17" So some of his disciples said to one another, “What is this that he says to us, ‘A little while, and you will not see me, and again a little while, and you will see me’; and, ‘because I am going to the Father’?” 18 So they were saying, “What does he mean by ‘a little while’? We do not know what he is talking about.” 19 Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him, so he said to them, “Is this what you are asking yourselves, what I meant by saying, ‘A little while and you will not see me, and again a little while and you will see me’? 20 Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. 21 When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. 22 So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you. 23 In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you.24 Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full."
John 16:17-24
The disciples were clearly puzzled by our Lord's words in 16, and He therefore elaborates them in 22ff in terms that confirm the interpretation that was suggested in yesterday's Note. The sorrow (20, 21) is involved in no longer seeing Him in the old way, and flows from their lack of understanding of the meaning of His death; the joy comes through seeing Him in a new way - this was their experience of the resurrection. But this contains a principle of much deeper application for the spiritual life, and this is the real lesson of the passage for us. Jesus speaks of the travail of a woman bringing her child into the world, and in this we have an allegory, an illustration of what it costs to live for Christ truly as disciples. Paul speaks in Galatians of travailing in birth till Christ was formed in them. It costs to beget men and women unto newness of life, and travail is an inseparable constituent of true service. But there is no joy like the joy that flows from it. It is with this paradox in spiritual experience in mind that we shall understand the better our Lord's great and wonderful words in 33, when we come to them in a later Note. In the meantime, however, we must look at the seeming riddle in 23 and 24. The AV conceals the fact that two different words in the Greek are both rendered 'ask'. What Jesus means in 23a is that 'in that day' they would have no more questions to ask, because everything will then be clear to them. This may refer either to the coming of the Spirit, or to our Lord's Second Coming, or both; the one does not exclude the other. The context, however, might seem to indicate that the reference is to the Spirit's coming; certainly, it is when the perplexities and questionings are cleared away that we are in a proper condition to ask in His Name (23, 24) for then our confidence in Him is what it should be.