Commentary on Luke (Greek fragments) 5.18–6.12

Then, it says, when a countless multitude of scribes and Pharisees had gathered, behold, men bringing on a bed a man who was paralysed; and being unable to get in by the door, they carried him up to the roof, as though attempting something strange and new; for pulling up the tiles they moved the material laid there. And yet, while this was being done, Jesus was patient and those present were silent, wishing to see the outcome and to see what he would say and do. Having opened up the roof, then, they let down the pallet and bring the paralysed man into the middle. What, then, does the Lord do? Seeing their faith—not the paralytic’s, but that of those who brought him; for it is possible for one person to be healed through the faith of others—or else he healed the paralytic himself, since he believed. One might also say that the place into which they let down the paralytic’s bed through the tiles was open to the sky, without their disturbing any of the roof at all. When the Saviour said to him, “Man, your sins are forgiven you,” he says this to humanity in common; for those who believed in him were to be healed of the soul’s ailments and to have forgiven the sins they had first committed. Or he says this: “I had to heal your soul before your body; for if this did not happen, you would sin the more, having received strength to walk. For even if you did not ask this, yet I as God see the passions of the soul from which the disease has also come upon you.” … the Saviour, then, since it was necessary, when a countless multitude of scribes and Pharisees had gathered, that something most befitting God should take place for their benefit—for they thought little of him—again arranged one of his wonders. A paralysed man lay on a bed, held fast by an incurable disease; since the physicians’ art was proved too weak for the case, he was brought by his own people to the physician from above and from heaven. And when he was now in the sight of the one able to heal, his faith was accepted; and Christ at once shows that it destroys sin; for he called to the man lying there, “Your sins are forgiven you.” But, I suppose, someone will say to this: “He wanted to be rid of the disease; how then did Christ announce forgiveness of sin to him?” So that you may learn that God silently and noiselessly watches over human affairs and oversees the path of each one’s life. So it is written: “For the ways of a man are before the eyes of God, and he watches all his tracks.” And since he is good and wills all men to be saved, he often scours clean of sins those who are caught in them, casting sickness on the body; so he says through the voice of Jeremiah: “By pain and the scourge you shall be disciplined, Jerusalem.” And the author of Proverbs said somewhere: “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, nor lose heart when you are reproved by him; for the Lord disciplines whom he loves, and scourges every son whom he receives.” Rightly, then, Christ announces that he will first cut away the occasions of illness, and as it were the root of the ailment, that is, sin; for when this is removed, on account of which the ailment came, the disease had altogether to be removed with it. “And the scribes and Pharisees began to reason, saying,” and so on (5:21). He, then, as has been said, having authority most befitting God, announced the forgiveness of sins; but the word again troubles the dull and envious workshop of the Pharisees; for they said to one another, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies?” But you would not have said this of him, O Pharisee, if you had known the divine Scriptures, if you had remembered the prophetic words, if you had understood the august and great mystery of the incarnation. They charge him with blasphemy, fixing the utmost penalty for him and voting death; for the law given through Moses ordered that whoever spoke evil against God should suffer death. Since they had once dared this, he at once shows that he is God, so as again to convict them of intolerable impiety. “Why,” he says, “do you reason in your hearts?” When you say, then, O Pharisee, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” I too will say to you: Who can know hearts and see the thoughts in the depth of the mind but God alone? For he himself says somewhere through the voice of the prophets: “I, the Lord, search hearts and test the reins.” And David said somewhere, of him and of us: “He who fashioned their hearts one by one.” So he who knows hearts and reins as God is the one who forgives sins as God. “But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority,” and so on (5:24).

Then, since in the saying “Your sins are forgiven you” there is often ready ground for unbelief—for a man does not see sins being forgiven with the eyes of the body—while casting off the disease, and the paralytic rising and walking, holds a clear proof of power befitting God, he adds: “Rise, take up your pallet, and go to your house.” Which was indeed done; for he went back home freed from so long a sickness. It was shown, then, by the event itself, that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. And of whom does he say this? Of himself, or also of us? Both are true. For he, as God made man, as Lord of the law, forgives sins; but we too have received from him this grace, so splendid and admirable; for he crowned human nature with this honour too. And indeed he said to the holy apostles: “Amen, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” And again: “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” When do we find him saying this to them? When, having trampled the might of death and risen from the dead, he breathed on them, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” For having made them partakers of his nature and made the Holy Spirit dwell in them, he then made them partakers of his own glory too, giving them authority to forgive and to retain sins. Since, then, we have been commanded to do this very thing, how much more does he himself forgive sins, who gave others the authority to be able to do it!

“And he saw a tax collector named Levi” (5:27). For Levi was a tax collector, a man insatiable in love of gain, unbridled in greed, an unjust lover of what did not belong to him; for this was the practice of tax collectors. But he was snatched from the very workshops of injustice and wonderfully saved, when Christ the Saviour of us all called him; for he said to him, “Follow me; and he left everything and followed him.” Do you see how truly the most wise Paul speaks when he says that Christ came to save sinners? Do you see how the only-begotten Word of God, made flesh, transferred the devil’s vessels to himself? Levi was saved, and the event has given us good hopes; for we have been taught by what happened that repentance will save. The Master and God of all will himself confirm it, saying through the voice of a prophet: “Turn to me, and you will be saved, you from the end of the earth.” But none of these things shamed the Pharisees; rather, they bring charges against the disciples.

For hear: “And their scribes and the Pharisees grumbled to his disciples, saying,” and so on (5:30). … there are some who try to deprive those caught in sins of the divine gentleness; for they do not admit repentance, but as it were rebuke the one who saves, who seeks what is his own and gathers from every side what was scattered. To them we will say: Before you, the Pharisees grumbled when they saw Levi called and a crowd of tax collectors gathered and dining with Christ the Saviour of us all. Then approaching the holy apostles they accused them, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors?” But they heard: “Those who are well have no need of a physician.” For the Saviour of all, being a physician of spirits, does not withdraw from those who need him, and, as one able to cleanse them, by the economy he stayed with those not yet cleansed. Let us see, O Pharisee, the arrogance of your mind. Of what charges your haughtiness toward those in sins has been the cause for you, let us take as interpreter Christ himself, who knows all things; for he said of a Pharisee boasting in his prayer and of a certain tax collector accusing himself: “Amen, I say to you, this man went down to his house justified rather than that Pharisee.” So the tax collector who confessed his sin was justified above the arrogant Pharisee. — For what reason do the Pharisees find fault with the Saviour for eating with sinners? Because the law was to distinguish between holy and profane, that is, that the one sanctified should not mix with the profane. Professing to avenge this law they brought their charges; but it was envy against the Lord and love of mockery. He shows them, then, that he is present now not as judge but as physician; and he does what belongs to medicine, being with those who need healing. And since they had received an answer to the first charge, they add another, accusing the disciples of not fasting, wishing to get a hold against him from this. See the persistence of their wickedness. Since they had received an answer to the first, they pass from one thing to another, wishing to get a hold and to show that the holy disciples, and Jesus himself with them, cared little for the law. But they hear again: It is now the wedding feast, the time of calling, the time of teaching; the children are being reared, those who have been called are being fed with milk; fasting has no place. “Yes,” they say, “you dine with tax collectors and sinners, though the law commands that the clean not mix with the unclean; and love of humanity has become your pretext for transgressing the law. Why do you not fast, according to the custom of those who are decent and wish to live by the law?” To such things one might say: Do you know at all, O Jew, the way of fasting? Have you ever fasted according to the will of God? For, as the prophet Isaiah says: “In the days of your fasts you find your own pleasures, and you goad all who are under your hand. If you fast for lawsuits and fights, and strike a lowly man with your fists, why do you fast for me? I have not chosen this fast, says the Lord.” Then how do you, who do not know how to fast, accuse the holy apostles of not fasting as you do? And in another way too, those made wise through the new covenant in Christ fast rationally: on the one hand humbling themselves in the eyes of God and bringing on themselves, as it were, a self-inflicted penalty, from toil and abstinence from food, so that they may obtain the forgetting of their offences, or gain some other spiritual gift; or else putting to death the law of sin in the members of the flesh. But you do not know this way, O Pharisee; for you did not receive the Bridegroom from heaven, the sower and teacher of all virtue, Christ. Further, the saints fast so that by wasting the body they may lull to sleep the passions in it; but Christ had no need of fasting to achieve virtue, being free as God from every passion; nor did those with him need it, since they shared in the grace given through him, were strengthened, and worked virtue even without fasting. And if he did fast the forty days, it was not to put to death the passions in himself, but to draw in himself for men the law of self-control. Fittingly, then, he defends himself by saying what the evangelist adds: “And he said to them: Can you make the sons of the bridechamber fast while the bridegroom is with them?” (5:34).

See again, I pray, how Christ shows that they have no part in the feast, but are wholly without share in the joy that is in him, and lie outside the festival of the whole world. For the manifestation of our Saviour in this world is a festival and nothing else, joining human nature to himself spiritually like a bride, so that she who was barren of old might become fruitful and most fertile. All, then, who have been called by him through the new and evangelical proclamation are sons of the bridechamber; but not so the scribes and Pharisees, who attend only to the shadow of the law. But since he had once granted the sons of the bridechamber that, as the time and need required, they need not toil, being engaged in a spiritual feast, so that fasting might not be rejected altogether among us, he very fittingly adds: “But days will come, and when the bridegroom is taken away from them, then they will fast in those days.” For all things are good in their season. And what is the bridegroom’s being taken away from them? His being taken up, clearly.

“And he also told them a parable,” and so on (5:36). … that the decrees of Christ are unacceptable to those who keep the legal way of life, and somehow cannot be held by the hearts of men that have not yet obtained renewal through the Holy Spirit, the Lord shows by saying that a patch cannot be put on a new garment, nor can old wineskins hold new wine. For the first covenant has become old, and was not faultless; so those who sit by it and keep the aged commandment in mind have no share in the newness that is in Christ—“for all things have become new in him”—and having a decayed mind, they are incompatible with and unattached to the ministers of the new covenant. And indeed the God of all said somewhere of them through one of the holy prophets: “I will give them a new heart and a new spirit.” And David sings: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” And we have been commanded to put off the old man and put on the new, which is renewed according to the image of the one who created him. And Paul too advises, saying: “Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, so that you may prove what is the will of God, good and acceptable and perfect.” Those, then, who have not yet obtained renewal in the spirit do not know how to prove the will of God, good and acceptable and perfect. The heart of the Jews, then, is an old wineskin; and for this reason it did not hold the new wine, that is, the evangelical and saving decree that gladdens the heart of man. But Christ has made us full of such good things.

“Why do you do what is not lawful to do on the sabbath?” (6:2). Further, God promises us a new covenant, since the first has become old and is near to vanishing, according to the word of the divine Paul. And indeed he says through one of the holy prophets: “Behold, days are coming, says the Lord, when I will accomplish for the house of Israel and the house of Judah a new covenant, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt.” If, then, the new is other than the first, and second to it, it is altogether necessary that those who wish to fulfil it should not use the ancient laws, but those that know how to lead to the newness of the evangelical way of life. But one can see that the scribes and Pharisees had nothing of this in mind; for they are wholly ignorant of the sacred Scriptures, and their one aim was always to disparage the divine and heavenly proclamation. They lie in wait, then, for the holy apostles, who followed Christ the Saviour of us all without distraction, and they say to him about them: “See, we observe those you are training opposing the commandments of the law; for they do what is not lawful to do on the sabbath. For while the law commands rest on the sabbath and touching no work whatever, the disciples rub ears of grain in their hands.” But you yourself, tell me: when you set your sabbath table before yourself, do you not break the bread? Why then do you accuse others? And so that we may also set the Saviour’s own words against you as a rampart, hear:

“And Jesus answered them and said: Have you not read even this, what David did?” and so on (6:3). … David, though he did these things contrary to what the law decreed, is deemed worthy of all admiration among us, rightly and justly; for he was truly holy and a prophet. Since, then, the law given through Moses plainly says, “Judge a righteous judgment, and you shall not show partiality in judgment,” “how,” he says, “have you condemned my disciples, while to this day you admire the blessed David as holy and a prophet, though he did not keep the commandment of Moses?” — By the loaves the bread from heaven, set forth on the holy tables of the churches, is clearly shown to us. And the vessels of the table, by which the mystical service is fulfilled, would be a clear type of the divine treasures. — Spiritually, the twelve apostles; of whom more will be said later, when our discourse comes round to the disciples themselves.

“And he taught. And there was a man there, and his right hand was withered” (6:6). He was teaching, no doubt, things beyond understanding, and whatever made plain to his hearers the way of salvation through him; then he at once made a display of his power befitting God, following on his teaching of the mysteries, all but smoothing by his word the path to belief; for sometimes the wonder moves to faith, even if the word is disbelieved. “And the Pharisees watched him, to see whether he would heal on the sabbath.” For such is the envious man: he makes the praise of others food for his disease and rages unjustly at the glory of others. And what does he who knows all things, who searches hearts and knows what is in them, say to this? “For the light is with him,” as it is written. He said to the man who had the withered hand, “Stand in the middle.” And what is the reason for this? Perhaps to call the harsh and pitiless Pharisee to mercy; perhaps the suffering would shame them and persuade the flames of envy to die down. “I will ask you something: is it lawful on the sabbath to do good or to do harm?” and so on (6:9).

The question is very wise, and the proposition fitting for their stupidity. For if it is lawful to do good on the sabbath, and nothing prevents the sick from receiving mercy from God, stop collecting pretexts for slandering Christ and pouring on your own head the penalty that the Father has hung over those who dishonour the Son. You have heard him say of him through the voice of David: “And I will cut down his enemies before his face, and put to flight those who hate him.” But if it is not lawful to do good on the sabbath, and the law has forbidden that a life be saved, you have become the accuser of the lawgiver; you have slandered a commandment for which the ministry through Moses was admired. “But,” he says, “the God of all did not lay down the law of the sabbath for himself, but rather for us who bend our necks to him.” You have spoken well; I praise the words. So the Divine is free of necessity and law. How then do you accuse Christ for wishing to show mercy and benefit a life even on the sabbath? And when we wish to examine the law laid down concerning the sabbath, we shall find it was decreed by God for the sake of mercy; for he commanded rest on the sabbath and the touching of no work whatever, and relief rather, even for the irrational animals themselves; for he said: “So that your manservant and your maidservant may rest, your ox and your beast of burden and all your cattle.” Would not he who has mercy on the ox and the other cattle have mercy on a man on the sabbath who had fallen into a terrible and inescapable disease?

“But they were filled with folly” (6:11). Is the wonder not enough for you to believe? You see him acting as befits God, and healing those in sicknesses with the highest authority, and you are in labour with murder out of envy and malice?

“He went out to the mountain to pray” (6:12). Christ did everything for our edification and for the benefit of those who believe in him, and setting forth his own conduct as in some way an image of the spiritual life, he wished to make true worshippers. Let us see, then, as in an image and type of the things done by Christ, in what way we ought to make our supplications to God. We should pray in secret and hidden, with no one seeing; for this is what Jesus’ praying on the mountain alone and as at leisure hints at. And he taught us this himself, saying: “But you, when you pray, go into your room.” For we must pray without love of glory, lifting up holy hands, the mind leaping up as to a height, to the height of the vision of God, withdrawing from all tumult and running away from worldly care. And we must do this neither with quick weariness nor with feeble faint-heartedness, but rather intently and earnestly, with a patience not unworthy of admiration. For you have heard that Christ did not simply pray, but spent the whole night doing it. But perhaps the enemy of the truth will not bear our saying this; for he says: “He prays and seeks from the Father what he does not have. How, then, do you still say that he is consubstantial with him and equal in all things and in no way unlike? For beyond all dispute the lesser is blessed by the greater; and the one who gives is certainly greater than the one who asks to receive something.” Then let those who pervert what is right teach us this before all else: of what do they think the Son is in need? What did he seek to receive as not having it? He is the true light, life by nature and life-giving, Lord of the powers, wisdom and righteousness, creator and maker of all things, beyond everything that has come to be, King of all, steward of heaven and earth, giver of every good thing together with God the Father. And this you will learn from the blessed Paul writing to some: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” He is resplendent on the highest thrones, he is glorified by every rational creature; he is therefore essentially the heir of all the dignities of God the Father that befit God. And indeed he said to him: “All that is mine is yours, and yours is mine, and I am glorified in them.” He who has as his own all that is God the Father’s—what does he still lack? And if he lacks anything at all, and they say this is true, nothing prevents us from saying that the Father himself is in need of some things. For if all that is the Son’s is the Father’s, and the Son lacks something, then the Father too is such; for all that is the Son’s is his. But the Father is all-perfect and needs none at all of the good things befitting God; so the Son is all-perfect, as having all that is the Father’s; he is the image and imprint of his hypostasis; and in the imprint the original certainly appears, and in the original the imprint. So much for them. But those carried away by the empty chatter of Nestorius also say that it is altogether unfitting for the Son, who is God by nature, to pray, but that it befits rather the man joined to him by conjunction, that is, the one from the seed of David; he, then, was the one who lifted up the prayer. What shall we say to this? You have been wholly ignorant of the mystery of the incarnation of the Only-begotten. Remember the blessed evangelist John saying: “And the Word became flesh.” And the all-wise Paul made this plain to us, saying of him: “For surely it is not angels that he takes hold of, but he takes hold of the seed of Abraham; therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the things of God, to make expiation for the sins of the people.” Why, then, is he who was born divinely as the Word from God the Father, but lowered himself to self-emptying and to brotherhood with us, by becoming like us and being made like those on earth in every respect, sin alone excepted—why is he expelled from the measures of humanity? For since he became as we are, out of very great gentleness and love for humankind he does not disdain human things, making his own conduct a pattern for us of the utmost goodness; so that, as I said, we may be eager to follow in his footsteps.