What did Jesus mean when He said, "I have overcome the world," in John 16:33?

Though the Lord had no support from His disciples in the dark hour before Him, He could go forth in perfect dependence on the Father and in the assurance of His abiding presence. Hence He confronted the world's hatred and opposition in perfect peace and wholly overcame it. Now all these communications the Lord had made that His disciples in their turn might have peace in Him, just as He had possessed peace in the Father. His overcoming the world, moreover, was the pledge that overcoming power was also at their disposal. He had just been speaking of the world's hatred and persecution. To us perhaps its seductions and smiles are more dangerous. But, whichever it be, our safety lies in Christ. Only as begotten of God and as believing that Jesus is the Son of God do we overcome the world, as 1 John 5:4-5, tells us.

But let us follow the text. Here was the failure of all fleshly association even with Christ, because Christ relinquished the ground on which it was held by either suffering to take a better inheritance for them with Him, they wholly failing, so that there was none but He in it. But the Father was with Him; this was the consolation; and He gave them the same: "In me ye shall have peace; in the world tribulation; but be of good cheer; I have overcome," etc. It was said to set them on this ground: "in me." He was out of the world, and they in it. He turned out of it, so they would have tribulation in it. His comfort was in the presence of One not seen to the world, where He seemed to be alone. In Him they would have the same. He had overcome. Thus His statement made the moral passing through of the suffering of His lonely death and rejection; and on this ground He speaks in what follows.

He is this barley loaf. It speaks of Him as of the risen One, the One who has had the victory over the world and the enemy. And the proof of His victory is His resurrection. This is why we have this barley loaf here which shows Gideon that Midian is a conquered enemy. This reminds us of the end of John 16 where the Lord says to His disciples: 'In the world ye have tribulation; but be of good courage: I have overcome the world '. It was at the cross that He had this victory - and His resurrection is the proof.

But then it is faith in His Son Jesus Christ which overcomes the world. “This is the victory which has gotten the victory over the world, our faith” (N.Tr.) I take our faith to be that which is presented to us in testimony. The Son of God is the One who is preached as glad tidings. The victory of God is presented to us in Him. In Him I am face to face with that which has obtained the victory over the world. He could say to His disciples, when going out of the world, “Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” It had exercised no influence upon Him. He learned nothing from it. Its principles were abhorrent to Him. He passed through it dependent upon the Father who sent Him. It knew Him not, and it hated Him with all its heart; but neither its hatred nor its friendship could cause Him to turn aside out of the path traced for Him by the will of God. He was the One righteous Man in a world of sinners. He loved righteousness, and hated lawlessness, and was thus the contrast of every other man. And His death was the crowning act of His obedient life. He was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. And because of this God has highly exalted Him. And He it is who is preached to us as glad tidings; and “who is he that overcomes the world, but he that believes that Jesus is the Son of God.”

The Lord Jesus perceived its snares, and, amidst the Judaism of that day, He found pleasure in always doing what pleased the Father. He said, “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father” (John 16:28). The Son of God found in that fallen dignitary, Satan, His great antagonist; the Father and the Father’s love found the world in opposition; and the Holy Spirit the flesh. We are told that Satan—the prince or “ruler of this world”—is judged (v. 11); nevertheless, as “the god of this world” (2 Cor. 4:4) he blinds the thoughts of the unbelieving that “the radiancy of the glad tidings of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not shine forth for them.” In both a governmental and religious way therefore his activities have the world in view. The Son of God however has brought about his just overthrow, and has also overcome the world in every form. He has kept His Father’s commandments and abode in His love through every trial, yet the world hated Him. They crucified the Lord of Glory. That exposed the awful condition of Judaism. There is however for faith another side to the Saviour’s death—to His going away from the world to the Father—even as He said, “Be of good cheer! I have overcome the world!”

And now once more the Lord Himself as an overcomer is brought before us in His closing words with His disciples in John 16:33: "These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." We can easily see that this is another side of the world. It is not the seductive aspect of it by which Satan hoped to overthrow the Lord, and which is the danger of the young men, but the persecuting aspect of it — a world where much tribulation was to be encountered on the way to the glory. It is our appointed portion here, and the danger is of yielding before the pressure of it and becoming unfaithful. If Satan cannot seduce the Christian by the world, he will persecute by it, as in Smyrna. "Behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days:" (there is no limit to his power) "be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." (Rev. 2:10)

With all before Him He spoke what He did here, that in Him they might have peace; and so He walked Himself. In the world tribulation was to be their portion, not as for the Jew retributively at a specified and measured hour (Jer. 30:7; Dan. 12:1; Matt. 24:21; Mark 13:19) at the time of the end, or even preparatorily meanwhile (Luke 21:22-24), but habitually for those not of the world, and hence a prey in it. Yet are they called to courage, as knowing Him Whom they have believed, His glory and His grace Who has overcome the world. What a spring and cheer, that we have to overcome a foe already overcome! He indeed alone; we looking to Him Who gives power for all things. And this is the victory that overcometh the world, our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? (1 John 5:5)309

Here, indeed, God is glorified; glorified not only in the exhibition of every moral beauty in perfection's highest height, but in respect to all His holy claims as to sin and the sinner. For this word of the Lord Jesus, "I have glorified Thee on the earth, I have finished the work Thou gavest Me to do," must surely have been uttered anticipatively in view of His death. It covered all His life down to the moment He uttered it: this we know. But the whole of the section, John 13-17, anticipates His going out of the world to the Father, and speaks of the conditions which would obtain when He had thus gone. At the close of John 16, as a summary of His own pathway, and looking over to its assured close, He says, "I have overcome the world." As surely as this includes the final hours of testing, so surely does "I have glorified Thee on the earth" look on to and include His death where His journey on the earth was ended.

In the final word the Lord exhorts His own, for the moment of His absence from them, to be of good cheer. Tribulation would be theirs from the world: in Him, Who overcame the world, they would have peace. What a triumph for our hearts to contemplate. He knows no defeat; He has vanquished every foe, and has entered victoriously into the Father's House. R. Duncanson.

This hour of triumph the Son of God saw in the hour of His rejection by the world, and announced it before He departed out of this world, as a warning to His foes and a comfort to His own. We need not fear the power of the great adversary, nor the world in which he rules. The Lord assures our hearts by these words. He tells us that the world which will hate and persecute us is judged, and that the great prince who governs and guides its affairs is deposed. His power is already broken and neutralised, and he himself doomed to everlasting punishment.