Commentary on John 1 part 48/94

For he is good, 'not bringing wrath every day'; but 'if we do not turn, he will whet his sword,' according to what is written, 'and will bend his bow against us,' in which are the instruments of death—that is to say, every kind of torment and of unbearable calamity.

Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he shall never see death forever.

He shows it to be superfluous to bring long defences in return against those who are wont to love fault-finding.

For he turns aside to what was necessary—I mean the being called through faith into eternal life; and all but saying farewell to those who out of ignorance had grieved him, he once more by a certain art weaves in his own teaching.

For will he not be known to be God by nature through this also? For to whom else could it belong to be able forever to give life to those who hear his words, save to him who truly is God by nature? Now the divine word is kept, not when one transgresses the divine commandment, but when one stands firm and without delay does what is enjoined, and is in no way accused of slackness with respect to the divine laws.

And observe again how great is the exactness of the word;

for he did not consent to say, 'If anyone hears my word,' but, 'If anyone keeps my word.'

For not only men liable to sin receive the word of God into their ear, but even the very unholy swarm of the demons;

and indeed Satan himself, the leader of them all, when he dared to tempt our Lord Jesus Christ in the wilderness, kicking against the goads out of the great savagery of his ways, even set before him a divine word, saying, 'It is written that he shall give his angels charge concerning you, to keep you in all your ways.' Salvation, therefore, is not in bare hearing of the word, nor is life in the mere learning, but in the keeping of what is heard, and in his setting the divine word before himself as a kind of rule and boundary of life.

And he says that the steadfast keeper of his words shall never see death forever—not that he altogether does away with dying in the flesh, but in that, as God, he does not reckon death to be death;

for the dead is nothing to him, seeing that it is his nature both to bring what is not into being, and easily to give life to what has come into a state of corruption;

or else he says that the saints shall not see death unto the age to come, which indeed may fittingly and more truly be understood as the age properly so called, having no end, unlike this age of ours; and he says that those who have kept his divine word shall not see death unto that age—not as though any were destined to die after the resurrection;

for the death of all has been dissolved in the death of Christ, and the power of corruption has been made to vanish;

but he names as death, in the appropriate sense, the being punished through the age.

And this you may learn from what he himself has said, considering it in the passages above;

for 'Truly,' he says, 'I say to you, he who believes in the Son has eternal life, but he who disobeys the Son shall not see life.' And yet all shall come to life again, and shall run back into life once more, both believers and unbelievers.

For the resurrection is not partial and in no wise limited, but equal for all, according at least to the principle that all must come to life again.

How then shall he who believes not in the Son not see life, although all are expected to rise? It is therefore evident to everyone henceforth that it is Christ's custom to call 'life' the living long in gladness and glory, that declines and refuses to come to an end—which is the thing treasured up in hope for the saints.

As therefore he says that he who disobeys the Son shall have life invisible to him, although all are expected to depart this life, not signifying by this the life of the body, but the gladness prepared for the saints, thus naming it;

in the same manner, I think, of the noble and vigorous keeper of his divine words, he says that he shall never see death forever, in no way signifying by this the death of the body, but the punishment prepared for sinners.

For as in those passages gladness is signified through 'life,' so also here through saying 'death' punishment is signified.

The Jews said to him, 'Now we know that you have a demon.'

Again they accuse the truth—they who, because they had been called liars, were displeased as though they had been insulted;

and they bear witness, even against their will, to the words of the Saviour, and through the very things by which they dishonour him, through these they prove him to be one who does not lie.

But blind are these wretched men, and they have a heart so filled with such great ignorance that they do not at all understand that they ought to shake off the things for which they might be blamed, but rather ever fall into evils more shameful than the past, and are caught in their own snares.

They are more tightly bound fast by their sins.

Most foolish also is what they say here: 'Now we know.'

For those who had often barked against him and proclaimed that he had a demon now say that they 'know,' thereby passing sentence on their own earlier unbridled babbling.

For if they now know, they did not know before.

How then did they assert that one not yet convicted was possessed by a demon, as they themselves supposed? Therefore the impious people of the Jews was a liar of old and beforehand, and with an ungated mouth belched forth against Christ the wickedness that comes from the devil.

To confirm their own drivel they snatch up what was said by our Saviour Christ, out of great stupefaction, as is likely, imagining that they can make the truth an ally to their falsehood.

Then, through the very things by which you may learn that they sin impiously, outrageously insulting the Giver of eternal life, through these same things they do not perceive that they are once more advancing to the intensifying of their disease;

for they do not reckon that they ought to repent of those things; rather they say they are already persuaded concerning what they have said, as though it were the truth.

And the prophet is true who says: 'For the ways of the Lord are straight, and the righteous shall walk in them;

but the ungodly shall be weak in them.' One might be amazed at their incomparable madness in this matter too.

Beholding an innumerable throng of demons and evil spirits shattered by a single word of the Saviour, and driven out unwillingly from those in whom they dwelt, they do not shudder to say that he has a demon—although they had been fully assured by unavoidable reasonings that Satan would not cast out Satan.

'For every kingdom,' says Christ, 'divided against itself is laid waste;

and every house and city divided against itself is laid waste.

And if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself;

how then shall his kingdom stand?' Behold then, one will say, and very rightly: A people truly foolish and senseless, who have eyes and see not, ears and hear not. For neither by word and teachings are they moved to be willing to think what is better, nor, beholding with the eyes of the mind the Nature that is queen over all, do they refrain from pelting her—as with stones—by their excesses unto dishonour; or rather, each pelts his own soul.

'Abraham died and the prophets died, and you say: If anyone keeps my word, he shall never taste death unto the age.'

For this is the demons' custom, as indeed we have said in other places.

They understand nothing beyond what is seen, nor do they recognize God the Word in human flesh; but not even a little do they raise their mind above bodily things—rather, fixing it upon earthly things alone, they revolve about the baser things alone, which fall under the touch.

For this cause the wretches are scandalized, and think that the Truth—that is, Christ—speaks false tales; and moreover they suppose that he exalts himself over the glory befitting God—not merely as content to be set in equal rank with the Ruler of all, but as already presuming something greater, reckoning himself able, or even promising to do, what God the Father did not do.

For why they are vexed, saying that Abraham and the prophets died, and for what reason they put forward the death of the saints to overturn the Saviour's words—this it is fitting to observe.

Therefore they wish to make plain something of this sort: 'We did not lie in saying that you have a demon; the proof is not far from what has been said.'

'For behold, you promise even to surpass God himself by your wonders, and to be able easily to accomplish what he himself has not done.'

'For Abraham and the prophets, though they kept the word of God, did not contradict the laws of nature, but sank and fell into this common death of the body;

[whereas you promise] that the keeper of your words shall be wholly beyond death;

how then,' he says, 'are your things not better than his?' But the one who supposed that he would surpass God—how is he not manifestly out of his senses? For out of much ignorance they think that in these words the Lord signifies only the death of the body, and that he promises those who obey him that they shall not die in the flesh—although it would above all have been the work of prudent men to consider that nothing dies to God, even if it die, since it is made alive.

For if it was brought from non-being into being, how shall not that which has already been brought forth be far more readily and easily called once again into being—even if, for a little while, according to the divine economy, it seems to have been laid to rest? Therefore the Jews, not knowing the glory of the Saviour, treat his words with a kind of insolence and call him demon-possessed, as one who promises to do greater things than God has wrought; and to prove their own calumny they bring forward the death of Abraham and of the holy prophets, thinking thereby to convict Christ as boasting in empty words and promising to give unceasing life to those who keep his word, and as in some way subverting the glory of God, in that he confesses that he will give them greater things.

'Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets died.'

In this too the word of the Jews is overshadowed, and is seen to be labouring with a deep meaning within itself.

For what again do they mean by this, conceiving things fit for a mere man, yet bitter nonetheless in accordance with the aim that lies within them? For behold, they say, though they kept the divine word, Abraham and the prophets have died; but we have just now heard you promising greater things to certain men.

For in that you say that they shall not die at all, they are surely by all means greater, and in better estate than those we mentioned, in this very respect of not dying.

'For tell us,' they say, 'and answer us who inquire this:

are you yourself greater than Abraham and the prophets, you who promise to render others greater than they? Will you not die, though they died, but remain immortal—you who are a man and have your body from the earth? How then could you bestow on others what you yourself do not have? For you will surely die, being a man.'

'But if you are not greater than Abraham and the prophets, since you will undergo the death common to them, then you will not give to others a good that is not even present in yourself.'

Such is the meaning of what was said by them in a sidelong manner.

And do not marvel if they understand nothing further concerning Christ.

For as we have already often said in many places, they consider him to be a mere man and one among us like ourselves, being wholly ignorant of the Only-begotten God the Word who was united with flesh; ['Whom do you make yourself?'] Out of measureless derangement they all but presume even to correct the Lord as one who errs, and, as though he were ignorant of what is fitting, they counsel him to think something more modest.

'For you, sir,' they say, 'have been ignorant of your own nature, and, being a man, you have as it were forgotten yourself; you were not content with the measure given you by God.'

For they already expect to hear him crying out plainly—through the things by which they think to provoke him, maliciously flinging out 'Whom do you make yourself?'—that 'I am greater than both Abraham and the prophets,' even though the Lord, in saying this, would have been altogether most true, since no human word is fit to be compared with God, who is above all nature, visible and intelligible.

Jesus answered: 'If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing.'

[Taking up] the person of holy Abraham and of the prophets, the Saviour persuasively transfers to himself what is signified, not being unaware that the Pharisee is prone to anger even without any pretext summoning him to it, and takes anything whatsoever that is spoken about him as an added incitement to murder more savagely.

For envy makes those in whom it arises lovers of sin, and persuades them to be the more hotly indignant, even over things at which they least ought to be.

Christ wishes once again to indicate something of this sort.

The Jews were leaping upon him and opposing what he said, incessantly naming blessed Abraham and the prophets up and down to satiety, and crying out expressly: 'Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets died.' Then, besides this, they accused him as one usurping the glory of the saints and exalting himself far too far above them, saying: 'Whom do you make yourself?' It was therefore necessary that the Lord should clearly defend himself against these charges and say plainly: 'I am better and greater than Abraham and the prophets.'

But the high-minded Jew would not have found such a word tolerable;

for one of them would at once have been indignant at this, and, feigning to be a lover of his father and pretending to plead for the glory of the saints, would have fastened the more hotly upon Christ, and, being aggrieved, would already have thought himself justified in shedding blood.

for this reason the Lord, transferring the words to himself, says: 'If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing.'

For he all but says this: 'Let none of those on earth think great things of himself.'

For if we should wish to consider by ourselves what the glory of man is, we shall find it to be nothing;

'for all flesh is grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass.' It is therefore no wonder, he says, if Abraham has died, and after him the prophets.

For what is the glory of man, when nature is tyrannized by death and corruption, and on this account is likened to easily-withering grass? And it is likely that, having skillfully transferred to himself the measure that belongs to Abraham or to the prophets, and saying 'My glory is nothing,' he brings the Jew to remembrance—both of Abraham, who says most plainly of himself, 'I am earth and ashes,' and of the blessed prophets who cried out to God, 'Remember that we are dust.' And surely we do not on this account say that the one who glorifies the saints accuses their glory.

But henceforth it was necessary, and the argument concerning what is profitable called for it, that he should show how great is the difference which his divine and ineffable nature has from the things subject to death and corruption.

'It is my Father who glorifies me.'

For the sake of exact clarity and the contemplation of what is signified, I shall make use of the same arguments, and shall proceed by the same words.

Since the Jews were forever putting forward, as an irrefutable question and a premise not easily overturned, and saying: 'Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets died;

whom do you make yourself?'—and thinking in truth that he too will die and will himself be subject to death and corruption, and that in this respect he will not be greater than Abraham and the holy prophets, and thinking nothing at all great about him;

therefore, of necessity, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is from the eternity of the One who begot him, shows himself to be eternal;

for this reason he says: 'It is my Father who glorifies me.'

not wishing the word 'is' in these words to be understood simply or without examination, but rather having set it down as significant of the Father's being.

And the Son, ineffably begotten of the Father who is, surely brings along in every way that which is proper to the One who begot him, that is, being.

He is therefore better than both Abraham and the prophets;

for they died as earthborn, being of mortal fathers;

but he who came forth incomprehensibly from Him who is, always exists, glorified by his own Father—not as being in need of glory;

for he is the King of glory;

but as having a boast, namely to have been begotten of an eternal Father, and being himself therefore eternal too; for he brings along essentially the dignity of the One who begot him.

That the Father is called his glory leads to a conception of the Son befitting God, since the Father himself is likewise glorified by the Son—not as being in need of glory, but since he counts it, and holds it, a glory to be known as the Father of such an Offspring, of God, that is, who is according to him his own.

For on this very account the Son himself, addressing the Father, says: 'Father, glorify your Son, that the Son also may glorify you.' Therefore the glory of man is altogether nothing.

For that which is of the earth falls into death, even in respect of the body, even though it shall rise again.

The Only-begotten is indeed glorified by his own Begetter, as having, together with all his other good things, also that which is proper to his essence;

and how great is his difference from all creation, the blessed psalmist too indicates, as it were briefly, crying: 'The heavens shall perish, but you shall remain;

and they shall all wax old like a garment, and like a cloak you shall change them, and they shall be changed;

but you are the same, and your years shall not fail.' For everything that has been made is corruptible, even if it has not yet been corrupted, being held fast to this by the divine will; but God is by nature incorruptible and eternal, not gaining this by the wills of another, as creation does, but ever abiding in his own good things, among which is also that which is proper to him.

'Whom you say that He is our God, and you have not known Him.'

For to know, perhaps, merely that God exists is not by any means the same as also possessing knowledge of God.

For that God subsists and exists, even the demons believe and tremble, according to what is written.

But over and above knowing that He exists, one must also hold consistent opinions concerning Him, such as befit Him and are due to Him.

As to what the God who is truly is according to His nature, I do not think any sober-minded person would pry into that.

But what belongs to Him, and what perhaps does not belong to Him, one might come to recognize very easily, by conversing with the sacred Scriptures.

For we know and have believed that He is powerful.

And we know that He is not weak; we know that He is good; we know that He is not evil; we know that He is just, and again that He is not unjust.

We know that He is eternal; we are disposed and believe that He is not bounded by time, nor is He temporal as we are.

The Jews therefore, professing in words and utterances as plainly as could be that their God was their God, nevertheless were no less ignorant of Him; but so far as their grasping that He is incorruptible and eternal, we shall not find them to have understood.

For if they had known Him, they would not, I think, have sunk to such folly as to expect that the Only-begotten Son, who came forth from His very substance, would die.

Nor, holding up before Him the death of Abraham and of the prophets, would they senselessly have said, 'Whom do You make Yourself?' For will not someone very reasonably say that it was necessary for those who knew who the Father is according to His nature to believe that the Word who came forth from Him is also such? For just as from a sweet spring the stream that issues is altogether sweet, and from noble trees the offspring too will altogether be noble;

so, I think, one must believe that He who is from the God who is by nature is truly God, and that He who was begotten of the eternal Father is eternal according to His Begetter.

It is therefore opportune here too to say to the Jews: 'Either make the tree corrupt and its fruit corrupt, or make the tree good and its fruit good.'

How should He who knows no corruption be made corruptible? 'But I know Him.'

'And if I should say that I do not know Him, I shall be a liar like you.'

'I did not lie,' He says, 'when I said to the Jews: If anyone keeps My word, he shall never see death forever. For I am able to bestow immortality, since I know that He from whom I am has the power to do this: I know that the Father, who is My own, is by nature Life.'

'Therefore I too, according to Him, am plainly Life by nature and life-giving.'

'But if I denied that I am able to give life, I should, as being ignorant, be denying the Father, whose proper substance I possess, so that I am able to give life just as He does.'

Therefore, when I confess that I have all that is in the Father, and that I subsist according to Him—affirming this both by promising to do His works—I altogether know Him.

But if I said that I did not have unaltered within Myself the properties of the Father, I should be a liar according to you, as not knowing the Father.

But also when I say that the glory of Abraham and of the prophets is nothing, since they were of the earth and men by nature, to whom dying is not strange, but that My glory is the eternity of the Father, as one who knows the Father—when I say such things,

yet if I said that I shall perish like them, and that I am not co-eternal with the Father, I should lie according to you, being ignorant of the Father from whom I am.

For it is impossible that He who is from Him who exists and is ever in the same state should not altogether both exist and be ever in the same state.

For eternal is that which has been begotten of the Eternal.

For taking the subject more simply, someone will say that it is spoken in another way.

'I know,' He says, 'My own Father.'

'But if I said that I did not know Him, I should be a liar according to you, who do not know God yet profess to know Him.'

What the manner of this knowing is, and on what grounds the charges of not knowing rest, we have already plainly set forth, and shall add nothing superfluous.

'But I know Him, and I keep His word.'

So far as concerns readily engaging with the subject before us, we say this: that Christ again speaks as man, and again brings Himself down to our level, not laying aside the servant's form at the fitting season.

He therefore says both that He knows the Father and that He keeps His word.

And we shall not by any means say that He is necessarily testifying such things to Himself, nor even enumerating any of the things that befit Him; but a great deal of art was mingled into the saying.

For by saying that He both knows the Father and keeps His word—things which He affirms that He possesses—He shows the Jews to be of the contrary mind, as neither knowing God, plainly, nor even thinking that it is fitting to keep His word;

for otherwise they would have received most eagerly Him who was foreproclaimed through Moses and the prophets.

And we shall find among ourselves too a certain figure of speech of this kind, well-turned and most beautiful, having the force of a rebuke, and gently indicating to some the evils in which they are, while somehow cutting short the wrath that leads to open reproof.

For instance, let there be some man, say, who is fair-minded and in other respects upright, reproaching the one who steals and the one who gets drunk, and saying: 'I am a certain fair-minded man; I have not stolen what belongs to others, nor have I ever been drunk.'

And such a one is not by any means testifying to himself by this, nor shall we suppose that he speaks in this way; rather, he is imputing to those reproached the opposites of the things he himself possesses.

So then, in this same way our Lord Jesus Christ also says that He knows the Father and keeps His word, thereby imputing to the impious Jews the opposite: that they neither know God, nor tolerate the word that comes from Him, nor deem worthy of any keeping at all the Law that was ordained for them from above.

But if it is proper to approach the subject before us in yet another way, and to see somewhat more subtly what is indirectly suggested, we shall say this in addition: The Son knows His own Father, not having such knowledge as is in us, but such as is God-befitting and inexplicable.

For just as the man begotten of a man, not having learned from any other, but from those things of which he himself consists, is not ignorant of the nature of the one who begot him;

so too the Son knows His own Begetter from those things of which He consists, and He keeps His word—that is, He has preserved whole within Himself the definition of His substance;

for the word of man—that is, the definition of his substance—is: a living being, rational, mortal, capable of mind and knowledge.

But indeed even the word of an angel, perhaps, would be understood as the definition of its substance.

But in the case of the God who is by nature, it is not possible for us to grasp a word or definition;

for we do not know what He is according to His nature. But the Son knows His own Father, and, having been begotten of His substance, He knows what the One who begot Him is according to His nature;

and taking from the custom that prevails among us and making use of human words, He says that He keeps within Himself the word of the Father—that is, as it were, the definition of His substance.

For He is the image of the One who begot Him and the impress, in no way whatsoever charged with any unlikeness, but having in Himself all the God-befitting and surpassing attributes of His Begetter.

'Abraham your father rejoiced that he might see My day; and he saw it and was glad.'

By 'day' in these words He means nothing other than the season of His coming, in which the true Light shone upon us and the Sun of righteousness arose, when the darkness that then held us fast was dispelled as though it were a mist—the darkness that tyrannized under the prince of this world, and, so to speak, blackened the whole inhabited world with its own perversities, and thrust it down into polytheistic error, and in various ways darkened the mind of each one.

For this reason the inspired psalmist too, as it were knowing the day, the thrice-longed-for season of His coming, proclaimed beforehand, saying in the Spirit: 'This is the day which the Lord has made;

let us rejoice and be glad in it.' Besides, it is also the custom of divine Scripture to call the season of each thing a 'day,' according to the text: 'For the day of the Lord of Sabaoth shall be upon everyone that is insolent and proud, and they shall be brought low'; and again: 'What will you do in the day of the solemn assembly and in the day of the feast of the Lord?' But the psalmist also says that the reasonings of certain ones shall perish in that day, again defining as 'day' the season of the divine and awaited judgment-seat, in which the deceit of their old reasonings will avail nothing to those splendid in this world, nor will the empty puffing-up of the brow over wealth.

'Your father Abraham therefore rejoiced,' He says, 'that he might see My day; and he saw it and was glad.'

And how or when shall we suppose that the blessed Abraham beheld the day of our Saviour Christ—that is, saw the season of His coming with flesh? The account is not lengthy;

for it is not possible to speak of it by taking it from some direct pronouncement and making it plain;

nevertheless, considering as best we can the things bearing on this, we shall say that, just as God revealed His own mystery to one of the holy prophets,

so we shall grant that he truly beheld the day of the Lord's sacrifice, through which all things have turned out favourably for us, and were borne well as though before a fair wind, when he was commanded to offer up as a sacrifice, as a type of Him, his only-begotten and firstborn—that is, Isaac;

for it was fitting that then, as he was performing the sacred rite, the exact truth of the mystery should be made plain to him, as though in the type of what was being enacted.

One might also give, to those more eager to learn, other starting-points bearing on this.