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27th January 2025
MondayReflection
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"Gilberto A. Ruiz"
Associate Professor of New Testament in the Theology Department at Saint Anselm College
"Commentary on
John 16:12-15"
'I still have many things to say to you'
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John 16:12-15 begins with Jesus telling his disciples,
"I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now" (v. 12)
What Jesus says here seems to contradict what he had just told the disciples in 15:15
"I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father."
How can Jesus have made known "everything" to the disciples and yet "still have many things to say" to them?
Jesus is the full and complete revelation of God.
To see him is in fact to the see God.
This is why Jesus can say in earnest that he has revealed everything from God.
This is also why Jesus's words in 16:12 cannot mean that there is new content to his revelation.
Something else must be going on.
John 16:13 adds some clarity.
It won't be Jesus doing the talking, but the Spirit.
The disciples "cannot bear" certain things now (v. 12) but will - through the Spirit - be guided "into all the truth".
This will take place at a future time, as can be seen in the future tense of the verbs used to describe the Spirit's actions
(the Spirit "will guide," "will speak," and "will declare").
As the verses leading up to John 16:12-15 indicate, a fundamental difference between the current experience of the disciples at the Last Supper with Jesus and their future experience with the Spirit is that the future context is marked by Jesus's departure from the world
The claim made by verses 12-13 is that in the post-Easter period, after Jesus' return to God, the Spirit facilitates a fuller understanding of Jesus' revelation without any change to its content.
Just as Jesus did, the Spirit reveals God.
Earlier in his farewell discourse, Jesus identified himself as "the way" and "the truth".
Just as Jesus is "the truth" (14:6), so is the Spirit "of truth" who "will guide you into all the truth".
That the Spirit speaks "whatever he hears" (v. 13) is in complete continuity with Jesus's method of revealing only what he hears from God.
Even though Jesus is no longer physically present as God's Revealer, the believer can trust that Jesus and the Spirit share the same source of revelation: God.
John 16:14-15 continue drawing parallels between Jesus' role as Revealer and the Spirit's function of continuing Jesus' revelation in the post-Easter period.
What the Spirit reveals comes directly from Jesus: "he will take what is mine and declare it to you".
Since the Spirit takes what belongs to Jesus, and since what belongs to Jesus belongs to God, then even in Jesus's absence God's revelation to the world and to the church is still available - through the Spirit.
As we can see in John 16:12-15, the Fourth Gospel's particular understanding of the Spirit recognizes two realities about how Christianity relates to its past and future.
The first is that the revelation that took place in and through Jesus is fundamental for Christian identity.
The second is that, as fundamental and eternal as Jesus' revelation is for Christians, the world will keep turning from the time that revelation first made itself known.
The church in John's day, today, and always finds itself trying to understand and live its faith in the midst of social, cultural, and global circumstances that change rapidly.
It might have been tempting for John - to devalue any new understanding of the Christian message that emerges when Jesus is no longer visible in-the-flesh to deliver it himself.
Instead, John places firm confidence in the Spirit as continuing the ongoing presence and revelation of Jesus within the Christian community after Jesus' return to God.
For John, then, the church need not fear learning and practicing its faith in Jesus in the midst of a changing world marked by Jesus' physical absence.
The Spirit makes possible a "deep understanding of what Jesus means for one's own time" without betraying the core truth of Jesus' original revelation.
The question we are left with is whether we will listen to the Spirit and be open to newer and deeper understandings of our faith and to the implications of Jesus's revelation for us today.
The internet, social media, and the 24-hour news cycle now give us a more immediate awareness of local, national, and global crises that challenge us for a Christian response, such as immigration and racial disparity in police treatment, to list just two examples.
What is the Christian response to such realities?
What response is more true and faithful to Jesus' revelation?
Can we, like John, trust the Spirit to guide us in discerning what it means to live out Christian faith today?
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This is an edited version.
The full article and Bible references are avaiable on request
"Gilberto A. Ruiz "
is Associate Professor of New Testament in the Theology Department at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire.
His research focuses on studying the New Testament Gospels in light of Second Temple Judaism and life in the Roman Empire,
and on biblical interpretation that foregrounds the experiences, social concerns, and identities of contemporary readers,
especially from minoritized perspectives and Latinx perspectives in particular.
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