John 14:16Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

By saying "another," He indicates the distinction of His hypostasis. By saying "Comforter," He indicates the unity of essence.

Why then does He say, "I will pray the Father"? Because if He had said, "I will send," they would not have believed as readily. At this point He was concerned that they should believe Him.

Later He declares that He Himself sends Him, saying, "Receive the Holy Spirit." But here He says, "I will pray the Father," in order to make the word credible for them.

For John says concerning Him that "of His fullness we all have received" (Jn 1:16). How then can He receive from another what He Himself possesses?

And again: "He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire" (Lk 3:16).

What advantage would He have over the apostles, if He had to pray to the Father in order to give the Spirit to others?

The apostles often did this, as is evident, even without prayer. And if the Holy Spirit is sent from the Father through prayer, how does He descend of Himself?

How can He be sent by another who is everywhere present, who of Himself distributes gifts "to each one individually as He wills" (1 Cor 12:11), and speaks with authority: "Separate for Me Barnabas and Saul" (Acts 13:2)?

Although these ministers served God, He summoned them with authority to His own work. This was not because the work to which He called them was different, but to show His authority.

What then, you will say, does "I will pray the Father" mean? The time of the coming of the Holy Spirit is being shown.

When He had cleansed them by the sacrifice, then the Holy Spirit descended. Why did He not come while Christ was with them? Because the sacrifice had not yet been offered.

When sin had already been destroyed, and the apostles had received the command to go into dangers and were preparing for the contest, then the One who strengthens for struggles had to come.

Why then does the Spirit not come immediately after the Resurrection? So that the apostles might desire Him more intensely and receive Him with greater love.

As long as Christ was with them, they were not in grief. But when He departed, they were deprived of Him and were in great fear.

Naturally, then, they were to receive the Holy Spirit with great zeal. "That He may abide with you." This means that even after death He will not depart.

And lest, when they heard of the Comforter, they should suppose another new incarnation and hope to see Him with their eyes, Christ turns them away from this and says, "Whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him."

He will not be with you as I am. Rather, He will dwell in your very souls. This is what "He will be in you" means.

By calling Him the Spirit of truth, He indicates the figures that existed in the Old Testament. "That He may abide with you." What does "that He may abide with you" mean?

It means the same as what He says of Himself: "I am with you" (Mt 28:20).

Let us consider the reason for the present feast of Pentecost, and why we celebrate it. It is because the Spirit has descended to us.

As the Only-begotten Son of God is with faithful men, so also is the Spirit of God. How is this known?

"If you love Me," the Savior says, "keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever, the Spirit of truth" (Jn 14:15-17).

Do not marvel if He says, "I will ask the Father." For He does not ask as a slave. Rather, in order to assure the disciples that the Spirit the Comforter will certainly come to them, He condescends to them and says, "I will ask" the Father.

For if He had said, "I will send," they would not have believed as much. But now, to make His word more trustworthy, He says, "I will ask the Father." That is, if it is necessary even to ask and entreat, I will by every means take care that the Spirit come to you.

This is like what we often say: I will lay down my life so that this or that may happen. Although the matter often does not require great effort, we speak this way because we want to show that we will not shrink from effort.

Again, since the Lord offered Himself for us as a sacrifice to the Father, propitiating Him by His death as High Priest, and since after the destruction of sin and the ending of enmity the Spirit came to us, He therefore says: I will ask the Father, and He will give you the Comforter.

That is, I will propitiate the Father on your behalf and reconcile Him to you, who are hostile to Him because of sin. He, propitiated by My death for you and reconciled to you, will send you the Spirit.

"That He may abide with you forever." He said this also for their consolation. His coming is not like Mine, not for a time only, but it will continue forever. He will not leave you even after your death, but will abide with you and glorify you.

He always abides with all the saints, even after their death. This is all the more so because then they are raised still higher above fleshly passions.

He commanded us to ask in His name, Jn 14:14. Along with many other things, He also established for the ancients the form of prayer, Mt 6:9-13, giving the promise that He would fulfill, and with great readiness, whatever we might desire to receive.

Therefore, lest He seem by this to reject the person of God the Father, or to set aside the authority of Him who begot Him, I mean over the generous distribution of blessings to the saints, He said that He Himself would necessarily be a co-distributor and would bestow the Comforter together with the Father.

Again He used the word "I will ask" as man, and He attributed to the whole divine and ineffable nature what properly and especially belongs to it, as though in the person of God the Father. This is customary for Him, as we have often said before.

Yet He calls the Spirit "another Comforter," the Spirit of the essence of God the Father, or of Himself, the Son. For the essence of both is one. He does not place Him outside the divine essence, but lets us understand that the distinction lies only in His hypostatic being and existence.

For the Spirit is not the Son. Yet we must receive by faith that what He is truly has its own hypostatic being and existence, for He is the Spirit of the Father and of the Son.

Knowing that He Himself, the Son, is also a Comforter and is in fact so named in the Holy Scriptures, He calls the Spirit "another Comforter." He does not mean that the Spirit can produce in the saints anything different from what He Himself would produce, whose Spirit He is and is called.

That the Son Himself both is and is called Comforter, John will testify, saying in his writings: "These things I write to you, that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have a Comforter with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous; and He is the propitiation for our sins" (1 Jn 2:1-2).

Thus He calls the Spirit "another Comforter," wishing Him to be understood in His own hypostases, yet as having such likeness to Him and as being able to perform so indistinguishably from Him the very things that He Himself would perform in a given case, that He appears to be the Son Himself and nothing else. For the Spirit is His.

When some, still weak in faith, first considered those filled with the Holy Spirit to be drunk, Peter stood in the midst of the apostles and the whole assembly and said: "Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words. For these are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is the third hour of the day. But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: And it shall be in the last days, says the Lord, that I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. For upon My menservants and upon My maidservants, in those days, I will pour out of My Spirit" (Acts 2:14 and following).

Therefore, if the Apostle Peter, on whom the Lord founded the Church, mentioned that the prophecies and the promises of the Lord were fulfilled at that time, how can we appoint another time for this?

If someone objects that afterward the four daughters of Philip prophesied, and that the prophet Agabus existed, and that in the distribution of the Spirit, besides apostles and teachers, prophets also were formed, as the Apostle writes, and that the Apostle Paul himself prophesied many things about future heresies and the end of the world, let our opponents know this.

We do not so much deny prophecies sealed by the blood of Christ as refuse to accept false prophets who do not agree with the authority of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.

Later Jesus Christ reveals His own authority in this regard, saying: "If I do not go away, the Comforter will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you" (Jn 16:7). And again: "Receive the Holy Spirit" (Jn 20:22).

But how is the omnipresent One, who distributes gifts to each one individually as He wills, given and sent by another, 1 Cor 12:11? He is given and sent not as a slave, but as one equal in essence to the Father and the Son, and as having one will with Them.

In relation to the uncreated Trinity, these words do not have the same meaning as they have in relation to creatures. The Holy Spirit is given by the Father as proceeding from Him. He is sent by the Son as cooperating with Him and not opposing Him.

Now Jesus Christ says of the Holy Spirit that He is given and sent. Later He showed the authority of the Holy Spirit as well, when He said: "When He, the Spirit of truth, comes," and so on, Jn 16:13.

"That He may be with you forever," not leaving you even after your death. Then follows the teaching about who this other Comforter is.

You now know that the Holy Spirit both abides and dwells in the saints unto the ages of ages. For when our Lord says, "that He may be with you forever," He shows that the Holy Spirit always, unceasingly and endlessly, is and will be inseparably with them, both in the present life and in the life to come.

That the divine apostles and all others who were counted worthy to receive the Holy Spirit saw Him, listen to what Christ says after the words just cited: "The Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, because He abides with you and will be in you" (Jn 14:17).

That those who love Christ and keep His commandments also see Christ, listen again to Christ Himself, who says: "He who has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father; and I will love him and will manifest Myself to him" (Jn 14:21).

"He will give you another Comforter": or intercessor, advocate, defender. This word is used only in this discourse of the Lord, Jn 14:26; Jn 15:26; Jn 16:7, and in the First Epistle of John, 1 Jn 2:1.

By saying "another," that is, besides Me, the Lord plainly applies the concept of Comforter to Himself as well. The Evangelist John himself directly calls Him by this name, 1 Jn 2:1, as advocate and comforter. Yet by the same word "another," the Lord also distinguishes Him from Himself as another person.

"By saying 'another,' Christ indicates the distinction of His hypostasis. By saying 'Comforter,' He indicates the unity of essence" (Chrysostom). This is the third Person of the worshipful Trinity, the Holy Spirit, Jn 14:26, cf. Mt 12:32, who proceeds from the Father, Jn 15:26.

"That He may abide with you forever": the Lord visibly departed from His disciples and from the world to heaven, though invisibly He abides and will abide in His Church until the end of the age, Mt 28:20.

The Comforter also will abide with them forever, that is, eternally, never leaving them, either in this life or in the life to come, cf. Theophylact.

"Who shall dare to condemn?" says St. Paul. "Christ died, and more than this, He is risen. He is at the right hand of God and makes intercession for us" (Rom 8:34).

And the Apostle Peter joins the sending down of the Holy Spirit with the Ascension of Christ Jesus into heaven (Acts 2:33).

"He will give you another Comforter." The giver of the priceless gift is God the Father, since He judged whether the work undertaken by the Son had been fulfilled, and whether eternal righteousness had been satisfied (Isa 52:1).

Yet the Son is so certain of the Father's will that, before asking Him, He says, "He will give you."

On another occasion He even ascribes the sending of the Spirit to Himself: "I will send Him to you from the Father" (Jn 15:26).

Who, then, will be given, or, as the Savior says elsewhere, will be sent?

The word Parakletos properly means advocate, as Jesus Christ Himself is also called (1 Jn 2:1). This meaning belongs here to the One who will be sent.

He is the Spirit of truth. The duty of an advocate is to present the case rightly, to reveal the truth to the one being defended, and to defend the accused.

The Paraclete, the Spirit of truth, tells us the truth both about ourselves and about God.

He shows us our disastrous condition, which we do not see because we are blinded by sins. He shows us how we must conduct ourselves so that we may not be condemned.

He does not console us with deceptive consolations, as Absalom's false friend consoled him. He does not say, "Be at peace; your case is good" (2 Kgs 15:3).

He speaks the truth, as He is the Truth itself (1 Jn 5:6). He comforts when comfort is needed, and He comforts mightily.

All the sorrows of the world yield place to His consolations and vanish before them like smoke, like a spider's web.

Does the soul grieve, worn down by the assaults of sin? The Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God (Rom 8:16).

He helps in our prayers, showing us for what and how we should pray (Rom 8:26). Is there need to answer the cunning wisdom of the world?

No wisdom of the world can withstand the answers inspired by the Spirit of truth (Mt 10:18-20), as is evident in the example of Stephen (Acts 6:10).

Thus the Spirit Paraclete is, first, a Person, and a divine Person, since He appears equal in honor with Jesus, the Son of God.

Second, He is a Person distinct from the Son of God, since He is another Paraclete.

We also see the personal being of the Spirit Paraclete from what the Savior Himself says. He will come (Jn 15:26; Jn 16:7, 8, 13), and He will teach every truth (Jn 15:26; Jn 16:8).

He will not speak from Himself, but whatever He hears He will declare (Jn 16:13-14). He will bear witness to the Son and glorify Him (Jn 15:26; Jn 16:8, 13).

"That He may be with you forever." It is a great consolation for the disciples that the Comforter remains with them for all eternity and will never leave them.

Did the Savior have only the apostles in view when He said of the Comforter, "He will be with you forever"?

Certainly the Spirit of grace remained in the souls of the apostles even after their death.

But the Savior's promise concerning the Comforter also applies generally to the Church of Christ. After the apostles, it must remain on earth until the end of the age.

It applies especially to the successors of the apostolic ministry. Who except the Spirit of God could give life to the great body of Christ Jesus (Col 1:24), which embraces all the nations of the earth?

What mind and what power could govern the movement of Christ's spiritual ship amid the waves and storms of a world hostile to Christ?