Jean 16:1-6

These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended

Christ’s reasons for present speech and former silence

I. OUR LORD’S LOVING REASON FOR HIS SPEECH.

1. The two statements of Joh_16:1; Joh_4:1-54 are separated by a reiteration of the dark prospect that He has been holding out. The world is the apostate Jewish Church. A formal church is the true world, to-day as then. And such a body will do the cruellest things and believe that it is offering up Christ’s witnesses as sacrifices to God. And the bottom of it all is that in the blaze of light, and calling themselves God’s, “they do not know” either God or Christ.

2. But that is all parenthetical. Look now at the loving reasons which Christ here suggests for His speech. “That ye should not stumble.” There could be nothing more productive of intellectual bewilderment and doubt than to find oneself at odds with the synagogue about the question of the Messiah. A modest man might naturally say, “Perhaps I am wrong and they are right.” A coward would be sure to say, “I will sink my convictions and fall in with the majority.” And, says Christ, “the only way by which you will ever get over these temptations is to reflect that I told you it would be so, before it came to pass.”

3. Of course all that has a special bearing upon the apostles, &c., a secondary bearing upon Christians, who live in a time of persecution. But it also has a bearing upon us. For, if we are trying to live like our Master, we, too, shall often be surrounded by people that take such an entirely opposite view of duty and of truth, as that we shall be only too much disposed to say, “Well, perhaps after all it is better for me to hold my tongue.” And then, besides, there are all the cares and griefs which befall each of us. Christ does not try to enlist recruits by highly-coloured pictures. He tells us plainly at the beginning, “If you take My yoke upon you, you will have to carry a heavy burden.” The roadway is narrow and rough, and the gateway is very strait, but it all goes steadily up. Will you accept the terms and come in and walk upon it? Jesus Christ will have no service on false pretences. Through much tribulation we must enter the kingdom. And the way by which all these troubles and cares can best be overcome is precisely by this thought, “The Master has told us before.”

(1) Sorrows anticipated are easier met. It is when the ship is caught with all its sails set that it is almost sure to go down. But when the barometer has been watched, and its fall has given warning, and everything has been made fast, and every spare yard has been sent below, and all tightened up and made ship-shape--then she can ride out the storm. Forewarned is forearmed.

(2) Sorrow foretold gives us confidence in our guide. We have the chart, and as we look upon it we see marked “waterless country,” “pathless rocks,” “desert and sand,” “wells and palm trees.” Well, when we come to the first of these, and find ourselves as the map says; and when, as we go on mile after mile, we find that it is all down there, we say to ourselves, “The remainder will be accurate too.” And if we are in Marah to-day, we shall be at Elim to-morrow. He has told us this; if there had been anything worse than this He would have told us that.

(3) Sorrow that comes punctually in accordance with His word plainly comes in obedience to His will. “Their hour”--the time allotted to them by Him. He could tell that they would come, because it was as His instruments that they came. It was only an “hour,” a definite, appointed, and brief period in accordance with His loving purpose. It takes all sorts of weathers to make a year; and after all the sorts of weathers are run out the year’s results are realized and the calm comes.

II. OUR LORD’S LOVING REASONS FOR PAST SILENCE.

1. “These things” (Jean 16:4) include the whole of the previous chapter, in which He sets the sorrow as being the consequence of union with Him. In so systematic and detailed fashion our Lord had not spoken in His earlier ministry. And the reason why He had given but passing hints before was because He was there. What a superb confidence that expresses in His ability to shield His poor followers, “as a hen gathereth her chickens,” &c. But He is going away, and so it is time to speak, and to speak more plainly.

2. For us, too, difficulties and sorrows, though foretold in general terms, are largely hidden till they are near. It would have been of little use for Christ to have spoken more plainly before. The disciples managed to misunderstand His plain utterances about His own death and resurrection. There needs to be an adaptation between the hearing ear and the spoken word. And there are great tracts of Scripture dealing with the sorrows of life, which lie dark and dead to us, until experience vitalizes them. The old Greeks used to send messages from one army to another by means of a roll of parchment twisted spirally round a baton, and then written upon. And it was perfectly unintelligible when it fell into a man’s hands that had not a corresponding baton to twist it upon. Many of Christ’s messages to us are like that. You can only understand the utterances when life gives you the frame round which to wrap them, and then they flash up into meaning, and we say at once, “He told us it all before, and I scarcely knew that He had told me until this moment when I need it.”

(1) It is merciful that there should be a gradual unveiling of what is to come to us, that the road should wind, and that we should see so short a way before us. Did you never say to yourselves, “If I had known all this before, I do not think I could have lived to face it.” Thank God for the loving reticence, and for the as loving eloquence of His speech.

(2) There ought to be in our lives times of close communion with that Master, when His presence makes all thought of trials in the future needlessly disturbing. If these disciples had drunk in His Spirit when they were with Him, then they would not have been so bewildered when He left them.

III. THE IMPERFECT APPREHENSION OF OUR LORD’S WORDS WHICH LEADS TO SORROW INSTEAD OF JOY (Jean 16:5). The one definite idea that they gathered was that He was going. And they said, “Going? What, is to become of us?” If there had been a little less selfishness, and if they had put their question, “Going? What is to become of Him?” then it would not have been sorrow that would have filled their heart, but joy. That gives us a thought that the steadfast contemplation of the ascended Christ is the sovereign antidote against all sense of separation and solitude, the sovereign power by which we may face a hostile world, the sovereign cure for every sorrow. If we could live in the light of that great triumph, then, oh! how small would the babble of a world be. Look up to the Master that has gone, and as the dying martyr outside the city wall “saw the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing”--having sprung to His feet to help His poor servant--“at the right hand of God,” so with that vision in our eyes we shall be masters of grief and care, and sin, and feel that the absent is the present Christ, and the present Christ is the conquering power in us. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

The Church and the world

I. THE RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO THE WORLD IS THE SAME AS CHRIST’S--one of moral contrast as to character, principle, motive, inward life, whether it be the Jewish world, or the Greek, or the Roman. And it is the same now. Conceive the character of Christ, and place by the side of it that of a thoroughly worldly man, you will have the most striking contrast. “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” And marks there are, plain and palpable, between the Church and the world. There are two kinds of changes possible with respect to these.

1. They may be shifted.

(1) The Church may push them out so as to take in more and more of the world, bringing in more and more converted spirits.

(2) The world may push it in upon the Church, making inroads upon it, persecuting it. Moral ravages, too, may be made, and those who have been in the Church may backslide, and the number of the faithful may be thus diminished.

2. They may be obliterated

(1) By practical compromise. The peculiarities of Christian character are by degrees diminished, and the Church becomes more and more like the world, so that one shades itself off, and gradually fades away into the other.

(2) By theoretical dogmas. The puritan doctrine was most unmistakeable. But there is in these days a doctrine which is just the opposite, that instead of dwelling upon the distinction between the Church and the world, dwells upon what belongs to Christians and men of the world in common. Now, we must protest against this obliteration of landmarks. Christ has drawn them most distinctly, and it is at our peril that we destroy them. We believe as firmly as any in the fatherhood of God over all His creatures; but in the case of worldly men, they have broken the hands of spiritual relationship, and adopted themselves into another family. We believe also in the universality of the atonement; but still there is to be a distinction made between those who accept that gospel and those who reject it.

II. THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH IS THE SAME AS THE MISSION OF CHRIST. “As Thou hast sent Me into the world,” &c. “I am the Light of the world,” “Ye are the light of the world.” Christ is represented

1. In the Church’s testimony of truth. The Church is to hold forth the truth, to make a stand for it, to illustrate and enforce it.

2. In the Church’s missionary operations. Christ was the great Missionary, and His work is now to be carried on instrumentally by His Church. “Go ye into all the world.” There are different kinds of missions. There is the lip mission; the pen mission; the hand mission; the foot mission; but chief of all, there is the life mission, and that must be connected with all the rest. Some men have done great things for the cause of Christ by their intellectual power, by pecuniary power, by business power, but I believe there is still more to be done by moral and social power. That connected with the rest makes the rest most effective.

III. THE DESTINY OF CHRIST IN THE WORLD, AND THE DESTINY OF CHRIST’S CHURCH IN THE WORLD IS THE SAME. “If ye were of the world, the world would love his own,” &c., and so the text. A great change has been wrought in society by the influence of Christianity; so that the world is not what it was when the prediction was first spoken. And persecution does not exist now in the world as it once did. It is one part of the nominal church persecuting another. But the world is still opposed to what is most truly the spirit of Christianity. The world does not like to hear about the mediation of the Lord Jesus or the work of the Holy Spirit. And then, again, the world is not opposed to some aspects of Christian consistency. When a Christian carries out that in the way of generosity the world will praise him, but when he refuses to connive at deceit and falsehood, the spirit of the world will come out and persecute. Nor is the world so much opposed to moral consistency as to spiritual consistency. Those who oppose forms of amusement which are instinct with evil, such men the world hates. The world, too, may admire specimens of Christianity which are remote, but it does not like specimens of Christianity which are near. Bunyan dead is applauded, but Bunyan alive would not be so. Had Havelock come to England and exemplified his principles in connection with some civil callings at home, there are numbers who would have been ready to persecute the very man whom they applauded to the skies when he was far away. In many cases also the world would be found to admire Christians in spite of their Christianity, but not because of their Christianity. They are praised for their kindness, their generosity, their humility; but their fondness for prayer, their religious strictness, and so on, how often all this is regarded as an abatement! (J. Stoughton, D. D.)

They shall put you out of the synagogues

The best men liable to the worst treatment from mistaken zealots

I. THE BEST OF MEN MAY BE EXCLUDED FROM THE COMMUNION OF THOSE WHO MAY ASSUME TO BE THE TRUE AND ONLY TRUE CHURCH, and that under the notion of very bad and criminal persons. What the Jews did to the apostles hath been too frequently practised since by some of the professors of Christianity towards one another. Witness the case of Athanasius and others, in the reign and prevalency of Arianism, and the ill treatment that whole churches have met with from that haughty and uncharitable church which makes nothing of thundering out excommunication against persons and churches more Christian than herself. But it is our comfort, that the apostles were thus used by a church that made the same pretences that they do, and upon grounds every whit as plausible.

II. THEY WHO ARE THUS EXCOMMUNICATED MAY NEVERTHELESS BE TRUE MEMBERS OF THE CHURCH OF CHRIST. Men may be put out of the synagogue, and yet received into heaven; for the judgment of God is not according to the uncharitable censures of men, but according to truth and right.

III. FROM UNCHARITABLE CENSURES MEN NATURALLY PROCEED TO CRUEL ACTIONS. This has been the source of the most barbarous cruelties; witness the severity of the heathens persecution, which justified itself by the uncharitable opinion that the Christians were despisers of the gods, and consequently atheists; but they were pertinacious and obstinate in their opinions; i.e., in the modern style, heretics. And the like uncharitable conceit has been thought a sufficient ground (even in the judgment of the infallible chair) for the justification of several bloody massacres; for after men are once sentenced to eternal damnation, it seems a small thing to torment their bodies.

IV. MEN MAY DO THE VILEST AND MOST WICKED THINGS OUT OF A REAL PERSUASION THAT THEY DO RELIGIOUSLY. The great duties and virtues of religion are easy to be understood; and so are the contrary sins and vices: but then they are only plain to a teachable and honest mind; to those who receive the Word with meekness and love. But if men will give up themselves to be governed by any corrupt interest, to be blinded by prejudice, intoxicated by pride, and transported by passion, no wonder if they mistake the nature, and confound the differences of things, in the plainest and most palpable cases; no wonder if God give up persons of such corrupt minds to strong delusions to believe lies. In these cases men may take the wrong way, and yet believe themselves to be in the right and be verily persuaded that they are serving God, and sacrificing to Him. Of this we have a plain and full instance in the Scribes and Pharisees, and in St. Paul. And if God had not checked him in his course, he would have spent his whole life in persecution, and would (with Pope Paul IV. upon his death-bed) have recommended the Inquisition to the chief priests and rulers of the Jewish Church.

V. SUCH ACTIONS ARE NEVERTHELESS HORRIBLY WICKED. To make an action good and acceptable to God, we must do it with a good mind, and to a good end, and it must be good and lawful in itself.

VI. THE CORRUPTION OF THE BEST THINGS IS THE WORST. Religion is certainly the highest perfection of human nature; and zeal for God highly acceptable: and yet nothing is more barbarous, and spurs men on to more horrid impieties, than a blind zeal for God, and false and mistaken principles in the matter of religion (Actes 26:9). (Abp. Tillotson.)

Whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.

The word “doeth” is the technical word for offering sacrifice (cf. Matthieu 5:23; Matthieu 8:4)

. The word “service” means the service of worship (Romains 9:4, Romains 12:1; Hébreux 9:1). A rabbinic comment on Nombres 25:13 is, “Whosoever sheddeth the blood of the wicked is as he who offereth sacrifice.” The martyrdom of St. Stephen, or St. Paul’s account of himself as a persecutor (Actes 26:9; Galates 1:13), shows how these words were fulfilled in the first years of the Church’s history, and such accounts are not absent from that history’s latest page. (Archdeacon Watkins.)

Abuse of conscience

What a rattle and noise hath this word conscience made! How many battles has it fought? how many churches has it robbed, ruined, and reformed to ashes? how many laws has it trampled upon, dispensed with, and addressed against? and in a word, how many governments has it overturned? Such is the mischievous force of a plausible word applied to a detestable thing (Actes 26:9). (R. South, D. D.)

Put you out of the synagogue

Excommunication

was much more than simply to exclude from the place of public worship. It cut a man off from the privileges of his people, from the society of his former associates. It was a sort of moral outlawry, and the physical disabilities followed the sufferer even after death. To be under this ban was almost more than flesh and blood could bear. All men shunned him on whom such a mark was set. He was literally an outcast; in lasting disgrace and perpetual danger. Those familiar with the history of the dark ages, or who are acquainted with the effects of losing caste among the Hindoos, will be able to realize the terrors of such a system. Sometimes this punishment and degradation was a prelude even to death. At all events, the Jews, who since their subjugation by the Romans had lost the legal prerogative of life and death, yet thought it meritorious even by irregular and clandestine measures to compass the destruction of those who were obnoxious. And the men who, in however underhand a manner, carried out the secret sentence of their displeasure were regarded by the rulers with approbation. So that there grew up a desperate and fanatical sect among them, which went by a name which in our adopted term of “zealot” has a very mitigated meaning. (G. J. Brown, M. A.)

Excommunication among the Jews

The three degrees of excommunication among the Jews were

1. Niddui, putting out of the synagogue (Luc 6:22). And the effect of this excommunication was to exclude men from the communion of the Church and people of God and from His service, which was a great disgrace, because after this sentence none of the Jews were to converse with them, but to look upon them as heathens and publicans.

2. Cherem, which extended farther, to the confiscation of goods into the sacred treasury, and devoting them to God, after which there was no redemption of them (Esdras 10:7).

3. Shammatha

when the rebellious and contumacious person was anathematized and devoted, and, as some conceive, according to the law Lévitique 27:29), was to be put to death; though other very knowing men in the Jewish learning think it amounted to no more than a final sentence, whereby they were left to the judgment of God, by some remarkable judgment of His to be cut off from the congregation of Israel. Of the first and last of these degrees of excommunication our Saviour seems here to speak. (Archbishop Tillotson.)

Gratitude for massacre

One of the most horrid circumstances attending the dreadful massacre of the Protestants under Charles IX. of Prance was that, when the news of this event reached Rome, Pope Gregory XIII. instituted the most solemn rejoicing, giving thanks to Almighty God for this glorious victory over the heretics!!

Religious fanaticism

In the Huguenot persecution in Belgium and France in 1562, the inhabitants of the town of Orange fell into the hands of the Catholics. They were hacked to pieces, burnt at slow fires, or left, infamously mutilated, to bleed to death. Noble ladies, first sacrificed to the lust of the soldiers, were exposed in the streets to die--either naked, or pasted over in devilish mockery with the torn leaves of their Geneva Bibles. Old men and children, women and sick, all perished under cruelties unexampled even in the infernal annals of religious fanaticism. (J. A.Froude.)

Religious intolerance dishonouring to God

In one of the Jews’ books it is stated that when Abraham sat at his tent door, according to his custom, waiting to entertain strangers, he espied an old man stooping and leaning on his staff, weary with age and travel, coming towards him, who was a hundred years of age. He received him kindly, washed his feet, provided supper, and caused him to sit down. But observing that the old man eat and prayed not, nor begged for a blessing on his meat, he asked him why he did not worship the God of heaven. The old man told him that he worshipped the fire only, and acknowledged no other God. At which answer Abraham grew so zealously angry, that he thrust the old man out of his tent, and exposed him to all the evils of the night and an unguarded condition. When the old man was gone, God called to Abraham and asked him where the stranger was. He replied, “I thrust him away because he did not worship Thee.” God answered him, “I have suffered him these hundred years, although he dishonoured Me; and couldest thou not endure him one night, when he gave thee no trouble?” Upon this, salts the story, Abraham fetched him back again, and gave him hospitable entertainment and wise instruction. “Go thou, and do likewise,” and thy charity will be rewarded by the God of Abraham. (Jeremy Taylor.)

The fate of the first disciples

Matthew suffered martyrdom by the sword in Ethiopia. Mark died at Alexandria, after being dragged through the city. Luke was hanged on an olive tree in Greece. Peter was crucified at Rome with his head downward. James was beheaded at Jerusalem. James the less was thrown from a pinnacle of the Temple and beaten to death below.
Philip was hanged against a pillar in Phrygia. Bartholomew was flayed alive. Andrew was bound to a cross, whence he preached to his persecutors till he died. Thomas was run through the body at Coromandel, in India. Jude was shot to death with arrows. Matthias was first stoned, and then beheaded. Barnabas was stoned to death by Jews at Salonica. Paul, “in deaths oft,” was beheaded at Rome by Nero. (J. Angus, D. D.)

Because they have not known the Father, nor Me

The tribulation explained

I. TRACED TO ITS CAUSE--ignorance. It is strange how differently Christ and man may view the same action. The Jews imagined they above all men were acquainted with the Father, and knew better than all the world beside what kind of service to present upon His altar. This was not the judgement of Christ.

II. CONDEMNED IN ITS CHARACTER. Though Christ ascribed their behaviour to ignorance, He does not say that for this they were not responsible, if they did not know the Father or Him they might have known Jean 15:22).

III. COMMISERATED IN ITS ACTORS. One cannot help thinking Christ designed His words to awaken pity in the breasts of His persecuted followers, like that afterwards found in His own, when, hanging on the cross, He prayed for His murderers (Luc 23:34). (T. Whitelaw,D. D.)

But now I go My way to Him that sent Me

Going to God

He says, not that He is going the way of all the earth, because He was not going as all flesh must go, from the necessity of man’s nature, but of His own will. All things which He suffered on earth were a going to His Father, a fulfilment of His mission, and the way by which He was to return to Him that sent Him. By His cross and passion, by His sufferings and death, was His kingdom to be set up and His throne established. And by reminding His disciples of this truth He seeks to assuage their grief, and to prevent their being offended in Him, since, however greatly He should be humiliated, and however many His sufferings might be, they were all but a going to His Father, all but the means by which His glory was to be made known unto men. This thought was the consolation of the Man Christ Jesus, and with the same thought He consoles us. The oil from the head of our Great High Priest flowed down to all His members, even the oil of gladness to comfort them in all their troubles. The whole of this present life of man is one continual going either to God or from Him. All thoughts and deeds of our daily life are either separating us from our heavenly Father or drawing us towards Him in whose presence we are at all times. It is our vocation to pass through life into the glory of our Father; and our duty to remember that whilst all is shifting around us, the Christian’s career is in itself a going the way to Him that sent him. (W. Denton, M. A.)

None of you asked Me, Whither goest Thou?

Misdirected and sanctified curiosity

Curiosity is often reprehensible. It is the fault of many to wish to pry into matters which they had much better never know. But there is one direction in which inquiry is never out of place. We can never be too anxious to know about Christ, the reasons of His movements, and the explanations of His doings (1 Pierre 1:10). Here anxious interest and casting about for light are not only legitimate, but necessary to our proper instruction, comfort, and salvation (Jaques 1:5). But just here it is that the human heart is most sluggish. People spend their lives searching into questions of political and domestic economy, finance, commerce, agriculture, education. They toil and experiment touching the character, relations, and classifications of rocks, metals, soils, plants, insects, reptiles, animals, birds, and flowers. They explore and labour, at every expense and inconvenience, to make and test theories about the world. They rummage the darkest histories of the past, and exhaust their powers speculating upon the phenomena of human life, and perplex themselves about a thousand things in reference to which the best wisdom is as useless as it is scanty. But when it comes to the great and mighty movements of the Lord of all, the incarnation of Jehovah for the redemption of a world labouring under the curse of sin, and those moral and spiritual administrations, without which all the universe must be as nothing to us, they have no inquiries of living interest to propound. And to many an energetic sage and earnest searcher in departments not a thousandth part the account of this, the wronged and burdened Saviour is compelled to say, “I go My way to Him that sent Me; and none of you asketh Me, Whither goest Thou?” And especially in times of affliction, when the good Lord seems to withdraw Himself, and leave us to ourselves and our weaknesses, does the Saviour find occasion to complain of the deadness of men, paralyzed with their griefs, when they ought to be inquiring of Him about the reasons and objects of them. He has His explanations for all our days of darkness, and an antidote for every pain or privation we suffer, if only we had the faith and interest to ask after it. But the human heart is such an inveterate doubter, and so ready to give way before what is afflictive and dark, that we often miss the very consolations which are at hand, just because we are too dull and despondent to make the requisite inquiry. (J. A. Seiss, M. A.)