Homily 41 — John 5, verses 39 to 47

“Search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and they are the ones that testify about me. And you will not come to me that you might have eternal life.” [a]

Beloved, let us set great store by spiritual things, and let us not think it is enough for our salvation to pursue them in any way at all. If in the affairs of this life a person can gain no great profit when he handles them in a careless, haphazard way, much more will this be so in spiritual things, since they demand still greater attention. That is why Christ, when he referred the Jews to the Scriptures, sent them not to a mere reading but to a careful and thoughtful search. He did not say, “Read the Scriptures,” but, “Search the Scriptures.”

The sayings about him needed great attention, because they had been kept hidden from the beginning for the good of the people of that time. So he tells them now to dig down with care, so that they might be able to discover what lay deep below. These sayings were not on the surface or thrown out in plain view; they lay like a treasure buried very deep. And anyone searching for hidden things will never find what he is looking for unless he seeks it with care and hard work. That is why he said, “Search the Scriptures, because in them you think you have eternal life.”

He did not say “you have,” but “you think,” to show that they gained nothing great or lofty from them, since they expected to be saved by the mere reading, without faith added to it. So what he means is something like this: “Don’t you admire the Scriptures? Don’t you think they are the source of all life? By them I now confirm my claims, for they are the ones that testify about me. And yet you will not come to me that you may have eternal life.” So he had good reason to say “you think,” because they would not obey, but merely prided themselves on the bare reading.

Then, because of his very tender care for them, he risked coming under suspicion among them of seeking empty glory; and because he wanted them to believe him, he risked being thought to seek his own interest. For he had reminded them of John’s words, of the witness of God, and of his own works, and had said everything he could to draw them to himself, and had promised them “life.” Since, I say, many were likely to suspect that he said these things out of a desire for glory, listen to what he says.

Verse 41: “I do not receive honor from people.”

That is, “I do not need it.” “My nature,” he says, “is not the kind that needs the honor that comes from people. If the sun can gain nothing added to it from the light of a lamp, I am much further still from needing the honor that comes from people.” “Then why,” someone asks, “do you say these things, if you do not need it?” “So that you may be saved.” He stated this plainly earlier, and he implied the same thing here too by saying, “that you might have life.” Then he puts forward another reason as well.

Verse 42: “But I know you, that you do not have the love of God in you.”

They were persecuting him under the pretense of loving God, because he made himself equal with God, and he knew that they would not believe him. So that no one would ask, “Why do you say these words?” he says: “I say them to convict you of this: that it is not out of love for God that you persecute me, since he testifies to me both by the works and by the Scriptures. Before this, when you thought I was God’s enemy, you drove me away. So now, since I have made these things plain, you ought to have hurried to me, if you really loved God. But you do not love him. That is why I have said these words: to show that you are gripped by excessive pride, that you are boasting emptily and throwing a shade over your own envy.” And he proves the same thing not only by these things, but also by what was going to happen.

Verse 43: “I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not receive me; if another comes in his own name, him you will receive.”

Do you see that he declares everywhere that he has been “sent,” that judgment has been handed over to him by the Father, that he can do nothing on his own? He does it to cut off every excuse for their unfairness. But who is it that he says here will come “in his own name”? He is hinting at the Antichrist, and he puts forward an undeniable proof of their unfairness: “If you persecute me because you love God, this ought to have happened much more in the case of the Antichrist. For he will not say that he is sent by the Father, or that he comes according to the Father’s will. In everything he will do the opposite, seizing like a tyrant what does not belong to him, and claiming that he is the very God over all, as Paul says: ‘exalting himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, showing himself that he is God’ (Second Thessalonians 2, verse 4). That is what it is to ‘come in his own name.’ I do not do so. I have come in the name of my Father.” [f]

That they did not receive one who said he was sent by God was proof enough that they did not love God. But now, from the opposite fact — that they were going to receive the Antichrist — he shows their shamelessness. They did not receive one who declares that he was sent by God, and they are going to worship one who does not know God and who says that he himself is God over all. So it is clear that their persecution came from malice and from hatred of God.

For this reason he gives two reasons for his words. First he gives the kinder one: “that you may be saved,” and “that you may have life.” Then, because they would have mocked him, he puts forward the other, which strikes harder, showing that even if his hearers did not believe, God was always accustomed to do his own works.

Now Paul, speaking about the Antichrist, said prophetically that “God will send them a strong delusion — so that all might be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in unrighteousness” (Second Thessalonians 2, verses 11 and 12). Christ did not say, “He will come,” but, “if he comes,” out of tenderness for his hearers, and because their obstinacy was not yet complete. He said nothing about the reason for the Antichrist’s coming; but Paul has pointed to it plainly, for those who can understand. For it is he who takes away all their excuse.

Then Christ gives the cause of their unbelief as well, saying:

Verse 44: “How can you believe, when you receive honor from one another, and do not seek the honor that comes from God alone?”

Here again he shows that they were not looking to the things of God, but under this pretense wanted to indulge their own private feelings. They were so far from doing this for God’s glory that they preferred honor from people to the honor that comes from him. How, then, were they likely to feel such hostility toward Christ on behalf of an honor they despised so much that they preferred the honor from people to it?

He has told them that they do not have the love of God. He has proved it by what was happening in his own case and by what would happen in the case of the Antichrist. He has shown that they are stripped of every excuse. Next he brings in Moses as their accuser, going on to say:

Verses 45 to 47: “Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, in whom you trust. For if you had believed Moses, you would have believed me, for he wrote about me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”

What he means is something like this: “It is Moses, more than I, who has been insulted by the way you treat me, for it is him rather than me that you have disbelieved.” See how he has shut them out from every excuse, in every way: “You said you loved God when you persecuted me; I have shown that you did it out of hatred for him. You say that I break the Sabbath and do away with the Law; I have cleared myself of this slander too. You claim that you believe in Moses by what you dare to do against me; I, on the contrary, show that this is the very worst unbelief toward Moses. For I am so far from opposing the Law that the one who will accuse you is none other than the man who gave you the Law.”

So just as he said of the Scriptures, in which “you think you have eternal life,” so of Moses too he says, “in whom you trust.” Everywhere he defeats them with their own weapons.

“And how,” someone says, “is it clear that Moses will accuse us, and that you are not a boaster? What do you have to do with Moses? You have broken the Sabbath he commanded us to keep; how, then, would he accuse us? And how does it appear that we will believe in another who comes in his own name? You make all these claims without evidence.” Well, in fact, all these points have been proved above. For Christ would reply: “Since it is acknowledged that I came from God — by the works, by the voice of John, and by the testimony of the Father — it is evident that Moses will accuse the Jews.” For what does Moses say? “If a man comes doing miracles and leading you to God, and truly foretelling what is to come, you must listen to him with all readiness.” Now Christ had done all this. He worked miracles in very truth, he drew all people to God, and he made what he foretold come to pass.

“But how does it appear that they will believe another?” From their hatred of Christ. For those who turn away from the one who comes according to the will of God will quite plainly receive God’s enemy.

And do not be surprised that he now brings Moses forward, although he said, “I do not receive witness from man.” He is not referring them to Moses, but to the Scriptures of God. But since the Scriptures frightened them less, he brings his words around to the person of Moses himself. He sets their own Lawgiver against them as their accuser, and so makes the fear more vivid; and he refutes every one of their claims.

Look at it. They said they persecuted him out of love for God; he shows that they did it out of hatred of God. They said they held fast to Moses; he shows that they acted this way because they did not believe Moses. If they had been zealous for the Law, they ought to have received the one who fulfilled it. If they loved God, they ought to have believed the one who drew them to him. If they believed Moses, they ought to have paid homage to the one of whom Moses prophesied. “But if Moses is disbelieved before my coming,” Christ says, “it is nothing strange that I, whom he announced, should be driven away by you.”

Earlier he had shown from their conduct toward himself that those who admired John really despised him. In the same way he now shows that those who thought they believed Moses did not believe him, and he turns back on their own heads everything they thought to put forward in their own defense. “So far am I,” he says, “from drawing you away from the Law that I call your Lawgiver himself to be your accuser.”

He declared that the Scriptures testified about him, but he did not add where they testify. He wanted to fill them with greater awe, to prompt them to search, and to leave them no choice but to ask. If he had told them readily, without their asking, they would have rejected the testimony. But as it was, if they paid any attention to his words, they would first have to ask him and learn from him what that testimony was. That is why he deals more in assertions and threats, and not only in proofs, so that even in this way he might win them over by fear of what he says. But even so they were silent. That is what wickedness is like: whatever anyone says or does, it will not budge, but stays as it is, keeping its own peculiar venom.

That is why we must throw all wickedness out of our souls and never again devise any deceit. For, as one says, “To the perverse God sends crooked paths” (Proverbs 21, verse 8, in the Greek Old Testament); and, “The Holy Spirit of discipline will flee from deceit, and will withdraw from thoughts that are without understanding” (Wisdom 1, verse 5).

For nothing makes people as foolish as wickedness. When someone is treacherous, unfair, ungrateful — these are different forms of wickedness — when he grieves another without having been wronged, when he weaves deceits, how can he fail to be an example of extreme folly? And again, nothing makes people as wise as virtue. It makes them grateful and fair-minded, merciful, mild, gentle and sincere; it tends to be the mother of all other blessings. And who has more understanding than someone of that disposition? For virtue is the very spring and root of good sense, just as all wickedness has its beginning in folly.

The man who insults others and the angry man fall prey to their passions from lack of wisdom. That is why the prophet said, “There is no soundness in my flesh; my wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness” (Psalm 38, verses 3 and 4), showing that all sin has its beginning in folly. And so the virtuous man, who has the fear of God, has more understanding than anyone. That is why a wise man has said, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 1, verse 7). If, then, to fear God is to have wisdom, and the wicked man does not have that fear, he is deprived of what is truly wisdom; and being deprived of true wisdom, he is more foolish than anyone.

And yet many admire the wicked as people able to do injustice and harm. They do not know that they ought to count them the most wretched of all, for in thinking to injure others they drive the sword into themselves. It is the height of folly for a man to strike himself and not even know that he is doing it, but to think he is injuring someone else while he is killing himself. That is why Paul, knowing that we slay ourselves when we strike others, says, “Why do you not rather accept wrong? Why do you not rather let yourselves be cheated?” (First Corinthians 6, verse 7). For not suffering wrong consists in doing none, just as not being mistreated consists in not mistreating others — though this saying may seem a riddle to the many, and to those who will not learn true wisdom.

Knowing this, then, let us not call wretched or mourn those who suffer injury or insult, but those who inflict these things. They are the ones who have been most injured. They have made God their enemy, and opened the mouths of ten thousand accusers; they earn a bad name in the present life, and draw down severe punishment on themselves in the life to come. But those they have wronged, who have borne it all nobly, have God on their side, and everyone to sympathize with them, praise them, and welcome them. People like these will enjoy the best of reputations in the present life, as the strongest example of true wisdom, and in the life to come they will share in the everlasting good things. May we all attain them, through the grace and love for humankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, with whom be glory to the Father and to the Holy Spirit, now and always, and forever and ever. Amen.