John
“I have told you these things to keep you from stumbling and
losing faith.
They will reject you from the synagogues. In fact, the time is
coming when anyone who kills you will think he is rendering a service to
God.
They will do these things because they have not come to know and
understand the Father or me,
but I told you these things so that when the
time comes you may remember that I told you. I did not tell you these things
from the beginning, because I was still with you.
“But now I am going away
to the One who commissioned me, and none of
you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’
Instead, because I have spoken these things
to you, your hearts are filled with sorrow.
Nevertheless I am telling you the
truth: it is for your benefit that I am going away, because if I do not go away
the Counselor
will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.
When
he comes he will convict the world about sin, doing right, and judgment:
about sin, because sin is the failure to believe in and obey me;
about being
and doing right, because I am going to the Father and you will no longer see
me;
and about judgment, because the ruler of this world-system has been
judged.
“I still have many things to tell you, but you are not able to bear them
now.
When that spirit of the truth
comes, it will guide you into all the
truth.
The spirit will not speak on its own initiative, but it will speak whatever it hears, and it will announce to you what is going to happen in
the future.
It will glorify me, because it will receive from me and show it to
you.
Everything which the Father has is mine. That is why I told you that
the spirit will take from what is mine and announce it to you.
“In a little while you will see me no longer, and yet in a little while you
will see me.”
So some of the disciples said to one another, “What does he
mean by this, ‘A little while and you will not see me, and a little while
and you will see me,’ and ‘because I am going to the Father’?”
They kept saying, “What is the
meaning of this saying ‘a little while’? We do not understand what he is
talking about.”
Jesus knew that they were wanting to question him, so he
said to them, “Are you asking one another about what I meant by ‘a little
while and you will not see me, and again a little while and you will see me’?
I tell you on the highest authority: you will weep and wail, but the world
will rejoice. You will become sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn to joy.
Whenever a woman is in labor she has pain because her time for delivery
has come. But when she has given birth to a child, she no longer remembers
the suffering, on account of the joy that a person has been born into the
world.
So you also have sorrow now, but I will see you again.
Your hearts will rejoice, and no one will be able to rob you of your joy.
“In that day you will not need to ask me anything. I tell you on the
highest authority: Anything you ask the Father in my name He will give you.
Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask and you will receive, so
that your joy may be complete.
“I have spoken these things to you in obscure, metaphorical speech. But
the time is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figurative language,
but I will tell you plainly about the Father.
In that day you will ask in my
name. I am not telling you that I will make requests to the Father on your
behalf,
for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved me and
have believed I came forth from God.
I came forth from the Father and have come
into the world.
Now I am leaving the world and going to the Father.”
His disciples said, “Now you are speaking plainly and not using
figurative language.
Now we know that you know everything and do not
need anyone to question you. By this we believe that you came forth from God.”
Jesus replied to them, “Do you now finally believe?
Look, the hour is
coming and has already come when each of you will be scattered to his own home, and you will leave me on my own. Yet I am not alone, because the
Father is with me.
I have told you these things so that in me you would have
peace. You will have suffering in this world, but be full of courage; I have
conquered the world.”
John