John 16:12

Joh_16:12-15

I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.

--The original implies that such teaching as that of the Cross would have been a crushing burden (cf. Joh_19:17; Luk_11:46; Luk_14:27; Gal_6:2; Gal_6:5; Act_15:10)

. The Resurrection brought the strength which enabled believers to support it. (Bp. Westcott.)

The wisdom of delayed revelation

I remember, says Dr. Pierre, on my return to France, after a long voyage to India, as soon as the sailors had discerned the shores of their native country, they became in a great measure incapable of attending to the duties of the ship; some looked at it wistfully, others dressed themselves in their best clothes; some talked, others wept. As we approached their joy became greater; and still more intense was it when we came into port, and saw on the quay their parents and children; so that we had to get, according to the custom of the port, another set of sailors to bring us into the harbour. Thus would it be with Gods children if they saw the full and unclouded glory of eternity before they reach the eternal heaven. I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now (Joh_16:12):

The Guide into all truth

This is our Lords last expansion of the great promise of the Comforter. First, He was spoken of simply as dwelling in Christs servants. Then, His aid was promised, to remind the apostles of the facts of Christs life, especially of His words; and so the inspiration and authority of the four Gospels were certified for us. Then He was further promised as the witness in the disciples to Jesus Christ. In the preceding context we have His office of convicting the world. And now we come to that gracious work which He is to do for all those who trust themselves to His guidance. We have here

I. THE AVOWED INCOMPLETENESS OF CHRISTS OWN TEACHING (Joh_16:12).

1. Earlier we have our Lord asserting that all things whatsoever He had heard of the Father He had made known unto His servants. Is it possible to make these two representations agree? Yes! There is a difference between the germ and the flower; between principles and complete development.

All Euclid is in the axioms and definitions, yet when you have learned them there are many things yet to be said, of which you have not grown to the apprehension. And so our Lord, as far as confidence and fundamental and seminal principles were concerned, had declared all that He had heard. But yet, in so far as the unfolding of these was concerned, the tracing of their consequences, the exhibition of their harmonies, the weaving of them into an ordered whole in which a mans understanding could lodge, there were many things which they were not able to bear. And so our Lord declares that His spoken words on earth are not the completed revelation.

2. We cannot but contrast the desultory, brief, obscure references which came from the Masters lips with the more systematized and full teaching which came from the servants, especially in reference to the atoning character of His sufferings.

3. What then? My text gives us the reason. You cannot bear them now, not in the sense of endure, tolerate, or suffer, but in the sense of carry. And the metaphor is that of some weight--it may be gold, but still it is a weight--laid upon a man whose muscles are not strong enough to sustain it. It crushes rather than gladdens. So our Lord was lovingly reticent. There is a great principle involved here. A wise physician does not flood that diseased eye with full sunshine, but puts on bandages, and closes the shutters, and lets a stray beam, ever growing as the cure is perfected, fall upon it.

(1) So from the beginning until the end of the process of revelation there was a correspondence between mans capacity to receive the light, and the light that was granted; and the faithful use of the less made them capable of receiving the greater. To him that hath shall be given.

(2) Now that same principle is true about us. How many things there are which we sometimes feel we should like to know, but compassed with these veils of flesh and weakness we have not yet eyes able to behold the ineffable glory. Let us wait with patience until we are ready for the illumination.

4. People tell us, Your modern theology is not in the Gospels. We stick by Jesus, not Paul. What then? Why this, it is exactly what we were to expect; and people who reject the apostolic form of Christian teaching because it is not found in the Gospels are going clean contrary to Christs own words.

II. THE COMPLETENESS OF THE TRUTH INTO WHICH THE SPIRIT GUIDES (Joh_16:13).

1. Note the personality, designation, and office of this new Teacher. He, not it, He, is the Spirit of Truth. He will guide you--suggesting a loving hand put out to lead--into all truth. That is no promise of omniscience, but the assurance of gradual and growing acquaintance with the truth which is revealed, such as may be fitly paralleled by men passing into some broad land of which, there is much still to be possessed and explored. He shall not speak of Himself, &c. Mark the parallel between the relation of the Spirit-teacher to Jesus and the relation of Jesus to the Father. All things whatsoever I have heard of the Father I have declared unto you. The mark of Satan is He speaketh of his own; the mark of the Divine Teacher is, He speaketh not of Himself, but whatsoever things, in all their variety, in their continuity, in their completeness, He shall hear. Where? Yonder in the depths of the Godhead--whatsoever things He shall hear--there, He shall show to you. And especially, He will show you the things that are to come. Step by step there would be spread out before them the vision of the future and all the wonder that should be, the world that was to come, the new constitution which Christ was to establish.

2. Now, if that be the interpretation, then

(1) This promise of a complete guidance into truth applies in a peculiar and unique fashion to the original hearers of it. One of the other promises of the Spirit was the certificate to us of the inspiration and reliableness of these four Gospels. In these words there lie involved the inspiration and authority of the apostles as teachers of religious truth. And so for us the task is to receive the truth into which they were guided. The Acts of the Apostles is the best commentary on these words. There you see how these men rose at once into a new region; how the things about their Master which had been bewildering puzzles to them flashed into light. In the book of the Apocalypse we have part of the fulfilment of He will show you things to come; when the seer was in the Spirit on the Lords day, and so the heavens were opened, and the history of the Church was spread before him as a scroll.

(2) This great principle has an application to us. That Divine Spirit is given to each of us if we will use it. Only we do not stand on the same level as these men. They, taught by that Divine Guide and by experience, were led into the deeper apprehension of the words and the deeds of Jesus. We, taught by that same Spirit, are led into a deeper apprehension of the words which they spake. And so we come sharp up to this. If any man thinketh himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, &c. That is how an apostle put his relation to the other possessors of the Divine Spirit. And you and I have to take this as the criterion of all true possession of the Spirit of God that it bows in humble submission to the authoritative teaching of this book.

III. THE UNITY OF THESE TWO.

1. He shall glorify Me. Think of a man saying that! So fair is He, so good, so radiant, that to make Him known is to glorify Him. The glorifying of Christ is the ultimate and adequate purpose of everything that God the Father, Son, and Spirit has done, because the glorifying of Christ is the glorifying of God, and the blessing of the eyes that behold His glory.

2. For He shall take of Mine, and show it unto you. All that that Divine Spirit brings is Christs. So, then, there is no new revelation, only the interpretation of the revelation. Christ said, I am the Truth. Therefore, when He promises, He shall guide you into all the truth, we may fairly conclude that the truth into which the Spirit guides is the personal Christ. We are like the first settlers upon some great island-continent. There is a little fringe of population round the coast, but away in the interior are leagues of virgin forests and fertile plains stretching to the horizon, and snow-capped summits piercing the clouds, on which no foot has ever trod.

3. All things that the Father hath are Mine, therefore said I, &c. (verse 15). What awful words! Is that what you think about Jesus Christ? He puts out here an unpresumptuous hand, and grasps all the constellated glories of the Divine nature, and says, They are Mine; and the Father looks down from heaven and says, Son, Thou art ever with Me, and all that I have is Thine. Do you answer, Amen! I believe it?

Conclusion:

1. Believe a great deal more definitely in, and seek a great deal more earnestly, and use a great deal more diligently that Divine Spirit that is given to us all. I fear that over very large tracts of professing Christendom men only stand up with very faltering lips and confess, I believe in the Holy Ghost. Hence comes much of the weakness of our modern Christianity, the worldliness of professing Christians.

2. Use the book that He uses--else you will not grow, and He will have no means of contact with you.

3. Try the spirits. If anything calling itself Christian teaching comes to you and does not glorify Christ, it is self-condemned. And if the great teaching Spirit is to come who is to guide us into all truth, and therein is to glorify Christ, and to show us the things that are His, then it is also true, hereby know we the Spirit of God, &c. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

Yet many things to say

There is always a pathos in last words. Those of great men become the inspiration of future generations; those of the humblest become sacred as gospels to those who loved them. Of dying teachers we expect last views of truth; of dying captains last advices for the campaign; of dying leaders some inspiring programme. But it can scarcely be said that Christs programme is an inspiring one. He prophesies tribulation, and dies with the fulness of His teaching unexplained, Note

I. CHRIST FORESEEING THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIS OWN TEACHINGS. It must be remembered that the ministry of Christ was not a harvesting. He had only time to cast in the good seed of the kingdom. But then there is a sense in which the man who looks upon the seed virtually is looking on the harvest too. So Christ saw in His teachings the prophecy of their fulfilment. He said that His words were Spirit and life. There are many issues, many harvests of the word of Christ, which He dare not even intimate to us yet. Yet the time will come, for this Galilean peasant dares to stand forth in the light of all the ages, and to say, Heaven and earth shall pass away; My teachings shall never pass away. Note, for instance

1. What Christ has to say about war. There is one of the sorest problems of the world, and Christ lived under the domination of the greatest military empire which the world has ever seen. In one sense He says nothing about it, except to prophecy of it when He is gone. What, then, was Christs attitude towards it? Love thy neighbour as thyself. That is the seed. Ages have trampled with heavy feet above it; and tens of thousands of men, women, and children have been crushed beneath this frightful Juggernaut. But the seed is not dead: now, after eighteen centuries, a tiny spear of green life begins to pierce through the red soil of the battle-field. Men gather round, and, behold, it is the plant of peace at last. Whatever be the wickedness of rulers, or the folly of statesmen, the entire sentiment of Europe towards war has changed; and governments talk of arbitration, and war is dreaded, shunned, hated by every civilized power.

2. What Christ has to say on slavery. Christ was familiar with it, and knew what it meant and would mean. What, then, did Christ say? Well, He did not go up and down Palestine preaching the abolition of slavery or the rights of man. Yet Jesus Christ overturned slavery, and that by recognizing the divinity of human nature--that the lost are worth saving; that the harlot and the publican were created in the image of God; and Christ said: If any man will be great among you, let him be servant of all. That is to say, He recognized the dignity and grandeur of service. That was the seed. Ages pass, till at last Macaulay, Wilberforce, &c., are praying, and the heavens seem to open and the authentic voice of Christ reaches them, and in the strength of that vision they begin their great crusade, till, at last, exactly eighteen hundred years after Christ bowed His head on Calvary, England pays down her twenty millions to free her last slave. And thirty years later, at the price of one of the greatest wars in history, America knocks the last shackle off her last slave.

3. He has many things to say to us on such questions as communism, socialism, liberty, sacrifice; for His life was the seed. He was the Divine Socialist, who, being rich, for our sakes became poor. He was the Heavenly Communist, who shared His hearts blood with us. He was the Great Liberator who made us free with a glorious liberty. He was the Sacrifice who gave Himself the just for the unjust that He might bring us to God. Very dimly and feebly have the wisest apprehended the truths that lie in those words. But the time will come when God will send His new teacher; and then that Christianity which began in a commune will end with a brotherhood, which says not, thine is mine, but, mine is thine.

4. Christ has much to say, too, of the duties that the Church owes to the world; and if we would know how long it takes for men to learn the issues of the words of Christ, just think how long it took England to learn what Christ meant by Go and preach the gospel unto every creature. Eleven centuries of Christianity pass in this land, during which the people perish in their darkness; until at last a clergyman against whom the Church doors are closed goes out into the highways and hedges to find his congregation, and says, with magnificent prevision, The world is my parish.

II. THIS PRINCIPLE OF GRADUAL ADVANCEMENT IS CHRISTS PRINCIPLE IN ALL THINGS.

1. For illustration you need go no farther than this very supper chamber. How fast Simons heart is beating! He has just said, I will go with Thee to prison and to judgment. Hush! Thy Master is about to speak. Where shall He begin? He sees the vision of thee, old and grey, girded by those whom thou knowest not, &c. He knows all the paths of pain thy martyr feet will tread. Shall He tell thee all that? No. It would not make a Judas of thee, but it might make a Demas, who would love the wicked world more than Christ. It would break thy heart. Wait thou. Thou must stand in the blackness and hear that last cry that thrills from that cross of shame, and then, when thou hast wept thine heart out in an agony of penitence, at last the morning will break beside the grey sea when Christ will meet thee, and then He will tell thee everything; but thou couldst not bear it now.

2. There are successive revelations for every age and for every man. They never come too soon; they never come too late. The Church is like a man who sits in a darkened room. He has been blind; he begins to see. Day by day a little more light is let into the chamber. At last the hour will come when the blinds will be rolled right up, and the windows flung wide open. We shall look out. There will be a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. Music has much to say to the little child. He begins snatches of his mothers lullaby, cradle songs, nursery rhymes. Then, as the years pass by, higher strains engross him. The deep chords of wailing and distress wake the poet in his brain. He bathes himself in the angel joy of Handel. He himself, perhaps, becomes a young Mozart or a Haydn. Music had much to say, but it waited till the heart was deep enough and the brain strong enough to receive the message. So the Church learnt her cradle song at Bethlehem, her hymn of pain on Calvary, her victorious marching music at Pentecost. In the dungeon and the fire her voice has been trained to its noblest use, until at last, without a single jarring discord, she shall sing in that new song which is never old--the praise and glory of the Lamb.

3. Some one says, I thought that all Christs words were in the Gospels. I know all that Christ has said, for I have read them. I congratulate you, for I do not. I find that Christs words are like the sea, which deepens evermore as we go farther into it. I find that Christ has always something new to say. Oh, think of it! For all these centuries men have been preaching out of these fragmentary sketches of biography--these broken words of Christ, and yet they are newer and deeper and Diviner to-day than ever they were before. Therefore, if Christ says nothing to me, I know that it is not because Christ is not speaking, but it is because I am deaf and am not listening. He tells me His truth as I am able to bear it.

4. Or, perhaps, some one says again, Oh, if Christ had this great foresight, that He would tell me something about my own future. Let me paint you a little picture. See, out of church there come those two who have plighted their troth each to each until death them shall part; and with what happy pride they step forth into the unknown years. Now, suppose I know their future, and I tell that fair young bride how she will know poverty and trial, and watch by sick children, and weep over little graves; and how he will grow old and grey before his time, vexed with many cares and hurt with many sorrows. Yes, and one of those two must close the others eyes in the coffin! Ah! which? Shall I tell them which? Would there be any more joy in marriage mornings, any more music in wedding bells? I will not tell them. And neither will Christ tell me. He has many things to say, but He wants the quietness of the house of sickness to say some, and the more solemn silence of the house of death to say others. Ye could not bear them now. Conclusion: So I learn that for much of Christs speech you and I must wait for another world. There are so many things that you and I would like to ask Christ about. Why did that great ambition cheat me so? Why did that bright joy crumble into ashes? Why did that fair angel child flit so early into heaven? I cannot tell; but I shall see Christ some day, and He will tell me everything. (W. J. Dawson.)

The reserve of Christ

I. THE SAYINGS OF JESUS.

1. They are the expression of the deepest and purest earnestness. There is no aim at any outward demonstration; yet in reading and reflecting upon them, they sink into your deeper life, they gain upon your reason, sentiment, and conscience, until at last they leaven you with their spiritual life, and you become His disciples through their life-power. This earnestness made Him despise all artifice and cunning concealment, and led Him to present His thoughts and sentiments natural and openly, without varnish and pomp.

2. They are the expression of the highest wisdom. Solomon uttered many wise proverbs; but Christs sayings contain the wisdom of life, of salvation, which Solomon and other wise men never pretended. He is the wisdom of God.

3. They are of perpetual and universal power and authority. The sayings of wise men like coins lose their weight and value in their use, because they are not essential for life and happiness, for all times and places; but the sayings of Jesus remain in their weight and authority, because we ever need them to guide and comfort us. Before anything which belongs to men can be of perpetual authority and fitness, it must

(1) Be comprehensive of all nature, and have provision to meet it in all its phases and relations, which is one reason why the sayings of Jesus remain the same.

(2) Harmonize with all essential laws outside itself, which is another reason why the sayings of Jesus perpetuate their power and authority. Essential laws change not. In vain all artificial powers try to prop a thing contrary to the laws of the universe and the constitution of our mind. The unnatural will perish by the hand of nature.

(3) Be capable of new development and application, which is another element constituting the permanent authority of Christs sayings. They are ever deeper than our plummet, and loftier than our highest reach. Like rich grapes, the more they are squeezed the richer and sweeter is their sap. The sayings of Jesus are like seed buried for a while, but which, by suitable agencies, will be restored to new life and fresh application.

4. They are expressions of His love. Love may be shown by tears, by gifts, and by sacrifices, as Jesus showed His; but the most common expressions of rational minds are words; these remain when tears are dried, and gifts and sacrifices are forgotten. Christ spoke as never man spoke, for He spoke from a true heart to the heart of humanity, according to the law of truth and love, which will abide for ever, and so He still speaks.

II. THE RESERVE OF JESUS. It was a reserve

1. In the surplus which was beyond and above the immediate need of His disciples. They had every way more than actually they needed to meet their present necessity. He had already told them more than they understood; He had given them work more than as yet they performed; He had declared already of privileges and blessings greater than they enjoyed; and their difficulties and persecutions were as numerous and heavy as they could well bear without speaking of more. It does not appear requisite on any ground to tell them more at present. They must master their present lessons before they are fit for more.

2. Was dictated by wisdom, to educate their Christian graces and character. He was a wise Master; He did not cram all into one lesson. There may be things which belong to this hour only that demand to be told as complete as they are, and that because we are fit to comprehend and use them now, and shall be unfit at any other time. But a system of spiritual education demands to be revealed little by little. If all the evil of the future were told us, it would discourage and distract all our life; or if all the good, it would partly destroy its enjoyment. The reticence of Christ was intended to keep alive their expectation for future blessings, and thus preserve them from flagging and weariness in their toil and trial, and to preserve their freshness of faith and experience.

3. Was inevitable because of the inexhaustibleness of His resources. Every true teacher has always something more to say. He never says all in any lesson or sermon. How could such riches of knowledge and love be bestowed all at one time, and that to feeble minds and contracted sympathies? The light was greater than their eyes, the cloud was larger than the field, the shower richer than the blades, and the ocean immeasurably greater than their cups.

4. Was a reticence of anticipation. What was unsaid should be declared another day with a comment.

III. THE PRESENT UNFITNESS OF THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD TO BEAR THE SAYINGS OF JESUS. It is the general misfortune of every great teacher to be misunderstood. The unfitness of the present age consists in

1. A want of greater sympathy with His teaching, and more insight into its meaning. As it is in any branch of knowledge, so is it with truth and character; without some sympathy to begin with in the object of our search, or faith, we shall not acquire an insight into it. Sympathy with the things of the Saviour is quite a different thing from certain attachments to certain appellations and certain acquired opinions. What we need is that deep attachment of our spirits with something that is common to all, and unchangeable in all times, in the person, life, and sayings of Jesus.

2. Overweening and preconceived attachment to other and contrary things to His sayings. This may be opinion, pleasure, worldly aggrandisement, self-indulgence, or any other wrong and sinful way. Or it may be some contracted habits, which have sunk into the very root of our nature, so that we have lost the power to renounce them. It may be associates who are loved more than Him; or it may be careless and blind indifference of all truth and goodness. Even what is right, if used in the wrong way, and the truth if misapplied or not used rightly, may unfit for His teaching and truth. Whatever absorbs the attention of the soul, so that it cannot listen fully and impartially to Him, unfits to bear His truth and spirit.

3. The many discordant voices that are heard. There is such a contradictory crying, Here is Christ, and there is Christ. Not that these voices are altogether false, for there is some Christ doubtless in all. But their great wrong is in the pretension that He is all with them, and none with others. These things perplex many, and keep them away from listening to the sayings of the Saviour; and until men will love Christianity more than sects, and the spirit of the Saviour more than habits and opinion, they will continue.

4. The materialistic spirit of the age. This world is the kingdom of most; they neither have taste nor time to think and trouble themselves about any other; and the love of the world is enmity against God.

5. An unwillingness to see our own wrong, and be corrected and directed rightly. The teaching of the Saviour is too spiritual, high, and searching, to suit our sensuous desire and self-indulgent view and feeling. This is the condemnation, &c.

6. The breadth and catholicity of His teaching. He is a teacher of truth, and not of party; He claims mankind as His suitable audience, and not a small portion of it. Such teaching is too lofty for men of narrow conceptions and small hearts.

7. The weakness of our powers and the imperfect character of the present state. For now we see through a glass darkly, &c. (T. Hughes.)

Christs reticence in teaching truth

I. SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF THIS FEATURE OF CHRISTS TEACHING.

1. Take some of the truths to which we may suppose our Lord made immediate reference.

(1) The long separation which was about to take place between Him and His disciples. This would have been a terrible prospect, to them, with the sense they then had of entire dependence on His outward presence. There was but one thing that could enable them to bear this prospect--the descent of the Comforter. Till then it is not made clear to them.

(2) The fall of the Mosaic dispensation, accompanied with the destruction of the Jewish State, and the scattering of the nation. The whole foundation of their faith would have been convulsed by the thought of this. It was only the unfolding of Christianity in its spiritual power, and the transference of their affections to a higher fatherland, that could enable them to bear it.

(3) The admission of men of all nations upon equal terms to the privileges of the children of God. It was only the perception of Christs relationship to man as man that could lead them to cast wide the gospel-door to every sinner.

(4) The gradual way in which lie made the true view of His own person dawn on them. Had they known, as they came afterwards to know, the full truth of His Divinity, they could not have borne it. It needed that they should have the tenderness and condescension of His character, as well as its purity and grandeur, brought out by the Spirit, before they could realize that God incarnate had entered our world.

2. Consider the manner of His revelation of truth to the world in general.

(1) The parable was Christs favourite method in speech, and the miracle m action. In both of these a man sees little or much, according to the spirit he brings, and what he sees is always growing into something deeper and higher, as he ponders it. It is this manner of Christs teaching which makes it suited to all the years of human life, as it is suited to every age of the world. The youngest child can understand something of it, and the most mature Christian feels that he has not reached the end of it.

(2) The Old Testament teaching was conducted in the same way. The symbols and the sacrifices were Divine parables, where the learners were made their own instructors. There is nothing more beautiful than to trace how their views of guilt, pardon, and holiness kept equal pace, growing in clearness till Christ came and satisfied all their longings when they were prepared for Him.

(3) When we come down to the ages that have followed His appearance upon earth, there is the same gradual unfolding of the principles of His kingdom. The great Reformers of the Christian Church were led on to their final views by slow degrees. If Luther had seen the whole course that lay before him when he opened the epistle to the Romans, he might have shrunk back in fear. But darkness was made light before him as he advanced, till a new dawn rose upon the Christian world. When churches and nations are brought out of Egypt, they do not see the long wanderings that are before them. Marsh and Meribah would terrify them; and yet these have all their lessons of faith and fortitude, which qualify Gods people for conquering the land of their birthright.

3. In the individual life.

(1) Take, e.g., the way in which the view of human life alters as men advance in years. Were the young to discover how unsatisfactory the present world is at the core, they could not bear it. The young need the bright view of the world to develop their energies--to nurse their affections and imagination--that when the veterans droop they may come in, like a fresh reinforcement, into the failing battle of life.

(2) There is a similar experience in the Christian life. Those who enter on it have the confident feeling which would gain triumphs without thinking of trials. They have the love of their youth, the zeal of their espousals, and they cannot conceive that it should ever be otherwise. But then comes the check and change, chillness of feeling, temptation, the bitter cross, and long prospects of march and battle before the close. Ere this, however, they have learned to add to their faith virtue and temperance and patience--to put on the whole armour of God, and having done all to stand.

(3) The afflictive events of Gods providence are measured in the same way. The days of darkness come, and they are many, but our eye takes in only the first. One wave hides another, and the effort to encounter the foremost withdraws our thought from evils which are pressing on.

(4) The great doctrines of the gospel are presented to the mind in a like manner. There are many who cannot bear at first the full view of the sovereignty of God. But grace and unconditioned freeness go forward, and with joined hands embrace at last the lofty doctrine of Gods sovereignty, while they say, Not unto us, &c.

II. SOME OF THE CONCLUSIONS TAUGHT US REGARDING CHRIST AND HUMAN NATURE.

1. In regard to Christ, we have reason to admire

(1) His control alike over Himself and His message. He is so absorbed by it that He can say, The zeal of Throe house hath devoured me, and yet He is not possessed by it like a frenzied instrument. There is calmness with all His depth--because of His depth. A little knowledge makes men eager to tell all they have. We read of God that it is His glory to conceal a thing. And Christ has this same token of Divinity. He is neither the slave nor organ, but the Owner and Lord of truth. It was the saying of a philosopher, If I had all the truth in my hand, I would let forth only a ray at a time, lest I should blind the world.

(2) His tenderness. The rays of the Sun of Righteousness do not injure the most delicate tissue of the eye on which they fall. It needs the most loving heart to have such pity on ignorance as to feel that premature knowledge may hurt it, and to refrain from acting the tyrant in the possession of superior intellect--to have a giants strength, but not to use it like a giant.

(3) His wisdom. Wisdom is displayed not so much in doing the right thing, as in doing it at the right time. No crisis has ever yet appeared when Christs word was not ready to take the van of human movement. The truths in their particular application may have lain unmarked--or revealed themselves only to a few sentinels watching for the dawn--till some great turn in the life of humanity comes, and then the principles of freedom and right and universal charity shine out so clear and undoubted, that men wonder at their past blindness. When so it is, we need not fear any want of harmony between the Word of Christ and the progress of science. It was never Christs intention to reveal scientific truth in His Word; but the indentations of the two revolving wheels will be found to fit, whenever they really come into contact; and the only thing broken will be the premature human harmonizings which are thrust in between them.

(4) His patience. He is not in restless commotion to have His work done on the instant; nor does He abandon it in discontent when men prove inapt and slow. He has often to say in sorrow, more than in anger, How is it that ye do not understand? but He patiently begins His labour again, and is long-suffering to our ignorance, as to our sins. Short-lived men must speak out all their mind before they die, but the centuries belong to Christ, and He can calmly wait.

2. Concerning our common human nature.

(1) We should take large and tolerant views of it. When we see how slowly the best of men have apprehended the clearest of all truths, we must not be provoked at what we call the stupidity and prejudice of our contemporaries. If the great Teacher had to wait, we may be content to do so. There are errors which give way only when God takes them into His own hand by the events of His Providence. It is marvellous how a turn in the road opens whole landscapes of truth to men, and lets them see what no logic could convince them of.

(2) We may cherish very hopeful views of it. There must be noble things in store for that race with which the Son of God is contented to have such patience. If the great Husbandman waits so long for the feeble, springing blade, how precious must the full harvest be! There are ages for the world to learn in, and an eternity for the individual; and when the soul is able to bear full light, how many things will the great Teacher have to disclose! It is a token of the immortality of the soul, that God has implanted in man a boundless desire of knowledge, and given him so limited a time to satisfy it--and it is ground for expecting all the treasures of wisdom andknowledge from Jesus Christ, that He came into this world, possessed of them, and yet kept silence on so much we long to know. Conclusion:

1. In regard to things which Christ does not tell us, let us be thankful to Him for His silence. The cloud that veils full knowledge is a cloud of love.

2. Let us be chiefly concerned about knowing the one great thing which Christ has to say to us. There is a message which stands out in His Word distinct from the beginning to the close--This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent. There are times in the future for learning other truths, but for this our time is always ready. (J. Ker, D. D.)

Divine teaching gradual

I. OUR LORDS OWN ORAL TEACHING DID NOT EMBRACE ALL NECESSARY CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE.

1. This is a point of great importance. It is not unusual to hear people say: I accept only the very words of Christ. St. Paul taught some doctrines which Christ Himself did not teach: I do not wish to be bound by these. The Church has in her creeds and elsewhere used language which I do not find in the words of Christ: I may reject that language. The Sermon on the Mount and Christs other discourses are enough for me. The rest is superfluous. This language recommends itself because it sounds at first so loyal to our Lord, just as politeness towards a single individual is more remarkable when the person who shows it is habitually uncivil to the rest of the world. By a confession of faith such as this, men flatter themselves that they can cut down the Christian creed to very narrow dimensions, and at the same time be all the better Christians. And yet here we find Christ saying that He did not undertake to teach in Person all that it was necessary for Christians to know. What the apostles taught would be still His teaching, even although it should go beyond the measure of truth which He had taught Himself (Luk_10:16; Mat_10:40). Joh_15:15 would seem at first sight to be at variance with the text.But there is no contradiction. So far as confidence went our Lord trusted His disciples unreservedly. But there was a want of spiritual comprehension on their side. Many a man has a wife or a sister with whom he has literally no secrets whatever, although she is not on that account able to share all his intellectual interests; he does not trust the less because he does not communicate unintelligible secrets; the time will come, perhaps, when whatever is now unintelligible will be understood.

3. Our Lords teaching, then, was completed by that of the Holy Spirit. To see how this was done we need not go beyond the limits of the New Testament.

(1) Our Lord had spoken, for instance, of the necessity that the Messiah should die; of His blood as the blood of the New Testament which was shed for His disciples. In the apostolic writings this is expanded into the doctrine of the Atonement.

(2) Our Lord had hinted at a new ground of acceptance with God in His parable of the labourers in the vineyard, in His eulogy upon the publican, and in His precept (Luk_17:10). But in St. Pauls writings we find a fully elaborated doctrine of salvation through the grace of Christ as contrasted with that of obedience to the Jewish law. In the visit of the Eastern sages to the manger of Bethlehem, in the acceptance of the Syro-Phoenician woman, in the interview with the Greeks at the passover, in the statement that the Good Shepherd had other sheep who were not of the fold of Israel, we have hints that the Pagan nations were in some way to have their part in the Divine Saviour. In St. Paul we find the express assertion that a special revelation had been made to him to the effect Eph_3:6).

4. Our Lord spoke about Himself, His sinlessness, His claims upon human thought and human affection, His power of enlightening and saving human beings, His future coming to judge all human beings, in a way which we should now-a-days think very extraordinary in any good man, and indeed fatal to his claim to goodness because inconsistent with sober fact. The Holy Spirit took of the words of Christ and showed the truth unto the apostles that the Speaker was Divine (1Co_12:3). The disciples could not have borne the full splendour of these truths before (chap. 12:16).

II. WHY WAS OUR LORDS OWN TEACHING THUS INCOMPLETE?

1. The answer is, that the same motive which led Him to teach men at all led Him to impose these limits. He taught men in their ignorance because He loved men too well to leave them in darkness. He taught men gradually, and as they were able to bear the strong light of His doctrine, because He loved men too well to shock or blind them by a sudden blaze of truth, for which they were as yet unprepared. He knew what was in man. He knew what the prejudices of education, the power of mental habits, the associations of youth, the traditions of a great history, could do to destroy the receptive powers, the moral flexibility of the soul. He was too wise and considerate to expect too much. The full understanding of who He was, and what He came to do, was preceded by a twilight; itself His own work, which brightened more and more towards the day.

2. In this He was true to Gods providential action in human history. All along God has taught men gradually. The heathen nations have been taught what little truth, amid their errors, they know by a succession of minds. The old Jewish Scriptures are a long series of revelations: the Patriarchal, the Mosaic, the prophetical. Each is an advance upon its predecessors, and all lead up to the final and complete revelation of God in Christ.

III. TWO PRACTICAL LESSONS.

1. The true principle of

(1) A religious education. To be solid it should be gradual; it should be given only as the learners mind becomes acclimatized to the atmosphere of religious truth. We find in the Epistles the distinction between babes in Christ and strong men or adults. To the first was given that elementary instruction which, from its easiness of reception, the apostle terms milk. To the second a much more comprehensive instruction in the mysteries of the Christian creed and in the range of Christian duty was imparted, and this the Apostle terms strong meat. This double order of teaching passed into the primitive Church. The catechumens, who were in the earlier stage of instruction, were treated quite differently from the faithful.

(2) The principle holds good of secular education, and is too much lost sight of in some modern methods. The old and deeper idea of education as a means of training the faculties of the mind to deal with any subject has been abandoned only too largely for the idea of an education which overloads the mind with huge packages of unmastered and unmanageable knowledge, and not seldom leads to frightful cases of intellectual indigestion. Boys are expected to know something about everything; they too often know nothing about anything thoroughly. The consequence is, that while they can talk with striking but unnatural facility on a great many more subjects than boys did forty or fifty years ago, their mental faculties are really less braced and sharpened, and their actual capacity for meeting the requirements of life is less considerable than that of their predecessors.

(3) And in teaching religious truth parents are sometimes apt to fall into the same mistake. They want to teach everything at once, and they end by really teaching nothing. They forget that most necessary duty of every teacher of placing himself, by an effort of sympathy and imagination, as nearly as possible in the mental position of his pupil or child. They think chiefly or only of what interests themselves in religion; not of what might be interesting or intelligible to minds just opening upon life, and catching with difficulty the horizons of truth and duty which meet the gaze. What is the consequence? Either the children are alienated from all religion in later life, or they learn that most fatal of all lessons in religion, to talk about it easily without thinking of what they say.

2. Remember that until our last day God is teaching us, through the action of other minds, through the events of life. Each stage of life up to the very last leaves some truth untaught. We are daily adding to our expectance. We never complete it. What can the soul do but breathe the prayer--Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, lead Thou me on, &c.? (Canon Liddon.)

Christs gradual teaching in the Church

This does not mean that during all the coming centuries He would go on adding from time to time new truths to the Christian creed by a process of continuous revelation. The faith was, St. Jude says, once for all delivered to the saints. Later ages might explain what the apostles had taught. This, for instance, is what was done by the great council which authoratively adopted the Nicene Creed in order to defend the truth of our Lords Divinity. But when in that creed we confess that Jesus Christ our Lord is of one substance with the Father, we do not say more than St. John says in the introduction to his Gospel, or St. Paul in the Colossians (Col_1:16-17). In the same way the word Trinity is not itself found in Scripture. But the baptismal formula, and many passages in the apostolic writings, especially in the Epistle to the Ephesians, obviously imply it. If therefore doctrines, having no ground in the teaching of the apostles, have been added to the faith, in whatever quarter of Christendom, these do not rest on the same basis as explanations or restatements of truths which the apostles had already taught. They are newly imported and foreign matter, and as such would have been rejected by the early Christian Church. We cannot, therefore, include additional doctrines proposed after the apostolic age under the head of the many things which our Lord had to say to His Church. It is not likely, to say the least, that the holiest and wisest of later divines should know more of His will than did St. John or St. Paul. (Canon Liddon.)

Christs gradual teaching by His providence

Consider the history of our own country. What lessons has God been teaching it during its fifteen centuries! Lessons of order to the England of the Heptarchy; lessons of patience and hope to the England of the Norman kings; lessons of the value of freedom to the England of the Tudors and the Stuarts; lessons of the need of seriousness in life and conviction to the England of the Georges. And surely in our time He is saying many things, stern and tender, to those who have ears to hear, in the events amidst which day by day we are living now. He is teaching us that morality should never be divorced from politics; that the duties of property rank higher than its undoubted rights; that races which trifle with the laws of purity are on the road to ruin; that righteousness exalteth a nation much more truly than any financial, or diplomatic, or military success. And much that God teaches us of to-day would have been unintelligible to our ancestors. As we look out on the surface of our national life, on its hopes and fears, on its unsolved, to us apparently insoluble, problems, on its incessant movement, whether of unrest or aspiration, we hear from behind the clouds the more or less distinct announcement of a future which will be at any rate as unlike our present as our past. I have many things to say unto thee, but thou canst not bear them now. (Canon Liddon.)

Teaching should be adapted to the condition of the mind

A careful mother or teacher will treat a childs mind with great tenderness and reverence; she will be careful to excite interest before gratifying it, to gratify it in such degree as its capacity will admit. She will not think of the mind of her child as of a large bag into which all the odds and ends of knowledge that are swept up from the table of common life can be thrown at random; she will think of it as a delicate and beautiful mechanism to be handled with tenderness and respect and one mistake in dealing with which may well be fatal. How well a lady writer has told us how she was taught by her mother. I asked mother one day who God was, and I was told to come again the next day and at the same hour, and I came and repeated the question, and she told me to wait another day and then I should be answered, and then, when my curiosity was raised to the highest pitch and when my sense of the importance of the subject was immensely enhanced by its repeated postponement of an answer, I came once more and my mother explained in words which I shall never forget how great and awful and beautiful a Being God is and what He has told us. And all this she did in simple words and as a childs mind could bear it. Such a lesson as that she was not likely to forget, and it was never forgotten. (Canon Liddon.)

Human capacity the measure of Divine communication

I. TO CHRISTS MIND NO INFORMATION CAN BE IMPARTED. When He says ask, He accommodates Himself to human phraseology. Christs is the infinite mind--to its perceptions there is no end! This is

1. Consolatory to the good: they can never pass the region of Christs knowledge, whether in fiery furnace or lions den.

2. Terrifying to the ungodly: they cannot commit sin except under the eye of the Being to whom it is infinitely hateful: there is no secret spot on which they can outrage the laws of purity. Not a leaf stirs, not a pulse beats, without attracting the notice of the Divine eye.

II. CHRISTS MIND IS THE HIGHEST SOURCE OF MENTAL ILLUMINATION.

1. Many things are in Christs possession. The phrase is simple, but who can measure its comprehensiveness? What imagination can conceive the number of the many things? All that we know of truth, holiness, destiny, we know directly or indirectly from Christ.

2. It follows, therefore, that companionship with Christ must ensure the highest mental attainment. Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life; walking with Him we must reach the highest altitudes of knowledge.

3. The mission of the Spirit is to take of the things of Christ and show them to the Church (Joh_16:13).

III. CHRISTS MIND REVEALS ITSELF ACCORDING TO OUR MENTAL CAPACITY. Mark here the true majesty of Christ. Ye cannot bear them, I can; your intellect is not strong enough--Mine is. For a time these many things must dwell in My own mind. As ye grow in capacity ye shall grow in knowledge. God does not pour His glory on the world in one dazzling blaze, He precedes the splendour of noontide by the ray of dawn. The passage has a bearing

1. On our individual experience. There are many things in the future which we could not bear in our present state. Suppose that God should certify every man of the exact time and precise circumstance of his death, society would be paralyzed. Be thankful for Christs forbearance.

2. On the inscrutable mysteries of faith. God has not taken man into His secret counsels.

3. On the perplexities of moral government. I cannot explain why Dives should be in the mansion and Lazarus at the gate. What thou knowest not now, thou shalt know hereafter. By and by we shall know enough. Let us calmly wait until it shall please Him to explain. We shall then say, It is well. (J. Parker, D. D.)

The new theology

Many persons are alarmed at the idea of a new theology. Because God is eternally the same, the science which treats of His Person and of His dealings with men is regarded as stationary. Theology, however, represents mans thoughts about God, and these may change as knowledge grows from more to more and as the power to understand spiritual things is increased. The elementary substances of nature are the same to-day as when the earth was a mass of fiery vapour; but to-day there is a new chemistry, which professors who died a score of years ago would find it difficult to read. So there is a new astronomy and a new geology, though worlds and the crust of our earth are the same.

I. CHRISTS WORDS DISTINCTLY FORESHADOWED A PROGRESSIVE APPREHENSION OF HIMSELF AND HIS TEACHINGS ABOUT GOD. Just as men lived for ages on this earth without a suspicion of its being globular, and walked in the light of the sun and yet had no notion that the solid earth was rolling round it in space; as they tilled their fields, without dreaming that the soil was composed of decayed animal and vegetable life; so the disciples were warmed by the love of Christ and guided by His wisdom without understanding the mystery of His Person or the wealth of His wisdom? What, then, does He promise? He does not say the Spirit shall give you a new revelation, but He shall lead you into new views of Me and My words. The theology of the apostles, therefore, was to be progressive; it was to be a journey into truth as a boundless realm whose borders they had crossed, but which still stretched away far out of sight beyond the utmost horizon of their thoughts.

II. HISTORY READ IN THE LIGHT OF THIS INTIMATION STRIKINGLY VERIFIES ITS TRUTH by showing that there have been successive stages of advance in human knowledge and opinion, while the substance of the Christian revelation has remained unchanged.

1. Two disciples set out one evening to walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus. That walk gave them most emphatically a new theology. It revolutionized their whole conception of the Divine character and ways with men.

2. Long after the day of Pentecost the apostles thought that faith in Christ must be combined with obedience to the ritual law of their fathers. But when Peter had seen his vision on the housetop, his eyes were opened to see Christ in a totally unexpected light. From that hour the Church began to form a new theology. God was the same; Christ was the same; the discourse by the well at Sychar was the same; the gospel was the same; but the Church was led into previously untraversed regions of truth.

3. Time would fail to mention the various theologies which have had their day since the apostles. There was a Greek theology which prevailed up to the time of Augustine. Then came a Latin theology fathered by him. Later on there arose several scholastic theologies. Then, again, at the Reformation there arose the Lutheran, Calvinistic, and Zwin-glian theologies, all revolting against Rome and yet all of them framed by men influenced by Latin divinity. The confessions of faith drawn up at Wurtemberg, Geneva, Zurich, and Westminster were all new theologies, and all sought to arrange and systematize the doctrines of the Scriptures as observers deal with the facts of nature in the construction of a new science. What, then, shall we conclude? Shall we say that they attained to a final knowledge of the truth and of Christ? It is at least permissible to suppose that the researches, experience, and Divine illumination of later students may have prevailed to eliminate some of their errors, to supply some of their defects, to combine some of their divided excellencies, and so to make some further progress towards that richer knowledge and clearer understanding of the mystery of God in Christ, which, when attained, will bring us all into the unity of the faith.

III. THE GROUND ON WHICH REAL ADVANCES HAVE BEEN MADE. As it was in the days of the apostles and reformers, so it has been since; new visions of truth have come in connection with new outbursts of spiritual life and new acceptances of service. In the latter part of the last century there was a strange movement of compassion for the souls of men. Looking out on heathendom abroad, and spiritual desolation at home, men said: We must cease our controversial strife, and give these peoples the good news of a Fathers love and a Saviours readiness to save. Stirred by these voices, the Church shook herself from sleep, and rose up to do her neglected duty with a vigour unexampled since the days of the apostles. In the course of these ministries she has formed a new feeling of human brotherhood, and this has opened her eyes to see more clearly the Divine Fatherhood. In the service of man, for Christs sake, she has learned to read anew Pauls grand unfolding of the meaning of Christs life and death as a ministry of Divine sacrifice. In her own prayers and yearnings over down fallen men she has entered into unison with the pity of the Lord, and the travail of Christs soul, to seek and save the lost. This sympathy has touched her thoughts and modified her creed. She can no longer hold with Calvin that babes are deserving of eternal damnation because guilty before God of Adams sin. The displacement of that one terrible idea has taken a big stone--a veritable key-stone, out of the arch of Calvinistic theology.

IV. OUR DUTIES AND DANGERS IN THIS AGE OF THEOLOGICAL TRANSITION.

1. To keep our spirits right. Whether we view the movements of our time with fear or hope, let us be patient with all men, charitable, tolerant.

2. To see to it that we neither part with nor refuse any true thing because it happens to be mixed up with something manifestly false. In all times of controversy some men fling away gold because embedded in dross, and other men grasp a needless quantity of dross because they see glittering grains of gold.

3. Beware of allowing religious earnestness to be evaporated by a too exclusive attention to the intellectual elements of religion. The life is more than creed, and the spirit than dogma. 1 meet men who reiterate the stale maxims about conduct being three-fourths of life, and the unimportance of dogma, yet are doing nothing for the good of their fellows but protest in this lordly fashion against the bigotry of men who, however mistaken in their creed, are assuredly spending time, and strength, and means in the practical imitation of Christ. It is possible to be a creed-bound creature, though your only creed be that all creeds are vain. (T. V. Tymms.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Joh 16:12-15. I have yet many things to say unto you — There are many other things concerning which I must give you information. But ye cannot bear them now — But the weakness of your understanding, your desire and expectation of my erecting a temporal kingdom, your prejudices in favour of your own nation and law, and your aversion to the Gentiles, are so great, that you cannot yet bear the discovery. For which reason I judge it more prudent to be silent for the present. The things which our Lord had in view probably concerned his passion, death, resurrection, and the consequences of it; the abrogation of the ceremonial law, the abolition of the whole Jewish economy, the doctrine of justification by faith without the deeds of the law, the rejection of the Jews, and the reception of believing Gentiles, without subjecting them to the law of Moses. Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of truth, (so called on account of his office,) is come — According to the promise I have given you; he will guide you into all truth — All necessary truth: so that you will sustain no loss by my not discovering these things to you now; for when the Comforter comes, he will inspire you with the knowledge of them, and of every other matter necessary for you to understand. For he shall not speak of himself, &c. — That you may have the greater confidence in, and satisfaction from, the revelations which he shall make to you, know that he shall speak to you by my direction, revealing to you nothing but what he is commissioned to discover. And he will show you things to come — His revelation shall be so full and complete, that he will discover unto you all such future events as you may be any way concerned to know. He shall glorify me — He shall do me great honour in this respect, that all his revelations to you shall be perfectly conformable to the doctrines which I have taught you in person; for he shall receive of mine — Or of those doctrines which relate to me, and those benefits which I procure and bestow; and will show it unto you — In the most clear and attractive light; will enable you clearly to understand the doctrines, and will assure you of your possession of the benefits, manifesting to you at the same time their unspeakable excellence. All things that the Father hath are mine — Be not surprised that I said, he shall receive of mine; for all the treasures of the Father’s wisdom, power, and goodness, truth, justice, mercy, and grace are mine; yea, in me dwells the fulness of the Godhead bodily. Could any mere creature say this?

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John

THE GUIDE INTO ALL TRUTH

Joh 16:12 - Joh 16:15.

This is our Lord’s last expansion, in these discourses, of the great promise of the Comforter which has appeared so often in them. First, He was spoken of simply as dwelling in Christ’s servants, without any more special designation of His work than was involved in the name. Then, His aid was promised, to remind the Apostles of the facts of Christ’s life, especially of His words; and so the inspiration and authority of the four Gospels were certified for us. Then He was further promised as the witness in the disciples to Jesus Christ. And, finally, in the immediately preceding context, we have His office of ‘convincing,’ or convicting, ‘the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.’ And now we come to that gracious and gentle work which that divine Spirit is declared by Christ to do, not only for that little group gathered round Him then, but for all those who trust themselves to His guidance. He is to be the ‘Spirit of truth’ to all the ages, who in simple verity will help true hearts to know and love the truth. There are three things in the words before us-first, the avowed incompleteness of Christ’s own teaching; second, the completeness of the truth into which the Spirit of truth guides; and, last, the unity of these two.

I. First, then, we have here the avowed incompleteness of Christ’s own teaching.

‘I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.’ Now in an earlier portion of these great discourses, we have our Lord asserting that ‘all things whatsoever He had heard of the Father He had made known’ unto His servants. How do these two representations harmonise? Is it possible to make them agree? Surely, yes. There is a difference between the germ and the unfolded flower. There is a difference between principles and the complete development of these. I suppose you may say that all Euclid is in the axioms and definitions. I suppose you may also say that when you have learned the axioms and definitions, there are many things yet to be said, of which you have not grown to the apprehension. And so our Lord, as far as His frankness was concerned, and as far as the fundamental and seminal principles of all religious truth were concerned, had even then declared all that He had heard of the Father. But yet, in so far as the unfolding of these was concerned, the tracing of their consequences, the exhibition of their harmonies, the weaving of them into an ordered whole in which a man’s understanding could lodge, there were many things yet to be said, which that handful of men were not able to bear. And so our Lord Himself here declares that His words spoken on earth are not His completed revelation.

Of course we find in them, as I believe, hints profound and pregnant, which only need to be unfolded and smoothed out, as it were, and their depths fathomed, in order to lead to all that is worthy of being called Christian truth. But upon many points we cannot but contrast the desultory, brief, obscure references which came from the Master’s lips with the more systematised, full, and accurate teaching which came from the servants. The great crucial instance of all is the comparative reticence which our Lord observed in reference to His sacrificial death, and the atoning character of His sufferings for the world. I do not admit that the silence of the Gospels upon that subject is fairly represented when it is said to be absolute. I believe that that silence has been exaggerated by those who have no desire to accept that teaching. But the distinction is plain and obvious, not to be ignored, rather to be marked as being fruitful of blessed teaching, between the way in which Christ speaks about His Cross, and the way in which the Apostles speak about it after Pentecost.

What then? My text gives us the reason. ‘You cannot bear them now.’ Now the word rendered ‘bear’ here does not mean ‘bear’ in the sense of endure, or tolerate, or suffer, but ‘bear’ in the sense of carry. And the metaphor is that of some weight-it may be gold, but still it is a weight-laid upon a man whose muscles are not strong enough to sustain it. It crushes rather than gladdens. So because they had not strength enough to carry, had not capacity to receive, our Lord was lovingly reticent.

There is a great principle involved in this saying-that revelation is measured by the moral and spiritual capacities of the men who receive it. The light is graduated for the diseased eye. A wise oculist does not flood that eye with full sunshine, but he puts on veils and bandages, and closes the shutters, and lets a stray beam, ever growing as the curve is perfected, fall upon it. So from the beginning until the end of the process of revelation there was a correspondence between men’s capacity to receive the light and the light that was granted; and the faithful use of the less made them capable of receiving the greater, and as soon as they were capable of receiving it, it came. ‘To him that hath shall be given.’ In His love, then, Christ did not load these men with principles that they could not carry, nor feed them with ‘strong meat’ instead of ‘milk,’ until they were able to bear it. Revelation is progressive, and Christ is reticent, from regard to the feebleness of His listeners.

Now that same principle is true in a modified form about us. How many things there are which we sometimes feel we should like to know, that God has not told us, because we have not yet grown up to the point at which we could apprehend them! Compassed with these veils of flesh and weakness, groping amidst the shadows of time, bewildered by the cross-lights that fall upon us from so many surrounding objects, we have not yet eyes able to behold the ineffable glory. He has many things to say to us about that blessed future, and that strange and awful life into which we are to step when we leave this poor world, but ‘ye cannot bear them now.’ Let us wait with patience until we are ready for the illumination. For two things go to make revelation, the light that reveals and the eye that beholds.

Now one remark before I go further. People tell us, ‘Your modern theology is not in the Gospels.’ And they say to us, as if they had administered a knockdown blow, ‘We stick by Jesus, not Paul.’ Well, as I said, I do not admit that there is no ‘Pauline’ teaching in the Gospels, but I do confess there is not much. And I say, ‘What then?’ Why, this, then-it is exactly what we were to expect; and people who reject the apostolic form of Christian teaching because it is not found in the Gospels are flying in the face of Christ’s own teaching. You say you will take His words as the only source of religious truth. You are going clean contrary to His own words in saying so. Remember that He proclaimed their incompleteness, and referred us, for the fuller knowledge of the truth of God, to a subsequent Teacher.

II. So, secondly, mark here the completeness of the truth into which the Spirit guides.

I must trouble you with just a word or two of remark as to the language of our text. Note the personality, designation, and office of this new Teacher. ‘He,’ not ‘it,’ He, is the Spirit of truth whose characteristic and weapon is truth. ‘He will guide you’-suggesting a loving hand put out to lead; suggesting the graciousness, the gentleness, the gradualness of the teaching. ‘Into all truth ‘-that is no promise of omniscience, but it is the assurance of gradual and growing acquaintance with the spiritual and moral truth which is revealed, such as may be fitly paralleled by the metaphor of men passing into some broad land, of which there is much still to be possessed and explored. Not to-day, nor to-morrow, will all the truth belong to those whom the Spirit guides; but if they are true to His guidance, ‘to-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant,’ and the land will all be traversed at the last. ‘He shall not speak of Himself, but whatsoever He shall hear that shall He speak.’ Mark the parallel between the relation of the Spirit-Teacher to Jesus, and the relation of Jesus to the Father. Of Him, too, it is said by Himself, ‘All things whatsoever I have heard of the Father I have declared unto you.’ The mark of Satan is, ‘He speaketh of his own’; the mark of the divine Teacher is, ‘He speaketh not of Himself, but whatsoever things,’ in all their variety, in their continuity, in their completeness, ‘He shall hear,’-where? yonder in the depths of the Godhead-’whatsoever things He shall hear there,’ He shall show to you, and especially, ‘He will show you the things that are to come.’ These Apostles were living in a revolutionary time. Men’s hearts were ‘failing them for fear of the things that were coming on the earth.’ Step by step they would be taught the evolving glory of that kingdom which they were to be the instruments in founding; and step by step there would be spread out before them the vision of the future and all the wonder that should be, the world that was to come, the new constitution which Christ was to establish.

Now, if that be the interpretation, however inadequate, of these great and wonderful words, there are but two things needful to say about them. One is that this promise of a complete guidance into truth applies in a peculiar and unique fashion to the original hearers of it. I ventured to say that one of the other promises of the Spirit, which I quoted in my introductory remarks, was the certificate to us of the inspiration and reliableness of these Four Gospels. And I now remark that in these words, in their plain and unmistakable meaning, there lie involved the inspiration and authority of the Apostles as teachers of religious truth. Here we have the guarantee for the authority over our faith, of the words which came from these men, and from the other who was added to their number on the Damascus road. They were guided ‘into all the truth,’ and so our task is to receive the truth into which they were guided.

The Acts of the Apostles is the best commentary on these words of my text. There you see how these men rose at once into a new region; how the truths about their Master which had been bewildering puzzles to them flashed into light; how the Cross, which had baffled and dispersed them, became at once the centre of union for themselves and for the world; how the obscure became lucid, and Christ’s death and the resurrection stood forth to them as the great central facts of the world’s salvation. In the book of the Apocalypse we have part of the fulfilment of this closing promise: ‘He will show you things to come’; when the Seer was ‘in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day,’ and the heavens were opened, and the history of the Church {whether in chronological order, or in the exhibition of symbols of the great forces which shall be arrayed for and against it, over and over again, to the end of time, does not at present matter}, was spread before Him as a scroll.

Now, dear friends, this great principle of my text has a modified application also to us all. For that divine Spirit is given to each of us if we will use Him, is given to any and every man who desires Him, does dwell in Christian hearts, though, alas! so many of us are so little conscious of Him, and does teach us the truth which Christ Himself left incomplete.

Only let me make one remark here. We do not stand on the same level as these men who clustered round Christ on His road to Gethsemane, and received the first fruits of the promise-the Spirit. They, taught by that divine Guide and by experience, were led into the deeper apprehension of the words and the deeds, of the life and the death, of Jesus Christ our Lord. We, taught by that same Spirit, are led into a deeper apprehension of the words which they spake, both in recording and interpreting the facts of Christ’s life and death.

And so we come sharp up to this, ‘If any man thinketh himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things which I speak unto him are the commandments of the Lord.’ That is how an Apostle put his relation to the other possessors of the divine Spirit. And you and I have to take this as the criterion of all true possession of the Spirit of God, that it bows in humble submission to the authoritative teaching of this book.

III. Lastly, we have here our Lord pointing out the unity of these two.

In the verse on which I have just been commenting He says nothing about Himself, and it might easily appear to the listeners as if these two sources of truth, His own incomplete teaching, and the full teaching of the divine Spirit, were independent of, if not opposed to, one another. So in the last words of our text He shows us the blending of the two streams, the union of the two beams.

‘He shall glorify Me.’ Think of a man saying that! The Spirit who will come from God and ‘guide men into all truth’ has for His distinctive office the glorifying of Jesus Christ. So fair is He, so good, so radiant, that to make Him known is to glorify Him. The glorifying of Christ is the ultimate and adequate purpose of everything that God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has done, because the glorifying of Christ is the glorifying of God, and the blessing of the eyes that behold His glory.

‘For He shall take of Mine, and show it unto you.’ All which that divine Spirit brings is Christ’s. So, then, there is no new revelation, only the interpretation of the revelation. The text is given, and its last word was spoken, when ‘the cloud received Him out of their sight,’ and henceforward all is commentary. The Spirit takes of Christ’s; applies the principles, unfolds the deep meaning of words and deeds, and especially the meaning of the mystery of the Cradle, and the tragedy of the Cross, and the mystery of the Ascension, as declaring that Christ is the Son of God, the Sacrifice for the world. Christ said, ‘I am the Truth.’ Therefore, when He promises, ‘He will guide you into all the truth,’ we may fairly conclude that ‘the truth’ into which the Spirit guides is the personal Christ. It is the whole Christ, the whole truth, that we are to receive from that divine Teacher; growing up day by day into the capacity to grasp Christ more firmly, to understand Him better, and by love and trust and obedience to make Him more entirely our own. We are like the first settlers upon some great island-continent. There is a little fringe of population round the coast, but away in the interior are leagues of virgin forests and fertile plains stretching to the horizon, and snow-capped summits piercing the clouds, on which no foot has ever trod. ‘He will guide you into all truth’; through the length and breadth of the boundless land, the person and the work of Jesus Christ our Lord.

‘All things that the Father hath are Mine, therefore said I that He shall take of Mine and show it unto you.’ What awful words! A divine, teaching Spirit can only teach concerning God. Christ here explains the paradox of His words preceding, in which, if He were but human, He seems to have given that teaching Spirit an unworthy office, by explaining that whatsoever is His is God’s, and whatsoever is God’s is His.

My brother! do you believe that? Is that what you think about Jesus Christ? He puts out here an unpresumptuous hand, and grasps all the constellated glories of the divine Nature, and says, ‘They are Mine’; and the Father looks down from heaven and says, ‘Son! Thou art ever with Me, and all that I have is Thine.’ Do you answer, ‘Amen! I believe it?’

Here are three lessons from these great words which I leave with you without attempting to unfold them. One is, Believe a great deal more definitely in, and seek a great deal more consciously and earnestly, and use a great deal more diligently and honestly, that divine Spirit who is given to us all. I fear me that over very large tracts of professing Christendom to-day men stand up with very faltering lips and confess, ‘I believe in the Holy Ghost.’ Hence comes much of the weakness of our modern Christianity, of the worldliness of professing Christians, ‘and when for the time they ought to be teachers, they have need that one teach them again which be the first principles of the oracles of God.’ ‘Quench not, grieve not, despise not the Holy Spirit.’

Another lesson is, Use the Book that He uses-else you will not grow, and He will have no means of contact with you.

And the last is, Try the spirits. If anything calling itself Christian teaching comes to you and does not glorify Christ, it is self-condemned. For none can exalt Him highly enough, and no teaching can present Him too exclusively and urgently as the sole Salvation and Life of the whole earth, And if it be, as my text tells us, that the great teaching Spirit is to come, who is to ‘guide us into all truth,’ and therein is to glorify Christ, and to show us the things that are His, then it is also true, ‘Hereby know we the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God; and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of Antichrist.’

Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

I have yet

Christ’s pre-authentication of the New Testament:

(1) he expressly declared that He would leave "many things" unrevealed (Joh 16:12).

(2) He promised that this revelation should be completed ("all things") after the Spirit should come, and that such additional revelation should include new prophecies (Joh 16:12).

(3) He chose certain persons to receive such additional revelations, and to be His witnesses to them Mat 28:19; Joh 15:27; Joh 16:13; Act 1:8; Act 9:15-17.

(4) he gave to their words when speaking for Him in the Spirit precisely the same authority as His own Mat 10:14; Mat 10:15; Luk 10:16; Joh 13:20; Joh 17:20 see e.g. 1Co 14:37 and "Inspiration,"; Exo 4:15; Rev 22:19.

The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Joh 16:12. Πολλὰ, many things) concerning the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of the Lord, and concerning those things which are touched upon in Joh 16:8, et seq., and are presently after brought to an abrupt close. These many things are not to be sought for in the traditions of Rome, which are more than elementary, and now even in a less degree can be borne by those who have the Paraclete (Comforter). But they are to be sought for in the Acts and Epistles of the Apostles, and in the Apocalypse, all which are to be on this very account highly estimated. They are also indicated in the close of the following verse, “He will show you things to come.” Comp. note, ch. Joh 14:16.—οὐ δύνασθε, ye cannot) either on account of the very multitude of the many things, or on account of their momentous character.—βαστάζειν) bear the things which I have to say. The Paraclete shall speak (of them, Joh 16:13).

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Joh_16:12. Jesus breaks off, and states the reason.

πολλά] Much, that belongs to the entirety of the divine ἀλήθεια (Joh_16:13). That He means only further developments (Luther, Melanchthon, and many others, including Lücke, De Wette), is not to be deduced (see in loc.) from Joh_15:15, comp. Joh_14:26. Nevertheless, the portions of doctrine themselves, which may belong to the πολλά, although they are in general to be sought for in the letters and discourses of the apostles, cannot be completely determined; but neither are they, with Grotius (comp. Beza), to be limited to the cognitio eorum, quae ad ecclesias constituendas pertinent (spirituality of the kingdom of Christ, abolition of the law, apostolic decrees), because we are not fully acquainted with the instructions of Jesus to His disciples. In general, it is certain that information respecting the further development of His work, and particularly matters of knowledge which, as history attests, still necessitated special revelation, as the immediate calling of the Gentiles, Acts 10, and eschatological disclosures like 1Co_15:51, Rom_11:25, 1Th_4:15 ff., form part of their contents. The non-apostolical Apocalypse (against Hengstenberg and others), as likewise the ἀποκαλύψεις granted to Christian prophets in the N. T., are here, where Jesus is concerned with the circle of apostles, left out of consideration. Augustine, however, is already correct generally: cum Christus ipse ea tacuerit, quis nostrum dicat: illa vel illa sunt? Since, however, we cannot demonstrate that even the oral instruction of the apostles was completely deposited in their writings (especially as undoubted epistles are lost, while very few of the original apostles left behind them any writing), Tradition in and of itself (in thesi) cannot be rejected, although its reality in regard to given cases (in hypothesi) can never be proved, and it must therefore remain generally without normative validity. Comp. on 1Co_11:34. In opposition to tradition, Luther limited πολλά, in entire contradiction of the context, to the sufferings that were to be endured.

ἔχω] I have in readiness, Joh_8:6; 2Jn_1:12; 3Jn_1:13.

βαστάζειν] That which is too heavy, for the spiritual strength, for understanding, temper, strength of will, cannot be borne. Comp. Kypke, I. p. 404 f. On the thing: 2Co_3:2. Note, further, Bengels appropriate remark, to the effect that the Romish traditions can least be borne by those who have the Spirit.

ἄρτι] at the end, as in Joh_13:33.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Joh 16:12-15 . The Spirit will complete the teaching of Jesus .

Joh 16:12 . Ἔτι πολλὰ ἔχω λέγειν ὑμῖν , “I have yet many things to say to you”; after all I have said much remains unsaid. There is, then, much truth which it is desirable that Christians know and which yet was not uttered by Christ Himself. His words are not the sole embodiment of truth, though they may be its sole criterion. ἀλλʼ οὐ δύνασθε βαστάζειν ἄρτι , “but you cannot bear them now,” therefore they are deferred; truth can be received only by those who have already been prepared for its reception. “’Tis the taught already that profit by teaching” ( Sir 3:7 ; 1Co 3:1 ; Heb 5:11-14 ). The Resurrection and Pentecost gave them new strength and new perceptions. βαστάζειν , similarly used in 2Ki 17:14 , ὃ ἐὰν ἐπιθῇς ἐπʼ ἐμὲ , βαστάσω . To those who wish to become philosophers Epictetus gives the advice, Ἄνθρωπε , σκέψαι τί δύνασαι βαστάσαι (Diss. iii. 15, Kypke).

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

12. ἔτι πολλὰ ἔχω ὑμῖν λέγειν κτλ. So אBL, but the rec. has λέγειν ὑμῖν. The constr. is thoroughly classical; cf. Demosth. Olynth. ii. τὰ μὲν ἄλλα σιωπῶ, πολλʼ ἄν ἔχων εἰπεῖν.

At 15:15 Jesus had assured His disciples that He had withheld from them nothing of His Father’s purpose, but this was necessarily subject to the reservation that there were some matters which they could not understand. All revelation is subject to the condition “Quicquid recipitur, recipitur ad modum recipientis.” So He now tells them that there are many things which they cannot yet bear (cf. 1Co 3:2). βαστάζειν is used figuratively (as at Act 15:10) of “bearing” a mental burden; see on 12:6. For ἄρτι, see on 9:19: its position here at the end of the sentence gives it emphasis.

The words of this verse show that the full Christian message is not contained in such teaching as, e.g., is found in the Synoptic Gospels. That marks a stage only in the revelation of God in Christ. If the challenge “Back to Jesus” means that we may safely neglect the interpretation of His gospel put forth by the Christians of the Apostolic age, then it is misleading. It is part of the teaching of Jesus Himself, if Joh 16:12 truly expresses His mind, that much would be learnt of Divine things under the guidance of the Spirit, which could not have been taught with profit during His public ministry on earth.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Vv. 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 (Joh 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 (Joh 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 Joh 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 (Joh 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 (Joh 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 (Joh 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 (Joh 15:26). The question is evidently of the teaching of things not yet heard on the earth (Joh 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 Joh 14:26 contained the formula of the inspiration of our Gospels; Joh 16:13 gives that of the Epistles and the Apocalypse.

Frédéric Louis Godet — Commentaries on Luke, John, Romans, and 1 Corinthians — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1870s–1890s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The doctrine of the Apostles proceeded from the holy Ghost, and is most perfect.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

when he, the Spirit of truth, is come . . . he shall not speak of himself--that is, from Himself, but, like Christ Himself, "what He hears," what is given Him to communicate.

he will show you things to come--referring specially to those revelations which, in the Epistles partially, but most fully in the Apocalypse, open up a vista into the Future of the Kingdom of God, whose horizon is the everlasting hills.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 12. Ye cannot bear them now.] In illustration of these three points, Christ had many things to say; but he found that his disciples could only bear general truths; yet, in saying what he did, he sowed the seeds of the whole system of theological knowledge, and heavenly wisdom, which the Holy Spirit of this truth afterwards watered and ripened into a glorious harvest of light and salvation, by the ministry of the apostles. Dr. Lightfoot supposes that the things which the apostles could not bear now were such as these:

1. The institution of the Christian Sabbath, and the abolition of the Jewish.

2. The rejection of the whole Jewish nation, at the very time in which they expected to be set up and established for ever.

3. The entire change of the whole Mosaic dispensation, and the bringing the Gentiles into the Church of God.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

12. I have still many things to say to you. Christ’s discourse could not have so much influence over his disciples, as to prevent their ignorance from still keeping them in perplexity about many things; and not only so, but they scarcely obtained a slight taste of those things which ought to have imparted to them full satisfaction, had it not been for the obstruction arising from the weakness of the flesh. It was, therefore, impossible but that the consciousness of their poverty should oppress them with fear and anxiety. But Christ meets it by this consolation, that, when they have received the Spirit, they will be new men, and altogether different from what they were before.

But you are not able to bear them now. When he says that, were he to tell them anything more, or what was loftier, they would not be able to bear it, his object is to encourage them by the hope of better progress, that they may not lose courage; for the grace which he was to bestow on them ought not to be estimated by their present feelings, since they were at so great a distance from heaven. In short, he bids them be cheerful and courageous, whatever may be their present weakness. But as there was nothing else than doctrine on which they could rely, Christ reminds them that he had accommodated it to their capacity, yet so as to lead them to expect that they would soon afterwards obtain loftier and more abundant instruction; as if he had said, “If what you have heard from me is not yet sufficient to confirm you, have patience for a little; for ere long, having enjoyed the teaching of the Spirit, you will need nothing more; he will remove all the ignorance that now remains in you.”

Now arises a question, what were those things which the apostles were not yet able to learn? The Papists, for the purpose of putting forward their inventions as the oracles of God, wickedly abuse this passage. “Christ,” they tell us, “promised to the apostles new revelations; and, therefore, we must not abide solely by Scripture, for something beyond Scripture is here promised by him to his followers.” In the first place, if they choose to talk with Augustine, the solution will be easily obtained. His words are, “Since Christ is silent, which of us shall say that it was this or that? Or, if he shall venture to say so, how shall he prove it? Who is so rash and insolent, even though he say what is true, as to affirm, without any Divine testimony, that those are the things which the Lord at that time did not choose to say?” But we have a surer way of refuting them, taken from Christ’s own words, which follow.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(12) I have yet many things to say unto you.—The “many things” are defined by the next verse to be things with regard to which the Spirit of Truth shall be their guide—i.e., they are parts of the revelation which the minds of the disciples are not yet fitted to receive.

Ye cannot bear them now.—Comp. Joh_15:15. The statements are not opposed to each other. On His side there is the readiness to impart to them as friends all things that He had heard from the Father. But revelation can only be made to the mind which can accept it; and for those who have only in part understood what He has told them there are many things which cannot now be borne.

Of what the “many things” were, we have only this general knowledge. They would include, doubtless, the doctrinal system of the early Church, and they would not exclude all the lessons which the spirit of God has taught the Church in every age.

The fact that there were truths which Christ Himself could not teach is a lesson which men who profess to teach in Christ’s name have too seldom learnt. St. Paul found in it a rule for his own practice. He, too, fed men with milk because they could not bear meat. (Comp. Note on 1Co_3:3.) It is true, indeed, that no one can teach who does not possess a higher knowledge than that of his pupil; but it is no less true that no one can really teach who does not take the lower ground of his pupil’s knowledge, and from that lead him to his own. Truths which the cultured mind accepts as obvious would appear no less so to the peasant if he were carefully taught them. Too often the weaker brother finds a stumbling-block in the very steps which should lead him to a higher truth, because he approaches them blindly, and without a guide. For the breach which exists between the higher Christian thought of our day and the faith of the masses of the people, Christian teachers are in no small degree responsible, and the only means by which the chasm may be bridged is to teach Christ’s truths as He Himself taught them.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

12. many things to say] They are His friends (Joh_15:15), and there is nothing which He wishes to keep back from them; He would give them His entire confidence. But it would be useless to tell them what they cannot understand; cruel to impart knowledge which would only crush them. ‘Now’ is emphatic (see on Joh_16:31): at Pentecost they will receive both understanding and strength. The word here used for ‘bear’ appears again in Joh_19:17 of Christ bearing the Cross.

12–15. The Disciples and the Paraclete

The Paraclete not only convicts and convinces the world, He also enlightens the Apostles respecting Christ and thereby glorifies Him, for to make Christ known is to glorify Him. These verses are very important as shewing the authority of the Apostles’ teaching: it is not their own, but the truth of Christ revealed by the Spirit.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

He shall glorify me,.... In the ministration of the Gospel, which is "the ministration of the Spirit", Co2 3:8; and asserts Christ to be God over all, to have all that the Father hath, to be possessed of all divine perfections, to have the fulness of the Godhead dwelling in him; ascribes the same works and worship to him as to, the Father; and, as in a glass, holds him forth to be beheld as the brightness of his glory, and his glory to be seen in it, as the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth: it declares him to be the only Saviour and Redeemer of lost sinners, that justification is solely by his righteousness, pardon by his blood, and atonement by his sacrifice; and which ministration the Spirit makes effectual to the bringing of many souls to Christ to believe in him, profess his name, and expect life and salvation from him, by all which he is glorified. Moreover, the Spirit of God glorifies Christ in the experience of the saints, by leading them to him for righteousness, peace, and pardon, for grace, and fresh supplies of it, for wisdom and strength, for food and rest, for life and happiness; and by enabling them to live by faith on him, on whom he has encouraged them to venture, and to whom they have committed their all; and by instructing them to glory in him, as their wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption; and by ascribing the glory of their salvation to him, and by making continual application to him, under his direction and influence; by leaning on him, and expecting every good thing from him both for time and eternity. The particular instance in which he glorifies Christ, follows,

for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you; which is to be understood not of gifts Christ received from his Father, and which he gives to men by his Spirit; nor of internal grace, as faith, love, &c. which the Spirit from Christ works in the hearts of men; but either of the doctrines of the Gospel, the deep things of God and Christ, which the Spirit searches, and reveals in the ministration of the word. The Gospel is a sort of a "Kabala", though of a different kind from the oral law of the Jews. Christ received it from the Father, the Spirit received it from Christ, the apostles received it from the Spirit, and the churches of Christ from them in succeeding generations: or this may be understood of the blessings of grace held forth in the Gospel, such as justification, pardon, adoption, &c. which are in Christ; and which the Spirit from Christ takes and shows to the saints, and witnesses their special and particular interest in, and so comforts them, and glorifies Christ.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

12 I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.

Ver. 12. But ye cannot bear them now] Because your spirits are dulled with worldly sorrow. But the Spirit shall be unto you a powerful removens, prohibens.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

I have yet many things to say ... - There were many things pertaining to the work of the Spirit and the establishment of religion which might be said. Jesus had given them the outline; he had presented to them the great doctrines of the system, but he had not gone into details. These were things which they could not then bear. They were still full of Jewish prejudices, and were not prepared for a full development of his plans. He probably refers here to the great change which were to take place in the Jewish system - the abolition of sacrifices and the priesthood, the change of the Sabbath, the rejection of the Jewish nation, etc. For these doctrines they were not prepared, but they would in due time be taught them by the Holy Spirit.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Not any new articles of doctrine or faith, for, Joh 15:15, he had told them that he had made known unto them all things which he had heard of the Father of that nature; but some things (probably) which concerned them with reference to their office as apostles, the constitution, state, and government of the church:

but, saith he, ye cannot bear them now; in regard of their passion, or rather of their more imperfect state.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

12. Many things to say… ye cannot bear—The wise teacher knows not only how to instruct, but how to withhold instruction that he may instruct in the right order. He will not impose truths upon brains not strong enough to bear them. And some instructions need diagrams, examples, apparatus, or experiments before they can be understood. So these apostles needed that Christ should suffer, rise, and be glorified before they could understand and preach a suffering, risen, and glorified Saviour. Nor were they as yet prepared to accept in heart the abolishment of circumcision and of the Jewish ritual, with the destruction of Jerusalem, the overthrow of the Jewish state, and the reduction of Jew and Gentile into one universal Christian Church. Much he probably taught them during the forty days after his resurrection; but, as the next verse teaches us, it required the coming of the Spirit fully to graduate them into a competent apostleship.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Vers. 12-15. (b) The power of the Paraclete on the disciples themselves. From the twelfth to the fifteenth verse the relation of the Paraclete to the disciples themselves makes yet more evident the expediency of the glorification of the Son of man, and demonstrates the authority of the apostolic teaching.

Notwithstanding the abundance of the revelations which Christ had given, still, said he, I have many things yet to tell you, but ye cannot bear them now (arti); i.e. at this epoch of your training. Christ (Joh_14:18, etc., in a passage which he proceeds to enlarge and deepen) has already said that the coming to them of the Paraclete would be one method of his own Divine approach to them for purposes of consolation and instruction; consequently he does not now allow them to suppose that, though separated from them by death, he would ever cease to instruct them. They could not in their present condition, and before the great events should have happened events on which so much revealing fact would turn bear the revelation of these "many things." Pentecost will enable them to appreciate the full mystery of love. The word used for "bear" is that which is used (Joh_19:17) to describe the bearing of the cross by Christ himself. Some have found in these "many things" new articles of doctrine which have been preserved by tradition; and others, a development of truths already presented in germ; and others, again, much of the future order of the world and the Church, such as gradually evolved itself to the vision and insight and spiritual wisdom of apostolic men. But they could not, on the eve of the Passion, have borne the full mystery of the atonement, or sufficiently have comprehended the glory of the enthroned King.

Vers. 12-15. The Spirit"s office is not confined to the convection of the world.

It has relation to the needs of the Church as well as the world.

I OUR LORD"S CONSIDERATION FOR THE SPIRITUAL INCAPACITY OF HIS DISCIPLES. I have yet many things to say to you, but ye cannot bear them now.

1. He had already told them many things which they could hardly understand. The communications of his truth were the marks of his loving confidence. (Joh_15:15)

2. Other truths were yet to be imparted, which, in the present stage of their spiritual growth, would be quite unintelligible. They were the truths concerning his incarnation and death, the relation of grace to the Law, the inclusion of the Gentiles in the kingdom of God, the final apostasy, the destiny of the Church till its end.

3. It is a mark of our Lords wisdom and tenderness to adapt his lessons to the growing capacity of his disciples.

II THE OFFICE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.

1. His personal guidance. "When he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all the truth.

(1) The Spirit is Divine Person, not a mere influence or energy of God.

(2) He gives expression to the truth; for he is "the Spirit of truth.

(3) He is the Guide to Zion"s travelers, leading them past the byways of error and the quagmires of subtle deception, till he places them in the land of truth.

(4) This truth is not all truth abstractly, but "all the truth" concerning Christ"s Person, work, and kingdom.

2. The test of his true guidance. "For he shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he shall announce to you things to come.

(1) His teaching is not self-originated, like that of Satan. (Joh_8:44) He shares in the intellectual fellowship of the Father and the Son, is initiated into the Divine scheme of salvation, and is thus enabled to make known the revelation which "God gave to Jesus Christ". (Rev_1:1)

(2) His teaching lifts apostolic inspiration above the region of mere spiritual illumination enjoyed by all saints. It was an instruction as to things not yet disclosed or known on earth (Ver. 12).

(3) His teaching lifts the veil of the future.

(a) The things to come are the destiny of the Church till its final consummation.

(b) The Holy Spirit thus declares beforehand the inspiration of the Epistles and the Apocalypse.

III THE GLORIFICATION OF CHRIST THE DEFINITE WORK OF THE SPIRIT. "He shall glorify me: for he shall take of what is mine, and shall show it unto you.

1. Mark the interrelation of the Divine Persons. The Son glorifies the Father; the Spirit glorifies the Son.

2. The method of glorification was by the manifestation of the truth.

3. Our Lord has a full consciousness of the greatness of his Person and his truth. "All that the Father hath is mine: therefore said I, he shall take of mine, and shall show it unto you." It has been well said, "There is nothing Christian that is not Divine, nothing Divine which is not Christian.

4. The personality of the Holy Spirit is set forth in the use of ekeinov in relation to one described by a neuter noun all through this discourse.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

I have yet many things to say - Concerning my passion, death, resurrection, and the consequences of it. These things we have, not in uncertain traditions, but in the Acts, the Epistles, and the Revelation. But ye cannot bear them now - Both because of your littleness of faith, and your immoderate sorrow.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

The Spirit’s work for the believers:

v. 12. I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.

v. 13. Howbeit when He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth; for He shall not speak of Himself, but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak; and He will show you things to come.

v. 14. He shall glorify Me; for He shall receive of Mine, and shall show it unto you.

v. 15. All things that the Father hath are Mine; therefore said I that He shall take of Mine, and shall show It unto you.

Much more remains to be said, much more Christ would like to tell His disciples, but in their present state of little faith, of immature spirituality, mixed with sorrow and grief over His leaving, they would not be able to grasp, to understand it. Jesus had indeed told His disciples all that they needed for their salvation, and there was and is no need for further arbitrary revelations, no matter from what sources these claim to come. But the disciples needed further instruction in order to understand the instruction which they had already received from the Master. And this would be provided for by the Spirit of Truth, by the Spirit whose essential function would be the teaching of the truth, the Word of God. He will teach them, serve as their Guide in leading them into the whole truth. He will bring their hearts and minds into the truth, make them familiar with it, let them understand and grasp the truth, have them realize the grace of God in Christ Jesus. And in doing this, the Spirit will not display an arbitrary, independent activity. The relation between the persons of the Godhead is the intimacy of unity and precludes any such possibility. The Spirit can and will lead the believers into all truth, because He will not bring a separate, independent revelation and Gospel, but will speak what He has heard in the council of the Godhead. The guarantee of the Spirit’s teaching is that He will utter the words of the Triune God as such. "Here He makes the Holy Ghost a preacher, in order that no one shall stand gaping up into heaven (as the flighty spirits and enthusiasts do) and separate Him from the oral Word or ministry of preaching, but know and learn that He wants to be with and in the Word, and through it lead us into all. truth, that we have faith in it, and fight therewith, and be kept against all lies and deceit of. the devil, and conquer in all tribulations. " Thus the Spirit, in the Word, revivals and makes plain the mysteries of God and heaven. And since He is a Spirit of prophecy, He will tell also of things that are to come, that are now coming. The future salvation also belongs to the counsel of God the coming of Christ to judgment, the consummation of the redemption in the Kingdom of Glory. And in regard to all these facts the Spirit will give the proper information. Moreover, in doing so, His work will redound to the glory of the Savior, since the truth which He will reveal He will receive from Christ for the purpose of preaching. By picturing Christ before the eyes and hearts of the believers, the Holy Spirit provides and gives to Christ the glory which is due Him in His capacity as Savior. And in taking His doctrine from the Son, the Spirit incidentally receives His doctrine from the Father, for since they have the Godhead in common, they have also the divine knowledge in common. Jesus here makes a very bold statement, as Luther says, and one that could not be made by any mere man. All that the Father has, He says, is Mine. He not only has charge of it; it is not only in His possession for a short time, but He has absolute power over its disposition, for He and the Father have everything in common. The Spirit has the unlimited fullness of the Godhead to draw from, all in the interest of the believers. That is the work of the Spirit for and in the believers, that He teaches them to know Jesus Christ, the Savior, aright and with ever-increasing clearness.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The second benefit, which our Saviour declares was to be expected by the coming of the Holy Spirit, relates to the apostles themselves: He shall guide you into all truth; that is, into all truth necessary for you to know in order to salvation.

This is a principal text which the papists bring for their doctrine of infallibility, but groundlessly: for this promise was made to all the apostles, as well as Peter; nay, not only to the apostles, but to all their succesors: yea, not to the apostles only and their successors, but to all believers also: for they are led by the Spirit of God, and that into all truth too; not absolutely, but into all necessary truth: and so far as a private Christian follows the conduct and guidance of the divine Spirit, he is more infallible than either pope or council, who follow the dictates and directions of their own spirits only.

That is, he shall not teach you a private doctrine, or that which is contrary to what ye have learned of me, but whatsoever he shall hear of me, and receive from me, that shall he speak; and he will shew you things to come.

This affords an argument to prove the Holy Spirit to be God: he that can shew us things to come, he that clearly foreseeth and infallibly foretelleth what shall be, before it is, is certainly God.

But this the Holy Spirit doth: He will shew you things to come. Men and devils may guess at things to come, but none can shew things to come, but he that is truly and really God: and therefore the Spirit is so.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

things to say to you

"messages for you" or "words for you"

the Spirit of Truth

This is a name for the Holy Spirit who will tell the people the truth about God.

he will guide you into all the truth

The "truth" refers to spiritual truth. AT: "he will teach you all the spiritual truth you need to know" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)

he will say whatever he hears

Jesus implies that God the Father will speak to the Spirit. AT: "he will say whatever God tells him to say" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)

he will take from what is mine and he will tell it to you

Here "things of mine" refers to Jesus' teaching and mighty works. AT: "he will reveal to you that what I have said and done are indeed true" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)

translationWords

Holy Spirit

true

glory

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

12–15. THE DISCIPLES AND THE PARACLETE

The Paraclete not only convicts and convinces the world, He also enlightens the Apostles respecting Christ and thereby glorifies Him, for to make Christ known is to glorify Him. These verses are very important as shewing the authority of the Apostles’ teaching: it is not their own, but it is the truth of Christ revealed by the Spirit.

12. πολλὰ … λέγειν. They are His friends (Joh 15:15), and there is nothing which He wishes to keep back from them; He would give them His entire confidence. But it would be useless to tell them what they cannot understand; cruel to impart knowledge which would only crush them. Ἄρτι is emphatic (see on Joh 16:31): at Pentecost they will receive both understanding and strength to know even that ‘which passeth knowledge’ (Eph 3:19).

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

12.] The πολλά are the things belonging to πᾶσα ἡ ἀλήθεια in the next verse, which were gradually unfolded after the Ascension, by the Spirit.

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Bear [βασταζειν] . See on Joh 10:31; Joh 12:6.

Now [αρτι] . See on 13 33. With reference to a future time, when they will be able to bear them.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.