Commentary on the Gospel of John

                                 Chapter Sixteen

                                                                                                                                              Verses 28-32

Jesus then plainly told His disciples that He came from His Father into the world, and He would leave the world and go back to His Father. Jesus spoke about His mission to the world and His ascension. This statement by Jesus caused His disciples to understand at least the outline of who Jesus was and why He came to the world. Their increased understanding deepened their faith in Him and their love for Him.

Jesus told His disciples that they may now have greater faith in Him, but a time would shortly come that they would be scattered from Him in fear for their lives. In other words, they would lose their faith and backslide. Matthew 26:56. Simon Peter, at least, had a little more faith than Jesus' other disciples because he followed Jesus to His trial. But when the crowd put pressure on him, he denied that he knew the Lord. Luke 22:54-62. Jesus assured His disciples that even though they would abandon Him, His Father would not abandon Him.

When Jesus cried from the cross as to why His Father had forsaken Him, He did not mean that His Father had abandoned Him. Matthew 27:46. Jesus bore the sins, evil, and spiritual deaths of all humans on the cross which caused Him to cry out as any ordinary sinner would do who died without faith or any help from God. In other words, Jesus died in the lost sinner's place. In that regard, His Father could not help Him. But His Father also knew that Jesus, being God in human form, had all the power He needed to endure that terrible suffering for sins and evil, and when He had finished putting all evil and the Devil away, He would give up the Ghost and die in every lost sinner's place. John 19:30; Hebrews 2:9. God's power is infinite, but Jesus' Father also knew that although His infinite power had been divided between Him and His Son on the cross, He had complete confidence that His Son would succeed in paying the full price for man's salvation even without His help because every part of infinity equals the whole of infinity. Psalm 147:5.