20Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. 21When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. John 16:20-21C.F.W. Walther writes about this Gospel:
"Jesus shows the disciples how their faith should be examined and exercised, and thus strengthened and preserved until they enter into eternal joy...
Divine sorrow, not worldly sorrow, is the way to the joy of faith on earth...
True faith is not a passive adherence to the truth of everything in the Bible. Even a person who does not have a broken heart can do this much. True faith is a divine power worked by the Holy Spirit to comfort Christ's own in firm confidence against all uneasiness of conscience over sin, God's wrath, death, judgement, and hell. It is that power by which a person is born again, love of sin is rooted out of him, his heart is purified and renewed, and the love of God and neighbor is poured into his heart...
This wonderful change cannot take place in any person as long as he remains comfortable in his sins...
Without the birth pains of true repentance, faith does not come into the world. As God said, if true faith, with its heavenly joy, is to come into a human heart, the person must first 'know and see that it is evil and bitter for you to forsake the LORD your God; the fear of Me is not in you' (Jeremiah 2:19)."
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