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1. While the disciples thus question, and Jesus their Master
replies to them, we also, as it were, are learning along with them,
when we either read or listen to the holy Gospel. Accordingly,
because the Lord had said, "Yet a little while, and the world seeth
me no more; but ye shall see me," Judas not indeed His betrayer,
who was surnamed Iscariot, but he whose epistle is read among the
canonical Scriptures asked Him of this very matter: "Lord, how is
it that Thou wilt manifest Thyself unto us, and not unto the
world?" Let us, too, be as it were questioning disciples with
them, and listen to our common Master. For Judas the holy, not the
impure, the follower, but not the persecutor of the Lord, has
inquired the reason why Jesus was to manifest Himself to His own,
and not to the world; why it was that yet a little while, and the
world should not see Him, but they should see Him.
2. "Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will
keep my word: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto
him, and make our abode with him. He that loveth me not, keepeth not
my sayings." Here we have set forth the reason why He is to manifest
Himself to His own, and not to that other class whom He
distinguishes by the name of the world; and such is the reason also why
the one loveth Him, and the other loveth Him not. It is the very
reason, whereof it is declared in the sacred psalm, "Judge me, O
God, and plead my cause against an unholy nation." For such as love
are chosen, because they love: but those who have not love, though
they speak with the tongues of men and angels, are become a sounding
brass and a tinkling cymbal; and though they had the gift of prophecy,
and knew all mysteries and all knowledge, and had all faith so that
they could remove mountains, they are nothing; and though they
distributed all their substance, and gave their body to be burnt, it
profiteth them nothing. The saints are distinguished from the world by
that love which maketh the one-minded to dwell [together] in a house
In this house Father and Son make their abode, and impart that very
love to those whom They shall also honor at last with this promised
self manifestation; of which the disciple questioned his Master, that
not only those who then listened might learn it from His own lips, but
we also from his Gospel. For he had made inquiry about the
manifestation of Christ, and heard [in reply] about His loving and
abiding. There is therefore a kind of inward manifestation of God,
which is entirely unknown to the ungodly, who receive no manifestation
of God the Father and the Holy Spirit: of the Son, indeed, there
might have been such, but only in the flesh; and that, too, neither
of the same kind as the other, nor able under any form to remain with
them, save only for a little while; and even that, for judgment, not
for rejoicing; for punishment, not for reward.
3. We have now, therefore, to understand, so far as He is pleased
to unfold it, the meaning of the words, "Yet a little while, and
the world seeth me no more; but ye shall see me." It is true,
indeed, that after a little while He was to withdraw even His body,
in which the ungodly also were able to see Him, from their sight; for
none of them saw Him after His resurrection. But since it was
declared on the testimony of angels, "He shall so come in like manner
as ye have seen Him go into heaven;" and our faith stands to this,
that He will come in the same body to judge the living and the dead;
there can be no doubt that He will then be seen by the world, meaning
by the name, those who are aliens from His kingdom. And, on this
account, it is far better to understand Him as having intended to
refer at once to that epoch, when He said, "Yet a little while,
and the world seeth me no more," when in the end of the world He
shall be taken away from the sight of the damned, that for the future
He may be seen only of those with whom, as those that love Him, the
Father and Himself are making their abode. But He said, "a little
while," because that which appears tedious to men is very brief in the
sight of God: for of this same "little while" our evangelist,
John, himself says, "Little children, it is the last time."
4. But further, lest any should imagine that the Father and Son
only, without the Holy Spirit, make their abode with those that love
Them, let him recall what was said above of the Holy Spirit,
"Whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither
knoweth Him: but ye shall know Him; for He shall dwell with you,
and shall be in you" (ver. 17). Here you see that, along with
the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit also taketh up His abode
in the saints; that is to say, within them, as God in His temple.
The triune God, Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit, come to us
while we are coming to Them: They come with help, we come with
obedience; They come to enlighten, we to behold; They come to
fill, we to contain: that our vision of Them may not be external,
but inward; and Their abiding in us may not be transitory, but
eternal. The Son cloth not manifest Himself in such a way as this to
the world: for the world is spoken of in the passage before us as
those, of whom He immediately adds, "He that loveth me not,
keepeth not my sayings." These are such as never see the Father and
the Holy Spirit: and see the Son for a little while, not to their
attainment of bliss, but to their condemnation; and even Him, not in
the form of God, wherein He is equally invisible with the Father and
the Holy Spirit, but in human form, in which it was His will to be
an object of contempt in suffering, but of terror in judging the
world.
5. But when He added, "And the saying which ye have heard is not
mine, but the Father's who sent me," let us not be filled with
wonder or fear: He is not inferior to the Father, and yet He is
not, save of the Father: He is not unequal in Himself, but He is
not of Himself. For it was no false word He uttered when He said,
"He that loveth me not, keepeth not my sayings." He called them,
you see, His own sayings; does He, then, contradict Himself when
He said again, "And the saying which ye have heard is not mine"?
And, perhaps, it was on account of some intended distinction that,
when He said His own, He used "sayings" in the plural; but when
He said that "the saying," that is, the Word, was not His own,
but the Father's, He wished it to be understood of Himself. For
in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God. For as the Word, He is certainly not His own, but
the Father's: just as He is not His own image, but the
Father's; and is not Himself His own Son, but the Father's.
Rightly, therefore, does He attribute whatever He does, as equal,
to the Author of all, of whom He has this very prerogative, that He
is in all respects His equal.
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