Bible Commentaries

These things; the premonitions which he had given them in respect to the trials and sufferings that were impending over them.--Be offended; surprised and disheartened, at the on set of unexpected calamities.

Reprove; teach, convince.

Because I go to my Father. The meaning seems to be that the Holy Spirit was to instruct the world in respect to righteousness, that is, the nature of the duty which the law of God requires, since Jesus himself, who had made this, in its various branches, the great subject of all his teaching, was about to leave the world, and of course his instructions must be closed. Many commentators have supposed that by the word righteousness Jesus refers to his own innocence of the charges against him; but the sin mentioned in the John 16:9 is the sin of others, if the righteousness mentioned here were his own, a pronoun would be required to change the subject, to which the words would respectively have pertained. That is, it should have been "to convince the world of their sin and of my righteousness." It seems clear, therefore, that all the words sin, righteousness, and judgment, should be understood in their general sense, and that the meaning of the John 16:10 is, that the Holy Spirit was to urge upon men the nature and the 'Obligation of moral duty, since the instructions of Jesus were now to be closed.

The prince of this world; Satan, spoken of in the Scriptures as the origin and representative of human wickedness.

He shall not speak of himself; that is, he shall not make a new and independent revelation, diverse from what the Savior had taught.

All things; that is, all that relates to moral truth.

We cannot tell; we cannot understand.

John 16:25. In proverbs; obscurely.

The event corresponded with this prediction, as recorded Matthew 26:56.