree,John 1:48; John 1:49.

      These words, and needest not that any man should ask thee, may bespeak either, First, Christ's aptness to teach. He prevents us with his instructions, and is communicative of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that are hid in him, and needs not to be importuned. Or, Secondly, His ability to teach: "Thou needest not, as other teachers, to have the learners' doubts told thee, for thou knowest, without being told, what they stumble at." The best of teachers can only answer what is spoken, but Christ can answer what is thought, what we are afraid to ask, as the disciples were, Mark 9:32. Thus he can have compassion,Hebrews 5:2.

      3. The gentle rebuke Christ gave the disciples for their confidence that they now understood him, John 16:31; John 16:32. Observing how they triumphed in their attainments, he said, "Do you now believe? Do you now look upon yourselves as advanced and confirmed disciples? Do you now think you shall make no more blunders? Alas! you know not your own weakness; you will very shortly be scattered every man to his own," c. Here we have,

      (1.) A question, designed to put them upon consideration: Do you now believe? [1.] "If now, why not sooner? Have you not heard the same things many a time before?" Those who after many instructions and invitations are at last persuaded to believe have reason to be ashamed that they stood it out so long. [2.] "If now, why not ever? When an hour of temptation comes, where will your faith be then?" As far as there is inconstancy in our faith there is cause to question the sincerity of it, and to ask, "Do we indeed believe?"

      (2.) A prediction of their fall, that, how confident soever they were now of their own stability, in a little time they would all desert him, which was fulfilled that very night, when, upon his being seized by a party of the guards, all his disciples forsook him and fled,Matthew 26:56. They were scattered, [1.] From one another they shifted every one for his own safety, without any care or concern for each other. Troublous times are times of scattering to Christian societies; in the cloudy and dark day the flock of Christ is dispersed, Ezekiel 34:12. So Christ, as a society, is not visible. [2.] Scattered for him: You shall leave me alone. They should have been witnesses for him upon his trial, should have ministered to him in his sufferings; if they could have given him no comfort they might have done him some credit; but they were ashamed of his chain, and afraid of sharing with him in his sufferings, and left him alone. Note, Many a good cause, when it is distressed by its enemies, is deserted by its friends. The disciples had continued with Christ in his other temptations and yet turned their back upon him now; those that are tried, do not always prove trusty. If we at any time find our friends unkind to us, let us remember that Christ's were so to him. When they left him alone, they were scattered every man to his own; not to their own possessions or habitations, these were in Galilee; but to their own friends and acquaintance in Jerusalem; every one went his own way, where he fancied he should be most safe. Every man to secure his own; himself and his own life. Note, Those will not dare to suffer for their religion that seek their own things more than the things of Christ, and that look upon the things of this world as their ta idia--their own property, and in which their happiness is bound up. Now observe here, First, Christ knew before that his disciples would thus desert him in the critical moment, and yet he was still tender of them, and in nothing unkind. We are ready to say of some, "If we could have foreseen their ingratitude, we would not have been so prodigal of our favours to them;" Christ did foresee theirs, and yet was kind to them. Secondly, He told them of it, to be a rebuke to their exultation in their present attainments: "Do you now believe? Be not high-minded, but fear; for you will find your faith so sorely shaken as to make it questionable whether it be sincere or no, in a little time." Note, even when we are taking the comfort of our graces, it is good to be reminded of our dangers from our corruptions. When our faith is strong, our love flaming, and our evidences are clear, yet we cannot infer thence that to-morrow shall be as this day. Even when we have most reason to think we stand, yet we have reason enough to take heed lest we fall. Thirdly, He spoke of it as a thing very near. The hour was already come, in a manner, when they would be as shy of him as ever they had been fond of him. Note, A little time may produce great changes, both concerning us and in us.

      (3.) An assurance of his own comfort notwithstanding: Yet I am not alone. He would not be thought to complain of their deserting him, as if it were any real damage to him; for in their absence he should be sure of his Father's presence, which was instar omnium--every thing: The Father is with me. We may consider this, [1.] As a privilege peculiar to the Lord Jesus; the Father was so with him in his sufferings as he never was with any, for still he was in the bosom of the Father. The divine nature did not desert the human nature, but supported it, and put an invincible comfort and an inestimable value into his sufferings. The Father had engaged to be with him in his whole undertaking (Psalms 89:21, c.), and to preserve him (Isaiah 49:8) this emboldened him, Isaiah 50:7. Even when he complained of his Father's forsaking him, yet he called him My God, and presently after was so well assured of his favourable presence with him as to commit his Spirit into his hand. This he had comforted himself with all along (John 8:29; John 8:29), He that sent me is with me, the Father hath not left me alone, and especially now at last. This assists our faith in the acceptableness of Christ's satisfaction; no doubt, the Father was well pleased in him, for he went along with him in his undertaking from first to last. [2.] As a privilege common to all believers, by virtue of their union with Christ; when they are alone, they are not alone, but the Father is with them. First, When solitude is their choice, when they are alone, as Isaac in the field, Nathanael under the fig-tree, Peter upon the house-top, meditating and praying, the Father is with them. Those that converse with God in solitude are never less alone than when alone. A good God and a good heart are good company at any time. Secondly, When solitude is their affliction, their enemies lay them alone, and their friends leave them so, their company, like Job's, is made desolate; yet they are not so much alone as they are thought to be, the Father is with them, as he was with Joseph in his bonds and with John in his banishment. In their greatest troubles they are as one whom his father pities, as one whom his mother comforts. And, while we have God's favourable presence with us, we are happy, and ought to be easy, though all the world forsake us. Non deo tribuimus justum honorem nisi solus ipse nobis sufficiat--We do not render due honour to God, unless we deem him alone all-sufficient.--Calvin.

      II. He comforts them with a promise of peace in him, by virtue of his victory over the world, whatever troubles they might meet with in it (John 16:33; John 16:33): "These things have I spoken, that in me you might have peace; and if you have it not in me you will not have it at all, for in the world you shall have tribulation; you must expect no other, and yet may cheer up yourselves, for I have overcome the world." Observe,

      1. The end Christ aimed at in preaching this farewell sermon to his disciples: That in him they might have peace. He did not hereby intend to give them a full view of that doctrine which they were shortly to be made masters of by the pouring out of the Spirit, but only to satisfy them for the present that his departure from them was really for the best. Or, we may take it more generally: Christ had said all this to them that by enjoying him they might have the best enjoyment of themselves. Note, (1.) It is the will of Christ that his disciples should have peace within, whatever their troubles may be without. (2.) Peace in Christ is the only true peace, and in him alone believers have it, for this man shall be the peace,Micah 5:5. Through him we have peace with God, and so in him we have peace in our own minds. (3.) The word of Christ aims at this, that in him we may have peace. Peace is the fruit of the lips, and of his lips,Isaiah 57:19.

      2. The entertainment they were likely to meet with in the world: "You shall not have outward peace, never expect it." Though they were sent to proclaim peace on earth, and good-will towards men, they must expect trouble on earth, and ill-will from men. Note, It has been the lot of Christ's disciples to have more or less tribulation in this world. Men persecute them because they are so good, and God corrects them because they are no better. Men design to cut them off from the earth, and God designs by affliction to make them meet for heaven; and so between both they shall have tribulation.

      3. The encouragement Christ gives them with reference hereto: But be of good cheer, tharseite. "Not only be of good comfort, but be of good courage; have a good heart on it, all shall be well." Note, In the midst of the tribulations of this world it is the duty and interest of Christ's disciples to be of good cheer, to keep up their delight in God whatever is pressing, and their hope in God whatever is threatening; as sorrowful indeed, in compliance with the temper of the climate, and yet always rejoicing, always cheerful (2 Corinthians 6:10), even in tribulation,Romans 5:3.

      4. The ground of that encouragement: I have overcome the world. Christ's victory is a Christian triumph. Christ overcame the prince of this world, disarmed him, and cast him out; and still treads Satan under our feet. He overcame the children of this world, by the conversion of many to the faith and obedience of his gospel, making them the children of his kingdom. When he sends his disciples to preach the gospel to all the world, "Be of good cheer," says he, "I have overcome the world as far as I have gone, and so shall you; though you have tribulation in the world, yet you shall gain your point, and captivate the world," Revelation 6:2. He overcame the wicked of the world, for many a time he put his enemies to silence, to shame; "And be you of good cheer, for the Spirit will enable you to do so too." He overcame the evil things of the world by submitting to them; he endured the cross, despising it and the shame of it; and he overcame the good things of it by being wholly dead to them; its honours had no beauty in his eye, its pleasures no charms. Never was there such a conqueror of the world as Christ was, and we ought to be encouraged by it, (1.) Because Christ has overcome the world before us; so that we may look upon it as a conquered enemy, that has many a time been baffled. Nay, (2.) He has conquered it for us, as the captain of our salvation. We are interested in his victory; by his cross the world is crucified to us, which bespeaks it completely conquered and put into our possession; all is yours, even the world. Christ having overcome the world, believers have nothing to do but to pursue their victory, and divide the spoil; and this we do by faith, 1 John 5:4. We are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

Kelly Commentary on Books of the Bible

In John 15:1-27 our Lord substitutes Himself for Israel, as the plant of God, responsible to bear fruit for Him on earth (not merely for man, as such, openly sinful and lost). He takes the place of that which most put itself forward as being according to God here below. As our Lord Himself said (in John 4:1-54), "Salvation is of the Jews:" this place of privilege and promise made their actual condition so much the guiltier. Our Lord, therefore, sets aside openly, and for ever, as regards those that He was now calling out of the world, all connection with Israel. "I am the true vine," He says. We all know that Israel of old is called the vine the vine that the Lord had brought out of Egypt. But Israel was empty, fruitless, false: Christ was the only true vine. Whatever might be the responsibility of Israel, whatever their boasted privileges (and they really were much every way), whatever the associations and hopes of the chosen people, all outside Christ had fallen under the power of the adversary. The only blessing for a soul now was found in Christ Himself; and so He opens the discourse (or, as we saw, closes what went before) with "Rise up: let us go hence." There was an abandonment, not only for Himself, but for them, of all connection with nature, or the world, even in their religion. It was Christ now, or nothing. As in the beginning of John 13:1-38, He had risen up anticipatively as a sign of His work for them on high; so here He calls them to quit all their earthly belongings with Himself; they were now definitively done with. Thus we have the Lord taking now the place substitutionally of all that had exercised religious power over their spirits. It was now proved to be neither a blessing nor even safety for a soul on earth.

"I," He says, "am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman." He puts Himself in the place of all to which they had been attached and belonged here below, and the Father in lieu of Almighty God, or the Jehovah of Israel. So had He been known. to the fathers and the children of Israel; but it was His Father, as such, to whose care He commends them now. "Every branch in me that beareth not fruit;" for fruit was what God looked for, not merely acts or obligations, but bearing fruit: "Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away; and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit." This is the general statement. There is a two-fold dealing with those who took the place of being branches of the true vine. Where no fruit was borne, there was judgment in excision; where fruit appeared, purging followed, that there might be more.

The Lord applies this truth particularly: "Already ye are clean through the word that I have spoken to you. Exhortation follows in verses 4, 5; the results distinctively for "a man," for any one ( τις ) who does not abide, and for the disciples who do, are found respectively in verse 6, and in verses 7, 8.

In this chapter it is never simply a question of divine grace saving sinners, blotting out iniquities, remembering sins and transgressions no more; but the power of the word is morally applied to judge whatever is contrary to God's character displayed in Christ, or, rather, to the Father's will revealed in Him. No standard less than this could be entertained, now that Christ was revealed. They then (for Judas was gone) were already clean through the word Christ had spoken to them. The law of Moses, divine as it was, would not suffice: it was negative; but Christ's word is positive. "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me." It is not what God is in grace towards those that are outside Him and lost, but the appraisal of the ways of those associated with Christ, the dealings of God, or more strictly of His Father, with those who professed to belong to the Lord. I say "professed," because it is to me evident that He does not contemplate in His view those exclusively who really had life everlasting. Still less do branches of the vine mean the same thing as members of Christ's body, but His followers, who might even abandon Him, as some in the earliest days walked no more with Him. This alone explains our chapter, without forcing it.

The Lord, then, has in view those who then surrounded Him, already branches in the vine, and, of course, in principle, all that should follow, including those that would nominally, and at first to all appearance really, abandon Israel and all things for Him. It was no light matter, but one of much seriousness; and surely, therefore, if a man did thus come out from all that claimed his affections and conscience, from his religion; in short, if a man came out at the cost of every thing, finding most of all foes in those of his own household, there was that which presumed sincerity of conduct, but had still to be proved. The proof would be abiding in Christ. There is no word more characteristic of John than the very word "abiding," and this in the way both of grace and of government. Here it is the disciples put to the proof. For Christianity is the revelation, not of a dogma, but of a person who has wrought redemption; doubtless, also, of a person in whom is life, and who gives it. Thence flows a new sort of responsibility; and a very important thing it is to see this most strikingly kept up in him, who, of all the evangelists, most strongly brings in the absolute unconditional love of God. Take the early part of the gospel, where the gift of Jesus in divine love, the sending Him into the world not to judge, but to save, makes known what God is to a lost world. There we have grace without a single thought of any thing on man's part, save the depth of need. "For God," He says, "so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved." (John 3:16-17) But here the ground is different. We see those who had come out to Christ from all that they had previously valued in the earth. Alas! flesh is capable of imitating faith; it can go a long way in religiousness, and in renunciation of the profane world. Soon there would be multitudes who would come out from Israel and be baptized unto Christ; but still they must be fully tested. None would stand by baptism, or by any other ordinance, but by abiding in Christ.

"Abide in me, and I in you." Here He always puts man's part first, because it is a question, as we have seen, of responsibility; where it is the grace of God, His part is first necessarily, and, further, it necessarily abides. Whereas, if man's responsibility is before us, it is evident that there can be no necessary permanence here: all turns on dependence on Him who always abides the same yesterday, today, and for ever. Thus the reality of God's work in the soul proves itself, so to speak, by continual looking and clinging to Christ. In verse 4 it is not, "Except I abide in you," but, "Except ye abide in me."

"I am the vine, and ye are the branches: he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing." (Verse 5) It is not here believing, but "doing," though faith be the spring, of course. The Lord would have us bear much fruit, and the only way in which fruit is to be borne is by abiding in Him in whom we believe. What can be a weightier consideration for us, after receiving Christ! Do you go after some other thing or person in order to bear fruit? The result in God's sight is bad fruit.

Thus Christ is not only everlasting life to the soul that believes in Him, but He is the only source of fruit-bearing, all the course through, for those that have received Him. The secret is the heart occupied with Him, the soul dependent on Him, Himself the object in all trials, difficulties, and duties even; so that, though a given thing be a duty, it be not done now barely as such, but with Christ before the eye of faith. But where there is not a life exercised in self-judgment and in enjoyment of Christ. as well as prayer, men get tired of this; they turn away from Him to the nostrums of the day, whether novel or antique, moral or intellectual. They find their attraction in religious feelings, experiences, frames, or visions; in imagining some new good self, or in anatomizing the old bad self; in sacerdotalism, ordinances, or legalism, of one sort or another. Thus they really return, in some shape or degree, to the false vine, instead of cleaving to the true. They lose themselves thus. It may even be a slip back into the world, into the open enemy of the Father; for this is no uncommon result, where there is for a time an abandonment of the old fleshly vine, the religion of ordinances, of human effort, and of assumed privilege. All this was found in its fulness and apparent perfection in Israel; but it was now discovering its utter hopeless hollowness and antagonism to the mind of God; and this was manifested, as we shall find later on in this chapter, in their causeless hatred of the Father and the Son. Christ is ever the test, and this the close declares, as much as the beginning sets Him forth as the only power of preparing for, and producing fruit.

This appears again in the sixth verse, and remarkably too: "If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch." Apply such language to life everlasting, or, still more, to union with Christ, and there is nothing but endless confusion. Where Scripture speaks of union with Christ, or, again, of life in Him, you never have such a thought as a member of Christ cut off, or one that had eternal life losing it. It is very possible that some who have accurate knowledge might give it, or plunge into all; and this is what Peter speaks of in his second epistle. There is no preservative energy in knowledge ever so full. Such might allow stumbling-blocks, disappointments, etc., to hinder their following Christ, and so practically abandon what they know, the result of which would be the surest and most disastrous ruin. They are worse even than before. So Jude speaks of men twice dead; and, in fact, experience proves that men who have no life in Christ, after having professed awhile, become fiercer adversaries, if not grosser sinners, against the Lord than before any such profession was made.

This is the case our Lord describes here: "If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned." It was one who had come out from the world, and had followed Christ. But there was no attraction of heart, no power of faith, and consequently no dependence on Christ; and this is the Lord's sentence pronounced on all such, whether in that day or in any other.

On the other hand, He says, "If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you." Not only is the heart occupied with Christ, but also His words weigh there. The Old Testament alone would not suffice. It had been used of God when there was nothing more. Blessed of God at all times it would surely be; and he that valued Christ's words would never slight those that witnessed of Christ before He came. But the soul that would make light of the words of Christ, or do without them, after they were communicated, would evince its own faithlessness. The Christian that really prizes the word of God in the Old Testament would still more set his heart on that in the New. He that had no more than a naturally reverent attachment to the law and the prophets, without faith, would prove his real condition by inattention to Christ's words. Thus, to this day, the Jews are themselves the great witness of the truth of our Lord's warning. They are clinging to the empty vine; and so all their religious profession is as empty before God. They may seem to cleave to the words of Moses, but it is mere human tenacity, not divine faith: else the words of Christ would be welcome above all. As the Lord had told them at an earlier moment, had they believed Moses, they would have believed Christ. for Moses wrote of Christ: in truth, there was no divine persuasion as to either. Again, the great test now is Christ's words abiding in us. Old truth, even though equally of God as the new, ceases to be a test when new truth is given and refused, or slighted; and the same thing is true not merely of God's word as a whole, but of a particular truth, when God reawakens it at any given time for the actual exigency of the Church or of His work. It is vain, for instance, to fall back now on the principles put forward and acted on two or three hundred years ago. Of course it is right and of God to hold fast all He gave at any time; but if there be real faith, it will be found out ere long that the Holy Ghost has before Him the present need for the Lord's glory in the Church; and those that have real confidence in His power will not merely hold fast the old but accept the new, in order so much the more to walk in communion with Him who ever watches and works for the name of Christ and the blessing of His saints.

In this case, however, it is the larger subject the all-importance of Christ's words abiding in us: "If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you." There is first the person, then the expression of His mind. Prayer follows: "Ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you." It is not prayer first (for this should not take the place either of Christ or of intelligence in His mind), but Christ Himself, the prime object; then His words, as forming fully the heart, according to His thoughts and will; and, lastly, the going out of the heart to the Father, on the ground both of Christ and of His revealed mind, with the annexed assurance that so it should come to pass for them. (Verse 7)

The prayer of Christians is often far from this. How many prayers are there where nothing seems to be done! This way be true, not merely of poor failing souls, such as any of us here; but even an apostle might find the same thing in his course, and God Himself be the witness of it. Indeed, the apostle Paul is the chronicler of the fact to us, that his prayers were not always in this communion. We know he besought the Lord thrice to take away that which was an immense trial to him, making him despicable in the eyes of the less spiritual. We can understand this: nothing is more natural; but, for that very reason, it was not all in the power of the Spirit of God, with Christ as the first object. He was thinking of himself, of his brethren, and of the work; but God graciously brought him to Christ, as the One sustained and sustaining object to abide in Him, as it is said here, and to have Christ's words abiding in himself, and then all the resources of God were at his command. "And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee; for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me." (Compare also Philippians 4:6-13) It is only so that there is the certainty of the answer, at least, of what we ask being done.

The object is to show how God the Father answers and acts in accordance with those who are thus practically associated in heart with Christ. And so it is written, "Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit, and ye shall become my disciples." (Verse 8) "Disciples," be it noted; for we must carefully bear in mind that we have not the Church as such here, and, indeed, we have never the Church, strictly speaking, in John. The reason is manifest, because the object of this gospel is not to point out Christ in heaven, but God manifesting Himself in Christ on the earth. I do not mean that we have no allusion to His ascent or presence there; for we have seen that there is here some such allusion, especially when the Holy Ghost replaces Him here, and we shall have it repeatedly in what follows. At the same time, the main testimony of John is not so much Christ as man in heaven, but God in Him manifest on the earth. It is evident that, He being the Son, the special place of privilege found in the gospel of John is that of children not members of Christ's body, but sons of God, as receiving and associated with the Son, the only-begotten Son of the Father.

Here He speaks of them as disciples; for, in point of fact, the relationship of which John 15:1-27 speaks was already true. They had already come to Christ; they had forsaken all to follow Him, and were then around Him. He was the Vine now and here. It was not a new place He was going to enter. They, too, were branches then, and more than that, they were clean through the word He had spoken to them. Not that they were then cleansed by blood, but, at least, they were born of water and of the Spirit. They had this cleansing, this moral operation, of the Spirit wrought in their souls. They were bathed or washed all over, and henceforth needed not save to wash their feet.

"As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue [abide] ye in my love." (Ver. 9) It is all a question of the Father's government and the disciples' responsibility; not of a people having to do with a governor nationally, as Jehovah was to Israel, but of Christ's disciples in relation with the Father, according to the revelation of Himself in Christ. Nor is it here His grace delivering souls, but, what is true along with that, the full maintenance of individual responsibility, according to the manifestation of His nature and relationship in Christ here below. Thus, as compared with the past, the standard is raised immensely. For when once God had brought out Christ, He neither could nor would go back to anything less. It is not merely that He could not own anything short of Christ as a means of salvation, because this is always true; and never was any one brought to God at any time since the world began save by Christ, however scanty the testimony or partial the knowledge of Him. Under the law there was, comparatively speaking, little or no acquaintance with His work as a distinct thing, nor could there be, perhaps (at any rate there was not), even after He came, till the work was done. But here we have God's ways and character as manifested in Christ, and nothing less than this would suit His disciples, or be agreeable to the Father. As already remarked, the application of this to life everlasting only induces contradiction. Thus, if we suppose that the subject of the chapter is, e.g., life or union with Christ, just see into what difficulties this false start plunges one at once: all would be made conditional, and those united to Christ might be lost. "If ye keep my commandments" what has that to do with life eternal in Christ? Does union with Christ, does life eternal, depend on keeping His commandments? Clearly not; yet there is a meaning, and a most weighty meaning for those that belong to Christ, in these words. Apply them, not to grace but to government, and all is plain and sure and consistent.

The meaning is, that it is impossible to produce fruit for the Father, impossible to keep up the enjoyment of Christ's love, unless there be obedience, and this to Christ's commandments. I repeat, that he who values the Master will not despise the servant; but there are many who do acknowledge their responsibility to the law of Moses without appreciating and obeying the words of Christ. He that loves Christ will enjoy all truth, because Christ is the truth. He will cherish every expression of God's mind; he will find guidance in the law, the prophets, the psalms everywhere; and so much the more where there is the fullest revelation of Christ Himself. Christ is the true light. Therefore, as long as Christ is not the One in and through whose light the Scriptures, whether old or new, are read, a man is but groping his way in the dark. When he sees and believes in the Son, there is for him a sure way through the wilderness, and also a bright way in the word of God. The darkness passes away; bondage is no more; there is no condemnation, but, on the contrary, life, light, and liberty; but, at the same time, it is a liberty used in the sense of responsibility to please our God and Father, measured by the revelation of Himself in Christ.

So the Lord says, "If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love." The consequence is, that where there is carelessness in one who belongs to Christ, in a living, branch of the vine, the Father as the husbandman deals in purging judgment. Where habitual obedience is found, there is habitual enjoyment of Christ's love. "These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full."

Supposing that for a time there is a departure from Christ, what is the effect of it? No matter how really a man may be a child of God, he is miserable; the more real, the more miserable. One that had not a conscience exercised before God might sleep over sin and accustom himself to evil for a while; and an unreal disciple would grow. tired of carrying on the profession of Christ along with indulged evil; nor would God allow it to go beyond a certain point as an ordinary rule. But for a saint, true-hearted in the main, nothing is more certain than that Christ would deal with him, and that he would lose meanwhile all sense of the love of Christ as a present practical thing. It is a matter of communion, not of salvation. And surely it ought to be so, and we would not desire it to be otherwise. Who would desire an unreal thing the keeping up an appearance, the parade of words and sentiments beyond the heart's state? There is nothing more calamitous for a soul than to be going on badly, and withal keeping up a vain, exaggerated semblance of feeling, where there is a scanty answer to it within.

With the enjoyment of Christ's love, then, goes obedience; and where the disciple fails in obedience, there cannot be a real abiding in His love. Here it is not a question of love everlasting, but of present communion. He only abides in Christ's love who walks in His will faithfully. We must discriminate in the love of Christ. Unconditionally, of pure grace, He loved them that were His. Again, there was love, in a broad sense even for those that were not His, as we have seen more than once. Besides, there is the special personal love of approbation for him who is walking in the ways of God.

Some there are a little sensitive on these subjects. They do not like to hear, save of eternal love of the elect; and certainly, if this were weakened or denied, they might have reason to resent it. But as it is there cannot be a more painful proof of their own state. The reason why they cannot bear this farther truth is because it condemns them. If these things are in Scripture, (and deny them who dares?) our business is to submit; our duty is to seek to understand them; our wisdom is to correct and challenge ourselves, if peradventure we find insubjection within us to anything that concerns Him and our own souls. Not to speak of Christ, even on the lowest ground, we are depriving ourselves of what is good and profitable. What, indeed, can be more ruinous than putting aside that which condemns any state in which we find ourselves?

I need not enter into all the details of our chapter, though I have rather minutely gone over it thus far, believing it to be of special importance, because it is so much and generally misunderstood. Here the Lord presents Himself as the only source, not of life, as elsewhere, but of fruit-bearing for disciples, or His professed followers. What He shows is, that they need Him just as much for every day as for eternity; that they need Him for the fruit the Father expects from them now, just as much as for a title to heaven. Hence He speaks of that which pertains to a disciple on the earth; and accordingly the Lord speaks of having Himself kept His Father's commandments, and of His own abiding in His love; for, indeed, He had ever been here below the dependent man, to whom the Father was the moral source of the life He lived; and so He would have us now to live because of Himself.

I entreat any who have misread this chapter to examine thoroughly what I am now urging on my hearers. It is incalculable the quantity of scripture that is passed over without distinct exercise of faith. Souls receive it in a general way; and too often one reason why it is received so easily is, because they do not face the truth, and their conscience is not exercised by it. If they thought, weighed, and let into their souls the real truth conveyed, they might at first be startled, but the way and the end would be blessed to them. What a return for these wondrous communications of Christ, just to slip over them perfunctorily, without making the light our own! Our Lord then clearly shows that He, as man here below, had Himself walked under the government of His Father. It was not merely that He was born of a woman, born under the law, but, as He says here, "Even as I have kept my Father's commandments." It went much farther than the ten words, or all the rest of the law; it embraced every expression of the Father's authority, from whatever quarter it came. And as He could not but perfectly keep His Father's commandments, He abode in His love. As the eternal Son of the Father, of course He was ever loved of the Father; as laying down His life (John 10:1-42), He was therefore loved of His Father; but, besides, in all His earthly path, He kept His Father's commandments, and abode in His love. The Father, looking upon the Son as man walking here below, never found the slightest deflection; but, on the contrary, the perfect image of His own will in Him who, being the Son, made known and glorified the Father as He never was nor could be by any other. This was not simply as God, but rather as the Man Christ Jesus here below. I admit that, being such an One, there could be no failure. To suppose I will not say the fact, but the possibility even, of a flaw in Christ, either as God or as man, proves that he who admits the thought has no faith in His person. There could be none. Still, the trial was made under the most adverse circumstances; and He who, though God Himself, was at the same time man, walked as man perfectly, as truly as He was perfect man; and thus the Father's love rested governmentally upon Him fully, unwaveringly, absolutely in all His ways.

Now we, too, are placed upon the true ground as the disciples, strictly speaking, who were then there; but, of course, the same principle applies to all.

Another thing comes in after this. Gathered round Christ, the disciples were called on by Christ to love one another. (Ver. 12) Loving one's neighbour was not the point now; nor is it so here. Of course, loving one's neighbour abides always, but this, no matter how accomplished, ought not to be enough for a disciple of Christ. Such a demand was right and seasonable for a man in the flesh for a Jew especially; but it could not suffice for the heart of a Christian, and, in fact, he who denies this, quarrels with the Lord's own words. A Christian, I repeat, is not absolved from loving his neighbour nobody means that, I trust; but what I affirm is, that a Christian is called to love his fellow Christian in a new and special manner, exemplified and formed by the love of Christ; and I cannot but think that he who confounds this with love to his neighbour has a great deal to learn about Christ, and Christianity too.

The Lord evidently introduces it as a new thing. "This is my commandment." It was His commandment specially. He it was that first gathered the disciples. They were a distinct company from Israel, though not yet baptized into one body; but they were gathered by Christ, and round Himself, severed from the rest of the Jews so far. "This is my commandment, that ye love one another." But according to what measure? "As I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." Shall I be told that any man ever loved, before Christ came into the world, as He loved? If a man will be ignorant, let him be ignorant, and show his unbelief by such an assertion, if he will. Now I say that there is a love looked for, such as could only be since Christ manifested it, and that His love fills and fashions after its own nature and direction. The disciples were now to love one another according to the pattern of Him who laid down His life for them as His friends. Indeed, He died for them when they were enemies; but this is out of sight here. They were His friends, if they did whatever He commanded them. (Ver. 14) He called them friends, not slaves; for the slave knows not what his master does; but He called them friends, for He made them His confidants in all He had heard of His Father. They had not chosen Him, but He them, and set them to go and bear fruit, abiding fruit, that He might give them whatsoever they asked the Father in His name. 'These things I command you, that ye love one another." (Verses 15-17)

And truly they would need the love of one another, as Christ loved them. They had become objects of the hatred of the world. (Verses 18, 19) The Jews knew no such experience. They might be disliked of the Gentiles. They were a peculiar people, no doubt, and the nations could ill brook a small nation raised to such a conspicuous place, whose law condemned them and their gods. But the disciples were to have the hatred of the world, of the Jew as much or more than of the Gentile. They had this indeed already, and they must make up their minds to it from the world. The love of Christ was on them, and, working in them and by them, would make them the objects of the world's hatred, and after that sort which He had Himself known. As He says here: "If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you." I refer to this for the purpose of showing, that the revelation of Christ has brought in not merely a total change in the consciousness of eternal life and salvation when the work was done, as well as the overthrow of all distinctions between Jew and Gentile, which we find, of course, in the epistles but, besides that practically, has 'brought in a power of producing fruit that could not be before, a mutual love peculiar to Christians, and a rejection and hatred from the world beyond all that had been. In every way possible Christ gives us now His own portion, from the world as well as from the Father. "Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also." (Verse 20)

Fully do I admit that there were works of faith, deeds of righteousness, holy, wise, obedient ways, in saints of God from the beginning. You could not have faith without a new nature, nor this again without the exercise practically of that which was according to God's will. Therefore, as all saints from the beginning had faith, and were regenerate, so also there were spiritual ways in accordance with it.

But God's revelation in Christ makes an immense accession of blessing; and the consequence is, that this brings out the mind of God in a way that was not and could not have been before, just because there was no manifestation of Christ, and nobody but Christ could bring it adequately out. With this revelation the hatred of the world is commensurate; and the Lord puts it in the strongest possible way. "But all these things will they do unto you for my name's sake, because they know not him that sent me. If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin." (Ver. 21, 22) What can be plainer than the enormous change that was coming in now? We know that there had been sin all along, in the dealings of God with His ancient people; but what does the Lord here mean? Are we to fritter away the meaning of His language? Are we not to believe that, whatever there was before, the revelation of Christ brought sin to such a head, that what had been before was, comparatively speaking, a little thing when put beside the evil that was done against, and measured by, the glory of Christ the Son, the rejection of the Father's love; in short, the hatred shown to grace and truth yea, the Father and the Son fully revealed in the Lord Jesus? Clearly so. It is not, then, a question of judging sin by right and wrong, by law, or by conscience all well and in place for Israel and man as such. But when One who is more than man comes into the world, the dignity of the person sinned against, the love and light revealed in His person, all bear on the estimate of sin; and the consequence is, there could be no such character of sin till Christ was manifested, though, of course, heart and nature are the same.

But the revelation of Christ forced everything to a point, sounded the condition of man as nothing else could, and proved that, bad as Israel might be, when measured by a law a holy, just, good law of God, yet, measured now by the Son of God, all sin previously was as nothing compared with the still deeper sin of rejecting the Son of God. "He that hateth me hateth my Father also." (Ver. 23) It is not merely God as such, but "my Father" that was hated. "If I had not done among them" not now His words only, but works "if I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father." (Verse 24) There was a full testimony, as we have seen already, in John 8:1-59; John 9:1-41. (His words in John 8:1-59, His works in John 9:1-41); but the manifestation of His words and of His works only brought out man thoroughly hating the Father and the Son. Had they only failed to meet the requirements of God, as man had done under the law, there was ample provision to meet him in mercy and power; but now, under this revelation of grace, man, and Israel most of all, the world (for in this they are all merged now) stood out in open hostility to, and implacable hatred of, the fullest display of divine goodness here below. But this dreadful hopeless hatred, evil as it was, ought not to surprise one who believes the word of God; it was, "that the word might be fulfilled which was written in their law, They hated me without a cause." (Verse 25) There is nothing that so demonstrates man's total alienation and enmity. This is precisely what Christ here urges. The disciples accordingly, having received this grace in Christ, were called into a like path with Him, the epistle here below of Christ who is above. Fruit-bearing is the great point throughout John 15:1-27, as the end of it and John 16:1-33 bring before us testimony. "When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me: and ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning." Here is a twofold testimony that of the disciples who had seen Christ and heard His words. Hence they were called to bear witness of Him "because ye have been with me from the beginning." It was not only the great manifestation at the end, but the truth from the beginning, grace and truth always in Him. Dealing differently, no doubt, according to that which was before Him; still it was in Christ ever the value of what came, not what He found, which was the great point. And to this testimony (for He is showing now the full testimony which the disciples were called to render) the Holy Ghost would add His, (wondrous to say and know it true!) as distinct from the witness of the disciples. We know right well that a disciple only renders testimony by the power of the Holy Ghost. How, then, do we find the Holy Ghost's testimony spoken of as distinct from theirs? Both are true, especially when we bear in mind that He would testify of the heavenly side of truth. In John 14:26, it was said, "The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." There the Holy Ghost is both a teacher and helper. As it is said, "He will teach you all things" what they never knew, besides bringing to remembrance things that they had known.

In the end ofJohn 15:1-27; John 15:1-27 there is a good deal more. The Holy Ghost, "when he is come," (not "whom the Father will send," but) "whom I will send from the Father." (Ver. 26) The Holy Ghost was both sent by the Father, and sent by the Son; not the same thing, but quite consistent. There is a distinct line of truth in the two cases. You could not transplant from John 15:1-27 into John 14:1-31, nor the reverse, without dislocating the whole order of the truth. Surely it all deserves to be weighed, and demands from us that we should wait upon God to learn His precious things. In John 14:1-31 it is evidently the Father giving another Comforter to the disciples, and sending Him in Christ's name: Christ is looked at there as One who prays, and whose value acts for the disciples. But in John 15:1-27 it is One who is Himself everything for the disciples from on high. Here He was the one spring of whatever fruit was borne, and He is gone on high, but is the same there; and so not merely asks the Father to send, but Himself sends them from the Father the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from with the Father, if so literal a turn may be allowed. His own personal glory on high is in full view, and so He speaks and acts, while the connection with the Father is always kept up. Still, in the one case it is the Father who sends; in the other, the Son; and this last, where the point is to show the new glory of Christ above. "He shall testify of me, and ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning." There would be the testimony of the Holy Ghost sent from the Son, and bearing witness of Him according to the place whence He came to replace Him here. The Holy Ghost, sent thus from above, would bear witness of the Son in heaven; but the disciples also would bear witness of what they knew when He was upon the earth, because they had been with Him from the beginning ( i.e. of His manifestation here). Both we have in Christianity, which not only maintains the testimony of Christ, as manifested on the earth, but also the Holy Ghost's witness of Christ known on high. To leave out either is to strip Christianity of half its value. There is that which never can make up for Christ on the earth; and certainly there is that revealed of Christ in heaven which no manifestation on the earth can supply. They have, both of them, a divine place and power for the children of God.

John 16:1-33 seems to be based rather on this last. The main difference is, that the Holy Ghost is more spoken of here apart from the question of who sends. It is more the Holy Ghost coming than sent here; that is, the Holy Ghost is looked at not certainly as acting independently, but yet as a distinct person. He comes, not to display His own power and glory, but expressly to glorify Christ. At the same time, He is looked at in more distinct personality than in John 14:1-31; John 15:1-27. And our Lord had the wisest reason for making known to the disciples what they had to expect. They were now entering on the path of testimony, that always involves suffering We have seen what should befall them in bearing fruit as Christ's disciples and friends. This is enough for the world, which hates them as Him, because they are not of it, but are loved and chosen of Christ. These two things unite the disciples. The hatred of the world and the love of Christ press them so much the more together. But there is also the hatred which befalls them in testifying, not as disciples so much as witnesses. Witnessing as the disciples did of what they had known of Christ here, witnessing of what the Spirit taught them of Christ on high, the consequence would be, "They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service." It is clearly religious rancour created by this full testimony, not the world's general ill-feeling, but special hatred to their testimony. Hence, it would be putting them, not merely into prisons, but out of the synagogues; and this under the notion of doing God service. It is religious persecution. "And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me. How perfectly the truth shines here on Christian as well as on Jewish hatred of all full testimony to Christ! Spite of the liberalism of the day, this peeps out where it dares. They talk about God; they speculate about the Deity, providence, fate, or chance. They may even be zealous for the law, and tack on Christ to it. There a great deal of the world's religion ends. But they know not the Father nor the Son. It is irreverence to draw near and cry, Abba, Father! It is presumption for a man in this life to count himself a child of God! The consequence is, that wherever there is this ignorance of the Father and the Son, there is inveterate hostility against such as are joyful in the communion of the Father and the Son. This hatred every true witness, without compromise, and separate from the world, must more or less experience. The Lord would not have them surprised. Jewish brethren might have thought that, having received Christ, everything was to be smooth, bright, and peaceful. Not so. They must expect special and increasing, and, worst of all, religious hatred. (Verses 1-4)

"But now I go my way to him that sent me." The path lay through death, no doubt; but He puts it as going to Him that sent Him. Let them be comforted, then, as surely they would if they rightly thought of His Father's presence. But "none of you asketh me, Whither goest thou?" (Ver. 5) They felt natural sadness at the thought of His departure. Had they gone a step farther, and asked whither He was going, it would have been all right, they would have felt glad for Him; for though it were their loss, it was most surely His gain and joy the joy that was set before Him, the joy of being with His Father, with the comfort for His own of an accomplished redemption (attested by His thus going on high). "But because I have said these things unto you, sorrow hath filled your heart. 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." (Ver. 7) It is the Comforter coming. No doubt Christ sends; and there lies the connection with the end of John 15:1-27. Still there is the special form of presenting Him as one that comes, which is confirmed in the next verse. "And when he is come, he will reprove [or convince] the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment." (Ver. 8) This is a sentence much to be pondered. It is now God's Spirit dealing according to the gospel with individual souls, which is perfectly true and most important. Conviction of sin is wrought in all who are born of God. What confidence could there be in a soul professing to have found redemption, even forgiveness of sins, through His blood, unless there were an accompanying sense of sin? The Spirit of God does produce this. Souls must be simple and distinct in it as truly as in believing in Christ Jesus. There is a real individual work in those, yea, in all brought to God. For a sinner, repentance remains an eternal necessity.

Here, however, the Holy Ghost is not spoken of as dealing with individuals when He regenerates them and they believe, but as bringing conviction to the world of sin because of unbelief There is no real conviction of sin unless there be faith. It may be but the first working of God's grace in the soul that produces it. There may not be faith so as to have peace with God, but assuredly enough to judge of one's own ways and condition before God; and this is precisely the way in which He does ordinarily work. At the same time there is also the conviction of which the Lord speaks: the Holy Ghost, when He is come, will convince the world of sin. Why? Because they have broken the law? Not so. This may be used, but is not the ground nor the standard when Christ is the question. The law remains, and the Spirit of God often employs it, specially if a man be in self-righteousness. But the fact is clear, that the Holy Ghost is sent down; as it is also clear, that the Holy Ghost, being here, convicts the world i.e., what is outside where He is. Were there faith, the Holy Ghost would be in their midst; but the world does not believe. Hence Christ is, as everywhere in John, the standard for judging the condition of men. "When he is come, he will convince the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, [not when they begin to believe in me, but] because they believe not in me." Again, the conviction of righteousness is equally remarkable. There is no reference even to the blessed Lord when on earth, or to what He did here. "Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more." (Verses 8-10)

Thus there is a twofold conviction of righteousness. The first ground is, that the only righteousness now is in Christ gone to be with the Father. So perfectly did Christ glorify God in death, as He always did in life the things that pleased His Father, that nothing short of putting Him as man at His own right hand could meet the case. Wondrous fact! a man now in glory, at the right hand of God, above all angels, principalities, and powers. This is the proof of righteousness. It is what God the Father owed to Christ, who had so perfectly pleased and so morally glorified Him, even in respect of sin. All the world, yea, all worlds, would be too little to mark His sense of value for Christ and His work nothing less than setting Him as man at His right hand in heaven. But there is another though negative, as that was the positive, proof of righteousness that the world has lost Christ, "and ye see me no more." When Christ returns, He will gather His own to Himself, as inJohn 14:1-31; John 14:1-31. But as for the world, it has rejected and crucified Christ. The consequence is, that it will see Christ no more till He comes in judgment, and this will be to put down its pride for ever. Thus there is this double conviction of righteousness: the first is Christ gone to be with the Father on high; the second is Christ seen no more consequently. The rejected Christ is accepted and glorified in the highest seat above, which condemns the world and proves there is no righteousness in it or man; but more than this, the world shall see Him no more. When He returns, it is to judge man; but as far as concerns the offer of blessing to man in a living Christ, it is gone for ever. The Jews did and do look for Him; but when He came, they would not have Him. The best of the world, therefore, the choicest and most divinely privileged of men, have turned out the most guilty. A living Messiah they will never see. If any have Him now, it can only be a rejected and heavenly Christ.

But there is another thing the Spirit will convince the world "of judgment." What is the conviction of judgment? It is not the destruction of this place or that. Such was the way in which God manifested His judgment of old; but the Holy Ghost bears witness now, that the prince of this world is judged. He led the world to cast out the truth, and God Himself, in the person of Christ. His judgment is sealed. It is fixed beyond hope of change. It is only a question of the moment in God's hands, and the world with its prince will be treated according to the judgment already pronounced. "Of judgment," He says, "because the prince of this world is judged." (Verse 11) In John we have the truth, without waiting for what will be manifest. The Spirit here judges things at the roots, dealing with things according to their reality in God's sight, into which the believer enters.

Thus everywhere there is absolute opposition between the world and the Father, expressed morally when the Son was here, and proved now that the Spirit is come. The great mark of the world is that the Father is unknown. Hence, like Jews, or even heathen, they can pray to Almighty God to bless their leagues, or their arms, their crops, their herds, or what not. Thereby they flatter themselves perhaps that they may do God service; but the Father's love is unknown never in such a condition can He be fully known. Even when we look at children of God, scattered here and there in the waste, they are trembling and fearful, and practically at a distance, instead of consciously near in peace, as if it were God's will that His children should now stand off in Sinai distance and terror. Who ever heard even of an earthly father, worthy of the name, so sternly repelling his children? Certainly this is not our Father as we know Him through Christ Jesus. Brethren, it is the spirit of the world which, when sanctioned, invariably tends to destroy the knowledge of the Father, and of our proper relationship, even among His real children, because it necessarily slips more or less into Judaism.

But the Holy Ghost has another work. He convinces the world of the truth they do not know, by the very fact that He is outside the world, and has nothing to do with it. He dwells with the children of God. I do not deny His power in the testimony of the gospel to souls. This is another thing not spoken of here. But, besides, we have His direct immediate action among 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." (Verses 12, 13) Thus the disciples, favoured as they were, were far from knowing all that the Lord desired for them, and would have told them if their state had admitted of it. When redemption was accomplished, and Christ was raised from the dead, and the Holy Ghost was given, then they were competent to enter into all the truth, not before. Hence, Christianity awaits not only Christ's coming, but the accomplishment of His work, and also the mission and personal presence of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, consequent on that work. But He would take no independent place, any more than the Son had. "He shall not speak from himself; but whatever he shall hear, he shall speak: and he will report (or announce) to you things to come. He shall glorify me; for he shall receive of mine, and shall report it to you." (Verses 13, 14)

It is not said, as some think, that He shall not speak about Himself; for the Holy Ghost does speak, and tells us much concerning Himself and His operations; and never so much as under the Christian revelation. The fullest instruction as to the Spirit is in the New Testament; and, pray, who speaks of the Holy Ghost if it be not Himself? Was it merely Paul? or John? or any other man? The fact is, that the Authorised Version gives rather obsolete English. The meaning is, that He shall not speak of His own authority, as if He had nothing to do with the Father and the Son. For He is come here to glorify the Son, just as the Son, when here, was glorifying the Father. And this explains why, although the Holy Ghost is worthy of supreme worship, and of being, equally with the Father and the Son, personally addressed in prayer, yet, having come down for the purpose of animating, directing, and effectuating the work and worship of God's children here, He is never presented in the epistles as directly the object, but rather as the power, of Christian prayer. Therefore, we find them praying in, and never to, the Holy Ghost. At the same time, when we say "God," of course we do mean not only the Father, but the Son, and the Holy Ghost too. In that way, therefore, every intelligent believer knows that he includes the Spirit and the Son with the Father, when he addresses God; because the name "God" does not belong to one person in the Trinity more than to another. But when we speak of the persons in the Godhead distinctively, and with knowledge of what God has done and is doing, we do well to remind ourselves and one another, that the Spirit has come down and taken a special place among and in the disciples now; the consequence of which is, that He is pleased administratively (without renouncing His personal rights) to direct our hearts thus towards God the Father and the Lord Jesus. He is thus (if we may speak so, as I believe we may and ought reverentially) serving the interests of the Father and the Son here below in the disciples. The fact we have noticed, the administrative position of the Spirit, is thus owing to the work He has voluntarily undertaken for the Father and the Son, though, of course, as a question of His own glory, He is equally to be adored with the Father and the Son, and is always comprehended in God as such.

The rest of the chapter, without entering into minute points, shows that the Lord, about to leave the disciples, would give them a taste of joy a testimony of what will be. (Verses 16-22) The world might rejoice in having got rid of Him; but He would give His own joy, which would not be taken from them. In measure, this was made good by our Lord's appearing after He rose from the dead; but the full force of it will only be known when He comes again.

Then there is another privilege. The Lord intimates a new character of drawing near to the Father, which they had not yet known. (Verses 23-26) Hitherto they had asked nothing in His name. "In that day," He says, "ye shall ask me nothing." 'We are in "that day" now. "In that day" does not mean in a future day, but in one that is come, Instead of using Christ's intervention as Martha proposed, instead of begging Christ to ask* the Father, demanding each thing they needed of Christ Himself, they might reckon on the Father's giving them whatsoever they should ask Him in Christ's name. It is not a question of a Messianic link to get what they wanted, but they would be able to ask the Father in His name themselves. How blessed to know the Father thus hearkening to the children asking in the Son's name! It is of children on earth now the Lord speaks, not of the Father's house by-and-by. Evidently this is a capital truth, bearing powerfully on the nature of the Christian's prayers, as well as on his worship.

*It is remarkable that Martha puts a word ( αἰτήσῃ ) into Christ's mouth (that is, uses an expression for asking the Father), which is never used nor warranted by Himself. It makes the Lord a mere petitioner, lowering the glory of His person, and obscuring, if not denying, the intimacy of His relationship with the Father.

It is exactly what accounts for the fact, that we are here on ground quite different from that of the precious and blessed form of prayer which the Lord gave His disciples when they wanted to know how to pray, as John taught his disciples. The Lord necessarily gave them that which was suited to their then condition. Now, I believe, it is little to say that there is not, nor ever was, a formula of prayer comparable with the Lord's prayer. Nor is there, to my thinking, a single petition of that prayer which is not a model for the prayers of His followers ever since; but all remains true and applicable at all times at least, till our Father's kingdom come. Why, then, was it not employed formally by the apostolic Church? The answer lies in what is now before us. Our Lord here, at the end of His earthly course, informs the disciples that hitherto they had demanded nothing in His name. They had, no doubt, been using the Lord's prayer for some time; nevertheless they had asked nothing in His name. In that day they were to ask the Father in His name. What I gather from this is, that those who had even used the Lord's prayer, as the disciples had done up to this time, did not know what it was to ask the Father in the Lord's name. They still continued at a comparative distance from their Father; but this is not the Christian state. By the Christian state I mean that in which a man is conscious of his nearness to his God and Father, and able to draw near in virtue of the Holy Ghost even. On the contrary, prayers that suppose a person to be an object of divine displeasure, anxious, and doubtful whether he is to be saved or not such an experience supposes one incapable of speaking to the Father in Christ's name. It is speaking as still tied and bound with the chain of their sins, instead of standing in known reconciliation, and, with the Spirit of adoption, drawing near to the Father in the name of Christ. Who can honestly, or at least intelligently, deny it? Thus, whatever the blessing through the Lord's ministry, there was certainly an advance here foreshown, founded on redemption, resurrection, and the Spirit given. Why should men limit their thoughts, so as to ignore that incomparable blessing to which even in this gospel Christ was ever pointing, as the fruit of His death and of the presence of the Comforter who would bring in "that day"? It was impossible to furnish a prayer which could reconcile the wants of souls before and after the work of the cross, and the new place consequent on it. And, in fact, the Lord has done the contrary; for He gave the disciples a prayer on principles of everlasting truth, but not anticipating that which His death and resurrection brought to view. Of these new privileges the Holy Ghost sent down was to be the power. Be assured this is no secondary matter, and that traditional views slight unwittingly the infinite efficacy and value of what Christ has wrought, the results of which the Holy Ghost was sent down to apply to our souls. And the gift of that divine person to dwell in us is this, too, a secondary matter? or is there no radical change which accompanies the work of Christ when accomplished and known? If, indeed, everything be secondary to the supply of man's need, if the unfolding of God's glory and ways in Christ be comparatively a cipher, I understand as much as I hate a principle so base and unbelieving.

It appears to me that the Lord Jesus Himself clearly sets forth the new thing at the highest value, which no general reasonings of men ought to weaken in the least. That immense change, then, let us accept on His authority who cannot deceive us, assured that our brethren, who fail to see how full association with the efficacy of His work and the acceptance of His person, made good in the presence of the Spirit, accounts for the difference between prayer before and prayer after, put no intentional slight on His words in this chapter, or on His work of atonement. But I beseech them to consider whether they are not allowing habits and prejudices to blind them to what seems to me the mind of Christ in this grave question.

In the close ofJohn 16:25-33; John 16:25-33, the Lord puts, with perfect plainness, both their coming position in His name, and as immediate objects of the Father's affection, and His own place as coming from and going to the Father, above all promise and dispensation. This the disciples thought they saw distinctly; but they were mistaken: their words do not rise higher than "We believe that thou camest forth from God." The Master thereon warns them of that hour, even then come in spirit, when His rejection should prove their dispersion deserted, yet not alone, "because the Father is with me." He spoke, that in Him they might have peace, as in the world they should have tribulation. "But be of good cheer: I have overcome the world." It was an enemy of the Father and of them, but an enemy overcome of Him.

On John 17:1-26 I must be brief, though its treasures might well invite one to devote ample space to weigh them. A few words, however, may perhaps give the general outline. The Lord, lifting up His eyes to heaven, no longer speaks to the disciples, but turns to His Father. He lays a double ground before Him: one, the glory of His person; the other, the accomplishment of His work. He seeks from the Father for His disciples a place of blessing in association with Himself suitable both to His person and work.

Be it observed, that from verse 6 He develops the relationship of the disciples with His Father, having manifested the Father's name to those who were the Father's, and given them the words which the Father gave Him, and spoken as He did now that they might have His joy fulfilled in them. From verse 14 He develops it with the world, they being not of it, and wholly sanctified from it, while sent into it like Himself. And observe, here, that He has given them the Father's word ( λόγον ) for their testimony (as before His words, ῥήματα ), but sanctifies them, not by this only, which kept them from the evil of the world, but by Himself, always separate from sin, but now made higher than the heavens, so as to fill them with an object there that could engage and expand and purify their affections. From verse 20 He extends this place of privilege and responsibility to those who should believe on Him through the word of the apostles, the moral unity of verse 11 being now enlarged into a unity of testimony, that the world might believe that the Father sent the Son; and carried onward, even to the display of glory "I in them, and thou in me" when they shall be perfected into one, and the world shall know (not then "believe") that the Father sent the Son, and loved them as He loved Him. (Compare 2 Thessalonians 1:10)

Lastly, from verse 24 to the end, we have, if possible, deeper things than even these; and here the Lord expresses His heart's desire, for it is no longer, as before, in the form of a request ( ἐρωτῶ ) but, "Father, I will," or desire ( θέλω ). This word indicates a new character of plea: "I desire that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am." The earlier section laid His person and His work as the ground for His being glorified on high, according to the title of the one, and in the accomplishment of the other. Verse 24, as it were, takes up that position of glory with the Father before the world was, into which Christ has gone, with His heart's expression of desire that they should be with Him where He is, that they might behold His glory, which the Father gave Him; "for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world." Thus, if the central portion gave us the disciples on the earth in relation with the Father on the one hand, and in total separation from the world on the other, with subsequent believers brought into one, both in testimony and in glory by-and-by before the world, the closing verses take up Christians, as it were, with the Father in an unearthly, heavenly glory, and His desire that they should be with Him there. It is not merely sought for them, that they should be thoroughly, as far as, could be, in His own place of relationship with the Father, and apart from the world, but also that they should be brought into intimacy of nearness with Himself before the Father. Then, in verse 25, the breach between the world and the Father and the Son being complete, He says, "O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee; but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me." There is always this opposition between the Father and the world, proved by His person in the world. But the disciples had known that the Father sent the Son, as the Son knew the Father. He had made known to them the Father's name, and would yet more, "that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them;" this last verse bringing into them, as it were, the Father's love, as the Son knew it, which was the secret source of all the blessing and glory, and Christ Himself in them, whose life by the Spirit was the sole nature capable of enjoying all. Thus they should have a present enjoyment of the Father, and of Christ, according to the place of nearness they had as thus associated with Him.

On the concluding chapters of our gospel I cannot speak particularly now. Yet I must, in passing point out that even in these solemn closing scenes the glory of the Son's person is ever the prominent figure. Hence we have no notice of His agony in the garden, nor of God's forsaking Him on the tree. Matthew depicts Him as the suffering Messiah, according to psalms and prophets; Mark, as the rejected Servant and Prophet of God; Luke, as the perfect and obedient Son of man, who shrank from no trial either for soul or body, but even on the cross prayed for His enemies, filling a poor sinner's heart with the good news of salvation, and committing His spirit with unwavering confidence to His Father. The point here is the Son of God with the world, the Jews especially being His enemies. Hence, John tells us (John 18:1-40) what no other gospel does, that when the band came to take Jesus, led by one who knew too well the spot where His heart had so often, poured itself out to the Father, at once they went backward, and fell to the ground. Do you suppose Matthew let it slip? or that Mark and Luke never heard of it? Is it conceivable that a fact so notorious the very world being the objects of the divine power that cast them prostrate to the ground could be hidden from, or forgotten by, friends or foes? Or if even men (not to speak of the Spirit's power) would forget such a thing, did the rest think it too slight for their mention? All such suppositions are preposterous. The true explanation is, that the gospels are written with divine design, and that here, as everywhere, John records a fact which falls in with the Spirit's object in his gospel. Did these men come to seize Jesus? He was going to be a prisoner, and to die; in the one case, as much as in the other, He would prove it was not of man's constraint, but of His own will and in obedience to His Father's. He was a willing prisoner, and a willing victim. If none could take His life unless He laid it down, so none could take Him prisoner unless He gave Himself up. Nor was it simply that He could ask His Father for twelve legions of angels, as He says in Matthew; but, in John, did He want angels? They might and did ascend and descend on Him as Son of man; but He had only to speak, and it was done. He is God.

The moment He said, "I am he," without lifting a finger, or even audibly expressing a desire, they fell to the ground. Could this scene be suitably given by any other than John? Could he leave it out who presents his Master as the Son and the Word who was God?

Again, we have our Lord's calm rebuke to Peter, who had cut off the ear of Malchus. Let Luke alone tell us of the Lord's gracious healing (for Jehovah's power to heal was not absent); John alone adds, "The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" He preserves throughout His personal dignity and His conscious relationship, but withal in perfect submission to His Father.

Then follows the notice of Peter's sad history with that other disciple which was known to the high priest. Next, our Lord is before the high priest, Caiaphas, as previously before his father-in-law Annas, and, finally, before Pilate. Suffice it to say, that the one point which meets us here, as distinct from the other gospels, is His person. Not that He was not King of the Jews, but His kingdom is not of this world, not from hence, and He Himself is born and come into the world to bear witness to the truth. Here it is the Jews insist He ought by their law to die, because He made Himself the Son of God. (John 19:1-42) Here, too, He answers Pilate, after scourging and mockery, "Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above: therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin." (Verse 11) It was the Jews, led on by Judas, that had this greater sin. The Jew ought to have known better than Pilate, and Judas better than the Jew. The glory of the Son was too bright for their eyes. Afterwards there is another characteristic scene, the blending of the most perfect human affection with His divine glory He confides His mother to the disciple whom He loved. (Verses 25-27)

The gospel which most of all shows Him to be God is careful to prove Him man. The Word was made flesh.

"After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst." I know not a more sweet and wonderful proof of how completely He was divinely superior to all circumstances. He had before Him with perfect distinctness all the truth of God. Here was a scripture which He remembers as unaccomplished. It was a word in Psalms 69:1-36. It was enough. "I thirst." What absorption in His Father's will! "Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a spunge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished." (Verses 29, 30) Where could such a word as this be but in John? Who could say, "It is finished," except Jesus in John? Matthew and Mark both give our Lord saying, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" This could not be in John. Luke gives us, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit," because there the perfect man never abandons His perfect reliance on God. God must, in the judgment of our sins, forsake Him, but He would never forsake God. The atonement would not have been what it is unless God had thus forsaken Him. But in Luke it is the sign of absolute trust in His Father, and not God's abandonment. In John He says, "It is finished," because He is the Son, by whom all worlds were made, Who but He could say it? Who but John could mention that He delivered up ( παρέδωκε ) His spirit? In every point of difference the fullest possible proof of divine glory and wisdom appears in these gospels. Put to death no doubt He was but at the same time it was His own voluntary will; and who could have this about death itself but a divine person? In a mere man it would be sin; in Him it was perfection. Then come the soldiers, breaking the legs of the others crucified with Him; but finding Jesus dead already, one pierces His side, land forthwith came thereout blood and water. And he that saw it bare record."

Thus a double scripture is fulfilled. The apostle John does not quote many scriptures; but when he does, the person of the Son is the great point. Accordingly this was the case now; for not a bone was to be broken. It was true. Nevertheless, He was to be pierced. He was singled out from the others, even while dead between the dying thieves. He has a place even here that belonged to Him alone.

Joseph charges himself with the body too; and Nicodemus, who came first by night is here by day, honoured by association with Jesus crucified, of whom he had been ashamed once, spite of the miracles He was doing.

In John 20:1-31 is the resurrection, and this in a remarkable light. No such outward circumstance is here as in Matthew, no soldiers trembling, no walk with disciples, but as ever the person of God's Son, though disciples prove how little they entered into the truth. Peter "saw, and believed. For as yet they knew not the Scriptures, that He must rise again from the dead." (Verses 8, 9) It was evidence; and there is no moral value in accepting on evidence. Believing the word of God has moral value, because it gives God credit for truth. A man gives up himself to confide in God. Believing the Scriptures, therefore, has another character altogether from a judgment formed on a matter of fact. Mary Magdalene, with as little understanding of the Scriptures as they, stood without at the sepulchre weeping, when they went to their own homes. Jesus meets her in her sorrow, dries her tears, and sends her to the disciples with a message of His resurrection. But He does not permit her to touch Him. In Matthew the other women even retain Him by the feet. Why? The reason appears to be that in the earlier gospel it is the pledge of a bodily presence for the Jews in the latter day; for whatever be the consequences of Jewish unbelief now, God is faithful. The gospel of John has here no purpose of showing God's promises for the circumcision; but, on the contrary, sedulously detaches the disciples from Jewish thoughts. Mary Magdalene is a sample or type of this. The heart must be taken off His bodily presence. "Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father." The Christian owns Christ in heaven. As the apostle says, even if we had known Christ after the flesh, "henceforth know we him no more." The cross, as we know it, closes all connection with even Him in this world. It is the same Christ manifested in life here upon earth. John shows us, in Mary Magdalene contrasted with the woman of Galilee, the difference between the Christian and the Jew. It is not outward corporeal presence on earth, but a greater nearness, though He is ascended to heaven, because of the power of the Holy Ghost. "But go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God." (Verse 17) Never had He put Himself and His disciples so together before.

The next scene (verses 19-23) is the disciples gathered together. It is not a message individually, but they are assembled on the same first day at evening, and Jesus stands, spite of closed doors, in the midst of them, and showed them His hands and His side. "Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained." It is a picture of the assembly that was about to be formed at Pentecost and this is the assembly's function. They have authority from God to retain or to remit sins not at all as a question of eternal forgiveness, but administratively or in discipline. For instance, when a soul is received from the world, what is this but remitting sins? The Church again, by restoring a soul put outside, puts its seal, as it were, to the truth of what God has done, acts upon it, and thus remits the sin. On the other hand, supposing a person is refused fellowship, or is put away after being received, there is the retaining of sins. There is no real difficulty, if men did not pervert Scripture into a means of self-exaltation, or cast away truth, on the other side, revolting from the frightful misuse known in popery. But Protestants have failed to keep up consciously the possession of so great a privilege, founded on the presence of the Holy Ghost.

Eight days after we have another scene. (Verses 24-29) One of the disciples, Thomas, had not been with the others when Jesus had thus appeared. Clearly there is a special teaching in this. Seven days had run their course before Thomas was with the disciples, when the Lord Jesus Christ meets his unbelief, pronouncing those more blessed who saw not, and yet believed. Of what is this the symbol? Of Christian faith,? The very contrary. Christian faith is essentially believing on Him that we have not seen: believing, "we walk by faith, not by sight." But the day is coming when there will be the knowledge and the sight of glory in the earth. So the millennium will differ from what is now. I deny not that there will be faith, as there was faith required when Messiah was on earth. Then faith saw underneath the veil of flesh this deeper glory. But, evidently, proper Christianity is after redemption was wrought, and Christ takes His place on high, and the Holy Ghost is sent down, when there is nothing but faith. Thomas, then, represents the slow mind of unbelieving Israel, seeing the Lord after the present cycle of time is completely over. What makes it the more remarkable is the contrast with Mary Magdalene in the previous verses, who is the type of the Christian taken out of Judaism, and no longer admitted to Jewish contact with the Messiah, but witnesses of Him in ascension.

Mark, too, the confession of Thomas; not a word about "My Father and your Father," but, "My Lord, and my God." Just so the Jew will acknowledge Jesus. They shall look on Him whom they pierced, and own Jesus of Nazareth to be their Lord and their God. (See Zechariah 12:1-14) It is not association with Christ, and He not ashamed to call us brethren, according to the position He has taken as man before His and our God and Father, but the recognition forced on Him by the marks of the cross, which drew out the confession of Christ's divine glory and Lordship.

In John 21:1-25, the appended scene is the fishing. After a night of failure, a vast multitude of fish is taken in the net, without breaking it or risking the ships (Luke 5:1-39), or the need of gathering the good into vessels and of casting the bad away. (Matthew 13:1-58) This I conceive to be a gathering in from the Gentiles. The sea is continually used in contrast to the land in prophetic Scripture. Thus, if the last was the Jewish scene when the Church state closed, this is the figure of the Gentiles in the great day of the earth's jubilee, the age to come contrasted with this age. From verse 15 to the end is the deep personal dealing of our Lord with Peter; also John's place. As I have no doubt there is a significance typically in what we have just glanced at, so it appears to me with regard to this also. The intermediate ministry of Paul is, of course, not here noticed; for he was the witness of Christ glorified in heaven Head of the Church His body, wherein is neither Jew nor Gentile. To Peter, the Lord, thoroughly restoring his soul after proving him to the core, commits His sheep and lambs (His Jewish flock, as we know from elsewhere). A violent end comes, though to God's glory. But if the full heavenly testimony is left for its own due place in Paul's completing the word of God that hidden mystery, John is seen witnessing in principle to the end. (Compare verses 22, 23 with the Revelation) However, I do not enlarge here, but rather apologise for the time that I have occupied in going over so large an extent of God's word. I pray the Lord that even these suggestions may be blessed of God in stirring up fresh desire to study, and weigh, and pray over these precious gospels. Surely it will be sweet reward now, if God deign thereby to give some of His children to approach His word with more reverence and a more childlike trust in every word He has written. May He vouchsafe this through Christ our Lord.