16:23-27 Asking of the Father shows a sense of spiritual wants, and a desire of spiritual blessings, with conviction that they are to be had from God only. Asking in Christ's name, is acknowledging our unworthiness to receive any favours from God, and shows full dependence upon Christ as the Lord our Righteousness. Our Lord had hitherto spoken in short and weighty sentences, or in parables, the import of which the disciples did not fully understand, but after his resurrection he intended plainly to teach them such things as related to the Father and the way to him, through his intercession. And the frequency with which our Lord enforces offering up petitions in his name, shows that the great end of the mediation of Christ is to impress us with a deep sense of our sinfulness, and of the merit and power of his death, whereby we have access to God. And let us ever remember, that to address the Father in the name of Christ, or to address the Son as God dwelling in human nature, and reconciling the world to himself, are the same, as the Father and Son are one.

Verse 27. - For the Father himself loveth you (φιλεῖ), with love of a fatherly affection, such as mine to you, because ye have loved me (the perfect preterit, in the sense of the realized past in the present which shall then be), and have believed that I came forth from the side of (παρὰ) the Father. In their belief of this transcendent fact is the hope of the world. It was wrought in them by the strengthening pulses of a deepening love, and to this love God himself responds with a personal tender affection that encourages boundless prayer. The disciple and lover of Jesus, having Jesus in the heart, united to him by living faith, will find in Christ that there is a perpetual pledge of reciprocal love between the Father and himself. Christ will not (ἐρωτᾶν) ask the Father, because his entire position as Mediator establishes a continual appeal, is a perpetual ἔντευξις, a continuous drawing near and appeal to God on our account, a pledge and guarantee of our own fellowship with and access to the Father. Our English word "intercession," though apparently corresponding with the Latin and with the Greek word, does not now represent its original meaning. That meaning is by no means equivalent to the hind of prayer which is here excluded (Trench, 'Syn. N.T.,' § 51.).

For the Father himself loveth you,.... The Father loved them as well, and as much as the Son did, and of himself too, without any merit or motive in them: he loved them from everlasting, and had given proofs of it in time, in the gift of his Son to them, and for them; and in calling them by his grace; and therefore being thus strongly affected to them, they might depend upon a ready and speedy answer from him, as might be best for his glory, and their good.

Because ye have loved me; not that their love to Christ was the cause of the Father's love to them; but, on the contrary, the Father's love to them was the cause of their love to Christ; and therefore as the cause is known by its effect, they might be assured of the Father's love to them by their love to Christ; for if the Father had not loved them, they had never loved God, nor Christ; but since they did love Christ, it was a clear case the Father loved them: and this their love is joined with faith;

and have believed that I came out from God; being sent by him, and am no impostor, but the true Messiah that was to come: faith in Christ, and love to him, go together; where the one is, there is the other; faith works by love; they are both the gifts of God's grace, and the fruits and effects of his everlasting love; and those who are possessed of them may be firmly persuaded of their interest therein.

27. For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me—This love of theirs is that which is called forth by God's eternal love in the gift of His Son mirrored in the hearts of those who believe, and resting on His dear Son.

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