Homily 52 — John 7, verse 45, to 8, verse 19

“Then the officers came to the chief priests and Pharisees, and they said to them, ‘Why have you not brought him?’ The officers answered, ‘No man ever spoke like this man.’” [a]

There is nothing clearer, nothing simpler than the truth, if we do not deal perversely; just as, on the other hand, if we do deal perversely, nothing is more difficult. Look at the scribes and Pharisees. They seemed, if you please, to be wiser than other men. They were always with Christ for the sake of plotting against him; they saw his miracles; they read the Scriptures. Yet they gained nothing from it, and were even harmed. The officers, meanwhile, who could claim not one of these advantages, were won over by a single sermon, and the men who had gone out to bind him came back bound themselves — by wonder. We must not only marvel at their understanding, that they did not need signs but were captured by the teaching alone (for they did not say, “No man ever worked miracles like this,” but, “No man ever spoke like this”). We must not, I say, merely marvel at their understanding, but also at their boldness, that they spoke this way to those who had sent them — to the Pharisees, to his enemies, to men who were doing everything to gratify their hatred.

“The officers came,” says the evangelist, “and the Pharisees said to them, ‘Why have you not brought him?’” Coming back was a far greater deed than staying away would have been. Had they stayed away, they would have been rid of the annoyance of these men; but as it was, they became heralds of Christ’s wisdom and showed their boldness to a greater degree. And they do not say, “We could not, because of the crowd, for they listened to him as a prophet.” What do they say? “No man ever spoke like this man.” They might have made that excuse, yet they show their honest feeling. For theirs were the words not only of men who admired him, but of men who blamed their masters for sending them to bind the one they ought rather to have listened to. And they had not heard a long sermon either, but a short one; for when the mind is impartial, there is no need of long arguments. That is what truth is like.

What, then, do the Pharisees say? When they ought to have been cut to the heart, they do the opposite and turn the charge back on the officers, saying:

Verse 47: “Are you also deceived?” They still speak to them politely and do not express themselves harshly, afraid that the officers might break away from them altogether. Even so, they show signs of anger and keep their words few. When they ought to have asked what he had said, and to have marveled at his words, they do not do so, knowing that they might have been captivated. Instead they argue with them from a very foolish point:

Verse 48: “Why has none of the rulers believed in him?” one of them says. Tell me, do you make this a charge against Christ, and not against those who did not believe?

Verse 49: “But the people who do not know the law,” one of them says, “are accursed.”

Then the charge against you is all the heavier, because the people believed and you did not. They acted like men who knew the law; how then are they accursed? It is you who are accursed, you who do not keep the law — not they, who obey it. Nor was it right to slander one in whom they did not believe on the evidence of unbelievers, for that is an unjust way to act. For you, too, did not believe God, as Paul says: “What if some did not believe? Will their unbelief make the faithfulness of God of no effect? Far from it!” (Romans 3, verses 3 and 4). For the prophets were always rebuking them, saying, “Hear, you rulers of Sodom,” and, “Your rulers are disobedient” (Isaiah 1, verses 10 and 23); and again, “Is it not for you to know justice?” (Micah 3, verse 1). Everywhere they attack them fiercely. What then? Will anyone blame God for this? Far from it! The blame is theirs.

And what other proof can anyone bring that you do not know the law than that you do not obey it? When they had said, “Has any of the rulers believed in him?” and, “These who do not know the law,” Nicodemus quite fittingly rebukes them, saying:

Verse 51: “Does our law judge anyone before it hears him?” He shows that they neither know the law nor keep it. For if the law commands that no one be put to death without first being heard, and they were eager for this deed before hearing him, they were breaking the law. And because they had said, “None of the rulers has believed in him,” the evangelist tells us that Nicodemus was “one of them” (verse 50), to show that even rulers believed in him. Though they did not yet show the boldness they should have, they were nonetheless becoming attached to Christ.

Notice how cautiously he rebukes them. He did not say, “You want to kill him, and you condemn the man as a deceiver without proof.” He spoke more mildly, checking their excessive violence and their reckless, murderous temper. That is why he turns his words to the law, saying, “Unless it hears him carefully and knows what he does.” So what is required is not a bare hearing, but a careful hearing. For “knows what he does” means “what he intends,” “on what grounds,” “for what purpose,” “whether he is out to overturn the order of things, as an enemy.” So they were at a loss, because they had said, “None of the rulers has believed in him,” and they answered him neither with great violence nor yet with restraint. For tell me: after he had said, “The law judges no one,” how does it follow that they should say:

Verse 52: “Are you also from Galilee?”

When they ought to have shown that they had not sent to summon him without a trial, or that it was not right to let him speak, they take the reply in a rough and angry way instead. [d]

“Search and look, for no prophet has arisen out of Galilee.” Why, what had the man said? That Christ was a prophet? No; he said that he ought not to be put to death without a trial. But they answered him insolently, as though he knew nothing of the Scriptures — as if to say, “Go and learn,” for that is the meaning of “Search and look.” What, then, did Christ do? They were continually harping on Galilee and “the Prophet.” So, to free everyone from this mistaken suspicion, and to show that he was not one of the prophets but the Master of the world, he said:

Chapter 8, verse 12: “I am the light of the world.” Not “of Galilee,” not of Palestine, nor of Judea. What, then, do the Jews say?

Verse 13: “You bear witness about yourself; your witness is not true.” Alas for their folly! He was continually referring them to the Scriptures, and now they say, “You bear witness about yourself.” What was the witness he bore? “I am the light of the world.” A great thing to say, truly great; but it did not greatly amaze them, because he did not at this point make himself equal to the Father, or claim that he was his Son, or that he was God, but for the time being called himself a light. They wanted to disprove even this, and yet this was a much greater thing than to say, “Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness.”

He uses the words “light” and “darkness” in a spiritual sense, and by “will not walk in darkness” he means “will not remain in error.” Here he draws Nicodemus on, and presents him as having spoken very boldly, and he praises the officers, who had done the same. For to cry aloud is the act of someone who wants them too to hear. At the same time he hints at those who were secretly plotting treachery against him: they were in darkness and error, but they would not prevail over the light. And he reminds Nicodemus of the words he had spoken to him before: “Everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light, so that his deeds will not be exposed” (John 3, verse 20). For since they had declared that none of the rulers had believed in him, he says that “whoever does evil does not come to the light,” to show that their not having come was due not to any weakness in the light, but to their own perverse will.

“They answered and said to him, ‘Do you bear witness about yourself?’” What, then, does he say?

Verse 14: “Even if I bear witness about myself, my witness is true, for I know where I come from and where I am going; but you cannot tell where I come from.” What he had said before, these men now bring forward as though he had stated it as a flat fact. What, then, does Christ do? To refute this, and to show that he had used those expressions to suit them and their suspicions, since they supposed him to be a mere man, he says, “Even if I bear witness about myself, my witness is true, for I know where I come from.” What does this mean?

“I am from God, I am God, the Son of God; and God himself is a trustworthy witness to himself. But you do not know him. You go astray on purpose. You know, and you pretend not to know, and everything you say, you say by merely human imagination, choosing to understand nothing beyond what is seen.”

Verse 15: “You judge according to the flesh.”

As to live according to the flesh is to live badly, so to judge according to the flesh is to judge unjustly.

“But I judge no one.” Verse 16: “And yet if I do judge, my judgment is true.”

What he is saying is something like this: “You judge unjustly.”

“And if we judge unjustly,” someone says, “why do you not rebuke us? Why do you not punish us? Why do you not condemn us?”

“Because,” he says, “I did not come for this.”

This is the meaning of “I judge no one; yet if I do judge, my judgment is true.” “For if I had been willing to judge, you would have been among the condemned. And I say this without judging you. Yet I do not tell you that I say it without judging you as though I were not confident that, had I judged you, I would have convicted you; for if I had judged you, I would have had to condemn you, and justly. But the time for judgment has not yet come.”

He also alluded to the judgment to come, saying, “I am not alone, but I and the Father who sent me.” Here he hinted that it is not he alone who condemns them, but the Father also. Then he veiled this by leading them on to his own testimony:

Verse 17: “It is written in your law that the testimony of two men is true.”

What would the heretics say here? They would say: “How is he better than a man, if we take what he has said simply? This rule was laid down for the case of men, because no man is trustworthy on his own. But in the case of God, how can anyone put up with such a way of speaking? How, then, is the word ‘two’ used? Is it because they are two, or because, being men, they are therefore two? If it is because they are two, why did he not turn to John and say, ‘I bear witness about myself, and John bears witness about me’? Why not to the angels? Why not to the prophets? For he could have found ten thousand other testimonies.” But he wants to show not only that there are two, but also that they are of the same essence. [h]

Verse 19: “Then they said to him, ‘Who is your father?’ Jesus answered, ‘You know neither me nor my Father.’”

They knew, and yet they spoke as though they did not know, and as if to test him; so he does not even think them worth an answer. That is why from now on he says everything more clearly and more boldly, drawing his testimony from the signs, from his teaching of those who followed him, and from the cross being near. “For I know,” he says, “where I come from.” This would not greatly affect them; but adding “and where I am going” would rather frighten them, since he was not going to remain in death. But why did he not say, “I know that I am God,” instead of “I know where I come from”? He always mixes humble words with lofty ones, and even the lofty ones he veils. After saying, “I bear witness about myself,” and proving it, he comes down to a humbler tone, as though he had said: “I know by whom I am sent, and to whom I am going away.”

For in that way they could have had nothing to say against it, when they heard that he was sent from him and would go back to him. “I could not have spoken any falsehood,” he says, “I who have come from there and am going back there, to the true God. But you do not know God, and that is why you judge according to the flesh. For if, after hearing so many sure signs and proofs, you still say, ‘Your witness is not true’; if you think Moses worthy of belief, both in what he says about others and in what he says about himself, but not Christ — that is to judge according to the flesh.”

“But I judge no one.” He also says that “the Father judges no one” (John 5, verse 22). How, then, does he declare here, “If I judge, my judgment is just, for I am not alone”? Again he is speaking in answer to their thoughts: “The judgment that is mine is the judgment of the Father. The Father, when he judges, would not judge otherwise than I do, and I would not judge otherwise than the Father.”

Why did he mention the Father? Because they would not have thought the Son worth believing unless he had the Father’s witness. Besides, the saying does not even hold good. Among men, when two bear witness in a matter that concerns someone else, their witness is true — that is what two witnessing means. But if one should bear witness for himself, then they are no longer two. Do you see that he said this for no other reason than to show that he was of the same essence, that he needed no other witness, and that he was in nothing inferior to the Father? Notice his independence, at least:

Verse 18: “I am one who bears witness about myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness about me.”

If he had been of a lesser essence, he would not have put it this way. But so that you would not think the Father is brought in to make up the number two, notice that his power is in no way different from the Father’s. A man’s witness counts when he is trustworthy in himself and does not himself need testimony — and that, in a matter that concerns someone else. But in a matter of his own, where he needs the witness of another, he is not trustworthy. Here it is entirely the opposite. Though he is bearing witness in a matter of his own, and says that witness is borne to him by another, he declares that he is trustworthy, showing his independence in every way. For why, when he had said, “I am not alone, but I and the Father who sent me,” and, “The testimony of two men is true,” did he not stop there, instead of adding, “I am one who bears witness about myself”? Plainly, to show his independence. And he puts himself first: “I am one who bears witness about myself.”

Here he shows that he is equal in honor, and that it did them no good to say they knew God the Father while they did not know him. And he says that the cause of this ignorance was that they did not want to know him. So he tells them that it was not possible to know the Father without knowing him, so that even in this way he might draw them to know him. For since they passed him by and still sought to gain the knowledge of the Father, he says, “You cannot know the Father without me” (verse 19). So those who blaspheme the Son blaspheme not the Son only, but also the one who begot him.

Let us avoid this, and glorify the Son. If he had not been of the same nature, he would not have spoken this way. For if he were merely a teacher, but of a different essence, a person might not have known him and yet have known the Father; and again, it would not follow that someone who knew him would fully know the Father. For someone who knows a man does not thereby know an angel. Someone replies: “Yes, whoever knows the creation knows God.” By no means. Many people — or rather, I should say, all people — know the creation, for they see it; but they do not know God. [k]

So let us glorify the Son of God, not only with this glory of words, but also with the glory that comes by works. For the first without the second is nothing. “Look,” says Paul, “you are called a Jew, and rely on the law, and boast in God — you, then, who teach another, do you not teach yourself? You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law?” (Romans 2, verses 17, 21, and 23). Let us take care that we too, who boast of the soundness of our faith, do not dishonor God by failing to show a life in keeping with that faith, and so cause him to be blasphemed. For he would have the Christian be the teacher of the world, its yeast, its salt, its light. And what is that light? It is a life that shines and has nothing dark in it. Light is not useful to itself, nor is yeast, nor is salt; each shows its usefulness toward others. So we too are required to do good, not to ourselves only, but to others. For salt that does not salt is not salt. And another thing is plain as well: if we are righteous, others will certainly become so too; but as long as we are not righteous, we will not be able to help others.

Let there be nothing foolish or silly among us; and such are worldly matters, such are the cares of this life. That is why the virgins were called foolish: they were busy about foolish, worldly matters, gathering things together here, and not laying up treasure where they should have. There is reason to fear that this may be our case, reason to fear that we too may depart dressed in filthy clothes to that place where everyone’s clothes are bright and shining. For nothing is filthier, nothing more unclean, than sin. That is why the prophet, declaring its nature, cried out, “My wounds stink and fester” (Psalm 38, verse 5).

If you want to learn fully how foul-smelling sin is, consider it after it has been committed. When you are rid of the desire, when the fire no longer troubles you, then you will see what sin is. Look at anger when you are calm; look at greed when you do not feel it. There is nothing more shameful, nothing more accursed, than robbery and greed. We say this constantly, not wanting to annoy you, but to gain some great and wonderful benefit. For whoever has not acted rightly after hearing once may perhaps do so after hearing a second time; and whoever has let the second time pass may do right after the third. May God grant that we, set free from all evil things, may have the sweet aroma of Christ; for to him, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, be glory, now and always, and forever and ever. Amen.