28 “I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father.”
29 His disciples said, “Ah, now you are speaking plainly and not using figurative speech! 30 Now we know that you know all things and do not need anyone to question you; this is why we believe that you came from God.” 31 Jesus answered them, “Do you now believe? 32 Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. 33 I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”
Today we reach the end of Jesus’ Farewell Discourse, which has taken us through chapters 13 to 16, and in verse 28 Jesus makes four key statements which perfectly describe who He is, and His redeeming work on the cross. “I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father.”
Vernon McGee wrote of this verse, “The eternal Son came into the world for one purpose: to redeem man. When the mission was accomplished, He returned to the Father. This is the movement in the Gospel of John. This verse is bigger than Bethlehem; it is wider than space. It reaches back into eternity, beyond the boundaries of space to the throne of God. Then it speaks of those few moments He spent on this earth. He came in out of eternity; He went back into eternity.”
Firstly, Jesus points to His eternal and divine origin by saying, “I came from the Father.” This is a recurring theme throughout the Gospel of John, and the entire New Testament in fact, and it is a fundamental truth that the disciples finally understood, as we can see from their reply in verse 30: “We believe that you came from God.” The deity of Jesus Christ is crucial to the plan of salvation. He is the pre-existent God who took on human flesh, who came into our world, which is His second point in verse 28.
“I have come into the world.” Here He speaks about His incarnation, the miracle by which the eternal Son of God was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin. Fully God, and fully man - a concept we cannot fully understand with our finite minds, but again, a doctrine which is a vital part of the Christian faith. It is important because only a man could pay for the sins of man, but because He was also fully God as He died on the cross, Jesus was untainted by human sin, which made Him the only perfect and acceptable sacrifice for our sin.
The American Bible teacher Donald Barnhouse illustrated the incarnation and atoning death of Jesus by writing, “As a judge who imposes strict justice on a convict, but then steps down from the bench to pay the fine himself. He does this because the guilty party is his own beloved child. Likewise, though very God, Jesus stepped down from heaven to pay in His blood the debt that His own divine justice demanded for our sins.” This means that we are saved by God, we are saved for God, and we are saved from God.
Thirdly in verse 28, Jesus speaks about the present. He spoke these words to His disciples just hours before His atoning death: “Now I am leaving the world.” He would leave this world by way of the cross. It’s important to note here that Jesus was not the tragic victim of a gross injustice. He came into the world for the specific purpose of dying for our sins. He said in John 10:17-18, “I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” As God in human form, Jesus remained in full control throughout His earthly life, including even His death.
And finally in verse 28, Jesus says He is “going to the Father.” The resurrection of Jesus proves God’s acceptance of His atoning death. It is because of the resurrection that we can know for certain that our sins have been forgiven, because the wrath of God was satisfied on the cross. When Jesus said as He died, “It is finished,” He was referring to the atoning work for which He came into the world.
And now, as He has returned to the Father, the ministry of Jesus continues through His intercession for us and the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Paul wrote in Romans 8:34, “Christ Jesus is the one who died - more than that, who was raised - who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.”
John 16:28 again: “I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father.”
These are the facts of the Christian faith which Jesus lays out very simply for us. The truth is that the Gospel is actually a very simple message which is a lot easier to understand than we might think.
Our greatest problem is our sin and the condemnation it brings, which means our greatest need is a Saviour, whom God Himself has provided for us. As we turn to Him through Jesus Christ in repentance and faith, God graciously forgives our sins, and saves us for all of eternity. This is the simple message we are to share with the lost.
And this means that when the Gospel is presented clearly, the many objections we hear against it have nothing to do with how complicated it is, because it is not complicated. Those who reject the Gospel are guilty of a moral objection to the claims made by Jesus. People reject the idea that God’s Son came to this world from heaven because they refuse to surrender to Him. They refuse the accept that they are guilty before a holy God. They reject the atoning death of Jesus Christ on the cross, because as soon as they do that, they must agree that God is right about their sin, and they are wrong, and they don’t want to do that.
Paul wrote in Romans 1:18-21, “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honour Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.”
The Greek word in verse 21 for “knew” is ginósko, which means to know, perceive or understand. It does not mean ‘believe.’ What Paul is saying here is that unbelievers know that God exists.
When an unbeliever tells you that God doesn’t exist, they are lying. They are suppressing the truth in their unrighteousness as Paul writes in verse 18, by denying the evidence which stares them in the face every single day of their lives. This is why Paul says in verse 20 that they are without excuse, and the awful consequences of this refusal to acknowledge God is spelled out in verses 24 to 32.
“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonouring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonourable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.”
In case you haven’t noticed, we are living in a Romans chapter 1 world. Darrell Harrison of Grace to You Ministries wrote on Twitter just the other day, “Romans 1 is a profoundly serious text, as it underscores God’s holiness and His righteous intolerance of unrepentant sin. Repent and believe the Gospel.”
The disciples believed. We know this from their response to Jesus’ statement in verse 28. “Ah, now you are speaking plainly and not using figurative speech! Now we know that you know all things and do not need anyone to question you; this is why we believe that you came from God.” (John 16:29-30)
Jesus, however, closes His lengthy teaching by reminding His disciples, and us by extension, that although it is easy for us to understand and embrace the Gospel message, remaining faithful to Him is an entirely different matter. He said to them in verse 31, “Do you now believe?”
Most commentators agree that Jesus’ words here can be paraphrased as, “You might believe now, but your faith is going to be hard to maintain in the not too distant future.”
Jesus was telling them that believing would a lot easier said than done. Once God opens our spiritual eyes and grants us repentance and faith, the Gospel is easy to believe, because it really is a simple message, but there is a hard reality about following Jesus that we need to be aware of. Jesus continued in verse 32 by saying, “Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone.”
Earlier that evening they said they would never desert Jesus, but sadly, the disciples underestimated the strength of their faith. J. C. Ryle wrote, “Like young recruits, they had yet to learn that it is one thing to know the soldier’s drill and wear the uniform, and quite another thing to be steadfast in the day of battle. If we have felt the challenge of Jesus’ words in our own lives, ‘Do you now believe?’ we will pray in earnest to be delivered from temptation, we will abide constantly in God’s Word, we will regularly attend to the means of grace in the worship of Christ’s Church, and we will live in close communion with fellow believers who can encourage us to walk in the light through faith.”
Living out our faith within the Body of Christ - the Church - is how we can be both encouraged and encouragers in a hostile world. We are family, and we need each other.
For the remaining eleven disciples, their first tests came later that same night. All four Gospel accounts record how accurate the words of Jesus in John 16:32 were: “The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone.” As the disciples fell away, the prophecy of Zechariah 13:7 was fulfilled. “Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.”
The great sadness is that this danger remains for the disciples of Jesus today. James Montgomery Boice writes, “We are often quite confident in our faith, and yet are not as strong as we imagine ourselves to be. We say, ‘Now I believe; now I am sure.’ But in a short while we find ourselves doubting the very thing we affirmed.”
Jesus warns in verse 33 that Christians will have tribulation or troubles in this world, and the temptation is to scatter, or even be tempted to renounce Jesus. We may not be physically scattered, but we see it in persecution, disagreements within the Church, and also by false doctrines and practices brought into the Church by false teachers. This is why it is so important for us to be grounded in Biblical truth, and the foundations of Christian doctrine. As Christians we should know not only what we believe, but why we believe it.
As Paul puts it in Ephesians 6, “Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the Gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.” (Ephesians 6:10-18)
What do we do in order to guard against being scattered? We turn to Jesus Christ and His word as revealed in the pages of Scripture. He is the answer. When our lives and our doctrine are centred on Him, we will have all we need to avoid being scattered as believers.
The second warning Jesus gives the disciples in verse 32 is that they would “leave me alone.” Peter’s three-fold denial of Jesus is the example that immediately springs to mind, but we each face the same danger every day in this lost world that hates Jesus Christ and all that He stands for. The wonderful promise we have in the face of these dangers is Jesus’ statement in verse 33: “Take heart; I have overcome the world.” The disciples were scattered, as are we at times, but Jesus stood firm as our Saviour. At the end of the day, it’s not about us and our faith, but about His faithfulness to us, and His obedience to the Father as He went to the cross. After telling His disciples that they would scatter and leave Him alone, He said at the end of verse 32, “Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me.”
Even as He hung on the cross, bearing the righteous wrath of God the Father at our sin, Jesus, in His divinity, remained in perfect union with God.
There are times when our faith is tested, almost at times it seems, to the breaking point. That is when we look to the cross and what Jesus achieved there on our behalf. He died for my sins and yours, and by His resurrection He has sealed us for redemption, so we can thank God that we are not saved by our faith, because our faith is weak. Our faith does not save us. We are saved by Christ through faith. The saving faith we have in Him is a gift from God. In other words, our weak and failing faith is saved by a strong and faithful Saviour. The disciples would fail Jesus and abandon their faith. It still happens today, so the question is, how could they and how can we ever be restored? The answer is in 2 Timothy 2:13. “If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.”
Despite all our doubts and weak faith, we can take courage from the wonderful promise Jesus makes in verse 33. “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” Earlier that evening He said to His disciples, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” (John 14:27).
Notice though in verse 33 that Jesus says that we will only have peace “in me.” True peace is to be found only in Christ. It is only in Jesus Christ that we have peace, because it is He and He alone who satisfies the righteous wrath of God which we are all under as a result of our sin.
The non-believing world has no idea what peace is, because they refuse to face up to the true predicament of their sin.
You often hear Christians saying that they have a relationship with God. That is absolutely true, but have you ever considered that every single person who ever has or ever will live has a relationship with God?
The problem is that the relationship is either one of grace, or one of wrath. It’s one or the other. You need to understand that until such time as you turn to God through Jesus Christ and receive His righteousness, you remain under the wrath and judgment of God. Without Christ, that is the true state of your relationship with God. So as Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:20, “We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”
It is only when you are reconciled to God through Jesus Christ that you will have true peace.
Also, notice that Jesus says in verse 33, “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace.” “These things” refer to the whole of His Farewell Discourse. Throughout this lengthy teaching Jesus reassured His disciples of His love and concern for them, specifically because He knew He was about to go to the cross. He promised He would return for them, and that same promise applies to us today. We need to remember that promise, because our faith in God is tested and threatened every day.
We should not be surprised by the trials and tribulations we face in this world because we belong to Christ. Jesus warned us that we would be hated because of Him. “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.” (John 15:18-20)
But Jesus has overcome the world. The reformer John Calvin wrote, “As there is always in us much reason for trembling, He shows that we ought to be confident for this reason, that He has obtained a victory over the world, not for Himself individually, but for our sake. Thus, though in ourselves almost overwhelmed, if we contemplate that magnificent glory to which our Head has been exalted, we may boldly despise all the evils which hang over us. If, therefore, we desire to be Christians, we must not seek exemption from the cross, but must be satisfied with this single consideration, that, fighting under the banner of Christ, we are beyond all danger, even in the midst of the combat.”
Jesus knew that His disciples would struggle with their weak faith, and that they would desert Him, but He did not desert them. As He defeated death and rose from the grave, He returned to them, and He does the same for us. By paying the price of our sins on the cross, Jesus has already won the victory for us.
The Bible teacher John Courson wrote, “The Christian race is the only race in the world that begins at the finish line. We don’t fight for victory. We fight from victory. The battle’s already won. Jesus has already overcome. No wonder He says, ‘Take heart.’”
His grace keeps us secure, which is why we can take heart. Christ has overcome the world.