Charles Ellicott Commentary John 16

These things have I spoken unto you.—Compare Note on John 15:17. Here, too, the reference is to the things which he had just said (John 16:17–27). He had foretold them of the hatred of the world and also of the witness of the Spirit.

That ye should not be offended.—Compare Matthew 11:6; Matthew 13:21; Matthew 24:10, et al. In St. John the word occurs only here and in John 6:61.

They shall put you out of the synagogues. Compare the notes on John 9:22 and John 12:42.

Will think that he doeth God service. A better translation is: will think that he offers to God a sacrificial service.

The word rendered “doeth” in the Authorized Version is the technical word for offering sacrifice (compare, e.g., the notes on Matthew 5:23 and Matthew 8:4). The word rendered “service” means the service of worship.

This can be seen by comparing other instances where it occurs in the New Testament: Romans 9:4, Romans 12:1, Hebrews 9:1, and Hebrews 9:6.

A Rabbinic comment on Numbers 25:13 is, “Whoever sheds the blood of the wicked is as he who offers sacrifice.”

The martyrdom of Stephen, or St. Paul’s account of himself as a persecutor (Acts 26:9; Galatians 1:13–14), shows how these words were fulfilled in the first years of the Church’s history, and such accounts are not absent from that history’s latest page.

Because they have not known the Father, nor me.—Compare Note on John 15:21. He repeats that ignorance of God is the cause of the world's hatred and persecution, and adds here that it is ignorance of God revealed in Himself. There is a special force in the mention of this ignorance in connection with the previous verse.

Men think that in exclusion, and anathemas, and persecutions, and deaths of men made like themselves in the image of God, they are offering to God an acceptable sacrifice.

They can know nothing of the true nature of the living Father who pities every child, and wills not the death of a sinner, and gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. They know nothing of the long-suffering and compassion of the Son of Man, who pleaded even for His murderers, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”

But these things have I told you . . .—He recurs to the thought of John 16:1. (John 14:29.) He strengthens them by forewarning them. When the persecution comes, they will remember His word and find in it support for their faith and evidence of His presence with them.

These things I said not unto you at the beginning, because I was with you.—While He was with them, He would spare them, and it was against Himself that the hatred of His foes was directed. When He has left them, they will represent Him and must stand in the foreground of the battle.

These words seem to be opposed to Matthew 10 and parallel passages, where our Lord told the Apostles at the time of their call of the persecutions that awaited them. (John 16:21; John 16:28.) The passages are not, however, really inconsistent, for “these things” in this verse (John 16:1) refers to the full account He has given them of the world’s hatred, the principles underlying it, and the manner in which it was to be met by the Spirit’s witness and their witness of Him. These things which the infant Church would have to meet, and meet without His bodily presence, He told them not at the beginning.

But now I go my way to him that sent me.—(John 14:12). The work of His apostleship on earth was drawing to its close, and He was about to return to the Father from whom He had received it. This was to Him matter of joy, and if they had really loved Him would have been so to them. They would have thought of the future before Him, as He was then thinking, in the fullness of His love, of the future before them.

And none of you asketh me, Whither goest thou?—Peter had asked this very question (John 13:36), and Thomas had implied it (John 14:5), but what the words here mean is, “None of you are out of love for Me asking about the place where I am going. Your thoughts are not with Me. It is to you as nothing that I am returning to Him that sent Me.”