John Calvin Commentary John 14:16

"And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may be with you for ever," — John 14:16 (ASV)

And I will pray to the Father. This was given as a remedy for soothing the grief which they might feel because of Christ’s absence. But at the same time, Christ promises that he will give them strength to keep his commandments; for otherwise the exhortation would have had little effect. He therefore loses no time in informing them that, though he is absent from them in body, yet he will never allow them to remain without assistance, for he will be present with them by his Spirit.

Here he calls the Spirit the gift of the Father, but a gift which he will obtain by his prayers; in another passage he promises that he will give the Spirit. If I depart, he says, I will send Him to you (John 16:7). Both statements are true and correct; for insofar as Christ is our Mediator and Intercessor, he obtains from the Father the grace of the Spirit, but insofar as he is God, he bestows that grace himself. The meaning of this passage therefore is: "I was given to you by the Father to be a Comforter, but only for a time; now, having discharged my office, I will pray to him to give another Comforter, who will not be for a short time but will remain with you always."

And he will give you another Comforter. The word Comforter is here applied both to Christ and to the Spirit, and justly; for it is an office which belongs equally to both of them, to comfort and exhort us, and to guard us by their protection. Christ was the Protector of his disciples, so long as he dwelt in the world; and afterwards he committed them to the protection and guardianship of the Spirit. It may be asked, are we not still under the protection of Christ? The answer is easy. Christ is a continual Protector, but not in a visible way. So long as he dwelt in the world, he openly manifested himself as their Protector; but now he guards us by his Spirit.

He calls the Spirit another Comforter, because of the difference between the blessings which we obtain from both. The distinctive office of Christ was to appease the wrath of God by atoning for the sins of the world, to redeem men from death, to procure righteousness and life; and the distinctive office of the Spirit is to make us partakers not only of Christ himself, but of all his blessings. And yet there would be no impropriety in inferring from this passage a distinction of Persons; for there must be some distinctive characteristic in which the Spirit differs from the Son so as to be another than the Son.