John 10:17Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

He also shows that this is very pleasing to the Father. Do not be surprised that He speaks here as man. We have already pointed out the reason for this many times, and to repeat the same thing again would be needless and burdensome.

As I have already said, He spoke in this way by condescension. One may also say the following. The love of God and the Father toward us was known.

But God and the Father saw that His Son also showed the same goodness toward us, for He willed even to die for us. He preserves exactly the properties of the Father's goodness.

Therefore the Father rightly loved the Son. He did not love Him as though granting the Son a gift or reward for His death for us. Rather, He loved Him because He saw in the Son a kinship of essence with Himself.

Therefore He was moved to love the Son as though by an irresistible law of nature. For did the Son not show a work of great love toward us when He accepted a shameful death for us?

And not only death, but He also took life again, in order to put death to death and, through His Resurrection, make us immortal.

Therefore, when He says that the Father loves Me because I die for you, He means that the Father, as it were, rejoices and is glad that the Son is like Him. The Son has toward men the same love that He has.

For He says, "For this reason He loves Me," namely, for what you, in your great senselessness, have counted as nothing. Are you not insolent and filled with every impiety, since you count as ridiculous what is most pleasing to God?

By these words He partly makes them understand that they are exceedingly hateful before God. For if He loves Him Who lays down His soul for the sheep of the flock entrusted to Him, then He must utterly abhor the one who sees the wolf coming and abandons the flock.

Such a man leaves it to be invaded and ravaged, while he himself turns to flight. In such deeds He convicted those who had received authority over the Jewish people, or court.

Thus He at once convicts them of hatred toward God and of impiety, because they did not shudder to mock what is held in highest honor by God.

Yet Christ declares that He is loved by God the Father not only because He lays down His soul. He is loved because He "lays it down, that He may take it again," for in this especially the greatness of the blessings prepared for us shone forth.

For if He had only died and not risen, what would have been extraordinary? What benefit would He have appeared to bring to our nature, if He remained dead with us and subject, like the rest, to the bonds of death and the corruption that entered in?

But since He died in order also to receive His soul again, by this very act He saved the whole nature. He abolished the dominion of death and showed us to be a new creation.

Thus the Son enjoys love with God the Father, not as though He would have remained outside love if the divine economy concerning us had not taken place. He was always and continually loved. Let us explain this.

Properties belonging to things by nature, or by acquired condition, have their most favorable occasion for manifestation when they come into act.

For example, fire has within itself the natural property of heat. Yet when it acts upon some combustible material, then especially we learn what power, and how great a power, belongs to it.

In the same way, a grammarian, or one who has mastered some other science, does not win esteem, I think, when he is silent. He does so when he presents to others the beauty of the science known to him.

So also the divine and ineffable nature, when It produces something proper to Itself and always inherent in It, then especially reveals Itself in all Its beauty, both before Itself and before us.

Therefore Wisdom also says in the book of Proverbs: "I was she in whom He rejoiced. Daily I rejoiced before His face at all times, when He rejoiced, having completed the universe, and rejoiced over the sons of men" (Prov 8:30-31).

Joy and infinite blessedness always belong to God, for nothing can grieve Him Who has authority over all. Yet He rejoiced with His Wisdom when He had completed the universe.

When He saw the power of His Wisdom brought into act, then especially He judged it right to rejoice more abundantly.

This, therefore, is how we must understand the present passage. God the Father, being love, according to John (1 Jn 4:8), is not merely good, but Goodness itself.

When He saw His Son laying down His life for us out of love for us, and preserving the true features of the boundless goodness of His nature, then, naturally, He loved Him.

He did not bestow His love upon Him as some reward for His works on our behalf. Rather, as we have said, He saw in the Son His own true essence.

He was drawn to this, as it were, by necessary and irresistible impulses.

As happens with one of us, when he sees in his own child the true features of his own image, love reaches its greatest intensity especially as he gazes upon the child.

In the same way, I think, God the Father is said to love His Son, Who laid down His soul for us and received it again.

For it is the work of love to resolve even upon sufferings, and dishonorable sufferings, for the salvation of others; see Jn 15:13. Yet He did not simply die, but received again the soul He had laid down, that He might slay death and remove the disgrace of corruption.

Therefore, being always beloved by nature, He is understood to have awakened love for Himself also by this. Through His love for us He brings His Begetter to joy, since from this too the wholly pure and unfeignedly shining image of His nature was visible to Him.

Since He knew the thoughts of the Jews as God, and saw them mocking what He said, that He would die for the sheep (Jn 10:11), He shows them by these words to be so impious that they even ridicule what God the Father greatly loves.

For He already saw the image of His own nature remaining pure and radiant in His incarnate Son, because of His unchangeableness.

Let them rage as much as they can. "If I wish to lay down My life, what will they accomplish by raging?" They were thrown into confusion by one answer.

When they were asked, "Whom do you seek?" they said, "Jesus." And He said to them: "I am He." They drew back and fell; cf. Jn 18:4-6.

Those who fell at one word of Christ when He had come to die, what will they do when they hear His voice as He comes to judge?

"I, I," He says, "lay down My life, that I may take it again." Let the Jews not boast as though they had prevailed. He Himself laid down His life.

He says: "I slept"; cf. Ps 3:6. You know the psalm: "I slept and dreamed, and I arose, because the Lord sustains me"; cf. Ps 3:6.

The psalm has just been read. We have just heard: "I slept and dreamed, and I arose, because the Lord sustains me." What does "I slept" mean? I slept because I desired to sleep.

What does "I slept" mean? "I was dead." Did not He sleep who, when He wished, rose from the tomb as from a bed?

But He wishes to give glory to the Father, in order to move us to give glory to the Creator. For this is what He added: "I arose, because the Lord sustains Me."

Do you suppose that His own power was lacking here? Did He have the power to die by His own might, but not the power to rise by His own might?

For that is how these words seem to sound, if they are not examined more diligently. "I slept," that is, "because I desired to sleep, I slept." "And I arose." Why? "Because the Lord sustains Me."

What then? Could You not rise by Yourself? If He could not, He would not have said: "I have authority to lay down My life, and I have authority to take it again"; cf. Jn 10:18.

In another place He clearly showed the distress which the soul endured during the suffering, for He said: "Now My soul is troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour. But for this purpose I came to this hour"; Jn 12:27.

By this He showed the conflict of thoughts, now fearing the suffering, now repelling fear. Luke portrayed this fear still more clearly, for he said that the suffering brought Him into such struggle that His sweat became bloody.

"His sweat became," says the Evangelist, "like drops of blood"; Lk 22:44. He also added that an angel came, "strengthening Him"; Lk 22:43.

From all this, behold the weakness of human nature. For when the Godhead of the Only-begotten is united with humanity, and the Spirit is present as anointing, why does an angel strengthen the weakness of soul and body?

Is it not clear from this that the divine nature allowed all this to take place? It did so in order, in later times, to confirm believers in His taking of a soul and body by these proofs, and to refute objectors by such clear testimonies.

But now He speaks of God the Father's love for Him because He dies for men. "That I may take it again." Here too the Greek construction with hina, "that," does not indicate purpose, but only the result that is to occur.

Jesus Christ does not lay down His life only in order to take it again. He lays it down for the world. He takes it again in order to show that He is God.

When the Son was accomplishing in time the work of the Father's love, the Father loved Him, so to speak, in human terms, in a special way. Love for the world and love for the Son were united in this action.

This action is the redemption of the beloved world by the beloved Son of God. "That I may take it again." In this expression, and especially in those that follow, the Lord indicates with particular force and expressiveness that He voluntarily offers Himself as sacrifice for the world.

This is especially proved by His power to take life again after death, that is, to rise. Of course, the expression "I lay down My life" already contains the thought of free, voluntary, and unforced self-sacrifice.

But the form of expression which the Lord used above, Jn 10:11-13, could somewhat obscure this lofty thought in the minds of His hearers. For in the death of a shepherd who dies for his sheep because of the wolf, there lies the idea of voluntary love.

Yet there also lies the idea of violence and even weakness. Therefore the Lord unfolds, in application to Himself as Shepherd, the idea of a wholly voluntary death. It excludes every violence and every weakness, and He unfolds it forcefully, both positively and negatively; cf. Chrysostom and Theophylact.

If He wished to preserve His life, no one could take it. By His own will, with complete freedom, He gives Himself over to death. With the same freedom He will restore life to Himself.

According to these words, in Christ Jesus there is seen not only a free person. This person is not separated in Him from limitless might. Only through the union of the human person with divine might could He have power to restore life to Himself.

"This command I have received from My Father." "By saying that He received a command from the Father, He shows that He does what is pleasing to Him. Thus, when they seize Him, they should not think that He has been abandoned and betrayed by the Father"; Chrysostom.

In Mt 26:46: "And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is, My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"

And in Lk 23: "And Jesus cried with a loud voice and said: Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit." It is this soul that He lays down for the sheep.

The Godhead did not abandon the body in the tomb and was not separated from the soul in Hades. This is what was meant by the prophet's words in Ps 15:10: "You will not leave My soul in Hades, nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption."

Therefore the Lord also said: "No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself." The second Hypostasis of the Holy Trinity reveals God to men in human flesh.

God the Father loves the Incarnate One, who is Himself in His second Hypostasis. This love for the God-man embraces, in His person, all mankind, whose image according to flesh and soul God assumed.

The Father loves the Son in human form. In this form He loves the love burning in the human soul of the God-man for man.

God the Father loves in the God-man that exaltation of the human soul which, for the fulfillment of God's will, gives His flesh over to suffering and His soul to sorrow and descent into Hades.

The God of mercy, truth, and love sanctifies that sacrifice which is offered by the man Jesus. Yet it could be offered only because God was offering it.

Having shown His hearers the greatness of divine love, the Lord then reveals His full divine authority over His flesh. This love is manifested in the second Hypostasis of the Holy Trinity by sacrifice, and in the first Hypostasis by love for the sacrifice offered.

For, laying down His soul and permitting its separation from the flesh, He again receives the human soul in the Resurrection. He restores the whole man again, with flesh and spirit, but in a new and glorified form.

This form He hands on as an inheritance to those who believe in Him. It was very important for the peace of the Lord's disciples, and of all believers, that before the violent death of the God-man they should know the truth.

It was not Jewish malice that overcame the Lord. Rather, He Himself, by His will, laid down His soul and accepted suffering and death. Therefore the Lord explains this.

The great Sacrifice is accomplished neither unwillingly nor by compulsion. "No one takes the soul from the Lord." By His holy will He lays it down, and by His holy will He receives it again.

This is done in fulfillment of the divine decree concerning man's salvation. It is expressed in the words: "This command I have received from My Father."