John 14:16-23

14:16 Then ¹  I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate ²  to be with you forever – 14:17 the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept, ³  because it does not see him or know him. But you know him, because he resides ⁴  with you and will be ⁵  in you.

14:18 “I will not abandon ⁶  you as orphans, ⁷  I will come to you. ⁸  14:19 In a little while ⁹  the world will not see me any longer, but you will see me; because I live, you will live too. 14:20 You will know at that time ¹⁰  that I am in my Father and you are in me and I am in you. 14:21 The person who has my commandments and obeys ¹¹  them is the one who loves me. ¹²  The one ¹³  who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will reveal ¹⁴  myself to him.”

14:22 “Lord,” Judas (not Judas Iscariot) ¹⁵  said, ¹⁶  “what has happened that you are going to reveal ¹⁷  yourself to us and not to the world?” 14:23 Jesus replied, ¹⁸  “If anyone loves me, he will obey ¹⁹  my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and take up residence with him. ²⁰ 

[14:16]  ¹ tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “Then” to reflect the implied sequence in the discourse.

[14:16]  ² tn Or “Helper” or “Counselor”; Grk “Paraclete,” from the Greek word παράκλητος (paraklhto"). Finding an appropriate English translation for παράκλητος is a very difficult task. No single English word has exactly the same range of meaning as the Greek word. “Comforter,” used by some of the older English versions, appears to be as old as Wycliffe. But today it suggests a quilt or a sympathetic mourner at a funeral. “Counselor” is adequate, but too broad, in contexts like “marriage counselor” or “camp counselor.” “Helper” or “Assistant” could also be used, but could suggest a subordinate rank. “Advocate,” the word chosen for this translation, has more forensic overtones than the Greek word does, although in John 16:5-11 a forensic context is certainly present. Because an “advocate” is someone who “advocates” or supports a position or viewpoint and since this is what the Paraclete will do for the preaching of the disciples, it was selected in spite of the drawbacks.

[14:17]  ³ tn Or “cannot receive.”

[14:17]  ⁴ tn Or “he remains.”

[14:17]  ⁵ tc Some early and important witnesses (Ì^66* B D* W 1 565 it) have ἐστιν (estin, “he is”) instead of ἔσται (estai, “he will be”) here, while other weighty witnesses ({Ì^66c,75vid א A D¹ L Θ Ψ Ë¹³ 33^vid Ï as well as several versions and fathers}), read the future tense. When one considers transcriptional evidence, ἐστιν is the more difficult reading and better explains the rise of the future tense reading, but it must be noted that both Ì⁶⁶ and D were corrected from the present tense to the future. If ἐστιν were the original reading, one would expect a few manuscripts to be corrected to read the present when they originally read the future, but that is not the case. When one considers what the author would have written, the future is on much stronger ground. The immediate context (both in 14:16 and in the chapter as a whole) points to the future, and the theology of the book regards the advent of the Spirit as a decidedly future event (see, e.g., 7:39 and 16:7). The present tense could have arisen from an error of sight on the part of some scribes or more likely from an error of thought as scribes reflected upon the present role of the Spirit. Although a decision is difficult, the future tense is most likely authentic. For further discussion on this textual problem, see James M. Hamilton, Jr., “He Is with You and He Will Be in You” (Ph.D. diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2003), 213-20.

[14:18]  ⁶ tn Or “leave.”

[14:18]  ⁷ tn The entire phrase “abandon you as orphans” could be understood as an idiom meaning, “leave you helpless.”

[14:18]  ⁸ sn I will come to you. Jesus had spoken in 14:3 of going away and coming again to his disciples. There the reference was both to the parousia (the second coming of Christ) and to the postresurrection appearances of Jesus to the disciples. Here the postresurrection appearances are primarily in view, since Jesus speaks of the disciples “seeing” him after the world can “see” him no longer in the following verse. But many commentators have taken v. 18 as a reference to the coming of the Spirit, since this has been the topic of the preceding verses. Still, vv. 19-20 appear to contain references to Jesus’ appearances to the disciples after his resurrection. It may well be that another Johannine double meaning is found here, so that Jesus ‘returns’ to his disciples in one sense in his appearances to them after his resurrection, but in another sense he ‘returns’ in the person of the Holy Spirit to indwell them.

[14:19]  ⁹ tn Grk “Yet a little while, and.”

[14:20]  ¹⁰ tn Grk “will know in that day.”

[14:21]  ¹¹ tn Or “keeps.”

[14:21]  ¹² tn Grk “obeys them, that one is the one who loves me.”

[14:21]  ¹³ tn Grk “And the one.” Here the conjunction καί (kai) has not been translated to improve the English style.

[14:21]  ¹⁴ tn Or “will disclose.”

[14:22]  ¹⁵ tn Grk “(not Iscariot).” The proper noun (Judas) has been repeated for clarity and smoothness in English style.

[14:22]  ¹⁶ tn Grk “said to him.”

[14:22]  ¹⁷ tn Or “disclose.”

[14:23]  ¹⁸ tn Grk “answered and said to him.”

[14:23]  ¹⁹ tn Or “will keep.”

[14:23]  ²⁰ tn Grk “we will come to him and will make our dwelling place with him.” The context here is individual rather than corporate indwelling, so the masculine singular pronoun has been retained throughout v. 23. It is important to note, however, that the pronoun is used generically here and refers equally to men, women, and children.