These things have I spoken unto you, that you should not be offended.
Read Chapter 16
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
1. In the words preceding this chapter of the Gospel, the Lord strengthened His disciples to endure the hatred of their enemies, and prepared them also by His own example to become the more courageous in imitating Him: adding the promise, that the Holy Spirit should come to bear witness of Him, and also that they themselves could become His witnesses, through the effectual working of His Spirit in their hearts. For such is His meaning when He says, He shall bear witness of me, and you also shall bear witness. That is to say, because He shall bear witness, you also shall bear witness: He in your hearts, you in your voices; He by inspiration, you by utterance: that the words might be fulfilled, Their sound has gone forth into all the earth. For it would have been to little purpose to have exhorted them by His example, had He not also filled them with His Spirit. Just as we see that the Apostle Peter, after having heard His words, when He said, The servant is not greater than his lord: if...
After the promise of the Holy Spirit, to inspire them with strength to give witness; Hewell adds, These things have I spoken to you, that you should not be offended. For when the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given to us (Romans 5:5),then great peace have they that love God’s law, and they are not offended at it (Psalms 118).What they were about to suffer follows next: They shall put you out of the synagogues.
Bu what evil was it to the Apostles to be put out of the Jewish synagogues, which they would have gone out of, even if none had put them out? Our Lord wished to make known to them, that the Jews were about not to receive Him, while they on the other hand were not going to desert Him. There was no other people of God beside the seed of Abraham; if they acknowledged Christ, the Churches of Christ would be none other than the synagogues of the Jews. But inasmuch as they refused to acknowledge Him, nothing remained but that they should put out o...
These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended. (1.) Some think that this refers to Matt. xxvi31 , All ye shall be offended because of Me this night. And that the meaning Isaiah , I have foretold you, that ye would flee away, when ye shall see Me taken: and I did Song of Solomon , in order that your shock and trouble of mind might be less, when it came to pass; and that thus ye might regain your courage and come back to Me. (2.) S. Cyril (x34), Maldonatus, and others, refer these words to the persecutions which Christ just before said were impending on the Apostles. And He did so that they might strengthen themselves against them. For evils which come unexpectedly, greatly stagger even brave men, while those which are foreseen take less effect. (3.) Bede, Euthymius, and others refer the words to the Holy Spirit Who had just been spoken of, thus explaining them, I have spoken these things of the Holy Spirit Who will come to you, in order that ye may not be offended ...
ily, Verily, I say unto you (I most surely promise you, S. Augustine says, "I swear," regarding the words as an oath, whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My Name, He will give it you. This is a fresh consolation of the Apostles, a fresh instruction given by Christ that they should use His aid, though absent, to obtain all that they needed from the Father, viz, by asking in His Name. Be not distressed at My absence. For I solemnly promise that the Father will give whatever ye ask in My Name. Ye used to ask everything from Me. I am going away, and I put the Father in My place. What ye used to ask of Me, ask now of the Father. He will as readily, as lovingly, and as fully, hear and understand you as I used to do. And object not to the absence or the distance, the Father being in heaven, and you on earth. For the Father is on earth also (since He is everywhere). Nay, He is within you, in your mind and soul, and that not merely by His essence, presence, and power, but also by His Grace. F...
The Saviour, having clearly set before His disciples the madness of the Jews, was perhaps about to add to what He had said, that these misguided men would reach such a height of disobedience, and so stubbornly refuse to listen, and in their cowardice advance so far in hatred of God, that even if there should be two witnesses of His glory they would decline to admit it----and this though the Law openly declares that whatever is testified by two or three witnesses should be believed and received as unquestionably true. But He avoids mentioning this on the present occasion for good reasons. For His statement would thus have produced in them an immoderate grief, and, breaking the hearts of His disciples even to despair, would have made the entrance of faint-heartedness and cowardice into their hearts absolutely certain. For they might reasonably have questioned among themselves;----If the masses of the Jews would not only lend to no one a complete obedience, but also set at nought the Comf...
For the Jews had already agreed, if any confessed that He was Christ, that he should be put out of the synagogue.
Then He consoles them: And all these things will they do to you, because they have not known the Father nor Me. As if He said, Let this consolation content you.
And He predicted these trials for another reason,viz. that they might not say that He had not foreseen them; That you may remember that I told you of them, or that He had only spoken to please them, and given false hopes. And the reason is added why He did not reveal these things sooner: And these things I said not to you at the beginning, because I was with you; because, that is, you were in My keeping, and might ask when you pleased, and the whole battle rested upon Me. There was no need then to tell you these things at the first, though I myself knew them.
Or, He had foretold that they should suffer scourgings, but not that their death could be thought doing God service; which was the strangest thing of all. Or, ...
