Thomas Aquinas Commentary John 16:1-4

"These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be caused to stumble. They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you shall think that he offereth service unto God. And these things will they do, because they have not known the Father, nor me. But these things have I spoken unto you, that when their hour is come, ye may remember them, how that I told you. And these things I said not unto you from the beginning, because I was with you." — John 16:1-4 (ASV)

1. Previously, our Lord had offered certain reasons to console His disciples concerning His departure and the persecutions and tribulations that would come upon them. Here, He explains these reasons more clearly.

   • First, He explains the reasons He gave before.
   • Second, we see the effect of this explanation on the disciples, who say to Him, “Behold, now you are speaking plainly and using no figure of speech!” (John 16:29).

   If we pay close attention to what was said in the previous two chapters, we can see that our Lord aimed to console His disciples against two things: His own departure from them, and the tribulations that would come upon them. But here He explains these two things in reverse order. He had first consoled them about His departure because this would happen very soon, and He had not yet foretold all the tribulations that would come upon them. But now, since they seemed to be more troubled by their own tribulations than by Christ’s departure, our Lord first consoles them against their forthcoming trials, and then against His departure: and now I go to him who sent me (John 16:5).

   Concerning the first point, He does three things:

   • First, He states His intention.
   • Second, He mentions the tribulations they will suffer from being persecuted: They will put you out of the synagogues.
   • Third, He tells them why they will be persecuted: And these things they will do to you.

2. He says, in effect: I have said that the Jews hate Me and you because they do not know the One who sent Me. I have said that they are without excuse and that you and the Holy Spirit will bear witness against them. Now, these things I have spoken to you, that you should not be made to stumble. This means you should not fall away when the tribulations I have foretold come upon you.

   It is fitting that our Lord warns them against falling away after promising the Holy Spirit. This is because the Holy Spirit is love—God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Romans 5:5)—and the Holy Spirit prevents stumbling: Great peace have those who love your law; nothing can make them stumble (Psalms 119:165). It is characteristic of friends that they disregard any loss for one another’s sake (Proverbs 12:26). Therefore, for one who is a friend of God, suffering punishment and loss is no reason to fall away. Yet because the disciples had not yet received the Holy Spirit before the death of Christ, they did fall away during His passion: You will all fall away because of me this night (Matthew 26:31). But after the Holy Spirit came, there was no falling away.

3. The disciples might say, “Do we not have reason to fall away? Many troubles will come upon us:”

   • First, that of rejection.
   • Second, we will be killed.

4. They will be rejected from the society of the Jews; so He says, They will put you out of the synagogues. This is as stated before: the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess him to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue (John 9:22). This was so effective that for this reason some of the authorities who did believe in Christ were afraid to profess Him publicly, as we read earlier (John 12:42). Christ foretold this rejection: Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you and revile you, and cast out your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! (Luke 6:22).

5. Was it an evil for the apostles to be cast out of the Jewish synagogues, since they were going to leave them in any case?

   The answer, according to Augustine, is that it was a trial for them, because this was our Lord’s way of telling them that the Jews would not accept Christ. For if they had received Christ, the synagogue of the Jews and the Church of Christ would have been the same, and those who were converted to the Church of Christ would have been converted to the synagogue of the Jews.

6. The other trial is that of being killed: indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. We can take these words as spoken to console the disciples, so that the word indeed signifies a contrary train of thought. The sense would be: you ought to be consoled by what they will do to you, for, indeed the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God.

   How is it a consolation for them that whoever kills them thinks he is serving God?

   The answer, according to Augustine, is that in saying, they will put you out of the synagogues, we are to understand that those converted to Christ would be immediately killed by the Jews. And so to console His disciples, our Lord tells them that they would win so many to Christ—who would be expelled from the Jewish synagogues—that they could not all be killed. Therefore, the Jews would try to kill the apostles to stop them from converting all the people to the name of Christ by their preaching.

   Alternatively, we could say that here Christ is simply telling them beforehand that they will be killed.

7. He says, whoever kills you will think he does a service to God, and not to the gods, to show that He is speaking only of persecution from the Jews: I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify (Matthew 23:34). The martyrs of Christ were killed by the Gentiles, and they did not consider that they were serving God but only their own gods. It was the Jews who, when they killed those who were preaching Christ, thought this was a service to God. For they had a zeal for God, but without knowledge, since they believed that anyone who converted to Christ was deserting God. We read of this killing: For your sake we are killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered (Psalms 44:22).

8. He gives the reason why this will be so: And these things they will do to you, because they have not known the Father or Me.

   • First, stating the reason for the future persecution.
   • And then, saying why He foretold this persecution: But these things I have told you.

9. He says they will persecute you, but they will do to you, not out of zeal for the truth, but because they have not known the Father as Father, or Me as His Son: If you knew Me, you would perhaps know My Father also (John 8:19); I formerly blasphemed and persecuted and insulted him; but I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief (1 Timothy 1:13).

10. One could ask: if the Jews are going to persecute you because of their ignorance of the faith, why did Christ foretell this to you? But these things I have told you, that when the hour comes, you may remember that I told you of them.

    So Christ first gives the reason why He foretold this, and second, why He did not tell them before: I did not tell you these things from the beginning.

11. He says, But these things I have told you, that when the hour comes, you may remember that I told you of them. The “hour” is said to come for people when they are able to accomplish what they desire and do what they want: let not the flower of our time pass us by . So the hour of the Jews will come when they are able to begin to persecute you. This is the hour of darkness: but this is your hour, and the power of darkness (Luke 22:53).

    That you may remember that I told you of them. This would help in two ways. In the midst of their persecutions, when they recalled that Christ had predicted them, they would realize His divinity and become more confident of His help. Again, when people foresee that tribulations are soon to come, they are less afflicted by them, for “forewarned is forearmed.”

    Cicero gives the reason for this in his Tusculan Questions. The better that temporal goods and evils are known, he says, the less they are regarded. Thus, riches are more highly regarded by those who do not have them than by the same people after they acquire them. In the same way, troubles are more feared and considered more oppressive before they are experienced than when they have come and are present. Now, when evil is meditated upon before it actually comes, this makes it present in a certain sense, and because of this presence, it is less regarded. So Cicero says that one who is wise, by premeditating on evils before they strike, can acquire strength against the sadness they will bring.

    Accordingly, Christ foretold the apostles about their tribulations for two reasons: to increase their confidence in His help, and to lessen their sadness.

12. Here He gives the reason why He did not foretell these things to them before, namely, because I was with you.

    We can relate this to the two points just mentioned. First, to the increasing of their hope. While I was with you, you had confidence in My help. But now that you will see Me die, you might doubt My power. Consequently, I must foretell certain things that are to come so that you may realize My divinity and power.

    Or, we can refer this to the second point, and then the meaning becomes this: I was with you, protecting you, and letting you cast all your troubles on Me. Father... while I was with them, I kept them in Your name (John 17:12). But since I am about to leave you, the entire weight of your troubles will fall upon yourselves. And so it is necessary that you be forewarned.

13. Yet it seems that our Lord did predict similar things before, for the other Evangelists tell us that before this, the Lord foretold to His disciples that they would be handed over to the authorities and rulers and that they would be scourged in the Jewish synagogues.

    This is not at odds with what our Lord says here, but I did not tell you these things from the beginning, because they said that our Lord said this to them on the Mount of Olives when His passion was near, that is, three days before the Last Supper. So the phrase, from the beginning, does not refer to the time of the passion, but to the time when He was first with His disciples, as Augustine says.

14. But this conflicts with Matthew. For he says that our Lord foretold that tribulations would come to the disciples not only when His passion was fast approaching, but even when He first chose them: I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves (Matthew 10:16).

    One must say then that from the beginning refers not only to the tribulations that were to come, but also to the Holy Spirit, for He did not tell them of the coming of the Holy Spirit from the beginning, as Augustine says.

    Or, it could be said, with Chrysostom, that Christ is referring to their tribulations. In this case, He did not tell them from the beginning two things which He now newly foretells. One is that they would suffer persecutions from the Jews, which He had not said previously, but had only mentioned the Gentiles (Matthew 10:22). The second regards something He had previously foretold them, which was that they would be scourged. But He now adds an element which was especially troublesome: that the Jews would regard their death as a service to God.