John 13:33 Commentary and Bible Study

The Lord addresses them as ‘little children,’ and while that is intended by way of endearment, at the same time, in some respects, in his eyes they were just children in their understanding, and this last discourse has to put them right, to make very clear to them certain essentials before he goes, suffers and dies, is resurrected from the dead, ascends into heaven, and the great burden of mission falls upon them.Finally he unveils the beauty of the future church. Now he does not say this to them, but he almost does – ‘You have thought and argued among yourselves, my disciples, who is going to be the greatest in the kingdom? When Christ gets rid of the Roman forces and sets up this land in righteousness and glory, in his administration here on earth (you see they thought of him as a political Messiah) – which of us will be the greatest?’ He says, ‘Your future is altogether different. You are not going to be senior administrators or officials or nobles in my administration, you are going to be my representatives, my preachers, my spokesmen. You will be rejected by most but received by countless numbers.’‘Little children,’ a very tender, personal way of addressing them. This is the only time Christ addresses them in this way. The apostle John in his epistles uses this terminology a lot. He loves it, he gets it from Christ, but Christ uses it only once, very tenderly, when he instructs the disciples just before the Lord’s Supper. ‘Little children,’ my little children, ‘yet a little while I am with you’ – hours only. ‘Ye shall seek me: and as I said unto the Jews, Whither I go, ye cannot come.’ The leading Jews could not go where Christ had gone because they were not saved. The disciples cannot go where Christ is going because they were going to be posted on earth as his representative.