John 16:26Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

He is the Advocate, according to the word of John (1 Jn 2:1-2), not for our sins only, but also for the whole world. Yet here again He profitably shows that honor and love toward Him who appeared from the Father are most pleasing to God the Father.

Not understanding this, the wretched Jewish people did not fear to insult Him with unbearable abuse. They "sought to kill Him," as it is written (Jn 5:18), because He was transforming the mind of believers from the legal and crude commandment into the spirituality of evangelical life.

Knowing nothing, or rather sharpening their impious tongue against Him, the wretched ones said: "If this Man were from God, He would not break the Sabbath" (Jn 9:16).

Therefore, He says, favor from God the Father will be given most graciously to those who have firmly believed precisely that He "came forth from God the Father." He will, as it were, anticipate and forestall the request of the Mediator. He will fill with spiritual blessings the mind of those who think rightly about Me, not as the lovers of the letter wished to think.

The expression, "I came forth from the Father," as we must understand it here, means one of two things. Either it means that I was begotten and shone forth from His essence, so that His coming forth must be understood as personal, that is, hypostatic existence, yet in all things undivided. For the Father is in the Son, and the Son in turn is by nature in the Father.

Or the words "I came forth" stand for this: I became like you, plainly, man, clothed in your form and nature. The proper nature of each being is, as it were, its own place. From this it comes forth when it passes into something else and becomes what it was not.

But we shall certainly not assert that, when the Only-begotten appeared and truly became man like us, He ceased to be God. For "yesterday and today He is the same, and forever" (Heb 13:8). Rather, having received what He was not while preserving what was His, He is understood to have come forth only according to our conception.

You may understand the expression "I came forth from the Father" in another way, if you wish. The Pharisees, inclined only to ignorance, thought, as I have already said, that the Lord had appeared like one of the false prophets.

They thought He had not been sent from God, but had come by His own intention, as false prophets were accustomed to do, to preach to those who came to them things hostile to the law. For this reason they dared to disobey. They pointed out that observance of the law, though most dear to God the Father, was being overthrown by His doctrines.

Thus they rejected Christ as one who had dared to rise up against the ordinances given by God through Moses. For this they even considered Him alien to God. But the blessed disciples were not so.

They "loved" Him, having thoughts higher than Jewish senselessness. They truly "believed" that He "came forth" from "God" in the way just indicated by us. For this reason they have the Father's love toward them, receiving, as it were in return, equal grace.

If those who believe that the Son came forth from God are most dear and pleasing to God the Father, then clearly those who suffer from the opposite opinion are repulsive and truly hateful to God. And if God is always wholly ready to hear those who love the Son, then clearly He will not receive the prayer of those who are not such.

This, then, is what was said to them by the voice of Isaiah: "When you stretch out your hands to Me, I will turn My eyes away from you. Even if you multiply your prayer, I will not listen to you, for your hands are full of blood" (Is 1:15).

But when the spiritual man begins to discern all things, even if in this life he still sees as through a dark glass, in an enigma (1 Cor 13:12), he understands that God is not material, but spiritual. He understands this not by bodily senses or imagination, but by the clearest understanding.

The Son openly proclaims the Father to us by the fact that He Himself, the One who proclaims, appears in the same nature as the One whom He proclaims.

Therefore those who ask, ask in His name. In the very sound of that name, they understand nothing other than the reality expressed by the name. They are able, to a certain degree, to understand that our Lord Jesus Christ, insofar as He is man, intercedes for us before the Father. But insofar as He is also God, they understand that He hears us together with the Father.

This, I think, is what He means when He says: "I do not say to you that I shall ask the Father on your behalf." To understand this, that is, how the Son does not ask the Father, but the Father and the Son together hear those who ask, is possible only by spiritual vision.

But this judgment seems to contradict what follows: "In that day you will ask in My name." For in the age to come, when we reach the Kingdom, where we shall be like Him because we shall see Him as He is (1 Jn 3:2), what shall we ask when our desire has already been satisfied with good things?

Therefore it is said in another psalm: "I shall be satisfied when Your glory appears" (cf. Ps 16:15). Every request is bound to need, and need will be entirely absent when satisfaction comes.

Therefore, insofar as I can understand this, it remains for us to perceive that Jesus promised that His disciples would become spiritual from being carnal and soulish. This does not mean such as we shall be when we also receive a spiritual body.

It means such as the Apostle was, when he said: "We speak wisdom among the perfect" (1 Cor 2:6). He also said: "I could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to carnal" (1 Cor 3:1). And again: "We have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit from God, that we might know the things given to us by God. These things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Holy Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. The soulish man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God" (cf. 1 Cor 2:12-14).

Thus the soulish man, not having received what comes from the Holy Spirit, hears whatever he hears about the nature of God in such a way that he cannot conceive Him except as a body. It may be immeasurable and boundless, bright and wondrous, but still a body.

Therefore everything said about the bodiless and unchangeable essence he receives as a kind of allegory. Not that he judges it to be allegory, but he receives it as people do who are accustomed to hear allegories and not understand them.

But when the spiritual man begins to judge all things, while he himself is judged by no one (cf. 1 Cor 2:15), then even if in this life he still sees as through a dark glass and in part (cf. 1 Cor 13:12), nevertheless he knows that God is not body, but Spirit.

He knows this without any bodily sense or imagination that arises and proceeds from likeness to bodily things. He knows it from the clearest understanding. In this Spirit the Son openly proclaims the Father, so that they may know that He Himself, the One who proclaims, possesses the same essence.

Therefore those who ask God ask in His name. In the sound of His name they understand nothing other than what is called by that name. They do not imagine, in the vanity or weakness of their mind, that the Father is in one place and the Son in another, standing before the Father and asking on our behalf.

Nor do they imagine that both, like certain vast bodies, occupy each His own space. Nor that the Word directs words for our sake to Him whose Word He is. Nor that there is space between the lips of the Speaker and the ears of the Listener.

Nor do they imagine any such thing as soulish and carnal people produce in their hearts. For when spiritual people contemplate God, they reject and cast aside everything generated by the habit of dealing with bodies.

They drive these things away from their inner eyes, enjoying the purity of His light. His testimony and judgment convince them that these bodily images, which seize their inward sight, are utterly false.

They can in some way understand that our Lord Jesus Christ, insofar as He is man, intercedes for us. Insofar as He is God, He hears us together with the Father. I think He indicated this when He said: "And I do not say to you that I shall ask the Father on your behalf."

Certainly only the intellectual sight of the spiritual man can rise to the understanding of how the Son does not ask the Father, but the Father and the Son together hear those who ask.

Fourth and finally, the fruit of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples will be that God the Father Himself will love them.

He will love them for their faith and love toward Jesus Christ as the Son of God, sent down from the Father and going to the Father.

To strengthen them further in this faith, the Lord repeatedly affirms that He came forth from the Father and came into the world, and now leaves the world and goes to the Father.

As for His words about coming forth from the Father, these words were apparently understood by the heart and received by them with joy.

For they immediately said to Him, “Behold, now You are speaking plainly, and therefore we believe that You came forth from God.”

“The Father loves you so much that you will no longer have need of My mediation” (Theophylact).

This saying does not contradict the other: “I will ask the Father” (Jn 14:16; cf. Jn 17:9).

In the latter saying, the Lord speaks of His prayer before the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples, specifically concerning His sending.

Here He speaks of prayer after the descent of the Holy Spirit.

In this, the Lord always remains advocate for all who believe in Him and have recourse to Him (cf. 1 Jn 2:1; Rom 8:34; Heb 7:25).

The reason why the Lord can refrain from asking the Father to hear and fulfill the disciples’ prayer is that the Father Himself loves them.

Because of this love for them, He will fulfill every petition they make in Christ’s name.

The reason why the Father Himself loves you is that “you have loved Me.”

For the Father cannot fail to love the one who loves the eternal object of His love, His Only-begotten Son (Jn 14:21, 23).

Then Christ showed that, through His Resurrection and victory over death, believers would be near to God. The dividing wall, the barrier of sin that separated men from God, would be destroyed. Then believers would understand the mystery of God's ineffable love for them. Then there would be no need to speak to them of the mystery of man's salvation in parables, as now. Then they would approach God the Father boldly in prayer, and their prayers would be heard.

"In that day you will ask in My name. I do not say to you that I shall pray the Father for you, for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came forth from God. I came forth from the Father and have come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go to the Father" (vv. 26-28).

Thus the Savior’s intercessory ministry, of which the Apostles so often speak (Jn 2:1, 12; Heb 7:25; 8:6; 9:24; Rom 8:34), is not excluded by the Savior’s words.

Rather, it is confirmed when He speaks of the importance of love for the Savior of the world.

The knowledge of the Lord's unity with God the Father now removes from them the thought that the Lord, apart from the flesh, will pray to the Father for them. In the flesh, the God-man, as man, prays to God the Father for believers (cf. Jn 17:20 and the whole chapter). For He was man in soul and body, and as such "fulfilled all human righteousness" (Mt 3:15). Yet as God He will receive prayer.

Being one with the Father, He Himself fulfills their prayer spoken in His name. He thereby points to the distinct honoring of the Hypostases, and also unites Them in the fulfillment of human prayer. This is the prayer which, as we said above, is inspired in us by the Holy Spirit, "interceding in us with groanings too deep for words" (Rom 8:26).

God, manifested to humanity within the limits of space and time, the second Hypostasis of the Holy Trinity, who reveals the invisible and incomprehensible God, requires nothing from man except faith and love.

A few simple men, yet chosen by God, loved the incarnate God with their souls and gave Him their souls. This love and faith of mortal creatures toward the immortal God incarnate is rewarded with joyful immortality. The Holy Spirit shows no partiality, says Cyril of Jerusalem, for He seeks not rank, but reverence of soul.

The Lord explains to the disciples: "For the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came forth from God." Therefore everyone who believes and loves the Lord Jesus is loved by God, for the Lord Jesus Himself is God.

"I came forth from the Father," says the Lord, "and have come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go to the Father."

The world is one of the glorious manifestations of the will of God, and the laws God established for it are firm and unchangeable. But the material world, with its organic and animal life, is not complete without man. In man, the soul, as a share of divinity granted to him, is the bond of man and of the whole world with God.

This human soul, with its free will, could depart and did depart from the moral laws. It had to be removed from God, the source of all righteousness, as unworthy of God, unless God Himself came to redeem this soul.

He came to make it worthy to be received into communion with the Godhead, "that God may be all in all" (1 Cor 12:6; 15:28; cf. Eph 1:23), by the mercy and sacrifice of the Lord Jesus.

The Lord Jesus, the pre-eternal Word of God, says: "I came forth from the Father and have come into the world." The world is not part of the Godhead, but only a part of infinity and eternity held in the hands of God.

Therefore God, entering the world, takes upon Himself the limitation of time and space. And when He says, "Again, I leave the world and go to the Father," He indicates that He loosens these bonds when, within them, He has fulfilled the dread Sacrifice before the righteousness of God.

Yet the very coming of God into the world illumined the world with radiance. As a human being is illumined by the Holy Spirit, "as when the bright shining of a lamp gives him light" (Lk 11:36), so also the world, by being visited by God in the flesh, received the Holy Spirit. From then and forever, He illumines all human actions.

Let us not be troubled when we see that in some places on earth the light grows dim in souls that surrender themselves to the corruption of unbelief. It shines more brightly in other places, where there is no self-deification of man, that supremely satanic sin.

Let us remember what the Lord said of His Church: "The gates of Hades shall not prevail against it" (Mt 16:18).

We shall end this section on the unity of God the Father and the Lord Jesus, who came into the world and ascends from the world to the Father. With the words of Athanasius the Great: "The distinctive mark of faith in Christ is that the Son of God, the true Word of God (Jn 1:1), the true wisdom and power of the Father (1 Cor 1:24), at the end of the ages became man for our salvation."

"He is true man and, together with this, God, now at the right hand of the Father, being in the Father, and the Father in Him always."