John 12:49Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Moreover, those who were to hear His words would be the cause of His knowledge. If He received the commandment about what to say only when He was sent, then you must finally admit that He did not know this before He was sent.

What could be more impious than these words, if someone takes them in this sense and does not seek the reason for their lowliness?

The Apostle Paul says that even the disciples knew what is the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God (Rom 12:2). Would the Son not know it until He received a commandment?

Is there any coherence in this? Do you see that He speaks with extreme lowliness, so as to draw the Jews to Himself and to silence those who come later?

Therefore He speaks in human fashion to compel them, even in this way, to avoid everything base in His words. They should know that He speaks so not according to His essence, but according to the weakness of His hearers.

Thus our Lord Jesus Christ at one and the same time censures the stubborn Jewish people for resisting God the Father Himself. By saying that He received a commandment from Him and does not speak from Himself, He clearly shows Himself to be the Prophet foretold in the Law and proclaimed by the voice of God the Father from very ancient times.

He summons them, though disobedient, to remember that if they refuse to obey His words, they will surely undergo inevitable punishment and suffer what God declared. For those who transgress the holy commandment of God the Father and reject the life-giving word of God, our Savior Christ, must they not fall into the most terrible miseries?

Must they not remain without share in the life given by Him, justly hearing what was spoken by the voice of the prophet: “O earth, earth, hear, hear the word of the Lord: behold. I will bring evils upon this people, the fruit of their turning away, because they have not listened to My law, and you have rejected My word” (Jer 6:19)?

We find that the Jews are subject to a twofold accusation. They did not honor even the Law itself, although they regarded it as holy and dear, since they did not receive Him who had been proclaimed to them.

Nor did they heed the words of Christ our Savior, although He openly announced that He is the Prophet clearly preached by the Law (Deut 18:18). For He says that He uses words proceeding from God the Father.

Let no one think that there is any lessening of the Lord in any respect, either in essence or in divine dignity, when He says that He speaks nothing from Himself, but from the Father. First, let him reason again and answer our question.

Would anyone consider the name and work of prophecy fitting for Him who truly is, and is honored as, true God by nature? Everyone, even the very simple, I think, will reject this, considering it incredible that God, who speaks in the prophets, should be called a prophet.

For He Himself “multiplied visions,” as it is written (Hos 12:10), and “was represented by the hands of the prophets.” Therefore, since He received the name and form of servitude like ours, and in our likeness was called a prophet, the Law necessarily ascribed to Him what belongs to a prophet.

That is, He asks something from the Father and receives a commandment, “what to say and what to speak.” In addition, I think it necessary to say this also. Although the Jews honored the Law very highly, believing it had been spoken by God, they nevertheless did not receive the words of the Savior, who was transforming the ancient ordinances into spiritual worship.

What was the reason they did not wish to receive the transformation of the types into the truth? It was that they did not know the true God by nature. Nor did they have in mind that, being the Word of the Father, the Only-begotten wore our flesh for our sake.

Otherwise, at once worshiping God and immediately turning to everything well-pleasing to Him, they would have rendered Him fitting glory. Instead, the wretched men supposed that He was one like us. Thinking Him a mere man, they believed He thought so much of Himself that He even tried to destroy the very laws given by God the Father.

Thus they shamelessly said to Him: “It is not for a good work that we stone You, but for blasphemy, because You, being a man, make Yourself God” (Jn 10:33).

Therefore, by His great mercy and wise providence, our Lord Jesus draws His hearers away from their ingrained suspicion. He shifts His speech from His simple and merely human appearance to Him who is indisputably and unanimously worshiped by all, namely God the Father.

In every way He desires to shame the ignorant heart of the Jews, and by various means He seeks to direct the foolish toward the desire to know what is true and fitting.

The same words and arguments may be used by anyone to repel the slander of impious heretics. They think that the Son must be in some respect lesser than His Begetter, because He declares that He speaks nothing from Himself, that a commandment has been given to Him, and that He speaks as He has heard.

I consider what has been said sufficient. Nevertheless, I shall add something else to expose the unbridled boldness of their tongue. If you wish, leaving aside for the present the discourse concerning the divine economy with the flesh, we can prove that even concerning the Only-begotten Himself it is rightly and beautifully said: “For I do not speak from Myself, but the Father who sent Me, He gave Me a commandment, what I should say and what I should speak.”

He Himself, the living and hypostatic Word of God the Father, necessarily utters what is in Him. Bringing to light what is well-pleasing to His own Begetter, He says that He receives this as a commandment.

That this is truly so, and not otherwise, may be seen in ourselves. For the spoken word, consisting in the combination of words and expressions and uttered outwardly by articulate sound, receives, as it were, a commandment from our mind and reveals what is in it.

This happens in a brief moment. What the mind understands, it immediately transmits also to the voice. The voice, bringing outward what is within, reveals what is contained in the mind, changing nothing in what is commanded to it.

What, then, is strange, someone might say to them, if the Word, being Son of God the Father, reveals the will of Him who begot Him? He does not do so as our word does, for God is above every comparison.

And does not the prophet say that the name most fitting for Him is “Messenger of Great Counsel” (Is 9:6)? I think this too is clear. Therefore, in both essence and dignity, the Only-begotten suffers no loss if it is said that He received a commandment from God the Father.

For we ourselves often command something to others and order them to do it. Yet for this reason we are not deprived of our likeness, nor do we cease to be men, as though less consubstantial, either before the commandment or after the commandment.

But, you will say, although they remain consubstantial, those inferior in dignity among us serve others. To this I also answer you concerning the Only-begotten. If it had not been written of Him that, “existing in the form of God, He did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, and being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself” (Phil 2:6-8), then your objection might have some force.

But if the form of subjection and self-emptying is evident, why do you irrationally reproach Him who underwent even this condition for our sake? Therefore, having presented a full explanation of the soundness of the doctrines, we affirm that in the proposed saying our Lord Jesus Christ spoke providentially.

How does the Father give a commandment to the Only-begotten Son? By what word does He speak to the Word, if the Son Himself is the Only-begotten Word?

Is it through an angel, when the angels themselves were created through Him?

Is it through a cloud, which, when it spoke to the Son, did not speak for His sake, as He Himself says elsewhere (see Jn 12:30), but for others who had to hear it?

Is it through a sound issuing from a mouth, when He has no flesh, and when the Son is not separated from the Father by any spatial distance?

Was there air between Them, by whose vibration a sound would arise and reach the ear?

We must not think in this way about such an incorporeal and ineffable essence.

The Only-begotten Son is the Word of the Father and the Wisdom of the Father, in whom are all the commandments of the Father.

Indeed, there was never a time when the Son did not know the Father's commandments, so that He would need to receive in time what He did not possess before.

For He so received from the Father what He possesses that He received it by being born. The Father gave it to Him by begetting Him.

Indeed, He is life, and He certainly received life at His birth. There was no time when He was without life.

The Father also has life and is what He has. Yet He did not receive it, because His being is not from another.

The Son received life, because the Father, from whom His being comes, gave it. The Son is what He has, for He has life and is life.

Hear Him Himself say: "For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has given the Son to have life in Himself" (Jn 5:26).

Did He give it to Him as one already existing and not possessing it? Rather, He gave it by begetting Him.

He begot life. Life begot life.

Because He begot equal life, not unequal life, He said, "As the Father has life in Himself, so He has given the Son to have life in Himself."

He gave life because, by begetting life, what else did He give Him except to be life?

Because His begetting itself is eternal, and there was never a time when the Son, who is life, did not exist, there was never a Son without life.

As His begetting is eternal, so He who is begotten is eternal life.

So too the Father did not give a commandment that the Son did not have. As I said, all the commandments of the Father abide in the Wisdom of the Father, that is, in the Word of the Father.

It is said that He gave a commandment because He to whom it is said to have been given does not have being from Himself.

To give the Son that without which the Son never was is the same as to beget the Son, who never was without life.

Therefore we should not understand the commandment of which He speaks as an imperative word uttered by organs of speech, prescribing what the Son must do as though He were subordinate.

We should understand it in a manner worthy of God, as the communication of will. It is like the reflection of an image in a mirror, passing timelessly from the Father to the Son.

Even among men, one who has learned an art and by long meditation has rooted in himself an unshakable habit can act on his own according to the laws of knowledge formed within him.

Does the Wisdom of God, the Creator of all creation, ever perfect and wise without instruction, need a separate indication determining the manner and measure of His actions?

He is the Power of God, in whom "are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Col 2:3).

For this He sent Me, and He sent Me not to judge the world, but to save it. Therefore I judge no one (Jn 8:15). And why judge now, when everyone who does not fulfill the will of God proclaimed by Me condemns himself?"

Blessed are those who have prepared themselves for the passage into eternity by life according to the Gospel. Woe to the negligent, the inattentive, the self-willed, and the self-opinionated.

Woe to those who have not broken communion with Satan. Woe to those who have not entered into communion with God. Greater woe to those who entered that communion and rejected it.

Despite all this, Israel remained unfeeling, obstinate, and hostile. In vain, according to the prophetic word of Isaiah cited by the Apostle Paul, God continually stretched out His hands to him during the whole ministry of His Son.

All this provoked only unbelief and opposition in the chosen people. At last grace, as if seeing the uselessness of all its influences, gave that people over to its own criminal inclinations.

It then calmly committed the most outrageous ingratitude, the most terrible crime, and the saddest sacrilege that can darken the memory of a people.

The Son, revealing the Father in human form, speaks words that are not human. They are not words of human wisdom or inventions of human reason.

They are the eternal words of God, enlightening the human mind by the Holy Spirit of God. The Lord gives Him the holy and moving name of the eternal Comforter (Jn 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:13), who always abides with the Church of Christ.

The Word revealed to men could be accepted or rejected by individual persons because of the freedom of will given to the human soul. But the evil will of individuals could not alter the will of God, which saved the world.

"For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who perish, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the understanding of the prudent I will reject" (1 Cor 1:18-19; Is 29:14).

The Word of God was, is, and will be eternal life for us, together with the preaching of the Cross of which the Apostle Paul spoke.

Light, Love, Life: this is what the Lord brought us from heaven. These precious gifts of the one God, the Creator of the world, were manifested in the world by the second Hypostasis of the Holy Trinity, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Such, in brief, is the meaning of the final words of this chapter. It concludes the exposition of the teaching addressed by the Lord to the whole people and to the unbelieving Jews.

In the following chapters, before His Passion, the Lord enlightens His disciples, after the unworthy betrayer had withdrawn from among them.

After the great mystery of Christ's death, redemption, Resurrection, and Ascension into heaven with His glorified human flesh, they were to go preach to all nations.

They were to baptize them "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Mt 28:19).

And in the Lord's final words, "I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Mt 28:20), we draw joy and strength on this earth to await our resurrection.

We do so while "looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith" (Heb 12:2), and to the "Author of life" (Acts 3:15).