John 8:23

In accordance with what was just, He said that no man laid hands on Him, because His hour was not yet come; He now speaks to the Jews of His passion, as a free, and not a compulsory sacrifice on His part: Then said Jesus again to them, I go My way. Death to our Lord was a return to the place whence He had come.

The connection of these words is such, that they might have been spoken at one place and one time, or at another place and another time: as either nothing at all, or some things, or many may have intervened.

But some one will object: If this was spoken to men who persisted in unbelief, how is it He says, You shall seek Me? For to seek Jesus is to seek truth and wisdom. You will answer that it was said of His persecutors, that they sought to take Him. There are different ways of seeking Jesus. All do not seek Him for their health and profit: and only they who seek Him aright, find peace. And they are said to seek Him aright, who seek the Word which was in the beginning with God, in order that He may lead them to the Father.

You shall seek Me, then, He says, not from compassionate regret, but from hatred: for after He had departed from the eyes of men, He was sought for both by those who hated, and those who loved Him: the one wanting to persecute, the other to have His presence. And that you may not think that you shall seek Me in a good sense, I tell you, You shall die in your sin. This is to seek Christ amiss, to die in one’s sin: this is to hate Him, from Whom alone comes salvation. He pronounces sentence on them prophetically, that they shall die in their sins.

Note: sin is in the singular number, your in the plural; to express one and the same wickedness in all.

But I ask, as it is said below that many believed on Him, whether He speaks to all present, when He says, You shall die in your sins? No: He speaks to those only, whom He knew would not believe, and would therefore die in their sins, not being able to follow Him. Whither I go, He says, You cannot come; i.e. there where truth and wisdom are, for with them Jesus dwells. They cannot, He says because they will not: for had they wished, He could not reasonably have said, You shall die in your sin.

This He tells His disciples in another place; without saying to them, however, You, shall die in your sin, He only says Whither I go, you cannot follow Me now; not preventing, but only delaying their coming.

The Word, while still present, yet threatens to depart. So long as we preserve the seeds of truth implanted in our minds, the Word of God does not depart from us. But if we fall into wickedness then He says to us, I go away; and when we seek Him, we shall not find Him, but shall die in our sin, die caught in our sin. But we should not pass over without notice the expression itself: You shall die in your sins. If you shall die be understood in the ordinary sense, it is manifest that sinners die in their sins, the righteous in their righteousness. But if we understand it of death in the sense of sin; then the meaning is, that not their bodies, but their souls were sick to death. The Physician seeing them thus grievously sick, says You shall die in your sins. And this is evidently the meaning of the words, Whither I go you cannot come. For or when a man dies in his sin, he cannot go where Jesus goes: no dead man can follow Jesus: The dead praise not You, O Lord.

They take these words, as they generally do, in a carnal sense, and ask, Will He kill Himself, because He said, Whither I go, you cannot come? A foolish question. For why? Could they not go where He went, if He killed Himself; Were they never to die themselves? Whither I go, then, He says; meaning not His departure at death, but where He went after death.

He shows here that He will rise again in glory, and sit at the right hand of God.

May they not however have a higher meaning in saying this? For they had opportunities of knowing many things from their apocryphal books or from tradition. As then there was a prophetical tradition, that Christ was to be born at Bethlehem, so there may have been a tradition also respecting His death, viz. that He would depart from this life in the way which He declares, No man takes it from Me, I lay it down of Myself: So then the question, Will He kill Himself, is not to be taken in its obvious sense, but as referring to some Jewish tradition about Christ. For His saying, I go My way, shows that He had power over His own death, and departure from the body; so that these were voluntary on His part. But I chink that they bring forward this tradition which had come down to them, on the death of Christ, contemptuously, and not with any view to give Him glory. Will He kill Himself? say they: whereas, they ought to have used a loftier way of speaking, and have said, Will His soul wait His pleasure, to depart from His body? Our Lord answers, You are from beneath, i.e. you love earth; your hearts are not raised upwards,. He speaks to them as earthly men, for their thoughts were earthly.

As if to say, No wonder that you think as you do, seeing you are carnal, and understand nothing spiritually. I am from above.

From whom above? From the Father Himself, Who is above all. You are of this world, I am not of this world. How could He be of the world, by Whom the world was made?

And Who was before the world, whereas they were of the world, having been created after the world had begun to exist.

Or He says, I am not of this world, with reference to worldly and vain thoughts.

I affect nothing worldly, nothing earthly: I could never come to such madness as to kill Myself. Apollinarius, however, falsely infers from these words, that our Lord’s body was not of this world, but came down from heaven. Did the Apostles then, to whom our Lord says below, You are not of this world, derive all of them their bodies from heaven? In saying then, 1 am not of this world, He must be understood to mean, I am not of the number of you, who mind earthly things.

Beneath, and, of this world, are different things. Beneath, refers to a particular place; this material world embraces a different tracts, which all are beneath, as compared with things immaterial and invisible, but, as compared with one another, some beneath, some above. Where the treasure of each is, there is his heart also. If a man then lay up treasure upon earth, he is beneath: if any man lay up treasure in heaven, he is above; yes, ascends above all hearers, attains to a most blissful end. And again, the love of this world makes a man of this world: whereas he who loves not the world, neither the things that are in the world, is not of the world. Yet is there beyond this world of sense, another world, in which are things invisible the beauty of which shall the pure in heart behold, yes, the First-born of every creature may be called the world, insomuch as He is absolute wisdom, and in wisdom all things were made. In Him therefore was the whole world, differing from the material world, in so far as the scheme divested of the matter, differs from the subject matter itself. The soul of Christ then says, I am not of this world; i.e. because it has not its conversation in this world.

Our Lord expresses His meaning in the words, You are of this world, i.e. you are sinners. All of us are born in sin; all have added by our actions to the sin in which we were born. The misery of the Jews then was, not that they had sin, but that they would die in their sin: I said; therefore to you, that you shall die in your sin. Amongst the multitude, however, who heard our Lord, there were some who were about to believe; whereas this most severe sentence had gone forth against all: You shall die in your sin; to the destruction of all hope even in those who should hereafter believe. So His next words recall the latter to hope: For if you believe not that I am He, you shall die in your sin: therefore if you believe that I am He, you shall not die in your sin.

For if He came in order to take away sin, and a man cannot put that off, except by washing, and cannot be baptized except he believe; it follows, that he who believers not must pass out of this life, with the old man, i.e. sin, within him: not only because he believes not, but because he departs hence, with his former sins upon him.

His saying, If you believe not that I am, without adding any thing, proves a great deal. For thus it was that God spoke to Moses, I am that I am. But how do I understand, I am that I am, and, If you believe not that I am? In this way. All excellence, of whatever kind, if it be mutable, cannot be said really to be, for there is no real to be, where there is a not to be. Analyze the idea of mutability, and you will find, was, and will be; contemplate God, and you will find is, without possibility of a past. In order to be, you must leave him behind you. So then, If you believe not that I am, means in fact, If you believe not that I am God; this being the condition, on which we shall not die in our sins. God be thanked that He says, If you believe not, not, If you understand not; for who could understand this?

It is manifest, that he, who dies in his sins, though he say that he believes in Christ, does not really believe. For he who believes in His justice does not do injustice; he who believes in His wisdom, does not act or speak foolishly; in like manner with respect to the other attributes of Christ, you will find that he who does not believe in Christ, dies in his sins: inasmuch as he comes to be the very contrary of what is seen in Christ.

If Christ is only man, how is it that He says, “Though I bear record of myself, yet my record is true: because I know whence I came, and whither I go; ye know not whence I came, and whither I go. Ye judge after the flesh?” Behold, also He says, that He shall return thither whence He bears witness that He came before, as being sent, to wit, from heaven. He came down therefore from whence He came, in the same manner as He goes thither from whence He descended. Whence if Christ were only man, He would not have come thence, and therefore would not depart thither, because He would not have come thence. Moreover, by coming thence, whence as man He could not have come, He shows Himself to have come as God. …

39. Again, another of these directs his attention to that which is said, “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth,” and beholdeth Wisdom, the Beginning, because It also speaketh unto us. Another likewise directs his attention to the same words, and by “beginning” understands the commencement of things created; and receives it thus, In the beginning He made, as if it were said, He at first made. And among those who understand “In the beginning” to mean, that “in Thy Wisdom Thou hast created heaven and earth,” one believes the matter out of which the heaven and earth were to be created to be there called “heaven and earth;” another, that they are natures already formed and distinct; another, one formed nature, and that a spiritual, under the name of heaven, the other formless, of corporeal matter, under the name of earth. …

16. Here some man shall say; “If the concupiscence of the bad, whereby it comes that they bear all evils for that which they lust after, be of the world, how is it said to be of their will?” As if, truly, they were not themselves also of the world, when they love the world, forsaking Him by Whom the world was made. For “they serve the creature more than the Creator, Who is blessed for ever.” Whether then by the word “world,” the Apostle John signifies lovers of the world, the will, as it is of themselves, is therefore of the world: or whether under the name of the world he comprises heaven and earth, and all that is therein, that is the creature universally, it is plain that the will of the creature, not being that of the Creator, is of the world. …

Let us then also glorify Him by faith as well as by works, that we may also attain to the reward of being glorified by Him. “For them that glorify Me, I will glorify” ( 1 Sam. ii. 30 ), He says: and indeed, if there were no reward, the very privilege of glorifying God were itself a glory. For if men take a pride in the mere fact of speaking eulogies of kings, even if there be no other fruit of it; consider how glorious it must be, that our Lord is glorified by us: as again, how great a punishment to cause Him to be by our means blasphemed. And yet this very being glorified, He wisheth to be brought about for our sakes, since He doth not need it Himself. …

Ver. 23 . “Ye are from beneath.” What He saith, is of this kind: “It is no wonder that ye imagine such things, ye who are carnal men, and have no spiritual thoughts, but I shall not do anything of the kind, for, “I am from above; ye are of the world.”

Where now is that heresy which crawled hissing through the world and boasted that both the bishop Theophilus and I were partisans of its errors? Where now is the yelping of those shameless hounds who, to win over the simple minded, falsely proclaimed our adherence to their cause? Crushed by the authority and eloquence of Theophilus they are now like demon-spirits only able to mutter and that from out of the earth. For they know nothing of Him who, as He comes from above, speaks only of the things that are above.