John 16:1-18

“I have told you this so that you would not surrender to confusion or doubt. For you will be excommunicated from the synagogues, and a time is coming when you will be put to death by misguided ones who will presume to be doing God a great service by putting you to death. And they will do these things because they don’t know anything about the Father or me. I’m telling you this now so that when their time comes you will remember that I foretold it. I didn’t tell you this in the beginning because I was still with you. But now that I’m about to leave you and go back to join the One who sent me, you need to be told. Yet, not one of you are asking me where I’m going. Instead your hearts are filled with sadness because I’ve told you these things. But here’s the truth: It’s to your advantage that I go away, for if I don’t go away the Divine Encourager will not be released to you. But after I depart, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will expose sin and prove that the world is wrong about God’s righteousness and his judgments. “ ‘Sin,’ because they refuse to believe in who I am. “God’s ‘righteousness,’ because I’m going back to join the Father and you’ll see me no longer. “And ‘judgment’ because the ruler of this dark world has already received his sentence. “There is so much more I would like to say to you, but it’s more than you can grasp at this moment. But when the truth-giving Spirit comes, he will unveil the reality of every truth within you. He won’t speak on his own, but only what he hears from the Father, and he will reveal prophetically to you what is to come. He will glorify me on the earth, for he will receive from me what is mine and reveal it to you. Everything that belongs to the Father belongs to me—that’s why I say that the Divine Encourager will receive what is mine and reveal it to you. Soon you won’t see me any longer, but then, after a little while, you will see me in a new way.” Some of the disciples asked each other, “What does he mean, ‘Soon you won’t see me,’ and, ‘A little while after that and you will see me in a new way’? And what does he mean, ‘Because I’m going to my Father’?” So they kept on repeating, “What’s the meaning of ‘a little while’? We have no clue what he’s talking about!”