John 16:1 Commentary and Bible Study

This chapter is going to bring us to Christ’s words on the era of the Spirit. Christ will be crucified, he will arise from the dead, he will ascend into heaven, he will remain at the right hand of God the Father. The Holy Spirit, the invisible Holy Spirit, will be sent to be guide and Lord of the church, and they must walk in relation with Christ by faith not by sight.Now the Lord’s words are extremely predictive, and first of all he tells them the bleak side of the matter. This will be the age of the Spirit, the age of the gospel, but there is a bleak side. He had already begun to speak about their rejection after his departure (John 15:18), and now he says: ‘That ye should not be offended.’ The modern translations tend to go for something else like – that you should not stumble. Well, both are perfectly accurate. The Greek has very interesting term, and we have an English word which comes straight from the Greek word – that you should not be scandalised, almost literally. But what it means is that you should not be tripped up, trapped, caught out by the opposition and the persecution and the trouble. So I tell you now, before it all happens, so that when it comes and they cast you out of the synagogues and they even seek after your life, then you will know that I warned you. Excommunication was shortly to follow, from the temple, from the synagogue, from the Jewish order. There is a bleak side to this, the hostility of the world.