{"commentary":{"id":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","website":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamieson-Fausset-Brown_Bible_Commentary","licenseUrl":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/","licenseNotes":null,"licenseNotice":null,"englishName":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","language":"eng","textDirection":"rtl","sha256":"db3d4c8b3c1f32ef9d1430a57392e02bda3a17aac1f9bbe398461de021a3cb13","availableFormats":["json"],"listOfBooksApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/books.json","listOfProfilesApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/profiles.json","numberOfBooks":66,"totalNumberOfChapters":1187,"totalNumberOfVerses":17056,"totalNumberOfProfiles":0,"languageName":"English","languageEnglishName":"English"},"book":{"id":"JHN","commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"John","commonName":"John","introduction":"THE author of the Fourth Gospel was the younger of the two sons of Zebedee, a fisherman on the Sea of Galilee, who resided at Bethsaida, where were born Peter and Andrew his brother, and Philip also. His mother's name was Salome, who, though not without her imperfections (Mat 20:20-28), was one of those dear and honored women who accompanied the Lord on one of His preaching circuits through Galilee, ministering to His bodily wants; who followed Him to the cross, and bought sweet spices to anoint Him after His burial, but, on bringing them to the grave, on the morning of the First Day of the week, found their loving services gloriously superseded by His resurrection ere they arrived. His father, Zebedee, appears to have been in good circumstances, owning a vessel of his own and having hired servants (Mar 1:20). Our Evangelist, whose occupation was that of a fisherman with his father, was beyond doubt a disciple of the Baptist, and one of the two who had the first interview with Jesus. He was called while engaged at his secular occupation (Mat 4:21-22), and again on a memorable occasion (Luk 5:1-11), and finally chosen as one of the Twelve Apostles (Mat 10:2). He was the youngest of the Twelve--the \"Benjamin,\" as DA COSTA calls him--and he and James his brother were named in the native tongue by Him who knew the heart, \"Boanerges,\" which the Evangelist Mark (Mar 3:17) explains to mean \"Sons of thunder\"; no doubt from their natural vehemence of character. They and Peter constituted that select triumvirate of whom see on Luk 9:28. But the highest honor bestowed on this disciple was his being admitted to the bosom place with his Lord at the table, as \"the disciple whom Jesus loved\" (Joh 13:23; Joh 20:2; Joh 21:7, Joh 20:24), and to have committed to him by the dying Redeemer the care of His mother (Joh 19:26-27). There can be no reasonable doubt that this distinction was due to a sympathy with His own spirit and mind on the part of John which the all-penetrating Eye of their common Master beheld in none of the rest; and although this was probably never seen either in his life or in his ministry by his fellow apostles, it is brought out wonderfully in his writings, which, in Christ-like spirituality, heavenliness, and love, surpass, we may freely say, all the other inspired writings.\n\nAfter the effusion of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, we find him in constant but silent company with Peter, the great spokesman and actor in the infant Church until the accession of Paul. While his love to the Lord Jesus drew him spontaneously to the side of His eminent servant, and his chastened vehemence made him ready to stand courageously by him, and suffer with him, in all that his testimony to Jesus might cost him, his modest humility, as the youngest of all the apostles, made him an admiring listener and faithful supporter of his brother apostle rather than a speaker or separate actor. Ecclesiastical history is uniform in testifying that John went to Asia Minor; but it is next to certain that this could not have been till after the death both of Peter and Paul; that he resided at Ephesus, whence, as from a center, he superintended the churches of that region, paying them occasional visits; and that he long survived the other apostles. Whether the mother of Jesus died before this, or went with John to Ephesus, where she died and was buried, is not agreed. One or two anecdotes of his later days have been handed down by tradition, one at least bearing marks of reasonable probability. But it is not necessary to give them here. In the reign of Domitian (A.D. 81-96) he was banished to \"the isle that is called Patmos\" (a small rocky and then almost uninhabited island in the Ægean Sea), \"for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ\" (Rev 1:9). IRENÆUS and EUSEBIUS say that this took place about the end of Domitian's reign. That he was thrown into a cauldron of boiling oil, and miraculously delivered, is one of those legends which, though reported by TERTULLIAN and JEROME, is entitled to no credit. His return from exile took place during the brief but tolerant reign of Nerva; he died at Ephesus in the reign of Trajan [EUSEBIUS, Ecclesiastical History, 3.23], at an age above ninety, according to some; according to others, one hundred; and even one hundred twenty, according to others still. The intermediate number is generally regarded as probably the nearest to the truth.\n\nAs to the date of this Gospel, the arguments for its having been composed before the destruction of Jerusalem (though relied on by some superior critics) are of the slenderest nature; such as the expression in Joh 5:2, \"there is at Jerusalem, by the sheep-gate, a pool,\" &c.; there being no allusion to Peter's martyrdom as having occurred according to the prediction in Joh 21:18 --a thing too well known to require mention. That it was composed long after the destruction of Jerusalem, and after the decease of all the other apostles, is next to certain, though the precise time cannot be determined. Probably it was before his banishment, however; and if we date it between the years 90 and 94, we shall probably be close to the truth.\n\nAs to the readers for whom it was more immediately designed, that they were Gentiles we might naturally presume from the lateness of the date; but the multitude of explanations of things familiar to every Jew puts this beyond all question.\n\nNo doubt was ever thrown upon the genuineness and authenticity of this Gospel till about the close of the eighteenth century; nor were these embodied in any formal attack upon it till BRETSCHNEIDER, in 1820, issued his famous treatise [Probabilia], the conclusions of which he afterwards was candid enough to admit had been satisfactorily disproved. To advert to these would be as painful as unnecessary; consisting as they mostly do of assertions regarding the Discourses of our Lord recorded in this Gospel which are revolting to every spiritual mind. The Tubingen school did their best, on their peculiar mode of reasoning, to galvanize into fresh life this theory of the post-Joannean date of the Fourth Gospel; and some Unitarian critics still cling to it. But to use the striking language of VAN OOSTERZEE regarding similar speculations on the Third Gospel, \"Behold, the feet of them that shall carry it out dead are already at the door\" (Act 5:9). Is there one mind of the least elevation of spiritual discernment that does not see in this Gospel marks of historical truth and a surpassing glory such as none of the other Gospels possess, brightly as they too attest their own verity; and who will not be ready to say that if not historically true, and true just as it stands, it never could have been by mortal man composed or conceived?\n\nOf the peculiarities of this Gospel, we note here only two. The one is its reflective character. While the others are purely narrative, the Fourth Evangelist, \"pauses, as it were, at every turn,\" as DA COSTA says [Four Witnesses, p. 234], \"at one time to give a reason, at another to fix the attention, to deduce consequences, or make applications, or to give utterance to the language of praise.\" See Joh 2:20-21, Joh 2:23-25; Joh 4:1-2; Joh 7:37-39; Joh 11:12-13, Joh 11:49-52; Joh 21:18-19, Joh 21:22-23. The other peculiarity of this Gospel is its supplementary character. By this, in the present instance, we mean something more than the studiousness with which he omits many most important particulars in our Lord's history, for no conceivable reason but that they were already familiar as household words to all his readers, through the three preceding Gospels, and his substituting in place of these an immense quantity of the richest matter not found in the other Gospels. We refer here more particularly to the nature of the additions which distinguish this Gospel; particularly the notices of the different Passovers which occurred during our Lord's public ministry, and the record of His teaching at Jerusalem, without which it is not too much to say that we could have had but a most imperfect conception either of the duration of His ministry or of the plan of it. But another feature of these additions is quite as noticeable and not less important. \"We find,\" to use again the words of DA COSTA [Four Witnesses, pp. 238, 239], slightly abridged, \"only six of our Lord's miracles recorded in this Gospel, but these are all of the most remarkable kind, and surpass the rest in depth, specialty of application, and fulness of meaning. Of these six we find only one in the other three Gospels--the multiplication of the loaves. That miracle chiefly, it would seem, on account of the important instructions of which it furnished the occasion (John 6:1-71), is here recorded anew. The five other tokens of divine power are distinguished from among the many recorded in the three other Gospels by their furnishing a still higher display of power and command over the ordinary laws and course of nature. Thus we find recorded here the first of all the miracles that Jesus wrought--the changing of water into wine (Joh 2:1-11), the cure of the nobleman's son at a distance (Joh 4:43-54); of the numerous cures of the lame and the paralytic by the word of Jesus, only one--of the man impotent for thirty and eight years (Joh 5:1-9); of the many cures of the blind, one only--of the man born blind (Joh 9:1-12); the restoration of Lazarus, not from a deathbed, like Jairus' daughter, nor from a bier, like the widow of Nain's son, but from the grave, and after lying there four days, and there sinking into corruption (John 11:1-44); and lastly, after His resurrection, the miraculous draught of fishes on the Sea of Tiberias (Joh 21:5-11). But these are all recorded chiefly to give occasion for the record of those astonishing discourses and conversations, alike with friends and with foes, with His disciples and with the multitude which they drew forth.\"\n\nOther illustrations of the peculiarities of this Gospel will occur, and other points connected with it be adverted to, in the course of the Commentary. \n\n\n\nNext: John Chapter 1\n\n","order":43,"numberOfChapters":21,"sha256":"2a03297b1e3a6f9e0b82a13c39c82e2202f9e979c173750344c480c63057d8a0","firstChapterNumber":1,"firstChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JHN/1.json","firstChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JHN","chapter":1},"lastChapterNumber":21,"lastChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JHN/21.json","lastChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JHN","chapter":21},"totalNumberOfVerses":680},"chapter":{"number":16,"content":[{"type":"verse","number":2,"content":["They shall put you out of the synagogue-- (Joh 9:22; Joh 12:42). \n\nthe time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service--The words mean religious service--\"that he is offering a service to God.\" (So Saul of Tarsus, Gal 1:13-14; Phi 3:6).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":4,"content":["these things I said not . . . at--from. \n\nthe beginning--He had said it pretty early (Luk 6:22), but not quite as in Joh 16:2. \n\nbecause I was with you.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":5,"content":["But now I go my way to him that sent me--While He was with them, the world's hatred was directed chiefly against Himself; but His departure would bring it down upon them as His representatives. \n\nand none of you asketh me, Whither goest thou?--They had done so in a sort (Joh 13:36; Joh 14:5); but He wished more intelligent and eager inquiry on the subject.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":6,"content":["But because I have said these things . . . sorrow hath filled your heart--Sorrow had too much paralyzed them, and He would rouse their energies.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":7,"content":["It is expedient for you that I go away--\n\nMy Saviour, can it ever be \n\nThat I should gain by losing thee? \n\nKEBLE. \n\nYes. \n\nfor if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you, but if I depart, I will send him unto you--(See on Joh 7:39; Joh 14:15).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":8,"content":["And when he is come, he will, &c.--This is one of the passages most pregnant with thought in the profound discourses of Christ; with a few great strokes depicting all and every part of the ministry of the Holy Ghost in the world--His operation with reference to individuals as well as the mass, on believers and unbelievers alike [OLSHAUSEN]. \n\nhe will reprove--This is too weak a word to express what is meant. Reproof is indeed implied in the term employed, and doubtless the word begins with it. But convict or convince is the thing intended; and as the one expresses the work of the Spirit on the unbelieving portion of mankind, and the other on the believing, it is better not to restrict it to either.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":9,"content":["Of sin, because they believe not on me--As all sin has its root in unbelief, so the most aggravated form of unbelief is the rejection of Christ. The Spirit, however, in fastening this truth upon the conscience, does not extinguish, but, on the contrary, does consummate and intensify, the sense of all other sins.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":10,"content":["Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more--Beyond doubt, it is Christ's personal righteousness which the Spirit was to bring home to the sinner's heart. The evidence of this was to lie in the great historical fact, that He had \"gone to His Father and was no more visible to men\":--for if His claim to be the Son of God, the Saviour of the world, had been a lie, how should the Father, who is \"a jealous God,\" have raised such a blasphemer from the dead and exalted him to His right hand? But if He was the \"Faithful and True Witness,\" the Father's \"Righteous Servant,\" \"His Elect, in whom His soul delighted,\" then was His departure to the Father, and consequent disappearance from the view of men, but the fitting consummation, the august reward, of all that He did here below, the seal of His mission, the glorification of the testimony which He bore on earth, by the reception of its Bearer to the Father's bosom. This triumphant vindication of Christ's rectitude is to us divine evidence, bright as heaven, that He is indeed the Saviour of the world, God's Righteous Servant to justify many, because He bare their iniquities (Isa 53:11). Thus the Spirit, in this clause, is seen convincing men that there is in Christ perfect relief under the sense of sin of which He had before convinced them; and so far from mourning over His absence from us, as an irreparable loss, we learn to glory in it, as the evidence of His perfect acceptance on our behalf, exclaiming with one who understood this point, \"Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth: Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died; yea, rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God,\" &c. (Rom 8:33-34).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":11,"content":["Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged--By supposing that the final judgment is here meant, the point of this clause is, even by good interpreters, quite missed. The statement, \"The prince of this world is judged,\" means, beyond all reasonable doubt, the same as that in Joh 12:31, \"Now shall the prince of this world be cast out\"; and both mean that his dominion over men, or his power to enslave and so to ruin them, is destroyed. The death of Christ \"judged\" or judicially overthrew him, and he was thereupon \"cast out\" or expelled from his usurped dominion (Heb 2:14; Jo1 3:8; Col 2:15). Thus, then, the Spirit shall bring home to men's conscience: (1) the sense of sin, consummated in the rejection of Him who came to \"take away the sin of the world\"; (2) the sense of perfect relief in the righteousness of the Father's Servant, now fetched from the earth that spurned Him to that bosom where from everlasting He had dwelt; and (3) the sense of emancipation from the fetters of Satan, whose judgment brings to men liberty to be holy, and transformation out of servants of the devil into sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty. To one class of men, however, all this will carry conviction only; they \"will not come to Christ\"--revealed though He be to them as the life-giving One--that they may have life. Such, abiding voluntarily under the dominion of the prince of this world, are judged in his judgment, the visible consummation of which will be at the great day. To another class, however, this blessed teaching will have another issue--translating them out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's dear Son.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":12,"content":["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. \n\nhe 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.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":14,"content":["He shall glorify me; for he shall receive of mine and show it unto you--Thus the whole design of the Spirit's office is to glorify Christ--not in His own Person, for this was done by the Father when He exalted Him to His own right hand--but in the view and estimation of men. For this purpose He was to \"receive of Christ\"--all the truth relating to Christ--\"and show it unto them,\" or make them to discern it in its own light. The subjective nature of the Spirit's teaching--the discovery to the souls of men of what is Christ outwardly--is here very clearly expressed; and, at the same time, the vanity of looking for revelations of the Spirit which shall do anything beyond throwing light in the soul upon what Christ Himself is, and taught, and did upon earth.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":15,"content":["All things that the Father hath are mine--a plainer expression than this of absolute community with the Father in all things cannot be conceived, though the \"all things\" here have reference to the things of the Kingdom of Grace, which the Spirit was to receive that He might show it to us. We have here a wonderful glimpse into the inner relations of the Godhead.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":16,"content":["A little while, and ye shall not see me; and again a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father--The joy of the world at their not seeing Him seems to show that His removal from them by death was what He meant; and in that case, their joy at again seeing Him points to their transport at His reappearance amongst them on His Resurrection, when they could no longer doubt His identity. At the same time the sorrow of the widowed Church in the absence of her Lord in the heavens, and her transport at His personal return, are certainly here expressed.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":23,"content":["In that day--of the dispensation of the Spirit (as in Joh 14:20). \n\nye shall ask--inquire of \n\nme nothing--by reason of the fulness of the Spirit's teaching (Joh 14:26; Joh 16:13; and compare Jo1 2:27).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":24,"content":["Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name--for \"prayer in the name of Christ, and prayer to Christ, presuppose His glorification\" [OLSHAUSEN]. \n\nask--when I am gone, \"in My name.\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":25,"content":["in proverbs--in obscure language, opposed to \"showing plainly\"--that is, by the Spirit's teaching.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":26,"content":["I say not . . . I will pray the Father for you--as if He were not of Himself disposed to aid you: Christ does pray the Father for His people, but not for the purpose of inclining an unwilling ear.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":27,"content":["For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me--This love of theirs is that which is called forth by God's eternal love in the gift of His Son mirrored in the hearts of those who believe, and resting on His dear Son.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":28,"content":["I came forth from the Father, &c.--that is, \"And ye are right, for I have indeed so come forth,and shall soon return whence I came.\" This echo of the truth, alluded to in Joh 16:27, seems like thinking aloud, as if it were grateful to His own spirit on such a subject and at such an hour.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":29,"content":["His disciples said, . . . now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb--hardly more so than before; the time for perfect plainness was yet to come; but having caught a glimpse of His meaning (it was nothing more), they eagerly express their satisfaction, as if glad to make anything of His words. How touchingly does this show both the simplicity of their hearts and the infantile character of their faith!\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":31,"content":["Jesus answered . . . Do ye now believe?--that is, \"It is well ye do, for it is soon to be tested, and in a way ye little expect.\" \n\nthe hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone; and yet I am not alone--A deep and awful sense of wrong experienced is certainly expressed here, but how lovingly! That He was not to be utterly deserted, that there was One who would not forsake Him, was to Him matter of ineffable support and consolation; but that He should be without all human countenance and cheer, who as Man was exquisitely sensitive to the law of sympathy, would fill themselves with as much shame, when they afterwards recurred to it, as the Redeemer's heart in His hour of need with pungent sorrow. \"I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none\" (Psa 69:20). \n\nbecause the Father is with me--how near, and with what sustaining power, who can express?\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":33,"content":["These things I have spoken unto you--not the immediately preceding words, but this whole discourse, of which these were the very last words, and which He thus winds up. \n\nthat in me ye might have peace--in the sublime sense before explained. (See on Joh 14:27). \n\nIn the world ye shall have tribulation--specially arising from its deadly opposition to those who \"are not of the world, but chosen out of the world.\" So that the \"peace\" promised was far from an unruffled one. \n\nI have overcome the world--not only before you, but for you, that ye may be able to do the same (Jo1 5:4-5).\n\n\n\n\nNext: John Chapter 17\n\n"]}],"introduction":"DISCOURSE AT THE SUPPER TABLE CONCLUDED. (John 16:1-33)\n\nThese things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended--both the warnings and the encouragements just given.\n\n"},"thisChapterLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JHN/16.json","thisChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JHN","chapter":16},"nextChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JHN/17.json","nextChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JHN","chapter":17},"previousChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JHN/15.json","previousChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JHN","chapter":15},"numberOfVerses":22}