John 14:18-20

14:18 “I will not abandon ¹  you as orphans, ²  I will come to you. ³  14:19 In a little while ⁴  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 ⁵  that I am in my Father and you are in me and I am in you.

[14:18]  ¹ tn Or “leave.”

[14:18]  ² tn The entire phrase “abandon you as orphans” could be understood as an idiom meaning, “leave you helpless.”

[14:18]  ³ 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]  ⁴ tn Grk “Yet a little while, and.”

[14:20]  ⁵ tn Grk “will know in that day.”