Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
2 Corinthians 5:21 For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
Romans 10:3-4 For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the…
1 Peter 3:18 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but qu…
Jeremiah 23:5-6 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execut…
Acts 3:14 But ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you;
1 Corinthians 1:30 But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption:
Philippians 3:7-9 But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.
1 Timothy 3:16 And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on John 16:7-15
As it was usual with the Old Testament prophets to comfort the church in its calamities with the promise of the Messiah (Isa 9:6; Mic 5:6; Zac 3:8); so, the Messiah being come, the promise of the Spirit was the great cordial, and is still.
Three things we have here concerning the Comforter's coming: -
I. That Christ's departure was absolutely necessary to the Comforter's coming, Joh 16:7. The disciples were so loth to believe this that Christ saw cause to assert it with a more than ordinary solemnity: I tell you the truth. We may be confident of the truth of everything that Christ told us; he has no design to impose upon us. Now, to make them easy, he here tells them,
1. In general, It was…
Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more--Beyond doubt, it is Christ's personal righteousness which the Spirit was to bring home to the sinner's heart. The evidence of this was to lie in the great historical fact, that He had "gone to His Father and was no more visible to men":--for if His claim to be the Son of God, the Saviour of the world, had been a lie, how should the Father, who is "a jealous God," have raised such a blasphemer from the dead and exalted him to His right hand? But if He was the "Faithful and True Witness," the Father's "Righteous Servant," "His Elect, in whom His soul delighted," then was His departure to the Father, and consequent disappearanc…
Of righteousness - Of my innocence and holiness, because I go away to my Father; of which my resurrection from the dead, and my ascension to heaven, shall be complete proofs. Christ was treated by the Jews as an impostor; as a magician; as one possessed by the devil; as a wicked person, seducer, and destroyer of the law. His vindication from these charges he chiefly referred to the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, who, by his influences on the minds of the people, and by his eloquence and energy in the ministry of the apostles, convinced both the Jews and the Gentiles that the sentence of the Jewish rulers was unjust and infamous, and that the very person whom they had crucified was both Lord and…
The Church Fathers
(de Qu. N. et V. Test. qu. 89) The Saviour, His righteousness retained, feared not to return to Him Who sent Him, and in that He returned, proved that He had come from Him: Of righteousness, because I go to the Father.
(Hom. lxxviii. 2) i. e. My going to the Father will be a proof that I have led an irreproachable life, so that they will not be able to say, This man is a sinner; this man is not from God. (c. 9:24, 16) Again, inasmuch as I conquered the devil, (which no one who was a sinner could do,) they cannot say that I have a devil, and am a deceiver. But as he hath been condemned by Me, they shall be assured that they shall trample upon him afterwards; and My resurrection will show that he was not able to detain Me.
(de Verb. Dom. s. lxi) Or thus: They believed not, He went to the Father. Theirs therefore was the sin, His the righteousness. But that He came from the Father to us, was mercy; that He went to the Father, was righteousness; according to the saying of the Apostle, Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him. (Philip. 2:9) But if He went to the Father alone, what profit is it to us? Is He not alone rather in the sense of being one with all His members, as the head is with the body? So then the world is reproved of sin, in those who believe not in Christ; and of righteousness, in those who rise again in the members of Christ.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Holy Ghost — The third Person of the adorable Trinity. His personality is proved (1) from the fact that the attributes of personality, as intelligence and volition, are ascribed to him (John 14:17, 26; 15:26; 1…
Holy Spirit, The, Is God · As convincing of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment — As convincing of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Of righteousness, because I go to my Father,.... The "righteousness" here spoken of, does, in the first sense of the word, design the personal righteousness of Christ. The Jews had traduced him as a wicked man, said he was a sinner himself, and a friend of publicans and sinners; that he was guilty of blasphemy and sedition, maintained a familiarity with Satan, yea, that he had a devil: now the Spirit of God, by the mouth of Peter, on the day of "Pentecost", proved, to the conviction of the Jews, that all this was slander; that Christ was an innocent, holy, and righteous person, and a man approved of God among them, as they themselves must be conscious of, Acts 2:22; of all which, his going t…
John 16:8-15
8. And when he is come, he will convince the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment 9. Of sin, because they believe not in me 10. Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and you see me no more. 11. Of judgment, because the prince of this world hath been judged. 12. I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13. But when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will lead you into all truth; for he will not speak from himself, but will speak all that he has heard, and will declare to you the things that are to come. 14. He will glorify me, for he will take of what is mine, and will declare it to you. 15. All things that the Father hath are m…
One of the Spirit’s roles is to convict the world. Convict is a legal term: The world had conducted its trial of Jesus, examining the evidence for his case (his signs and claims). Now the world would stand trial before the Spirit, and its guilt would be proven.
16:8 The Spirit unveils to the world the real nature of its sin, the truth about righteousness found only in God, and the coming judgment, which has already dawned on the world as light penetrating the darkness.
