John 16 - CSB Ancient Faith Study Bible

16:1-4 Chrysostom: He says to them, in effect: It is sufficient comfort that you endure these things for my sake and the Father’s. Here he reminds them of the blessedness of which he spoke at the beginning, “Blessed are you when people shall revile you, and persecute you and shall say all kinds of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad. For great is your reward in heaven” [Mt 5:11-12]. Homilies on the Gospel of John 77.3.

16:7 Cyril of Alexandria: After Christ had completed his mission on earth, it still remained necessary that we should become partakers and sharers of the divine nature of the Word. We had to give up our own life and be so transformed that we would begin to live an entirely new kind of life that would be pleasing to God. However, this was something we could do only by sharing in the Holy Spirit. And the most fitting and appropriate time for the mission and descent of the Holy Spirit to us was . . . the occasion of our Savior’s departure to heaven. As long as Christ was with them in the flesh, the believers would have thought that they possessed all the blessings he had to offer. But when the time came for him to ascend to his Father in heaven, it was necessary for him to be united through his Spirit to those who worshiped him and to dwell in our hearts through faith. Only by his presence within us in this way could he give us the confidence to cry out [as Rm 8:15 says], “Abba, Father,” and enable us to grow in holiness and, through our possession of the all-powerful Spirit, strengthen us to become invincible against the traps of the devil and the assaults of our fellow human beings. . . .

You see that the Spirit changes those in whom he comes to dwell and alters the whole pattern of their lives. . . . With the Spirit within them it is quite natural for people who had been absorbed by the things of this world to become entirely other-worldly in their outlook and for cowards to become people of great courage. There is no question that this is what happened to the disciples. The strength they received from the Spirit enabled them to hold firmly to the love of Christ, facing the violence of the persecutors without fear. What our Savior said, then, was very true, that is, that it was to their advantage that he return to heaven. For that return was the occasion for the descent of the Spirit. Commentary on the Gospel of John 10.2.

16:11 Bede: [Christ] calls the devil “the ruler of this world” because he rules over those who, in a perverse way, love the world rather than the world’s Maker. He was judged by the Lord when he said, “I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven” [Lk 10:18]. He was judged by [the Lord] when he was casting out demons and when he gave his disciples the power of treading on all the power of the enemy [see Mt 10:1]. Accordingly, the world is convicted of the judgment by which the devil is judged when human beings are frightened by the example of the archangel who was condemned because of his pride, lest they presume to resist the will of God. The Holy Spirit convicts the world of the judgment by which the ruler of the world has been judged when the apostle Jude, speaking in the Holy Spirit, in order to correct the wickedness of evil human beings records the punishment of the proud angels, saying, “The angels who did not preserve their place of leadership but left their dwelling place, he has kept in eternal chains in darkness for the judgment of the great day” [Jd 6]. Homilies on the Gospels 2.11.

16:15 Gregory of Nazianzus: All things that the Father has are the Son’s. And . . . all that belongs to the Son is the Father’s. Nothing then is peculiar [to any person] because all things are in common. For their being itself is common and equal, even though the Son receives it from the Father. On the Son, Theological Oration 4(30).11.

16:22 Cyprian: Does it delight us to stand here long among the swords of the devil when we should rather long for and choose to hurry toward Christ? . . . Who would not choose to be free from sorrow? Who would not speed toward joy? But our sorrow is indeed to be turned into joy, as our Lord makes clear . . . To see Christ is to rejoice, and we cannot have joy unless we see him [see Ps 16:11]. What blindness of mind or what foolishness is it to love the world’s afflictions, and punishments and tears, and not rather to rush to the joy that can never be taken away! On Mortality. 5.

16:25 Gregory the Great: When [Christ] declares that he will show them plainly of the Father, he alludes to the manifestation about to take place of his own majesty that would show his own equality with the Father and the procession of the co-eternal Spirit from both. For we shall then openly see how what has its existence from something else is not subsequent to him from whom it springs and how he who is produced by procession is not preceded by those from whom he proceeded. We shall then see openly how both the One is divisibly Three and the Three indivisibly One. Morals on the Book of Job 30.4.17.

16:28 John of Damascus: Some of the things said concerning Christ make known the fact of his origin from the Father as cause. . . . For from him he derives both his being and all that he has. His being was by generative and not by creative means, as, “I came forth, and I have come,” and “I live because of the Father” [Jn 6:57]. But all that he has is not by free gift or by teaching, but in a causal sense, as “the Son is not able to do anything of himself, unless he sees the Father doing anything” [Jn 5:19]. For if the Father does not exist, neither does the Son. For the Son is of the Father and in the Father and with the Father, and not after the Father. In a similar way also what he does is of him and with him. For there is one and the same—not similar but the same—will and energy and power in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Orthodox Faith 4.18.

16:31-32 Augustine: [W]hen he was taken, not only did [the disciples] outwardly abandon his bodily presence, but they mentally abandoned their faith. This is what [Christ] is talking about when he says, “Do you now believe?” . . . This was as if he had said, Afterward, you will be so confused that you will leave behind even what you now believe. It is apparent that this is indeed what happened because they did fall into such despair and such a death, so to speak, of their old faith. For instance, Cleopas, after Jesus’s resurrection, and unaware that he was speaking with Jesus, narrated what had happened to him, saying, “We trusted that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel” [Lk 24:21]. They left him, in other words, by abandoning the very faith that had formerly believed in him. Tractates on the Gospel of John 103.3.