John 16:5-7

“ But now I go away to him who sent me; and no one of you asks me, Whither goest thou? 6. But, because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. 7. But I tell you the truth: it is expedient for you that I go away; for, if I go not away, the support will not come to you; but when I shall have gone away, I will send him to you. ”

The idea of the departure in John 16:5-6 is naturally connected with the last words of John 16:4: “because I was with you.” It forms the transition to the promise of the Paraclete in John 16:7, since the departure of Jesus is the condition of the sending of the Holy Spirit. De Wette and Lucke have needlessly proposed to place John 16:6 between the two clauses of John 16:5.

The connection is clear; from the great conflict Jesus passes to the great promise. Jesus is grieved at seeing His disciples preoccupied only with the separation which is approaching, and not at all with the glorious goal to which this departure will lead Him. Love should impel them to ask Him respecting that new state into which He is about to enter (John 14:28). Instead of this, He sees them preoccupied only with the desolate condition in which His departure is to leave them, and plunged thereby into a gloomy dejection. Weiss thinks that Jesus means: “You do not ask me further because now you understand.” But the light does not come into their minds until later (John 16:29-30). There is evidently in the words: “No one of you asks me,” a friendly reproach. As Hengstenberg says: “Jesus would have been glad to find in them at this moment the joyous enthusiasm of hearts which open themselves to the prospects of a new epoch, and which do not unceasingly continue to put presumptuous questions respecting what it promised them.” The questions of Peter, Thomas and Philip did not bear upon this luminous side of His near departure, and besides, at the moment when Jesus was speaking, they were already quite at a distant point of the conversation.

The words: Because I have said these things to you (John 16:6), signify, as following upon John 16:5: Because I have spoken to you of separation, of conflict, of sufferings. In John 16:7 Jesus makes appeal first, as in John 14:2, to the conviction which they have of His veracity. The ἐγώ, I, at the beginning, emphasizes in opposition to their ignorance the knowledge which He Himself possesses of the true state of things. Then He announces to them spontaneously a part of these joyful things which they were not eager to ask of Him. This departure is His re-establishment in the divine state, and the latter is the condition of the sending of the Spirit which He will secure for them. We find here again the idea of John 7:39: “ The Spirit was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified. ” That He may on their behalf dispose of this supreme agent, it is necessary that He should be Himself restored to the divine state. This mission implies, therefore, the complete glorification of His humanity.

He does not, in this passage, make any mention of the sacrifice of the cross and of the reconciliation of the world, that first condition of the gift of the Spirit. This silence is explained by the declaration of John 16:12: “ I have yet many things to say to you; but you cannot bear them. ” John explains himself very distinctly on this point in his Epistle (John 2:1-2, John 5:6; John 5:8); which proves, indeed, that he has not allowed himself to make Jesus speak here after his own fancy. Besides, Reuss is himself obliged, indeed, to acknowledge that this part of the discourse is addressed expressly to the Eleven, and not, as he always affirms, to the readers of the evangelist, and he tries in vain to escape the consequence which follows from this fact in favor of the historical truth of these discourses.