Commentary on John 1 part 81/94

and He has been sent to us, proclaiming the ordinance of the Lord, according to what is said in the Psalms;

but those who mocked the word that is thus divine and from the Father denied the faith together, and plainly disbelieved that He is God and from the Father, and that He came to us for the sake of our salvation, having become like us apart from sin.

Justly, therefore, He commends to God the Father the good and genuine ones, those who submitted to Him the more obedient hearing of the soul, having entirely passed over in silence such as were not of this kind, so that what He said might appear plain, having begun from our own times.

And what does this mean? 'Everyone therefore who shall confess Me before men, him will I also confess before My Father who is in heaven.'

The Father: 'For you are My witnesses,' says the Lord God, 'and I am a witness, and the Servant whom I have chosen.' The Saviour therefore speaks in a manner at once befitting God and befitting man;

for He was at one and the same time both God and man, having a reason for both aspects that is beyond all reproach, and dispensationally fitting what is appropriate to each case to the needs of the occasions.

For the man will not lie outside the kingdom of Christ, even if something be said to belong to the Father; for their rule over all things is one and the same.

for their sovereignty over all is simultaneous and shared.

'I do not ask concerning the world, but concerning those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours; and all Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, and these are in the world, and I come to You.'

AGAIN He mediates as man, He who is the reconciler and mediator of both God and men, and who is truly our great and all-holy High Priest, softening by His own supplications the mind of His own Begetter, offering Himself in priestly sacrifice on our behalf.

For He Himself is both the sacrifice and Himself the priest, Himself the mediator, Himself the all-spotless victim, the true Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. There was therefore, as it were, a type and a translucent shadow of the mediation of Christ which was manifested in the last times: the ancient order given through Moses, and the high priest according to the Law who in his own figure prefigured the Priest who is above the Law.

for the things of the Law are shadows of the truth.

For the divinely-inspired Moses, and indeed with him the renowned Aaron also, continually stood in the midst between God and the congregation—now entreating away the wrath that arose over the transgressions of those of Israel, and calling down from above the favour upon the failing;

and now again praying for them and blessing them, and offering the sacrifices according to the Law, and besides these still the gift-offerings, presenting them according to the order of the ordinances—sometimes on behalf of sins, and sometimes as thank-offerings for the good things which, having received them, they knew to be from God.

But He who in the last times has appeared as High Priest and Mediator, Christ, above the types and figures of the Law, asks on our behalf as man, yet as God shares in the same zeal with God the Father who distributes good things to the worthy.

And Paul showed this to us most plainly when he said: 'Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.' He therefore who asks, as man, again dispenses together, as God.

For being a holy High Priest, blameless and guileless, not on behalf of His own weakness—as was the custom for those to whom it fell to serve as priests according to the Law—but rather offering Himself for the salvation of our souls, and this once for all on account of our sin, He has become an advocate on our behalf, and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, according to the word of John;

and not for ours only, but also for the whole world. But perhaps someone opposing our arguments will surely say, crying out: Will not what has been spoken through the disciple stand contrary to the words of the Saviour? For our Lord Jesus Christ appears in these words expressly to have refused that it was necessary to intercede for the whole world;

but the wise John, he says, spoke something quite contrary to these.

For he strongly affirms that the Saviour will be an advocate and propitiation not for our sins alone, but already also for the whole world.

By 'the world' he means those from every nation and race who shall be called through faith unto righteousness and sanctification.

But our Lord Jesus Christ, separating from the true ones those who do not have such a mind, and from those who chose to insult Him with such hard disobedience separating those who more reasonably listen to His divine words and have already bowed the neck of their heart and all but bound upon themselves the yoke of servitude under God—said that it was more fitting to ask concerning these alone.

For those of whom He is mediator and high priest, He thought it right to procure the good things arising from the mediation for these alone—those whom He says have been given to Himself, yet are the Father's, since the intimacy with God has no other way except through the Son.

And He Himself will teach you this, saying: 'No one comes to the Father except through Me.' For see how the Father, having given to His own Offspring those on account of whom the discourse is, has acquired them for Himself;

and understanding this very well, the man most learned in the sacred writings says: 'That God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.' For while Christ mediates, receiving those who draw near through faith and presenting them through Himself to the Father, the world was being reconciled to God.

For this reason the prophet Isaiah also taught beforehand that we should choose the peace which is toward God in Christ, saying: 'Let us make peace with Him, let us make peace, we who come.' For by removing from our own soul the things that alienate us from the love toward Christ—I mean the shameful deed,

and the pleasure-loving inclination to sin, and the exceeding readiness toward worldly pleasure, and besides these still the mother and nurse of all baseness, monstrous error—then we shall become intimate friends of Christ, and shall establish peace with God, being joined to the very Father through the Son, inasmuch as we have received within ourselves the Word begotten of Him and cry in the Spirit, 'Abba, Father.' Those therefore who have been given to Christ have become the Father's, yet not on this account outside of Christ.

For God the Father reigns together with Him and holds dominion over His own through Him.

For the kingdom is the same, and the power over all things is one, that of the holy and consubstantial Trinity; and whatever might belong to the Son will be subject to the glory of the Son and the Father, and again, whatever is said to be subject to the Father, over this indeed the Son also shall assuredly rule.

For on account of this indeed He says: 'And all Mine are Yours and Yours are Mine.'

For where the utter identity of nature shines forth and appears, there the glory of the dignity is unaltered, not portioning off something and assigning it to one of the beings while thrusting aside the other, but extending one equal and same glory to each and every thing whatsoever.

For He who is essentially the heir of the divine dignities of His own Father will Himself appear to have all the things of His Begetter, and will show His Begetter to have all the things that are His own.

For the one shines forth naturally in the other, and the Son shines out in the Father, and again the Father in turn in the Son.

For in this manner have the divinely-inspired Scriptures initiated us into the mystery.

Since therefore it is one of the dignities of the Father to hold the sovereignty over all things, this too will belong also to the Son;

for He is the express image of His substance, admitting in nothing whatsoever any unlikeness or variation.

And He firmly asserted that He has been glorified in those once given, declaring the asking on their behalf to be, as it were, a most just recompense.

What then is the request, and for what cause does He seek that the favour from the Father should be given to His own acquaintances? 'I am not in the world,' He says, 'and these are in the world, and I come to You.'

For while He was still dwelling and present together with the holy apostles in the flesh upon the earth, He was a visible and seen comfort, and, as it were, a consolation living among and lying ready at hand for those in danger, to be received without effort;

and in this respect they were more full of good courage.

For the human mind somehow loves to take courage and delight not so much in things unseen as in things more manifest.

And we say this, not saying that the Lord is weak to be able to save some, even if He be not seen present;

anyone thinking thus would think most reasonably;

for Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and unto the ages. But He knew that the disciples would be no moderately faint-hearted, left as it were alone upon the earth, while the world seethed around them like savage waves, and was wont to besiege with unbearable terrors and the utmost dangers those who still carried the divine word as ambassadors to the uninitiated.

Since therefore, 'I,' He says, 'come to You;'

for I shall very soon ascend to sit enthroned together and reign together as God with God and Father, while these meanwhile shall remain in the world;

for they have become Yours given to Me, and as being already both Yours and Mine I reasonably care for them, and I have been glorified in them, because all that You have given Me is Yours and Yours are Mine.

For it is not the case that, because certain of those in the world have been given to Christ and have on this account become the Father's, they have renounced glorifying Him through whom they were joined to God the Father; but having been brought near through Him, they shall remain no less His own.

For all things are common to Him with the Father, together with the divinity and authority according to nature.

For there is one God among us, worshipped in the holy and consubstantial Trinity.

And we are all God's, the one and only and true God's, subjected to the holy and consubstantial Trinity according to the mode of servitude.

That the dignity of the divinity is natural in the Son, even if He be said to have received it from the Father on account of the human element and the form of the humiliation.

'Holy Father, keep them in Your name which You have given Me, that they may be one, even as We are.'

OBSERVE everywhere the interweaving into one of the two things—I mean of the human element having the lowliness that is according to us, and of the divine element travailing with the glory that is highest of all.

For the discourse has been blended out of both, and, as we said in distinguishing the matters above, neither does the God-befitting element leap up completely to the height, nor yet does it wholly rise up out of the measures that are according to us;

for He is God become man, by some ineffable and unutterable union occupying, as it were, a certain middle ground, so as neither to run out beyond the bounds of true divinity, nor yet to abandon in every mode those of humanity.

For the ineffable generation from God the Father raises Him up, inasmuch as He is Word and Only-Begotten, fittingly into the divine substance and into the glory that accompanies this;

but the self-emptying somehow lowers Him to that which is according to us, not as though it had been able by force to overpower the King of all together with the Father;

for the Only-Begotten would never have been forced to that which was against His will;

but rather self-summoned, out of the love toward us it was both admitted and preserved.

For He humbled Himself, that is, willingly and not out of any necessity.

For He would have been caught no longer suffering the passion of humiliation willingly, if there had been anyone at all able to overpower Him and commanding Him to go to this unwillingly.

Therefore He humbled Himself willingly for our sake;

for we too would never have been named sons by grace and gods, had not the Only-Begotten stepped down into humiliation for us and on account of us—to whom we ourselves also, being conformed through participation of the Spirit, are called both children of God and gods.

Whenever therefore He says something, having in a certain way yoked the human element together with the divine, do not on this account be scandalized, foolishly failing to marvel fittingly at the incomparable artistry devised in the words, which through every mode faithfully preserves for us the twofold character with elegance, so that one sees in the same speaker both God by nature and truly man, most beautifully interweaving the lowliness of the humanity with the glory of the ineffable nature, and preserving wholly blameless and free from every reproach the well-proportioned course over both aspects.

And we say these things, not affirming that the nature of the Word has been dragged down to something lesser than it was in the beginning—far from it! For to think thus would not be free from the utmost ignorance, since the divine is in every way and altogether impassible, not admitting of any turning whatsoever unto anything else, but rather preserving most firmly its own proper stability;

clothed with the form of humiliation, He makes it so that, on account of the human element, the Only-Begotten God—equal to Him, conformed to Him, and having shone forth in Him and from Him—appears somehow in something less than the things in which the Father is.

And do not marvel when you hear that the Son seems to be in things less than the magnificence of the Father on account of the human element, when on this account Paul firmly declared Him to us as being made lower even than the angels themselves, writing thus: 'But we see Jesus, who was made a little

lower than the angels, even Jesus, on account of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honour'—and yet the holy angels are commanded to worship Him;

for 'when,' he says, 'He brings the Firstborn into the world, He says: And let all the angels of God worship Him.' Moreover, the holy Seraphim also stood round about, fulfilling the rank of servants, when He appeared to the prophets sitting upon a throne high and lifted up.

Therefore, as far as concerns the genuine travail and generation from God the Father, the human element is not proper to the Son;

but again it is proper to Him, inasmuch as He has appeared as man, remaining indeed what He always was and is and shall be for ever, yet having let Himself down into that which He was not, for our sake.

'Holy Father, therefore,' He says, 'keep them in Your name which You have given Me, that they may be one, even as We are.'

He wills that the disciples be preserved by the power and authority of the ineffable nature, rightly and fittingly ascribing to Him who is truly and by nature God the ability to keep safe whomsoever He wills, and to do so with the greatest ease.

And through these words He glorifies not some other nature again, but His own nature, as in the person of the Father, from whom He was begotten as God.

Therefore He says: 'O Father, keep them in Thy name which Thou hast given Me'—that is, in the divine name.

But again He says that the name of the Godhead has been given to Him, not as though, being by nature not God, He had been called to some acquired dignity of divinity.

For then He would be adopted, just as we are, possessing a spurious and merely allotted glory, and a nature falsely peddled—things which it is not lawful for us even to imagine.

For on this account He would forfeit also being Son by nature.

But since, as the divine Scriptures proclaim, the Word became flesh, that is, man, He says that He received as man the things which He possessed as God.

For the name and the reality of the divine glory would not appear to belong naturally to a man.

Consider again, and understand precisely, how He has shown Himself to be the living and self-subsistent Power of God and the Father, through whom He works all things.

For in addressing the Father and saying, 'Keep them,' He was by no means content with these words alone, but again He aptly brings Himself forward, as being efficacious for their keeping and a power effective unto this very end—the power of Him who begot Him.

For 'Keep them,' He says, 'in Thy name which Thou hast given Me.'

Do you see the safeguard of His discourse?

For while apportioning and ascribing, as pre-eminently belonging to the divine nature alone, the oversight and dispensation of our affairs, He straightway maintains that the glory of the Godhead has been given to Himself—on account of the form of the manhood declaring that what belongs to Him by nature is a thing given, that is, the name which is above every name. Hence we say that these things belong to the Son naturally, indeed, as from the Father, but humanly by way of gift, which He receives as man, in so far as pertains to the human condition according to us.

For the man is not God by nature, but Christ is God by nature, even though He be conceived of as one like us on account of His being from us.

He wills, moreover, that the disciples be preserved in the union of concord and identity of will, being blended, as it were, with one another in soul and spirit and by the law of peace and mutual love, and drawn tight into an unbreakable bond of charity—so that the union should advance to such a degree that the deliberate conjunction should become an image of the natural unity conceived in the Father and the Son: an inseparable union, plainly, and one that cannot be overpowered, drawn aside by nothing whatever of the affairs of this world, or of pleasures, into a dissimilarity of wills, but rather preserving, in unity according to godliness and sanctification, the power of love unharmed—which indeed came to pass.

For 'the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and one soul,' plainly in the unity that is of the Spirit.

For this too is what was again said by Paul himself: 'One body and one spirit'; for we, being many, are one body in Christ, since we all partake of the one bread, and we all have been anointed in one Spirit, the Spirit of Christ.

As those, then, who are to be members of one body, and to partake together of one and the same Spirit, He wills that His own disciples be preserved in a unity of spirit which is in no way torn asunder, and in a concord that cannot be broken.

But if one should grant that the disciples are made one also in that manner in which the Father and the Son are one—not only according to essence but also according to will—

for there is one will in the holy nature, and one and the same purpose toward whatsoever is willed—

he would not stray outside of fitting reasoning; since indeed one might behold this identity in will even among those who are truly Christians, even if the consubstantiality is not among us in an equal manner, as in the case of the Father and of the Word who is God from Him and in Him.

'When I was with them, I kept them in Thy name which Thou hast given Me, and I guarded them, and none of them was lost, except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.'

The discourse concerning the Saviour advances, little by little, toward a more manifest declaration; and what at the beginning was set forth as under a shadow is now already proclaimed and unveiled, as though changing from storm into fair weather.

For the blessed disciples supposed that the departure of our Saviour would be to them a cause of much loss—clearly the departure understood as with the flesh.

For there is nothing to hinder Him, as God, from being present with whomsoever He wills.

But they expected that, once Christ had been taken up into heaven, no one would keep them safe, and that they would lie exposed to those who wished to do them harm, with no one at all restraining the hand of the covetous, but rather that it would lie within the power of those who wished, to do all things against them unhindered, and to summon them within every peril.

Yet even though they became wise men, and fathers, and lights of the world, one must not hesitate to say that they ought not to look only to the fleshly presence of our Saviour Christ, but to know assuredly that, even if He were to withdraw from association with them according to the flesh, and even if He were perhaps not seen by the eyes of the body, they were nevertheless bound by all means to understand that He was present and abiding with them continually by the authority of the Godhead.

For when will God ever cease from His own proper attributes? Or what is there to withstand the nature which holds sway over all things, and, as it were by necessity, is able to impede it from performing its own works? But it is an activity and a power befitting God, to be everywhere, and to fill ineffably the heaven, and again to fill the earth, and to contain all things while being contained by none.

For God is not comprehended by place, nor bounded by intervals, nor within any circumscription.

For the nature that is without extension, without magnitude, and incorporeal does not admit of suffering any such thing.

Therefore, since Christ was at once both God and man together, the disciples ought by all means not to have been ignorant that, even if He should come to be absent bodily, He would not be utterly forsaking them, but would surely be present with them, according to the ineffable principle of His God-befitting authority.

For on this account the Saviour Himself, in the preceding words, said, 'Holy Father, keep them in Thy name which Thou hast given Me'; but now again, 'When I was with them, I kept them in Thy name which Thou hast given Me'—all but showing this to His own disciples, that it would rather befit the working of the Godhead, and not the presence of the flesh, to be able to keep any safe.

For the flesh itself was not sanctified of itself, but by the presence of the Word who was united to it; being transferred, in a certain manner, to His natural power, it becomes a purveyor of salvation and sanctification to those who partake of it.

The whole, then, of the God-befitting activity we shall by no means ascribe to the flesh by itself; but thinking something more fitting, we shall attribute it to the divine power of the Word.

That the disciples are kept by the Father—is this anything else at all? For they have been kept by the glory of God.

Removing, therefore, from the disciples' understanding the fear arising from His seeming to be left behind, and having many times revolved through the very same words that there would be for them every security, He says that this is not from His dwelling bodily with them as teacher, but rather because He is by nature God.

And clearly, possessing the unceasing authority and power over all things—

for He could not be altered, nor undergo any change into what He was not, being ever the same; but He will again save them no less without effort, and will deliver them from every evil that befalls.

Consider again the providence hidden within the discourse, unto our profit and edification.

For having asked, as it were, from God the Father that the keeping should come to pass—the keeping, I mean, plainly, unto the holy disciples—He says that He Himself has already done this very thing, showing Himself to be equal in strength and equal in operation to His own Begetter, or rather, showing Himself to be the self-subsistent Power of the One who begot Him.

For to whomsoever there should appear to belong the ability to do the same things as He who truly and confessedly is God by nature—how could He not be conceived of as being, wholly and in every way, that same thing, and possessing equality in authority and identity according to nature? And He who kept them as God in the name of God, and who has bound about Himself, in a God-befitting manner, the glory arising from His achievements, glory befitting the appellation—in what way could He be shown to be of an alien kind, or of a different nature—or rather, how could He not be shown to be the very thing which He is by nature, namely God? For He could not do any of the works which belong specifically to God, unless He were substantially this very thing which we might suppose God to be.

But again He preserves, in the contemplation concerning Himself, the twofoldness in conception, on account of the dispensation with the flesh.

For He removes, in a certain way, from created nature the ability to save and to keep those to whom this may perhaps be owed on account of godliness, and He ascribes it to the name of the Father, apportioning the God-befitting things to the divine nature alone.

For on this account again, although saying that He kept the disciples, He did not attribute the estimation of the achievement to the measures of manhood, but rather says that it was fulfilled in the name of God—placing Himself, in a certain way, outside of the matter, in so far as He became and is conceived of as flesh, but again placing Himself within the keeping and the ability to work God-befitting things, inasmuch as He is God from God, the all-effecting Power of the Father, a strength not made to operate by another, but from the very things that it is, manifesting the nature from which it ineffably came forth.

But if He says that the name of the Godhead was given to Him even in this instance also, although being God by nature inasmuch as He appeared as Only-begotten from God, this in no way does harm to the truth of the matter, nor would it thrust Him out of the honour and glory that befit Him.

For the receiving would be proper to the manhood, and it will rather fittingly be assigned to it.

And He says that He so kept His own disciples, and exercised over them such great providence, that not one was lost, save one, whom He also named the son of perdition, as being owed to perdition by his own will—or rather, by his own wickedness and impiety.

For we shall by no means ever suppose that, by some divine and irresistible decree, the traitor among the disciples was caught in the snare of the hunter and came within the diabolical nets.

For then he would even be free from blame, having yielded the victory by a decree from above.

For who shall withstand the judgment that is from God? But as it is, he is condemned and abominable, and it would have been better for him if he had not been born at all.

For what cause? Because the wretched man is convicted of having suffered this from his own wills, and not from any necessity imposed by another.

But he who loved so dire a destruction might reasonably be named a child of perdition, inasmuch as he was both owed to ruin and corruption, and was awaiting, as though a birth-pang and an appointed road, the day of his perdition.

But since He added, to the words concerning this man, 'that the Scripture might be fulfilled,' we again profitably say this to those who will read.

It was an act of baseness that he gave up the precious blood of Christ for a few pieces of silver.

But since he was going to perish wholly and in every way, having betrayed the Lord on account of the perversity that was in him, the Scripture, which could not lie, foretold that this would assuredly come to pass.

For it is the word of God, who knows all things, and bears in His own knowledge the manner and life of each, and his course from beginning to end.

And so the psalmist, ascribing to Him the knowledge of all things, both of those already past and of those expected to be, says to Him somewhere: 'Thou hast understood all my thoughts from afar off; my path and my line Thou hast searched out, and Thou hast foreseen all my ways.' Having therefore foreknown all things, and surveyed things to come as though already present, in addition to all the other things which He spoke concerning Christ, the divine word foretold to us that the one appointed among the disciples would both betray and perish.

But it was by no means the will and command of God to foreknow and to declare the things that would be; nor, moreover, is the prediction compulsory unto the accomplishment of the foretold evil and of the plot against the Saviour, but rather deterrent from it.

For it was by all means within the power of him who learned this, if indeed he had so wished, both to decline and to guard himself against suffering it, since he possessed a free inclination toward whatsoever he might will.

But perhaps you will say: How then did Christ still keep them, if it was by the inclinations of their own wills and by their free-willed movements that some were found to have come outside the diabolical nets, while Judas alone, the wretch, was caught above all others? What benefit, then, came from the keeping here spoken of? But, O noble one, we for our part shall again reply: Good indeed is watchfulness, and most profitable is the vigilance of our mind, and an earnest will toward well-doing and unto the achievement of virtue.

For thus shall we work out our own salvation; yet this alone will not suffice for the soul of man.

For it stands in necessary need of the cooperation and grace from above, which makes easy for it things hard to accomplish, and renders very passable the steep and rugged road of righteousness.