John16chapter 16

The warning is exact about what was coming: they will put you out of the synagogues, and the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. Both happened. Exclusion from the synagogue cost a Jewish family its whole social world, and the man who would write most of the New Testament had himself hunted believers in the sincere belief that he was serving God.

The word for the Helper is the courtroom term again, and the work described here is prosecution rather than defence: he will convict the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment. The picture is of a case being made, not a feeling being produced.

The image of childbirth was the most familiar picture of pain that ends in joy that anyone in that world had. A woman has sorrow because her hour has come, and when the child is born she no longer remembers the anguish for joy that a human being has been born into the world. Every family had watched it, and many had watched it go wrong, which gives the promise its weight.

Praying in his name is introduced as something new — until now you have asked nothing in my name. To ask in someone's name in that culture meant to come with their authority, the way an envoy spoke for a king, and it is being handed to fishermen.