Yohanes 10:38

10:38 But if I do them, even if you do not believe me, believe the deeds, ¹  so that you may come to know ²  and understand that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.”

Yohanes 14:12

14:12 I tell you the solemn truth, ³  the person who believes in me will perform ⁴  the miraculous deeds ⁵  that I am doing, ⁶  and will perform ⁷  greater deeds ⁸  than these, because I am going to the Father.

Yohanes 17:12

17:12 When I was with them I kept them safe ⁹  and watched over them ¹⁰  in your name ¹¹  that you have given me. Not one ¹²  of them was lost except the one destined for destruction, ¹³  so that the scripture could be fulfilled. ¹⁴ 

[10:38]  ¹ tn Or “works.”

[10:38]  sn Jesus says that in the final analysis, the deeds he did should indicate whether he was truly from the Father. If the authorities could not believe in him, it would be better to believe in the deeds he did than not to believe at all.

[10:38]  ² tn Or “so that you may learn.”

[14:12]  ³ tn Grk “Truly, truly, I say to you.”

[14:12]  ⁴ tn Or “will do.”

[14:12]  ⁵ tn Grk “the works.”

[14:12]  ⁶ tn Or “that I do.”

[14:12]  sn See the note on miraculous deeds in v. 11.

[14:12]  ⁷ tn Or “will do.”

[14:12]  ⁸ tn Grk “greater works.”

[14:12]  sn What are the greater deeds that Jesus speaks of, and how is this related to his going to the Father? It is clear from both John 7:39 and 16:7 that the Holy Spirit will not come until Jesus has departed. After Pentecost and the coming of the Spirit to indwell believers in a permanent relationship, believers would be empowered to perform even greater deeds than those Jesus did during his earthly ministry. When the early chapters of Acts are examined, it is clear that, from a numerical standpoint, the deeds of Peter and the other Apostles surpassed those of Jesus in a single day (the day of Pentecost). On that day more were added to the church than had become followers of Jesus during the entire three years of his earthly ministry. And the message went forth not just in Judea, Samaria, and Galilee, but to the farthest parts of the known world. This understanding of what Jesus meant by “greater deeds” is more probable than a reference to “more spectacular miracles.” Certainly miraculous deeds were performed by the apostles as recounted in Acts, but these do not appear to have surpassed the works of Jesus himself in either degree or number.

[17:12]  ⁹ tn Or “I protected them”; Grk “I kept them.”

[17:12]  ¹⁰ tn Grk “and guarded them.”

[17:12]  ¹¹ tn Or “by your name.”

[17:12]  ¹² tn Grk And not one.” The conjunction καί (kai, “and”) has not been translated here in keeping with the tendency of contemporary English style to use shorter sentences.

[17:12]  ¹³ tn Grk “the son of destruction” (a Semitic idiom for one appointed for destruction; here it is a reference to Judas).

[17:12]  sn The one destined to destruction refers to Judas. Clearly in John’s Gospel Judas is portrayed as a tool of Satan. He is described as “the devil” in 6:70. In 13:2 Satan put into Judas’ heart the idea of betraying Jesus, and 13:27 Satan himself entered Judas. Immediately after this Judas left the company of Jesus and the other disciples and went out into the realm of darkness (13:30). Cf. 2 Thess 2:3, where this same Greek phrase (“the son of destruction”; see tn above) is used to describe the man through whom Satan acts to rebel against God in the last days.

[17:12]  ¹⁴ sn A possible allusion to Ps 41:9 or Prov 24:22 LXX. The exact passage is not specified here, but in John 13:18, Ps 41:9 is explicitly quoted by Jesus with reference to the traitor, suggesting that this is the passage to which Jesus refers here. The previous mention of Ps 41:9 in John 13:18 probably explains why the author felt no need for an explanatory parenthetical note here. It is also possible that the passage referred to here is Prov 24:22 LXX, where in the Greek text the phrase “son of destruction” appears.