John16chapter 16

John 16:1-2

These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended: skandalizo, the same word for stumbling that runs through the Synoptic warnings, and Jesus names the purpose of his hard sayings as protection against a coming shock rather than an added burden. They shall put you out of the synagogues, the aposynagogos already named in 9:22 and 12:42 as the leadership's settled policy, and the harder word follows, the time cometh that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service, a warning the bench reads as fulfilled almost at once in Saul of Tarsus, who calls his own pre-conversion zeal a service he believed was owed to God.

John 16:3-4

have not known the Father: These things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me: the persecution's root is traced again, as at 15:21, to ignorance of God rather than to any real fault in the disciples. These things have I told you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them, and these things I said not unto you at the beginning, because I was with you: the bench notes the pastoral logic, warning withheld while the shepherd was present in person and given now because his bodily presence is about to end, so that the prediction itself, remembered later, becomes evidence for faith rather than a cause of despair.

John 16:5-6

Now I go my way to him that sent me, and none of you asketh me, Whither goest thou: the observation reads at first as a rebuke, though Peter had asked exactly that question at 13:36, and the bench resolves it by noting the change of spirit rather than the words, the disciples no longer asking with hope but sitting silent under grief. Because I have said these things unto you, sorrow hath filled your heart: the departure that should be read as glory, the Son going to the Father who sent him, has instead only registered as loss, the whole discourse working to correct that reading before the night is over.

John 16:7

Nevertheless I tell you the truth, It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you, but if I depart, I will send him unto you: the third Paraclete saying states a trade the disciples cannot yet believe is a gain, one presence exchanged for another, and the bench reads expedient, sympherei, as the Lord's own verdict against their instinct, his bodily absence the very condition of the Spirit's coming to be with every disciple everywhere rather than one man walking beside a few in one province. I will send him is the same sending language of the Father's own commission, the Son now the sender in his turn.

John 16:8-9

When he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: elencho, reprove, carries the sense of a legal cross-examination that exposes and convinces, and the bench reads the courtroom language as continuous with the Gospel's own trial structure, the Spirit now the prosecuting witness John himself has been building toward since chapter 1. Of sin, because they believe not on me: the first count is named specifically as unbelief in Christ, not the catalogue of ordinary transgressions, the one sin beneath every other in this Gospel's reckoning.

John 16:10-11

Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more: the second count is Jesus' own righteousness vindicated by the ascension, the world having condemned him as a criminal, the Father's own reception of him at his side proving the verdict false, a case Peter will argue outright at Pentecost from this same claim. Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged: the third count names Satan's defeat as already accomplished in the cross about to come, is judged a present tense standing on a future event, and the bench reads all three counts together as one demonstration, the cross that looked like Christ's condemnation is in fact the world's, his righteousness, and Satan's judgment.

John 16:12-13

I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now: the Lord respects the limits of what eleven frightened men can absorb the night before the cross, and the bench reads bastazein, bear, as carrying weight rather than merely understanding words. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth, for he shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak, and he will shew you things to come: the fourth Paraclete saying names the Spirit's ministry as guidance rather than novelty, speaking only what he hears from the Father and Son, the site's own continuationist confession reading the prophetic clause, things to come, as still operative and not confined to the apostolic writing of the New Testament, a position the bench notes is held with others who confine the promise's fulfillment to the apostles' own inspired testimony.

John 16:14-15

He shall glorify me, for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you: the Spirit's whole office is Christ-directed, and the bench reads the verse as the safeguard against any teaching that claims the Spirit's authority while sidelining the Son he was sent to glorify. All things that the Father hath are mine, therefore said I that he shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you: the claim to share fully in the Father's possessions returns the discourse to the deity already stated at 10:30 and 14:9, the Son's ownership of all that the Father has made the ground of the Spirit's ministry to the church.

John 16:16-19

A little while, and ye shall not see me, and again, a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father: the saying is deliberately riddling, and the disciples' confusion is recorded at length, three verses of their own bewildered questioning among themselves, a rare window into how little of this the eleven grasped in the moment. The bench reads the double little while as holding two horizons at once, the few hours until the crucifixion hides him and the few days until the resurrection restores him, an ambiguity the text itself does not resolve until it plays out.

John 16:20-21

Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice, and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy: the doubled amen introduces the discourse's central promise, the disciples' grief and the world's satisfaction running in parallel across the crucifixion before the reversal at Easter overturns both. A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come, but as soon as she is delivered of the child she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world: the bench reads the image carefully, the sorrow not erased from memory but overtaken and outweighed by what it produced, a pattern the resurrection joy will follow exactly.

John 16:22

And ye now therefore have sorrow, but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you: the promised joy is tied to a specific reunion, I will see you again, which the bench reads first of the resurrection appearances and by extension of the abiding presence the Spirit secures afterward. No man taketh from you sets this joy apart from every circumstance that could threaten it, a permanence the disciples' own later history of persecution would test and, on the Gospel's own witness, never overturn.

John 16:23-24

ask the Father in my name: And in that day ye shall ask me nothing: Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you: a new access to the Father opens, prayer no longer routed through questioning Jesus directly as the disciples have done through this whole discourse but offered straight to the Father on the ground of the Son's own name and merit. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full: the bench reads the command as an invitation into a privilege not yet exercised, the completed joy of verse 22 now tied to a prayer life the cross and resurrection are about to make possible.

John 16:25

These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs, but the time cometh when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall shew you plainly of the Father. Paroimia, proverb or figure, names the whole discourse's manner of speech, vine and travailing woman and little while, and Jesus promises an end to it. The bench locates that plain unveiled speech variously in the post-resurrection appearances, in the Spirit's own coming teaching, and in the face-to-face knowledge glory itself will bring, the readings named without a verdict forced between them.

John 16:26-27

ask in my name: At that day ye shall ask in my name, and I say not unto you that I will pray the Father for you, for the Father himself loveth you: the verse is carefully guarded by the bench against a misreading that would make Jesus reluctant to intercede, since Romans 8:34 and Hebrews 7:25 have him doing exactly that, the point instead being that his intercession is not needed to persuade an unwilling Father, because the Father's love for the disciples is already full and direct. Because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God grounds that love in their own faith and love, not as its cause but as the relationship in which the Father's love toward them is now known and enjoyed.

John 16:28

I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world, again I leave the world, and go to the Father: the whole incarnation and return compressed into one sentence, the bench reading it as a summary the disciples finally seize on, since their response in the next verse treats this line as the plain speech Jesus had just promised. The four clauses trace an arc of pre-existence, incarnation, departure, and return that the prologue opened the Gospel with and the passion narrative is about to complete.

John 16:29-30

His disciples said unto him, Lo, now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb: the disciples take verse 28 as exactly the unveiled speech promised in verse 25, and confidence surges, Now are we sure that thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask thee, this they take as proof that thou camest forth from God. The bench reads their claim to sureness against what follows almost immediately, the Lord's own gentle question in the next verse and Peter's denial only hours away, a faith genuine as far as it goes and about to be tested past what it can yet bear.

John 16:31-33

Jesus answered them, Do ye now believe: the question is not scorn but a gentle warning, and the bench reads it preparing them for verse 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, the confident faith of verse 30 about to fail within the hour even while the Father's presence with the Son never wavers. 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: the discourse closes on a perfect tense, nenikeka, a victory already accomplished before the cross has yet been suffered, offered to the disciples as ground for peace in the very tribulation Jesus has just finished naming.