John 16 is the sixteenth chapter of the Gospel of John in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It records Jesus' continued Farewell Discourse to his disciples, set on the last night before his crucifixion. In this chapter, Jesus speaks about the work of the Holy Spirit, the joy of the believers and his victory over the world. The book containing this chapter is anonymous, but early Christian tradition uniformly affirmed that John composed this Gospel.

Text

The original text was written in Koine Greek. This chapter is divided into 33 verses.

Textual witnesses

Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter are:

Places

The setting for the discourse in this chapter and the following chapter appears to be in Jerusalem. The precise location is not specified, but John 18:1 states that afterwards, "Jesus left with his disciples and crossed the Kidron Valley".

Purpose

The evangelist's purpose in this section of his gospel is to support the early Church for whom he is writing, to ensure that they do not fall away (, hina mē skandalisthēte). Some commentators suggest he is writing for a specific group of believers called the Johannine Community.

Verse 1

Heinrich Meyer relates "all this" to, the section of this discourse which anticipates the world's hatred for the disciples. English translations vary widely in the way they treat the opening verse of this chapter: Meyer observes that "Prepared beforehand, and armed by Christ’s communications, they were not to be made to stumble at Him, but were to oppose to the hatred of the world all the greater efficiency and constancy of faith."

Verse 2

Jesus foretells the exclusion from the Jewish synagogues which the evangelist has already alluded to in and.

Verse 4

Lutheran writer Johann Bengel notes that while Jesus had not said these things before, he was previously aware of the hatred which would arise.

Verse 5

The King James Version adopted the wording "I go my way" for this verse. William Robertson Nicoll comments that the disciples' failure to ascertain clearly where Jesus was going reflected their absorption with "the thought of His departure and its consequences of bereavement [for] themselves".

Verses 8-11

Commentator Henry Alford refers to three key words in this chapter, ἁμαρτία, δικαιοσύνη, κρίσις (sin, righteousness and judgment, ) which "comprehend the three great steps of advance in spiritual truth among men".

Verse 13

Alford advises that in the words all truth, "no promise of universal knowledge, nor of infallibility, is hereby conveyed; but a promise to them and us, that the Holy Spirit shall teach and lead us, not as children, under the tutors and governors of legal and imperfect knowledge, but as sons".

Verse 24

See also: Matthew 7:7-8 and Luke 11:9-10.