The Expositor's Bible: The Gospel of St. John, Vol. IIDods, Marcus
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The Gospel of St. John, Vol. II
Dods, Marcus
Bible. John; Bible. John -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
At this point (ver. 25) Jesus pauses; and feeling how little He had time
to say of what was needful, and how much better they would understand
their relation to Him after He had finally passed from their bodily
sight, He says: “These things I have spoken to you, while yet I remain
with you; but the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, which the Father will send
in My name, He will teach you all things, and will remind you of all
that I have said to you.” Jesus cannot tell them all He would wish them
to know; but the same Helper whom He has already promised will
especially help them by giving them understanding of what has already
been told them, and by leading them into further knowledge. He is to
come “in the name” of Jesus—that is to say, as His representative—and
to carry on His work in the world.[16]
Here, then, the Lord predicts that one day His disciples will know more
than He has taught them. They were to advance in knowledge beyond the
point to which He had brought them. His teaching would necessarily be
the foundation of all future attainment, and whatever would not square
with that they must necessarily reject; but they were to add much to the
foundation He had laid. We cannot therefore expect to find in the
teaching of Jesus all that His followers ought to know regarding Himself
and His connection with them. All that is absolutely necessary we shall
find there; but if we wish to know all that He would have us know, we
must look beyond. The teaching which we receive from the Apostles is the
requisite and promised complement of the teaching which Christ Himself
delivered. He being the subject taught as much as the teacher, and His
whole experience as living, dying, rising, and ascending, constituting
the facts which Christian teaching was to explain, it was impossible
that He Himself should be the final teacher. He could not at once be
text and exposition. He lived among men, and by His teaching shed much
light on the significance of His life; He died, and was not altogether
silent regarding the meaning of His death, but it was enough that He
furnished matter for His Apostles to explain, and confined Himself to
sketching the mere outline of Christian truth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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