I have said these things to you to keep you from falling away.
They will put you out of the synagogues; indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think they are offering service to God.
And they will do these things because they have not known the Father or me.
I have said these things to you so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you about them. “I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you.
But now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’
But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts.
Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.
And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment:
about sin, because they do not believe in me;
about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer;
about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.
I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.
When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.
He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me.”
Some of his disciples said to one another, “What does he mean by saying, ‘A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me,’ and, ‘Because I am going to the Father’?”
They said, “What does he mean by ‘a little while’? We do not know what he is talking about.”
Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him, so he said to them, “Are you discussing among yourselves what I meant when I said, ‘A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me’?
Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have grief, but your grief will turn into joy.
When a woman is giving birth, she has pain because her hour has come; but when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world.
So you have pain now; but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.
On that day you will ask nothing of me. Very truly, I tell you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you.
Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.
I have said these things to you in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech, but will tell you plainly about the Father.
On that day you will ask in my name. I am not saying that I will ask the Father on your behalf;
for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.
I came from the Father and have come into the world; I am leaving the world and going to the Father.”
The Son quite clearly shows himself to us in these words as the pure and precise imprint of the Father's hypostasis. By what he says he enables us to understand that since he is the fruit of the Father's essence, he applies to himself by nature all that belongs to that essence and says that it is his and for good reason. Since nothing severs or separates the Son from the Father, as far as their complete likeness and equality is concerned (save only that he is not the Father), and since the essence shines forth in both with no difference, how could their qualities not be in common, or rather identical in both, so that what belongs to the Father is in the Son and what belongs to the offspring is in the one who begat him? That is why, I think, he made this statement about these matters to us with precise care. He did not say, "All that the Father has, I too have," so that we may not think he is a bare image understood as a mere copy, conformed to an archetype by external adornments, as is the case with us since we were made in the image of God.
Rather, [638] he says, "is mine," to indicate the highest unity, which he has with his begetter, and the meaning of consubstantiality, which consists of unchangeable attributes in both. This you may see quite clearly when he says to the Father in another passage, "All that is mine is yours, and all that is yours is mine."4 How could they not be identical in nature, since there is absolutely no difference between them, but there is complete essential equality and likeness? God the Father, then, has his own Spirit, that is, the Holy Spirit, from himself and in himself, through whom he dwells in the saints and reveals mysteries to them. But the Spirit does not receive orders to do this like an underling. Do not think anything like that. Rather the Spirit is in him essentially and proceeds from him without division or separation, as the one who explains as his own what belongs to the one in whom and from whom he exists. God does not deal with creation in any other way than through the Son in the Spirit. But this Spirit also belongs to the Only Begotten, since he is of the same substance with the Father.
Therefore, he is saying, since God the Father clearly uses his own Spirit to reveal mysteries to those who are worthy, and he accomplishes whatever The Son quite clearly shows himself to us in these words as the pure and precise imprint of the Father's hypostasis. By what he says he enables us to understand that since he is the fruit of the Father's essence, he applies to himself by nature all that belongs to that essence and says that it is his and for good reason. Since nothing severs or separates the Son from the Father, as far as their complete likeness and equality is concerned (save only that he is not the Father), and since the essence shines forth in both with no difference, how could their qualities not be in common, or rather identical in both, so that what belongs to the Father is in the Son and what belongs to the offspring is in the one who begat him? That is why, I think, he made this statement about these matters to us with precise care. He did not say, "All that the Father has, I too have," so that we may not think he is a bare image understood as a mere copy, conformed to an archetype by external adornments, as is the case with us since we were made in the image of God.
Rather, [638] he says, "is mine," to indicate the highest unity, which he has with his begetter, and the meaning of consubstantiality, which consists of unchangeable attributes in both. This you may see quite clearly when he says to the Father in another passage, "All that is mine is yours, and all that is yours is mine."4 How could they not be identical in nature, since there is absolutely no difference between them, but there is complete essential equality and likeness? God the Father, then, has his own Spirit, that is, the Holy Spirit, from himself and in himself, through whom he dwells in the saints and reveals mysteries to them. But the Spirit does not receive orders to do this like an underling. Do not think anything like that. Rather the Spirit is in him essentially and proceeds from him without division or separation, as the one who explains as his own what belongs to the one in whom and from whom he exists. God does not deal with creation in any other way than through the Son in the Spirit. But this Spirit also belongs to the Only Begotten, since he is of the same substance with the Father.
Therefore, he is saying, since God the Father clearly uses his own Spirit to reveal mysteries to those who are worthy, and he accomplishes whateverhe wants through the Spirit, this applies to me by nature as well. That is why I said, "He will receive what is mine and declare it to you." Let no one be troubled when they hear the word receive in this statement. Rather let them consider the following, and they will do rightly. All things spoken of God are on our level, yet they are not understood that way but are understood to be above us. Thus we say that the Spirit receives what belongs to the Father and the Son not as though he ever lacked the knowledge and power that is in them and only then possessed them (and just barely) when he is understood to receive. After all, the Spirit is always wise and powerful, or rather he is wisdom and power itself, not by participation in anyone but [639] by nature. We would say that the aroma of fragrant herbs entering our nostrils is different than the herbs themselves, at least in thought, but it is understood to proceed from the herbs in no other way than by receiving the power of what it originates from in order to demonstrate it, and it does not have a different nature because it is from them and in them. Something like this, or rather transcending this, is how you should think of the relation between God and the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is like a living and distinct fragrance of his essence that conveys what comes from God to creation, which implants through itself the participation in the highest essence of all. If the aroma of fragrant herbs imparts its own power to garments and in a way transforms what it enters into itself, how could the Holy Spirit not be strong enough, since he is from God by nature, to make those whom he enters share the divine nature through himself? And since the Son is the fruit and imprint of the hypostasis of his begetter, all that belongs to him applies to the Son by nature. That is why he says, "All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will receive what is mine and declare it to you." He is referring to the Spirit, who is through him and in him, through whom he himself dwells in the saints. The Spirit is not another besides him, even though the Spirit is understood to exist on his own personally. The Spirit, after all, is the Spirit, not the Son.
