John 16:25

These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall shew you plainly of the Father.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(25) These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs.—Better, as in the margin, . . . in parables. So in the second clause of the verse and in John 16:29. (Comp. Note on John 10:6.) “These things” refers specially to what He had just said from John 16:16 onwards. There is a sense in which it is necessarily true of all Christ’s teaching, and of all teaching in words. They are but parables until the truth which they contain has been thought out by the man that hears them. For the disciples much of Christ’s teaching remained in a parabolic form, until the Spirit brought all things which He had said to the mind, and quickened their minds so that they could grasp its meaning. (Comp. e.g., John 2:20-22.)

But the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs.—For “proverbs,” read parables, as in last verse. For the time referred to, comp. John 16:16; John 16:23. In that time He will be present with them in the Advocate, and will no longer need parables or words, but will, to the depth of their spirit, communicate to them in all fulness and plainness the eternal truth of the Father (John 16:13 et seq.).

MacLaren's Expositions

John

THE JOYS OF ‘THAT DAY’

John 16:25 - John 16:27.

The stream which we have been tracking for so long in these discourses has now nearly reached its close. Our Lord, in these all but final words, sums up the great salient features which He has already more than once specified, of the time when His followers shall live with an absent and yet present Christ. He reiterates here substantially just what He has been saying before, but in somewhat different connection, and with some slight expansion. And this reiteration of the glad features of the day which was about to dawn suggests how much the disciples needed, and how much we need, to have repeated over and over again the blessed and profound lessons of these words.

What a sublime self-repression there was in the Master! Not one word escapes from His lips of the personal pain and agony into which He had to plunge and be baptized, before that day could dawn. All that was crushed down and kept back, and He only speaks to the disciples and to us of the joy that comes to them, and not at all of the bitter sorrow by which it is bought. There are set forth in these words, as it seems to me, especially three characteristics which belong to the whole period between the ascension of Jesus Christ and His coming again for judgment. It is a day of continual and clearer teaching by Him. It is a day of desires in His name. It is a day of filial experience of a Father’s love. These are the characteristics of the Christian period, and they ought to be the characteristics of our individual Christian life. My brother! are they the characteristics of yours?

Let us note them in order.

I. First, our Lord tells us that the whole period of the Christian life upon earth is to be a period of continuous and clearer teaching by Himself.

‘Hitherto I have spoken to you in proverbs,’ or parables. The word means, not only a comparison or parable, but also, and perhaps primarily, a mysterious and enigmatical saying. The reference is, of course, directly to the immediately preceding thoughts, in which His departure and the sorrow that accompanied it and was to merge into joy, were described under that touching figure of the woman in travail. But the reference must be extended very much farther than that. It includes not only this discourse, but the whole of His teaching by word whilst He was here upon earth.

Now the first thing that strikes me here is this strange fact. Here is a man who knew Himself to be within four-and-twenty hours of His death, and knew that scarcely another word of instruction was to come from His lips upon earth, calmly asserting that, for all the subsequent ages of the world’s history, He is to continue its Teacher. We know how the wisest and profoundest of earthly teachers have their lips sealed by death, so as that no counsel can come from them any more, and their disciples long in vain for responses from the silenced oracle, which is dumb whatever new problems may arise. But Jesus Christ calmly poses before the world as not having His teaching activity in the slightest degree suspended by that fact which puts a conclusive and complete close to all other teachers’ words. Rather He says that after death He will, more clearly than in life, be the Teacher of the world.

What does He mean by that? Well, remember first of all the facts which followed this saying-the Cross, the Grave, Olivet, the Heavens, the Throne. These were still in the future when He spoke. And have not these-the bitter passion, the supernatural resurrection, the triumphant ascension, and the everlasting session of the Son at the right hand of God-taught the whole world the meaning of the Father’s name, and the love of the Father’s heart, and the power of the Father’s Son, as nothing else, not even the sweetest and tenderest of His utterances, could have taught them? When, then, He declares the continuance of His teaching functions unbroken through death and beyond it, He refers partly to the future facts of His earthly manifestation, and still more does He refer to that continuous teaching which, by that divine Spirit whom He sends, is granted to every believing soul all through the ages.

This great truth, which recurs over and over again in these discourses of our Lord, is far too much dropped out of the consciousness and creeds of the modern Christian Church. We call ourselves Christ’s disciples. If there be disciples, there must be a Master. His teaching is by no means merely the effect of the recorded facts and utterances of the Lord, preserved here in the Book for us, and to be pondered upon by ourselves, but it is also the hourly communication, to waiting hearts and souls that keep themselves near the Lord, of deeper insight into His will, of larger views of His purposes, of a firmer grasp of the contents of Scripture, and a more complete subjection of the whole nature to the truth as it is in Jesus. Christian men and women! do you know anything about what it is to learn of Christ in the sense that He Himself, and no poor human voice like mine, nor even merely the records of His past words and deeds as garnered in these Gospels and expounded by His Apostles, is the source of your growing knowledge of Him? If we would keep our hearts and minds clearer than we do of the babble of earthly voices, and be more loyal and humble and constant and patient in our sitting on the benches in Christ’s school till the Master Himself came to give us His lessons, these great words of my text would not, as they so often do in the mass of professing Christians, lack the verification of experience and the assurance that it is so with us. Have you sat in Christ’s school, and do you know the secret and illuminative whispers of His teaching? If not, there is something wrong in your Christian character, and something insincere in your Christian profession.

Notice, still further, that our Lord here ranks that subsequent teaching before all that He said upon earth, great and precious as it was. Now I do not mean for one moment to allege that fresh communications of truth, uncontained in Scripture, are given to us in the age-long and continuous teaching of Jesus Christ. That I do not suppose to be the meaning of the great promises before us, for the facts of revelation were finished when He ascended, and the inspired commentary upon the facts of revelation was completed with these writings which follow the Gospels in our New Testament. But Christ’s teaching brings us up to the understanding of the facts and of the commentary upon them which Scripture contains, so that what was parable or proverb, dimly apprehended, mysterious and enigmatical when it was spoken, and what remains mysterious and enigmatical to us until we grow up to it, gradually becomes full of significance and weighty with a plain and certain meaning. This is the teaching which goes on through the ages-the lifting of His children to the level of apprehending more and more of the inexhaustible and manifold wisdom which is stored for us in this Book. The mine has been worked on the surface, but the deeper it goes the richer is the lode; and no ages will exhaust the treasures that are hid in Christ Jesus our Lord.

He uses the new problems, the new difficulties, the new circumstances of each successive age, and of each individual Christian, in order to evolve from His word larger lessons, and to make the earlier lessons more fully and deeply understood. And this generation, with all its new problems, with all its uneasiness about social questions, with all its new attitude to many ancient truths, will find that Jesus Christ is, as He has been to all past generations,-the answer to all its doubts, using even these doubts as a means of evolving the deeper harmonies of His Word, and of unveiling in the ancient truth more than former generations have seen in it. ‘Brethren, I write unto you no new commandment. Again, a new commandment I write unto you.’ The inexhaustible freshness of the old word taught us anew, with deeper significance and larger applications, by the everlasting Teacher of the Church, is the hope that shines through these words. I commend to you, dear brethren, the one simple, personal question, Have I submitted myself to that Teacher, and said to men and systems and preachers and books and magazines, and all the rest of the noisy and clamorous tongues that bewilder under pretence of enlightening this generation-have I said to them all, ‘Hold your peace! and let me, in the silence of my waiting soul, hear the Teacher Himself speak to me. Speak, Lord! for Thy servant heareth. Teach me Thy way and lead me, for Thou art my Master, and I the humblest of Thy scholars’?

II. In the next place, another of the glad features of this dawning day is that it is to be a day of desires based upon Christ, and Christlike.

‘In that day ye shall ask in My name.’ Our translators have wisely put a colon at the end of that clause, in order that we may not hurry over it too quickly in haste to get to the next one. For there is a substantial blessing and privilege wrapped up in it. Our Lord has just been saying the same thing in the previous verses, but He repeats it here in order to emphasise it, and to set it by the subsequent words in a somewhat different light. But I dwell upon it for a very simple, practical purpose. I have already explained in former sermons the full, deep meaning of that phrase, ‘asking in Christ’s name,’ and have suggested to you that it implies two things-the one, that our desires should all be based upon His great work as the only ground of our acceptance with God; and the other, that our desires should all be such as represent His heart and His mind. When we ‘ask in His name’ we ask, first, for His sake, and, second, as in His person. And such desires, resting their hopes of answer solely upon His mighty sacrifice and all-sufficient merit, and shaped accurately and fully after the pattern of the wishes that are dear to His heart, are to be the prerogative and the joy of His servants, in the new ‘day’ that is about to dawn.

Note how beautifully this thought, of wishes moulded into conformity with Jesus Christ, and offered in reliance upon His great sacrifice, follows upon that other thought, ‘I will tell you plainly of the Father.’ The Master’s voice speaks, revealing the paternal heart, the scholar’s voice answers with desires kindled by the revelation. Longings and aspirations humbly offered for His sake, and after the pattern of His own, are our true response to His teaching voice. As the astronomer, the more powerful his telescope, though it may resolve some of the nebulae that resisted feebler instruments, only has his bounds of vision enlarged as he looks through it, and sees yet other and mightier star-clouds lying mysterious beyond its ken-so each new influx and tidal wave of knowledge of the Father, which Christ gives to His waiting child, leads on to enlarged desires, to longings to press still further into the unexplored mysteries of that magnificent and boundless land, and to nestle still closer into the infinite heart of God. He declares to us the Father, and the answer of the child to the declaration of the Father is the cry, ‘Abba! Father! show me yet more of Thy heart.’ Thus aspiration and fruition, longing and satisfaction in unsatiated and inexhaustible and unwearying alternation, are the two blessed poles between which the life of a Christian may revolve in smoothness and music.

My friend! is that anything like the transcript of our experience, that the more we know of God, the more we long to know of, and to possess, Him? and the more we long to know of, and to possess, Him, the more full, gracious, confidential, tender, and continuous are the teachings of our Master? Is not this a far higher level of Christian life than that we live upon? And why so? Is Christ’s word faithless? Hath He forgotten to be gracious? Was this promise of His idle wind? Or is it that you and I have never grasped the fulness of privileges that He bestows upon us?

III. Note, lastly, that that day is to be a day of filial experience of a Father’s love.

‘I say not unto you that I will pray the Father for you, for the Father Himself loveth you because ye have loved Me, and have believed that I came out from God.’ Jesus Christ does not deny His intercession. He simply does not bring it into evidence here. To deny it would have been impossible, for soon afterwards we find Him saying, ‘I pray for them which Thou hast given Me, for they are Thine.’ But He does not emphasise it here, in order that He may emphasise another blessed source of solace-viz., that to those who listen to the Master’s teaching, and have their desires moulded into harmony with His, and their wishes and hopes all based upon His sacrifice and work, the divine Father’s love directly flows. There is no need of any intercession to turn Him to be merciful. Men sometimes caricature the thought of the intercession of Christ, as if it meant that He, by His prayer, bent the reluctant will of the Father in heaven. All such horrible misconceptions Christ sweeps out of the field here, even whilst there remains, in the fact that the prayers of which He is speaking are offered in His name, the substance and reality of all that we mean by the intercession of Jesus Christ.

And now note that God loves the men who love Jesus Christ. So completely does the Father identify Himself with the Son, that love to Christ is love to Him, and brings the blessed answer of His love to us. Whosoever loves Christ loves God.

Whosoever loves Christ must do so, believing that He ‘came forth from God.’ There are the two characteristics of a Christian disciple,-faith in the divine mission of the Son, and love that flows from faith. Now, of course, it does not follow from the words before us, that this divine love which comes down upon the heart which loves Christ is the original and first flow of that love towards that heart. ‘We love Him because He first loved us.’ Christ is not here tracking the stream to its source, but is pointing to it midway in its flow. If you want to go up to the fountain-head you have to go up to the divine Father’s heart, who loved when there was no love in us; and, because He loved, sent the Son. First comes the unmotived, spontaneous, self-originated, undeserved, infinite love of God to sinners and aliens and enemies; then the Cross and the mission of Jesus Christ; then the faith in His divine mission; then the love which is the child of faith, as it grasps the Cross and recognises the love that lies behind it; and then, after that, the special, tender, and paternal love of God falling upon the hearts that love Him in His Son. There is nothing here in the slightest degree to conflict with the grand universal truth that God loves enemies and sinners and aliens. But there is the truth, as precious as the other, that they who have ‘known and believed the love that God hath to us’ live under the selectest influences of His loving heart, and have a place in its tenderness which it is impossible that any should have who do not so love. And that sweet commerce of a divine love answering a human, which itself is the answer to a prior divine love, brings with it the firm confidence that prayers in His name shall not be prayers in vain.

So, dear friends, growing knowledge, an ever-present Teacher, the peace of calm desires built upon Christ’s Cross and fashioned after Christ’s Spirit, and the assurance in my quiet and filial heart that my Father in the heavens loves me, and will neither give me ‘serpents’ when I ask for them, thinking them to be ‘fishes,’ nor refuse ‘bread’ when I ask for it-these things ought to mark the lives of all professing Christians. Are they our experience? If not, why are they not, but because we do not believe that ‘Thou art come forth from God,’ nor love Thee as we ought?

Benson Commentary

John 16:25-28. These things — Though very weighty and important; have I spoken unto you in proverbs — In the obscurity of parables, which have appeared dark and mysterious to you; but the time cometh, &c. — You may comfort yourselves with this thought, that the time is at hand when I shall speak unto you no more in proverbs — No more in that obscure manner; but I shall show you plainly of the Father — Shall, by the teaching of my Spirit, declare to you, in plain terms, the whole counsel of God relating to the erection of his church and the salvation of men. At that day ye shall ask in my name, &c. — I repeat it to you again, that after my ascension you shall offer up all your addresses unto the Father, through my mediation; I say not that I will pray the Father for you — I do not mean that I will solicit the Father in your behalf, as if he were unwilling to bestow on you the blessings you stand in need of; for the Father himself loveth you — In a peculiar manner; and therefore will be always ready to grant your requests, and to watch over you with paternal affection and care; because ye have loved me — With sincerity and fervency; and have believed that I came out from God — As the Messenger of his grace to men; and have accordingly relied on me with such steadfastness, that you have ventured your all upon that belief. And you have therein acted a very prudent and happy part; for indeed I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world — For purposes of infinite importance to the glory of God and the happiness of the human race; again — Having finished the work I came to do, I leave the world and go to the Father — From whom I came, with whom I shall continually abide, and into whose presence I will shortly conduct you, putting you in possession of a more glorious kingdom than you ever expected, or could expect on earth.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

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.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

In proverbs - In a manner that appears obscure, enigmatical, and difficult to be understood. It is worthy of remark, that though his declarations in these chapters about his death and resurrection appear to us to be plain, yet to the apostles, filled with Jewish prejudices, and unwilling to believe that he was about to die, they would appear exceedingly obscure and perplexed. The plainest declarations to them on the subject would appear to be involved in mystery.

The time cometh - This refers, doubtless, to the time after his ascension to heaven, when he would send the Holy Spirit to teach them the great truths of religion. It does not appear that he himself, after his resurrection, gave them any more clear or full instruction than he had done before.

I shall show you plainly - As Jesus said that he would send the Holy Spirit John 16:7, and as he came to carry forward the work of Christ, so it may be said that the teachings of the Holy Spirit were the teachings of Christ himself.

Of the Father - Concerning the will and plan of the Father; particularly his plan in the establishment and spread of the Christian religion, and in organizing the church. See Acts 10.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

25. in proverbs—in obscure language, opposed to "showing plainly"—that is, by the Spirit's teaching.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

That by proverbs is meant any dark sayings, is plain from the opposition in the text of that term

plainly. Christ had spoken, though not all things, yet many things to them in dark phrases, and under many figurative expressions;

but (saith he) the time cometh, when I shall show you plainly of the Father: that time is either Christ’s second coming, or after the pouring out of the Spirit, which latter is most probably what our Saviour doth here intend, because of those great measures of knowledge which at and after that time were given out. He had before given to his disciples to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, far beyond others, Matthew 13:11; but yet it appears by John 14:1-6, and many other texts, that they had a very confused and imperfect knowledge of the Trinity, and Christ’s oneness with the Father, and their mutual personal relation one to another.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs,.... Concerning his Father, and his Father's house, and the many mansions in it, of his going to prepare a place for them there, and of the way unto it, all which they seemed not to understand; of the nature of communion with him and his Father, and of the manifestation of them to them, so as not unto the world, which they could not account for; of their union to him under the simile of the vine and its branches; and of his departure from them, and return unto them; and of the sorrow that should follow upon the one, and the joy that should attend the other, set forth in the case of a woman in travail, having sorrow, and being joyful when delivered. All which, one would think, were plain and easy to be understood; but such was the then present state and case of the disciples, that these all seemed as proverbs, parables, and dark sayings, which they did not clearly understand: wherefore our Lord says,

but the time cometh; meaning either the time of his appearing unto them, after his resurrection, or the day of Pentecost:

when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall show plainly of the Father; by pouring forth his Spirit upon them, who should not only take of his things, but of his Father's also, and show them unto them clearly and plainly; so as that they should have a clear understanding of them, as they were capable of; of the perfections of his nature, his distinct personality, his being the Father of Christ, and of all the elect in him; of his everlasting love to their persons; of his choice of them in Christ; of his covenant with them in him; of his mind and will concerning them, and his gracious designs towards them; of his Father's house, and the way to it; and of the nature, design, and usefulness of his going to him; of the distinction between speaking in parables and dark sayings, and speaking plainly, openly, and apparently; see Numbers 12:8.

Geneva Study Bible

{7} These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall shew you plainly of the Father.

(7) The Holy Spirit, who was poured upon the apostles after the ascension of Christ, instructed both them in all the central mysteries and secrets of our salvation, and also the Church by them, and he will also instruct the Church until the end of the world.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Meyer's NT Commentary

John 16:25. Ταῦτα] that, namely, after which the disciples, in John 16:17-18, had asked, and what He Himself, John 16:20 ff., had more fully carried out; that, consequently, which had been spoken of His departure and of His being seen again, and its circumstances and consequences. He has uttered this in improper, allegorical expressions (ἐν παροιμ., comp. on John 10:6, and on the generic plur., Mark 12:1), proportioned to their capacity of comprehension; but when the hour of the fulfilment of the promise of the Paraclete shall have arrived, He will then, and that by means of the Paraclete, no longer speak to them under such sensuous veils of thought, but without circumlocution, and directly, frankly and freely (παῤῥησίᾳ, adverbial instrumental dative, as in John 11:14), give them tidings of the Father. In answer to Luthardt, who refers ταῦτα to all that was previously said, including the discourse on the vine (comp. also Godet), John 16:1 is already decisive, and also the fact that before John 16:19 the disciples have spoken.

Expositor's Greek Testament

John 16:25. Another great change would characterize the economy into which they were passing. Instead of dark figurative utterances which only dimly revealed things spiritual, direct and intelligible disclosures regarding the Father would be made to the disciples: ταῦτα ἐν παροιμίαις … ὑμῖν. παροιμία. See John 10:6; “dark sayings” or “riddles” expresses what is here meant. It is opposed to παρρησίᾳ, open, plain, easily intelligible, meant to be understood. He does not refer to particular utterances, such as John 15:1, John 16:21, etc. but to the reserved character of the whole evening’s conversation, and of all His previous teaching. “The promise is that the reserve imposed by a yet unfinished history, by a manifestation in the flesh, by the incapacity of the hearers, and by their gradual education, will then be succeeded by clear, full, unrestricted information, fitted to create in those who receive it that ‘full assurance of understanding’ which contributes so largely to the ‘full assurance of faith’.” Bernard. περὶ τοῦ πατρός, the Father is the central theme of Christ’s teaching, both while on earth and above.

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

25–33. Summary and conclusion of these discourses

25. These things] As in John 16:1 there is some uncertainty as to how much is included. Some refer ‘these things’ to John 16:19-24; others to John 15:1 to John 16:24. Perhaps even the latter is too narrow a limit. The words can apply to all Christ’s teaching, of which there was much which the multitudes were not allowed (Matthew 13:11) and the Apostles were not able (John 2:22) to understand at the time.

in proverbs] Better, in allegories (see on John 10:6).

but the time cometh] Better, there cometh an hour (John 4:21; John 4:23, John 5:25, John 16:2; John 16:32). Omit ‘but’ with the best authorities.

shew] Or, declare, as in John 16:13-15. The best MSS. give a different compound of the same verb as is used in John 16:13-15, but the difference cannot well be marked in English.

plainly] Frankly, without reserve (see on John 7:4 and comp. John 7:13; John 7:26, John 10:24, John 11:14; John 11:54, John 18:20).

Bengel's Gnomen

John 16:25. Ἐν παροιμίαις, in more covert words, in somewhat dark sayings) In antithesis to παῤῥησίᾳ, openly, plainly, without a veil: πάροιμος, is one who is somewhere about the way (οἴμη), but not in the way, whence παροιμία (ch. John 10:6) is a mode of speaking whereby is meant not the literal thing, which the words express to the ear, but yet something not unlike it (from which notion also the term παραβολὴ, משל, is formed). Such was that expression, μικρὸν, a little while; John 16:16, whereupon the disciples said, What is this? John 16:18.—περὶ, concerning) The same particle occurs in the following verse. I shall show you concerning the Father, and in John 16:26, I will pray (request) the Father concerning (for) you, are sweetly correlative.

Pulpit Commentary

Verses 25-33. - (d) The final conviction wrought that Jesus was what he had said that he was. The joy of Christ, with its note of warning. Verse 25. - These things I have spoken to you in proverbs (see John 10:6); i.e. in concentrated and to some extent enigmatical utterances, "in dark sayings upon a harp," in words which subsequent events and higher enlightenment would interpret (cf. here Christ's distinction between his disciples and the multitude in the matter of parables, Matthew 13.). He used the parable to the stupefied, that they might thus separate between those who were susceptible to his teaching and those who were not. To his disciples he interpreted his parables, still leaving much which might be regarded as παροιμίαι, condensed word-utterances, in which words stood for higher things than in their ordinary usage. Thus the similitudes adopted throughout John 9, 10, 11, 12-16, are numerous, intended to draw the disciples on from their ordinary ideas to the heights of his thought and the mystery of his Person. The ἀλλ is omitted by modern editors. The hour cometh - the great climacteric period of my revelation - when I shall no longer speak to you in proverbs, when, indeed, the sound of my voice will be hushed, and words will no longer be needed, when Divine spirations and heavenly pulsations shall convey to you what my parabolic teaching and my paroimic interpretations have failed to impart, when I shall be with you and in you, and by the energy of the Paraclete I shall declare (to you) plainly, with clearness and openness, in the fullness of spiritual light, without reserve, circumlocution, or parable, concerning the Father. This promise declares that the glorious revelations of Pentecost and the teaching of those who received the Holy Ghost will be verily and indeed our Lord Christ's own most personal and frank and outspoken revelations of the Father; John 16:25

Vincent's Word Studies

Proverbs (παροιμίαις)

See on parables, Matthew 13:3. He had spoken under figures, as the vine, and the woman in travail.

Shall shew (ἀναγγελῶ)

Rev., tell. See on John 16:13. The best texts read ἀπαγγελῶ, the original force of which is to bring tidings from (ἀπό) something or someone.

Plainly (παῤῥησίᾳ)

See on John 7:13.