John 16:12-13

“ I have yet many things to say to you; but you have not now the strength to bear them. 13. When he, the Spirit of truth, shall have come, he will lead you into all the truth;for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall have heard, he shall speak, and he shall announce to you the things to come. ”

Jesus begins by assigning a place to the teaching of the Spirit following upon His own. At this very moment He had just told His disciples so many things which they could only half understand! From the standpoint of confidence, He had concealed nothing from them (John 15:15); but with a view to their spiritual incapacity, He had kept to Himself many revelations which were reserved for a later teaching. This subsequent revelation will, in the first place, bear upon the very contents of the teaching of Jesus, which it will cause to be better understood (John 14:25-26); then, on various points which Jesus had not even touched; for example redemption through the death of the Messiah, the relation of grace to the law, the conversion of the Gentiles without any legal condition, the final conversion of the Jews at present unbelieving, the destiny of the Church even to its consummation in a word, the contents of the Epistles and the Apocalypse, so far as they pass beyond those of the teaching of Jesus.

The Spirit is presented in John 16:13 by the term ὁδηγεῖν, to show the way, under the figure of a guide who introduces a traveller into an unknown country. This country is the truth, the essential truth of which Jesus has spoken that of salvation and this truth is Himself (John 14:6). This domain of the new creation, which Jesus can only show them from without, in the objective form, the Spirit will reveal to them by making them themselves enter into it through a personal experience.

The two readings εἰς and ἐν harmonize with the verb ὁδηγεῖν; according to the second, the disciples are considered as being already within the domain where the Spirit leads them and causes them to move forward.

The word all brings out the contrast with the incomplete teaching of Jesus.

The infallibility of this guide arises from the same cause as that of Jesus Himself (John 7:17-18): the absence of all self-originated and consequently unsound productivity. All the revelations of the Spirit will be drawn from the divine plan realized in Jesus. Satan is a liar precisely because he speaks according to an altogether different method, deriving what he says from his own resources (John 8:44). The term ὅσα ἄν, all the things which, leads us to think of a series of momentary acts. On every occasion when the apostle shall have need of wisdom, the Spirit will communicate to him whatever of the objective truth will be appropriate to the given moment.

Whether we read the future with the Vatican, or the present with the Sinaitic MS., or the aorist subjunctive with the T. R., the verb shall hear must in any case be completed by the idea: from God respecting Christ (John 15:26). The question is evidently of the teaching of things not yet heard on the earth (John 16:12), consequently of the special revelation granted to the apostles, distinct from that which every Christian receives by means of theirs. That revelation has a primordial character, while this latter one is a mere internal reproduction of the light contained in the apostolic teaching, first oral, then written. It is therefore only indirectly included in this promise. The expression “ all the truth ” contains the thought that during the present economy no new teaching respecting Christ will come to be added to that of the apostles.

To this teaching of the Spirit belongs, as a peculiarly important element, the revelation of the destiny of the Church, of the things to come. Καί, and even. As Jesus is not only the Christ come, but also the Christ coming (ὁ ἐρχόμενος, Rev 1:4), these things to come (ἐρχόμενα)are also contained in His person. The words of John 14:26 contained the formula of the inspiration of our Gospels; John 16:13 gives that of the Epistles and the Apocalypse.