John 16:13 - Exposition

Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come. This points to the definite promise already made (conditioned by his own departure, and so rendering that departure "expedient") when the Spirit of truth is come, having been sent by me from the Father. He will be your Guide into the truth in all its parts . £ As Godet says, "The reading εἰς suits ὁδηγήσει better than ἐν ." A most glorious promise this, for as days of darkness and perplexity draw on, fresh needs will arise. The "many things" which would thus be said must be presumed to have been said on highest authority; and hence the unapproachable dignity of the apostles themselves; hence the secret of all their binding and loosing power; hence the revelations they have been able to supply with reference to Christ and salvation, glory, duty, and eternal life, and all the laws of the kingdom. From this vast promise we see the sufficiency of the apostolic teaching, and by implication the portion of it which is committed to writing. Our Lord had delivered to his disciples "nothing but the truth;" but from the nature of the case they must wait for the truth in its completeness, the whole truth of salvation and deliverance. But our Lord proceeds to show that the infallibility of the Holy Spirit is not that he will be a secondary, or tertiary, or independent Divinity. Like Christ, the Son of God, who was in the bosom of the Father (see John 7:17 , John 7:18 ; John 8:28 ), so he who proceedeth from the Father will not speak from himself , as from any spontaneous, independent source. He is, in his gracious operations, no rival Deity, but the Spirit of the Father and the Son (comp. John 8:44 , where the essence of the lie is that the devil speaketh of his own), and whatsoever things he shall hear £ (or, heareth , or, shall have heard ), that shall he speak . The verb "hear" is used absolutely, and has been variously completed with the words, "of me" or "of the Father," whether verbally supplemented or not. We learn that the Holy Spirit is limited by the revelation already involved in the great fact of the Incarnation. "He will speak" of that which he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are coming . The revelation will concern Christ and the future. The whole New Testament, so far as it is apostolic, is here declared to be the work inspired by the Spirit's guidance of the apostles' mind into the truth in all its completeness and in all its parts. Some, like Westcott, refer the ἐρχόμενα to "the constitution of the Christian Church;" but the most satisfactory view is that the Spirit would himself be the Source of the prophetic hope and wondrous vision of the future which pervades the apostolic writings. Hengstenberg runs here into great detail. His remark is of deep interest—that such a promise should be found in the Fourth Gospel, preluding those sublime premonitions which the beloved disciple, when "in the Spirit," received and recorded concerning the things which are and are to come ( Revelation 1:19 ). Not only in the writings of John, but of Peter, and in the prophetic spirit given to Paul, we see how the Lord the Spirit fulfilled the promise.