Tractates on the Gospel of John 22.1–23.1

Following the sermons delivered to you the day before yesterday and yesterday comes today's Gospel reading, which we are to treat in order, not according to its dignity but according to our strength; for you too take it in not according to the abundance of the overflowing fountain but according to your own measure. And we do not speak into your ears as much as the fountain itself pours out, but as much as we can take in, to pass on to your understanding, while he himself works more abundantly in your hearts than we do in your ears. For a great matter is being treated, and not by great men but by very small ones; yet he gives us hope and confidence who, being great, became small for our sake. For if we were not encouraged by him nor invited to understand him, but he deserted us as contemptible—since we cannot take in his divinity unless he had taken on our mortality and come to us to speak the gospel to us—if he had not willed to share with us what is lowly and least in us, we might think that he who took on our smallness had been unwilling to give us his greatness. I have said this so that no one may reproach us as too bold in treating these things, and no one may despair of himself that he can grasp, by God's gift, what the Son of God deigned to speak to him. What he deigned to speak to us, then, we ought to believe he willed us to understand. But if we cannot, he who gave the word unasked gives understanding when asked.

See now, attend to what secrets these words hold. “Amen, amen, I say to you, that he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life.” Certainly we all strive toward eternal life; and he says, “He who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life.” Did he, then, want us to hear his word and not want us to understand it? For if eternal life is in hearing and believing, much more is it in understanding. But faith is a step of devotion, and understanding is the fruit of faith, so that we may reach eternal life, where the gospel will not be read to us; but he who now dispenses the gospel to us, when all the pages of reading and the voice of reader and preacher have been removed, will appear to all his own, who stand by him with cleansed hearts and in immortal bodies never to die again; he will cleanse them and enlighten them, living and seeing that “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” Now, then, let us consider what we are, and think whom we are hearing. Christ is God, and he speaks with men: he wills to be grasped—let him make us capable; he wills to be seen—let him open our eyes. And it is not without reason that he speaks to us, but because what he promises us is true.

“He who hears my words,” he says, “and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and will not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” Where, when, do we come from death to life, so as not to come into judgment? In this life one passes from death to life; in this life, which is not yet life, one passes from here, from death to life. What is that passing? “He who hears my words,” he said, “and believes him who sent me.” Keeping these, you believe, and you pass. And is there anyone who passes while standing still? Plainly there is: he stands in body, he passes in mind. Where was he, from where did he pass, and where does he pass to? He passes from death to life. Look at one man standing, in whom all that is said takes place. He stands, he hears; perhaps he did not believe, and by hearing he believes: a little before he did not believe, now he believes; he has made a passage, as it were, from the region of unbelief to the region of faith, with the heart moved, not the body, moved for the better; for again, those who abandon faith are moved for the worse. See, in this life, which, as I said, is not yet life, one passes from death to life, so as not to come into judgment. But why did I say that it is not yet life? If this were life, the Lord would not say to someone, “If you wish to come to life, keep the commandments.” For he did not say to him, “If you wish to come to eternal life”; he did not add “eternal,” but only said “life.” So this should not even be called life, because it is not true life. What is true life but that which is eternal life? Hear the apostle saying to Timothy: “Charge the rich of this world not to be haughty, nor to hope in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who provides us all things richly to enjoy; let them do good, be rich in good works, give readily, share.” To what end? Hear what follows: “Let them store up for themselves a good foundation for the future, that they may lay hold of the true life.” If they ought to store up for themselves a good foundation for the future, that they may lay hold of the true life, surely this life in which they were is a false life. For why would you want to lay hold of the true one, if you already hold the true one? Is the true to be laid hold of? Then one must move away from the false. And by what way must one move? Where to? Hear, believe; and you make the passage from death to life, and you do not come into judgment.

What is this, “And you do not come into judgment”? And who will be better than the apostle Paul, who says, “We must all be presented before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive there what he has done through the body, whether good or evil”? Paul says, “We must all be presented before the judgment seat of Christ”; and do you dare to promise yourself that you will not come into judgment? “Far be it from me,” you say, “that I should dare to promise myself this; but I believe the one who promises. The Savior speaks, the Truth promises; he himself said to me, ‘He who hears my words and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and makes the passage from death into life, and will not come into judgment.’ I, then, have heard the words of my Lord; I have believed. Though I was an unbeliever, I have now become a believer; as he admonished me, I have passed from death to life; I do not come to judgment, not by my own presumption but by his promise.” Does Paul, then, speak against Christ—the servant against the Lord, the disciple against the teacher, man against God—so that when the Lord says that he who hears and believes passes from death to life and will not come into judgment, the apostle says, “We must all be presented before the judgment seat of Christ”? Or if he who is presented before the judgment seat does not come to judgment, I do not know how to understand it.

Our Lord God, then, reveals it, and through his Scriptures admonishes us how it is to be understood when “judgment” is spoken of. I urge you, then, to pay attention. Sometimes judgment means punishment; sometimes judgment means discrimination. In the sense in which judgment means discrimination, “we must all be presented before the judgment seat of Christ, that each may receive there what he has done through the body, whether good or evil”; for this is discrimination: that good things are distributed to the good and evil things to the evil. For if judgment were always taken in a bad sense, the psalm would not say, “Judge me, O God.” Someone perhaps hears a person saying, “Judge me, O God,” and is surprised. For a man usually says, “May God pardon me; spare me, O God”: who is there who says, “Judge me, O God”? And sometimes in a psalm this very verse is set as the refrain, to be given out by the reader and answered by the people. Is not someone's heart perhaps struck, so that he fears to sing to God and say, “Judge me, O God”? And yet the believing people sing it, and do not think that they are wishing for something evil, which they have learned from the divine reading; and if they understand little, they believe that what they sing is something good. And yet the psalm itself did not leave a man without understanding. For it goes on to show in the following words what judgment it meant: that it is not one of condemnation, but of discernment. For it says, “Judge me, O God.” What is “Judge me, O God”? “And distinguish my cause from an unholy nation.” According to this judgment of discernment, then, we must all be presented before the judgment seat of Christ. But according to the judgment of condemnation, “He who hears my words,” he says, “and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and will not come into judgment, but makes the passage from death to life.” What is “will not come into judgment”? He will not come into condemnation. Let us prove from the Scriptures that “judgment” is said where punishment is understood; although in this very reading too you will hear a little later the word “judgment” used only for condemnation and punishment. Yet the apostle says in a certain place, writing to those who were treating badly the Body that you the faithful know, and who for treating it badly were being chastised by the Lord's scourge—he says to them, “For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a good number sleep.” For many were even dying for this reason. And he went on: “For if we judged ourselves, we would not be judged by the Lord”; that is, if we corrected ourselves, we would not be corrected by the Lord. “But when we are judged, we are corrected by the Lord, so that we may not be condemned with this world.” So there are some who are judged here by way of punishment, so that they may be spared there; there are some who are spared here, so that they may be tormented more abundantly there; and there are some to whom those punishments are allotted there without the scourge here, if they have not been corrected by the scourge of God; so that, having despised here the Father who strikes them, they may feel there the Judge who punishes. There is, then, a judgment by which God, that is, the Son of God, will at the end send the devil and his angels, and all unbelievers and ungodly with him: to this judgment he will not come who now, by believing, makes the passage from death to life.

For so that you should not think that by believing you will not die according to the flesh, and, taking it carnally, say to yourself, “My Lord said to me, ‘He who hears my words and believes him who sent me has passed from death to life’; so I have believed, and I shall not die”—know that you will pay the death that you owe as Adam's penalty. For he, in whom we all then were, received, “You shall surely die”; and the divine sentence cannot be made void. But when you have paid the death of the old man, you will be taken up into the eternal life of the new man, and you will make the passage from death to life. Meanwhile, for now, make the passage of life. What is your life? Faith: “The just lives by faith.” What of unbelievers? They are dead. Among such dead was that man, in body, of whom the Lord says, “Let the dead bury their dead.” So in this life too there are dead and there are living, and all, as it were, live. Who are the dead? Those who have not believed. Who are the living? Those who have believed. What is said to the dead by the apostle? “Arise, you who sleep.” “But he spoke of sleep,” someone says, “not death.” Hear what follows: “Arise, you who sleep, and rise from the dead.” And as if one said, “Where shall I go?”—“And Christ will enlighten you.” Now, when Christ has enlightened you as a believer, you make the passage from death to life: remain in that to which you have passed, and you will not come to judgment.

He himself now explains it, and goes on: “Amen, amen, I say to you.” Lest, because he said “passes from death to life,” we should understand this of the future resurrection—wishing to show how the believer passes, and that to pass from death to life is to pass from unbelief to faith, from injustice to justice, from pride to humility, from hatred to love—he now says, “Amen, amen, I say to you, that the hour is coming, and now is.” What is clearer? He has now certainly opened what he was saying: that what Christ urges us to happens now. “The hour is coming.” What hour? “And now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.” We have already spoken of these dead. What do we think, my brothers? In this crowd that hears me, are there no dead? For those who believe and act according to true faith live and are not dead; but those who either do not believe, or believe as the demons do, trembling and living evilly, confessing the Son of God and not having love, are rather to be reckoned dead. And yet this hour is still going on. For the hour of which the Lord spoke will not be one hour of the twelve hours of one day. From when he spoke until this time, and until the end of the world, that one hour is going on, of which John says in his letter, “Little children, it is the last hour.” So it is now. Let him who lives, live; let him who was dead, live; let him who lay dead hear the voice of the Son of God, let him rise and live. The Lord cried out at the tomb of Lazarus, and the man dead four days rose again. He who stank came forth into the air; he was buried, a stone had been laid on him, the voice of the Savior burst through the hardness of the stone: and is your heart so hard that that divine voice does not yet break you open? Rise in your heart; come forth from your tomb. For dead in your heart you lay as in a tomb, and you were weighed down as by the stone of bad habit. Rise and come forth. What is “Rise and come forth”? Believe and confess. For he who has believed has risen; he who confesses has come forth. Why did we say that the one confessing has come forth? Because before he confessed he was hidden; but when he confesses, he comes forth from darkness to light. And when he has confessed, what is said to the ministers? What was said at the burial of Lazarus: “Loose him and let him go.” How? It was said to the apostles, the ministers: “Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven also.”

“The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.” From what will they live? From life. From what life? From Christ. How do we prove that it is from Christ, the life? “I am,” he says, “the way, the truth, and the life.” Do you want to walk? I am the way. Do you not want to be deceived? I am the truth. Do you not want to die? I am the life. This is what your Savior says to you: There is nowhere for you to go except to me; there is no way for you to go except through me. Now, then, this hour is going on; this is plainly going on, and there is no ceasing at all. People who were dead are rising, passing to life, living at the voice of the Son of God, living from him, persevering in faith in him. For the Son has life; he has that from which believers may live.

And how does he have it? As the Father has it. Hear him saying, “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son also to have life in himself.” Brothers, I will speak as I can. For these are the words that trouble a small understanding. Why did he add “in himself”? It would have been enough to say, “For as the Father has life, so he has given to the Son also to have life.” He added “in himself”: for the Father has life in himself, and the Son too has it in himself. He wished us to understand something in saying “in himself.” And here a secret is shut up in this word: let it be knocked on, that it may be opened. O Lord, what is it that you have said? Why did you add “in himself”? For did not the apostle Paul, whom you made to live, have life? “He had,” he says. And when men who were dead come to life again and pass over by believing at your word—when they have passed over, will they not have life in you? They will; for I too said a little before, “He who hears my words and believes him who sent me has eternal life.” So those who believe in you have life; and you did not say “in themselves.” But when you were speaking of the Father, “As the Father has life in himself”; again, when you were speaking of yourself, you said, “so he has given to the Son also to have life in himself.” As he has it, so he gave him to have it. Where does he have it? In himself. Where did he give him to have it? In himself. Where does Paul have it? Not in himself, but in Christ. You, believer, where do you have it? Not in yourself, but in Christ. Let us see whether the apostle says this: “I live, yet no longer I, but Christ lives in me.” Our life as our own, that is, from our own will, will be nothing but evil, sinful, unjust; but good life is in us from God, not from ourselves; it is given us by God, not by ourselves. But Christ has life in himself as the Father does, because he is the Word of God. He does not live badly now and well now; but a man lives now badly, now well. He who was living badly was in his own life; he who lives well has passed over to the life of Christ. Made a partaker of life, you were not what you received, but you were one who received it; but the Son of God was not, as it were, first without life and then received life. For if he received it in that way, he would not have it in himself. For what is “in himself”? That he himself is life itself.

I will perhaps say something else still more plainly. Someone lights a lamp. For example, that lamp, as far as the little flame shining there is concerned—that fire has light in itself; but your eyes, which lay idle and saw nothing while the lamp was absent, now have light too, but not in themselves. So if they turn away from the lamp, they are darkened; if they turn toward it, they are enlightened. But that fire, as long as it exists, shines: if you want to take its light from it, you put it out at the same time; for it cannot remain without light. But Christ is light inextinguishable and coeternal with the Father, always gleaming, always shining, always burning: for if he did not burn, would it be said in the psalm, “Nor is there anyone who can hide himself from his heat”? But you were cold in your sin; you are turned so that you may grow warm; if you withdraw, you grow cold. In your sin you were dark; you are turned so that you may be enlightened; if you turn yourself away, you will be darkened. So, because you were darkness in yourself, when you are enlightened you will not be the light, though you will be in the light. For the apostle says, “You were once darkness, but now light in the Lord.” Having said “but now light,” he added “in the Lord.” In yourself, then, darkness; light in the Lord. Why light? Because you are light by participation in that light. But if you withdraw from the lamp by which you are enlightened, you return to your darkness. Not so Christ, not so the Word of God. But how? “As the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son also to have life in himself”: so that he does not live by participation but lives unchangeably, and is altogether life itself. “So he has given to the Son also to have life.” As he has it, so he gave it. What is the difference? That the one gave, the other received. Did he already exist when he received? Do we understand that Christ was ever without light, when he himself is the Wisdom of the Father, of which it is said, “It is the radiance of eternal light”? So when it is said, “he gave to the Son,” it is as though it were said, “he begot the Son”; for by begetting he gave. As he gave him to be, so he gave him to be life, and so he gave him to be life in himself. What is “to be life in himself”? Not to need life from elsewhere, but to be himself the fullness of life, from which others, believing, might live while they live. So he gave him to have life in himself. He gave it as to whom? As to his Word, as to him who “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.”

Then, because he was made man, what did he give him? “And he has given him power to execute judgment, because he is the son of man.” In that he is the Son of God, “as the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son also to have life in himself”; but in that he is the son of man, he has given him power to execute judgment. This is what I explained to your Charity yesterday: that at the judgment the man will be seen, but God will not be seen; but after the judgment God will be seen by those who have prevailed in the judgment, while God will not be seen by the ungodly. Since, then, the man will be seen at the judgment, in that form in which he will come just as he ascended, he had therefore said above, “The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son.” He repeats this in this place too, when he says, “And he has given him power to execute judgment, because he is the son of man.” As if you were to say: “He has given him power to execute judgment”—why? When did he not have this power to execute judgment? When in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, when all things were made through him, did he not have power to execute judgment? But it is in this respect, I say, that “he has given him power to execute judgment, because he is the son of man”: in this respect he received the power of judging, because he is the son of man. For in that he is the Son of God, he always had this power. He who was crucified received it. He who was in death is in life: the Word of God was never in death, but always in life.

Now, then, perhaps one of us was saying about the resurrection: “See, we have risen; he who hears Christ, who believes, both passes from death to life and will not come into judgment; the hour is coming, and now is, that he who hears the voice of the Son of God may live; he was dead, he heard, see, he rises: what is it that is said, that there is to be a resurrection later?” Spare yourself; do not rush into a judgment, lest you go headlong after it. There is indeed this resurrection which happens now: unbelievers were dead, the unjust were dead; the just live, they pass from the death of unbelief to the life of faith. But do not therefore believe that there will be no resurrection of the body later; believe that there will also be a resurrection of the body. For hear what follows after he has commended this resurrection that comes through faith, lest anyone think this to be the only one and fall into that despair and error of the men who perverted the minds of others by saying that the resurrection had already taken place, of whom the apostle says, “And they are overturning the faith of some.” For I believe that they used to say such words to them: “See, the Lord says, ‘And he who believes in me has passed from death to life’; the resurrection has already taken place in believing men who had been unbelievers: how is another resurrection spoken of?” Thanks be to the Lord our God; he props up the tottering, guides the hesitant, strengthens the doubting. Hear what follows, for you have nothing from which to make for yourself the darkness of death. If you have believed, believe the whole. “What whole,” you say, “am I to believe?” Hear what he says: “Do not marvel at this,” that he has given the Son power to execute judgment. “I say this of the end,” he says. How of the end? “Do not marvel at this, for the hour is coming.” Here he did not say “and now is.” In that resurrection of faith, what did he say? “The hour is coming, and now is.” In this resurrection, of dead bodies, which he commends as future, he said, “The hour is coming”; he did not say “now is,” because it is to come at the end of the world.

“And from where,” you say, “do you prove to me that he spoke of that resurrection?” If you listen patiently, you will now prove it to yourself. Let us follow on, then: “Do not marvel at this, for the hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs.” What is clearer than this resurrection? Earlier he had not said “who are in the tombs,” but “the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.” He did not say “some will live, others will be condemned,” because all who believe will live. But of the tombs what does he say? “All who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come forth.” He did not say “will hear and live.” For if they lived evilly and lay in the tombs, they will rise to death, not to life. Let us see, then, who will come forth. Though a little before the dead were living by hearing and believing, no distinction was made there: it was not said, “The dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and when they have heard, some will live and others will be condemned,” but “all who hear will live”: because those who believe will live, those who have love will live, and none will die. But of the tombs: “they will hear his voice and come forth—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life; those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.” This is the judgment: that punishment of which he had said a little before, “He who believes in me has passed from death to life, and will not come into judgment.”

“I can do nothing of myself: as I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just.” If you judge as you hear, from whom do you hear? If from the Father, surely the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son. When do you, as in a way the Father's herald, say what you hear? “I say what I hear, because what the Father is, that I am; for to say is my being, because I am the Word of the Father.” This is what Christ says to you. Hence, from what is yours … What is “As I hear, so I judge,” except “As I am”? For how does Christ hear? Brothers, let us inquire, I beg you. Does Christ hear from the Father? How does the Father speak to him? Surely, if he speaks to him, he addresses words to him; for everyone who says something to someone says it by a word. How does the Father speak to the Son, when the Son is the Word of the Father? Whatever the Father says to us, he says by his Word: the Son is the Word of the Father; by what other word does he speak to the Word himself? God is one; he has one Word; in one Word he contains all things. What, then, is “As I hear, so I judge”? As I am from the Father, so I judge. “Therefore my judgment is just.” For if you do nothing of yourself, O Lord Jesus, as carnal men think—if you do nothing of yourself, how did you say a little before, “So the Son also gives life to whom he will”? Now you say, “Of myself I do nothing.” But what does the Son commend to us except that he is from the Father? He who is from the Father is not from himself. If the Son were from himself, he would not be the Son: he is from the Father. The Father, to be, is not from the Son; the Son, to be, is from the Father. He is equal to the Father; but yet the Son is from the Father, not the Father from the Son.

“Because I do not seek my own will, but the will of him who sent me.” The only Son says, “I do not seek my own will,” and men want to do their own will! He who is equal to the Father humbles himself so much; and he who lies in the depths, and does not rise unless a hand is stretched out to him, exalts himself so much! Let us, then, do the will of the Father, the will of the Son, the will of the Holy Spirit; because this Trinity has one will, one power, one majesty. Yet the Son says, “I came not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me,” because Christ is not from himself, but is from his Father. But what he had so as to appear as a man, he took from the creature that he himself formed.

In a certain place in the Gospel the Lord says that the prudent hearer of his word ought to be like a man who, wishing to build, digs deeper until he reaches the firm foundation of rock, and there securely sets what he builds against the force of the river; so that when the river comes, it may be beaten back by the firmness of the building rather than bring ruin on that house by its onset. Let us think of the Scripture of God as a field in which we want to build something. Let us not be lazy, nor content with the surface; let us dig deeper until we reach the rock: “And the rock was Christ.”