NOTES for Joh 16:2-13
In telling His disciples about the Kingdom, Jesus repeatedly mentioned its organic incompatibility with the untransformed world. This, and nothing else, is how He explains the persecutions that will inevitably accompany Christians throughout the Church’s historical journey. What is it that constitutes such an unbearable rebuke to the world and provokes so violent a reaction? First of all, of course, the testimony that “the prince of this world” has already been judged. Perhaps if this referred specifically to the devil, the dark forces, the forces of evil, the reaction to this testimony would not be so fierce. But it refers to “the prince of this world,” and therefore to the entire order of things existing in the world. Even the righteous who follow the Torah are justified within it not because they are part of this world, but because and insofar as, being righteous and following the Torah, they no longer belong to it. The world would like to appropriate for itself all the good that sometimes occurs within it contrary to its own nature, while disclaiming all the evil that it produces by virtue of that nature. But as the Kingdom enters the world, it bears witness to the world’s true nature, corrupted by sin, thereby arousing the fury of the forces of this world, the fury of a villain whose mask has been publicly torn away. A further irritant is the reminder of the One whom the world would like to forget, but of whom it is constantly reminded. Of course, if the world were reminded of Jesus as, for example, some great theologian, religious reformer, or at worst a moral teacher, that would still be tolerable: after all, He would be neither the first nor the last. But He is pointed to as Someone unique and unrepeatable, who moreover has no intention of accommodating either the world or its weaknesses and sins. Evidently the conflict is caused by the very essence of the differences separating the Kingdom from the world steeped in evil. It is unsurprising that it will last until the end of time and grow only sharper over the years.