John 8:56

As it is necessary that the good should grow better by contumely, so are the reprobate made worse by kindness On hearing our Lord’s words, the Jews again blaspheme: Then said the Jews to Him, Now we know you have a devil.

Those who believe the Holy Scriptures, understand that what men do contrary to right reason, is not done without the operation of devils. Thus the Jews thought that Jesus had spoken by the influence of the devil, when He said, If a man keep My saying, he shall never see death. And this idea they labored under, because they did not know the power of God. For here He was speaking of that death of enmity to reason, by which sinners perish: whereas they understand Him of that death which is common to all; and therefore blame Him for so speaking, when it was certain that Abraham and the Prophets were dead: Abraham is dead, and the Prophets; and you say, If man keep My saying, be shall never taste of death. Shall never taste of death, they say, instead of, shall not see death; though between tasting and seeing death there is a difference. Like careless hearers, they mistake what our Lord said. For as our Lord, in that He is the true bread, is good to taste; in that He is wisdom, is beautiful to behold; in like manner His adversary death is both to be tasted and seen. When then a man stands by Christ’s help in the spiritual place pointed out to him, he shall not taste of death if he preserves that state: according to Matthew, There those standing here, which shall not taste of death. But when a man hears Christ’s words and keeps them, he shall not see death.

Again, they have recourse to the vainglorious argument of their descent: Are you greater than our father Abraham, which is dead? They might have said, Are you greater than God, whose words they are dead who heard? But they do not say this, because they thought Him inferior even to Abraham.

For they do not see that not Abraham only, but every one born of women, is less than He who was born of a Virgin. Now were the Jews right in saying that Abraham was dead? for he heard the word of Christ, and kept it, as did also the Prophets, who, they say, were dead. For they kept the word of the Son of God, when the word of the Lord came to Hosea, Isaiah, or Jeremiah; if any one else kept the word, surely those Prophets did. They utter a lie then when they say, We know that you have a devil; and when they say, Abraham is dead, and the Prophets.

For being given over to eternal death, which death they saw not, and thinking only, as they did, of the death of the body, their minds were darkened, even while the Truth Himself was speaking. They add: Whom makes you Yourself?

As if to say, you a person of no account, a carpenter’s son of Galilee, to take glory to Yourself!

Whom make you Yourself? i.e. Of what merit, of what dignity would you be accounted? Nevertheless, Abraham only died in the body; his soul lived. And the death of the soul which is to live for ever, is greater than the death of the body that must die some time.

This was the speech of persons spiritually blind. For Jesus did not make Himself what He was, but received it from the Father: Jesus answered and said, If I honor Myself, My honor is nothing.

This is to answer their suspicions as above, If I bear witness of Myself My witness is not true.

He shows in these words that the glory of this present life is nothing.

This is to answer those who said, Whom make you Yourself? He refers His glory to the Father, from Whom He is: It is My Father that honors Me. The Arians take occasion from those words to calumniate our faith, and say, Lo, the Father is greater, for He glorifies the Son. Heretics, have you not read that the Son also glorifies the Father?

The Father glorified the Son, at His baptism, on the mount, at the time of His passion, when a voice came to Him, in the midst of the crowd, when He raised Him up again after His passion, and placed Him at the right hand of His Majesty.

He adds, Of whom you say that He is your God; meaning to tell them that they were not only ignorant of the Father, but even of God.

For had they known the Father really, they would have reverenced the Son. But they even despise God, who in the Law forbade murder, by their clamors against Christ. Wherefore He says, You have not known Him.

As if to say, you call Him your God, after a carnal manner, serving Him for temporal rewards. You have not known Him, as He should be known; you are not able to serve Him spiritually.

Some heretics say that the God proclaimed in the Old Testament is not the Father of Christ, but a kind of prince of bad angels. These He contradicts when He calls Him His Father, whom the Jews called their God, and knew not. For had they known Him, they would have received His Son. Of Himself however He adds, But I know Him. And here too, to men judging after the flesh, He might appear arrogant. But let not arrogance be so guarded against, as that truth be deserted. Therefore our Lord says, And if I should say I know Him not, I should be a liar like to you.

As if to say, As you, saying that you know Him, lie; so were I a liar, did I say I knew Him not. It follows, however, (which is the greatest proof of all that He was sent from God,) But I know Him.

Having that knowledge by nature; for as I am, so is the Father also; I know Myself, and therefore I know Him. And He gives the proof that He knows Him: And I keep His saying, i.e. His commandments. Some understand, I keep His saying, to mean, I keep the nature of His substance unchanged; for the substance of the Father and the Son is the same, as their nature is the same; and therefore I know the Father. And here has the force of because: I know Him because I keep His saying.

He spoke the saying of the Father too, as being the Son; and He was Himself that Word of the Father, which He spoke to men.

In answer then to their question, Are you greater than our father Abraham, He shows them that He is greater than Abraham; Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day: he saw it, and was glad; he must have rejoiced, because My day would benefit him, which is to acknowledge Me greater than himself.

As if to say, He regarded My day, as a day to be desired, and full of joy; not as if I was an unimportant or common person.

He did not fear, but rejoiced to see: he rejoiced in hope, believing, and so by faith saw. It admits of doubt whether He is speaking here of the temporal day of the Lord, that, viz. of His coming in the flesh, or of that day which knows s neither rising or setting. I doubt not however that our father Abraham knew the whole: as he says to his servant whom he sent, Put your hand under my thigh, and swear to me by the God of heaven. What did that oath signify, but that the God of heaven was to come in the flesh, out of the stock of Abraham.

Abraham saw the day of the Lord even then, when he entertained the three Angels, a figure of the Trinity.

They are aliens from Abraham if they grieve over what he rejoiced in. By this day perhaps He means the day of the cross, which Abraham prefigured by the offering up of Isaac and the ram: intimating hereby that He did not come to His passion unwillingly.

If they rejoiced to whom the Word appeared in the flesh, what was his joy, who beheld in spiritual vision the light ineffable, the abiding Word, the bright illumination of pious souls, the indefectible wisdom, still abiding with God the Father, and sometime to come in the flesh, but not to leave the Father’s bosom.

If, then, those who were conversant with the ancient Scriptures came to newness of hope, expecting the coming of Christ, as the Lord teaches us when He says, “If ye had believed Moses, ye would have believed Me, for he wrote of Me;” and again, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it, and was glad; for before Abraham was, I am;” how shall we be able to live without Him? The prophets were His servants, and foresaw Him by the Spirit, and waited for Him as their Teacher, and expected Him as their Lord and Saviour, saying, “He will come and save us.” Let us therefore no longer keep the Sabbath after the Jewish manner, and rejoice in days of idleness; for “he that does not work, let him not eat.” For say the [holy] oracles, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread.” But let every one of you keep the Sabbath after a spiritual manner, rejoicing in meditation on the l …

6. But, besides this, those very Jews who then disputed with the Lord Jesus Christ have most clearly indicated the same thing. For when the Lord said to them, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day; and he saw it, and was glad,” they answered Him, “Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast Thou seen Abraham?” Now, such language is fittingly applied to one who has already passed the age of forty, without having as yet reached his fiftieth year, yet is not far from this latter period. …

3. And teaching this very thing, He said to the Jews: “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he should see my day; and he saw it, and was glad.” What is intended? “Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness.” In the first place, [he believed] that He was the maker of heaven and earth, the only God; and in the next place, that He would make his seed as the stars of heaven. This is what is meant by Paul, [when he says,] “as lights in the world.” Righteously, therefore, having left his earthly kindred, he followed the Word of God, walking as a pilgrim with the Word, that he might [afterwards] have his abode with the Word.

5. Since, therefore, Abraham was a prophet and saw in the Spirit the day of the Lord’s coming, and the dispensation of His suffering, through whom both he himself and all who, following the example of his faith, trust in God, should be saved, he rejoiced exceedingly. The Lord, therefore, was not unknown to Abraham, whose day he desired to see; nor, again, was the Lord’s Father, for he had learned from the Word of the Lord, and believed Him; wherefore it was accounted to him by the Lord for righteousness. For faith towards God justifies a man; and therefore he said, “I will stretch forth my hand to the most high God, who made the heaven and the earth.” All these truths, however, do those holding perverse opinions endeavour to overthrow, because of one passage, which they certainly do not understand correctly.

Again, whose doctrine does He announce, at which all were astonished? Was it His own or the Father’s? So, when they were in doubt among themselves whether He were the Christ (not as being the Father, of course but as the Son), He says to them “You are not ignorant whence I am; and I am not come of myself, but He that sent me is true, whom ye know not; but I know Him, because I am from Him.” He did not say, Because I myself am He; and, I have sent mine own self: but His words are, “He hath sent me.” When, likewise, the Pharisees sent men to apprehend Him, He says: “Yet a little while am I with you, and (then) I go unto Him that sent me.” When, however, He declares that He is not alone, and uses these words, “but I and the Father that sent me,” does He not show that there are Two, Two, and yet inseparable? Indeed, this was the sum and substance of what He was teaching them, that they were …

“He came for a witness that He might bear witness of the light, that all through Him might believe.” Some of the dissenters from the Church’s doctrine, men who profess to believe in Christ, have desired another being, as indeed their system requires, besides the Creator, and hence cannot allow His coming to the world to have been foretold by the prophets. They therefore endeavour to get rid of the testimonies of the prophets about Christ, and say that the Son of God has no need of witnesses, but that He brings with Him His own evidence, partly in the sound words full of power which He proclaimed and partly in the wonderful works He did, which were sufficient at once to convince any one whatever. …

5. I have already given what I considered a sufficient answer to Faustus’ calumnies of the lives of the patriarchs. That they were punished at their death, or that they were justified after the Lord’s passion, is not what we learn from His commendation of them, when He admonished the Jews that, if they were Abraham’s children, they should do the works of Abraham, and said that Abraham desired to see His day, and was glad when he saw it; and that it was into his bosom, that is, some deep recess of blissful repose, that the angels carried the poor sufferer who was despised by the proud rich man. …

For it must not be supposed that those saints of old only profited by Christ’s divinity, which was ever existent, and not also by the revelation of His humanity, which had not yet come to pass. What the Lord Jesus says, “Abraham desired to see my day, and he saw it, and was glad,” meaning by the phrase his day to understand his time , affords of course a clear testimony that Abraham was fully imbued with belief in His incarnation. It is in respect of this that He has a “time;” for His divinity exceeds all time, for it was by it that all times were created. …

16. Next we come to the passage where His brethren, that is to say, His relations according to the flesh, urge Him to go up to the feast-day, in order that He may have an opportunity of making Himself known to the multitude. And here, again, how supremely elevated is the tone of His reply! “My time is not yet come, but your time is alway ready. The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify of it that the works thereof are evil.” So it is the case, then, that “your time is alway ready,” because ye desire that kind of day to which the prophet refers when he says, “But I have not laboured following Thee, O Lord; and the day of man I have not desired, Thou knowest:” that is to say, to soar to the light of the Word, and to desire that day which Abraham desired to see, and which he did see, and was glad. …

9. But it may well excite a question, in what sense they were styled (Christs, or) anointed, before there was any unction, from which this title was given to the kings.…Whence then were those patriarchs at that time called “anointed”? For that they were prophets, we read concerning Abraham; and certainly, what is manifestly said of him, should be understood of them also. Are they styled “christs,” because, even though secretly, yet they were already Christians? For although the flesh of Christ came from them, nevertheless Christ came before them; for He thus answered the Jews, “Before Abraham was, I am.” But how could they not know Him, or not believe in Him; since they are called prophets for this very reason, because, though somewhat darkly, they announced the Lord beforehand? Whence He saith Himself openly, “Your father Abraham desired to see My day, and he saw it, and was glad.” For …

3. He then who calls the thing glory, and rebukes the disciple because he was trying to hinder Him, and proves that what constitutes the good shepherd is his sacrificing himself on behalf of the sheep, and declares that he earnestly longs for this thing, and willingly goes to meet it, how is it that He beseeches it may not come to pass? And if He did not wish it what difficulty was there in hindering those who came for that purpose? But in fact you behold Him hastening towards the deed. …

For the Lord, saith he, “shall give the word to them that proclaim glad tidings with great power” ( Ps. lxviii. 12 , Sept.); and again, “How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the Gospel of peace.” ( Is. lii. 7 ; Rom. x. 15 .) See here both the name of the Gospel expressly and the temper of it, laid down in the Old Testament. For, we do not proclaim it by words only, he means, but also by acts done; since neither was it human, but both divine and unspeakable, and transcending all nature. Now since they have laid against it the charge of novelty also, He shows it to be older than the Greeks, and described aforetime in the Prophets. And if He gave it not from the beginning because of those that were unwilling to receive it, still, they that were willing did hear it. “Your father Abraham,” He says, “rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it, and was glad.” ( John viii. …