John 12:45Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

What then? Does this mean that God is a bodily being? Not at all. Christ is speaking here of intellectual vision, and by this He again shows His consubstantiality.

"And he who sees Me sees Him who sent Me." Does this mean one who sees bodily features? No.

For the Father is not a body, so that one could say that whoever sees Christ bodily also sees the Father. By seeing, I ask you to understand noetic contemplation.

The Lord speaks as though saying: Whoever has embraced My essence by mental contemplation, insofar as this is possible for man, has also embraced the essence of the Father.

Whoever has recognized Me as God will, without doubt, also recognize the Father. For I am the image of the Father.

By all this the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son is shown. Let those suffering from Arianism hear that one who believes in the Son believes not in Him, but in the Father.

That He is in complete identity with God the Father, by reason of natural likeness and, as it were, identity of essence, He disclosed in the words: "He who sees Me sees Him who sent Me."

Therefore, in order to persuade the listener that He is the complete likeness and image of the Father, although He became man, He brought forward: "He who sees Me sees Him who sent Me."

He speaks thus: Although for your salvation I became man, I am God by nature, begotten of God, and equal in all things to My Father.

Therefore, when honor is given to Me, do not think that you are honoring Me merely as a simple man. For I am God by nature, and the honor must pass to the Father.

There is not such a great difference between Me and Him who sent Me that one who sees Me does not see the Father.

It is true that the Lord Christ sent the apostles, but none of them dared to say, "He who believes in me."

Yes, we believe an apostle, but we do not believe in an apostle, because an apostle does not justify the ungodly.

An apostle can say, "He who receives me receives Him who sent me," or, "He who hears me hears Him who sent me," because the Lord Himself speaks to them in this way (Mt 10:40).

The servant gives honor to the master, and the son to the father. Then the father is, as it were, in the son, and the master is, as it were, in the servant.

By “seeing” here Jesus Christ means intellectual vision. He speaks as though saying: He who knows the Godhead knows also the Godhead of My Father, because our Godhead is one and the same. I am the image of the Father, differing from Him in nothing. Yet one sees the Godhead of Jesus Christ not in His divine nature itself, which is invisible and wholly incomprehensible, since “no one has ever seen God” (Jn 1:18). Rather, one sees it in His words and works, which belong to God alone.

The Evangelist made the above observation about the fruits of Jesus Christ's public activity after previously noting that Jesus, after His discourses concerning the Greeks' desire to see Him, "departed and hid Himself from them" (36).

Here, however, without noting when or where this occurred, he says: "But Jesus cried out and said."

Some commentators think that the Evangelist interrupted Jesus Christ's discourse, spoken in connection with the Greeks' desire to see Him, by his reflection on the people's unbelief. According to them, he now gives its continuation.

Other commentators base their view on the fact that the discourse cited here contains only sayings spoken by Jesus Christ at various times. These sayings were transmitted by the same Evangelist in different places.

Thus, in reality, all the data are present which make the crime of the Jewish people wholly inexcusable. Here their malice was manifested in all its fullness, and so was the fatherly goodness of God.

To set forth these proofs still more clearly, the Evangelist John reproduces the declaration which Christ finally made to them. This declaration was made with complete clarity and sealed with divine authority.

"But Jesus cried out and said: He who believes in Me believes not in Me, but in Him who sent Me." By His miracles Christ had fully proved that His work was the work of God Himself.

He had proved that, in reality, He was one with His Father.

"He who sees Me," and so forth. This seeing is not bodily. It is the "noetic contemplation" (Theophylact) of the inner essence of the One who is seen by bodily eyes, arising from faith and developed by faith.

Through this seeing or contemplation, the Lord becomes the light of the soul. Whoever does not attain this contemplation remains in darkness (v. 46).

Therefore one who sees the Lord Jesus in His outward form sees the invisible Father who sent Him (cf. Jn 5:36; Jn 6:38; Jn 7:18; Jn 8:18, 28).

"Whoever has embraced My essence by mental contemplation, insofar as this is possible for man, has also embraced the essence of the Father. Whoever has recognized Me as God will, without doubt, also recognize the Father."

"For I am the image of the Father. By all this the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son is shown" (Theophylact).

Verses 44-50 contain the substance of the teachings offered by Christ Jesus at various times. One cannot produce an example in which a whole discourse of the Savior consisted only of repetitions of what had been said before, without any new thought.

This is what appears in verses 44-50. Since such an extraction of thoughts from the Savior's teachings is entirely fitting for a disciple of Christ, verses 44-50 should be recognized as a continuation of John's reflection.

The connection with what precedes is this: by the words of Christ Jesus, the guilt of the Jews' unbelief is shown.

In a solemn appeal to the disciples surrounding Him, probably on the Mount of Olives after His withdrawal from the people, v. 36, the Lord sets forth, as it were, the essence of all that He had spoken to the people.

First of all, He clearly points to His identity with the Father. Human eyes cannot see God the Father, and the human mind cannot comprehend the Incomprehensible.

Yet the human soul can contemplate the Father in the Son, and to that soul the Lord appeals. Only by faith is the veil removed from the heart, says the Apostle Paul in 2 Cor 3:14.

"But we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord."