John 13:33

John 13:33. Little children, yet a little while I am with you. For them there is separation from Him, and the thought of its nearness lends more than ordinary tenderness to the words of Jesus. He calls them ‘little children,' a term found nowhere in the New Testament, except here and in the First Epistle of John (chap. 1 John 2:1; 1 John 2:12; 1 John 2:28 1 John 3:7; 1 John 3:18; 1 John 4:4; 1 John 5:21); for the more probable reading of Galatians 4:19 is simply ‘children.'

Ye shall seek me: and even as I said onto the Jews, Whither I go away, ye cannot come; so now I say to you. These words had been spoken to the Jews at chaps. John 7:34; John 8:21. It is remarkable that, formerly addressed to determined enemies, they should now be addressed to beloved disciples. Yet we are probably to seek for no other basis of the common thought than this, that the ‘going away' of Jesus involved His separation from the community of human life, from friends therefore no less than foes. The desolate state in which the disciples would thus be left, and, not less than this, the greater responsibility that would then rest upon them to carry out the work of Jesus, prepare the way for the words that follow.