John 13:20Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

If, He says, you practice wisdom, always keeping Me in memory and setting before yourselves all that I suffered and did, then you will easily bear afflictions. But He comforts them not only by this, but also by the fact that they will receive great services from all. He indicated the first by saying: "If you do them, blessed are you." He indicated the other by the words: "He who receives you receives Me." He opened for them the houses of all, so that they had a double consolation, both in their own wisdom and in the zeal of those who served them.

The other way is that He opens the houses of all to them, since all who listen to their teaching will receive them. Do you see the connection of the present words with the preceding ones? The Lord will leave them. They will endure many evils and afflictions. He comforts them by His own example, for He will be betrayed by a disciple, yet He washes him. He also comforts them by foretelling that, though they will suffer many afflictions, all will receive them. Whoever receives you receives Me, and through Me, God and the Father. Note the power of the consolation. He says that men will honor you as God Himself. Therefore do not grow faint because of the malice of persecutors.

He preferred a more pleasant form of speech, giving His hearers to understand the opposite from it. At that moment a threat was more timely than an exhortation, since the crime was at the door and the betrayal was already being planned. For Satan had already put this intention into the betrayer's heart (Jn 13:2). Therefore, He says, just as the one who receives him whom I send receives Me Myself, and not someone else, so also the one who receives the Sent One from God the Father will undoubtedly receive the Father Himself. Yet in these words one may see a certain softening in the expression of their meaning. Whoever considers the opposite side will see that the betrayer's impiety extends not only to the Son, but also to the Father Himself. Thus these words contain a kind of threat expressed in pleasant words, as though indirectly indicating their meaning. Each of us receives Him as the One sent from God when we consent to His words and honor the One proclaimed by God through keeping His commandments. On the same basis, I think, the one who believes in the Son receives the Lord and, through Him, the Father. For with the indication of the Begotten One, the Begetter is also indicated. Whoever wholly believes that He is the Son will certainly also confess the One Who begot Him. Therefore the betrayer's crime is terrible, since through impiety toward the Son he also committed an insult against God the Father Himself. Otherwise, he would have received and honored Him, sincerely handing over his heart to the Lord. He would have confessed with undoubting faith that the Son is God from God. The wretched man would have placed love for Him above filthy gains. Indeed, I think that, by not becoming a betrayer, he would not have made himself such a man for whom it would have been better never to have existed.

How then are we to receive these words of the Lord? "He who receives Me receives Him who sent Me." These words express the unity of nature between the Father and the Son. "He who receives the one whom I shall send receives Me." These words refer to the unity of nature between the Son and His messenger.

There is nothing unfitting in this understanding, since the Word became flesh, that is, God became man. Thus, probably in unity with human nature, He said, "He who receives the one whom I shall send receives Me." But according to the divine nature He said, "He who receives Me receives Him who sent Me."

Yet in this passage He spoke not so much of unity of nature as of the authority of the sender over the one sent. Let everyone receive the one sent, so that in him he may discern the one who sent him.

Therefore, if you seek Christ in Peter, you will find Peter's Master. If you seek the Father in the Son, you will find Him who begot the Only-begotten. Finally, when you receive the one sent, you will not err in believing that you receive also the sender.

Did He really wish us to think that the difference between the one whom He sends and Himself is the same as between Himself and God the Father? If we receive this in that way, then I do not know what steps we must build. May it never be! This would be according to the Arian principle.

Augustine goes on to speak of steps of dignity which, in the Arian view, separate God the Father and God the Son. The word gradus is best understood as "steps," since Augustine uses it to form the image of a ladder. On its different steps the heretics place the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and the Apostles. By it the Arians descend to death rather than ascend to heaven. At the end of the passage he speaks directly of the heretics' ladder, scalae.

When they hear or read these Gospel words, they at once hurry to those steps of their teaching. By them they do not ascend to life, but descend to death. They immediately begin to say, "As far as the Apostle of the Son is from the Son, according to His words, 'He who receives the one whom I shall send receives Me,' so far is the Son from the Father, according to His words, 'He who receives Me receives Him who sent Me.'"

But if you speak so, heretic, you have forgotten your own steps. If, on the basis of these words of the Lord, you define the distance between the Son and the Father as the same as that between the Apostle and the Son, where will you place the Holy Spirit?

Has He vanished from you, whom you usually place after the Son? Then He will stand between the Apostle and the Son. In that case the distance between the Son and the Apostle will be much greater than that between the Father and the Son.

Or perhaps, so that the same distance may remain between the Son and the Apostle and between the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit will be equal to the Son? But you do not want this. Where then will you place Him, if you establish the same distance between the Apostle and the Son as between the Son and the Father?

Therefore restrain the boldness of your prejudice. Do not try to find in those words the same distance between the Father and the Son as between the Son and the Apostle. Rather hear the Son Himself when He says, "I and the Father are one" (Jn 10:30).

Here the Truth left us no hint of distance between the Begetter and the Only-begotten. Here Christ shattered your steps. Here the Stone broke your ladder.

After refuting the slander of the heretics, how should we receive these words of the Lord: "He who receives the one whom I shall send receives Me; he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me"?

If we wished to understand, "He who receives Me receives Him who sent Me," as an assertion of the one nature of the Father and the Son, then the similar form of the phrase, "He who receives the one whom I shall send receives Me," would seem to assert one nature of the Son and the Apostle.

Indeed, this could be understood in such a way. For the Giant had a twofold nature, He who rejoiced to run His course (cf. Ps 19:5). "The Word became flesh" (Jn 1:14), that is, God became man.

Therefore one may suppose that He said, "He who receives the one whom I shall send receives Me" as man. And "he who receives Me" as God "receives Him who sent Me."

But if He spoke so, He was emphasizing not unity of nature, but the significance of the Sender in the one sent. That is, let each one receive the sent one in such a way as to see in him the Sender.

Thus, if you seek Christ in Peter, you will find the Master of the disciple. If you seek the Father in the Son, you will find the Begetter of the Only-begotten Son. So in the person of the one sent, you will unfailingly receive the Sender.

What follows next in the Gospel need not be pressed into the narrow limits of time. Therefore, beloved, let the words already spoken be well digested by you, like food for holy sheep, if this is enough. If it is not enough, let them be carefully chewed over.

This Evangelist does not transmit the promise, though it fits very well among the Lord's sayings which he gives between verses 17 and 18. Namely, He indicated that only those chosen by God for salvation would share in the goods of the promise. Yet over one of them, though he had been chosen among the Lord's disciples, Scripture had to be fulfilled (Ps 40:10; Jn 13:18). The betrayal of Judas, together with all its consequences, would trouble the true disciples of Christ. But they had to remember that this had been foretold to them and therefore foreseen by the Lord (19). To strengthen their faith still more, the Lord, in contrast to the betrayal of Judas, foretells that they will be His messengers. At the same time He describes the high dignity of their ministry: whoever receives them receives Jesus Christ Himself and God Himself (20). The connection of verse 18 with what precedes in St. John, apart from Luke's Gospel, would be this: blessed are you if you not only know, but do what has been said (17). Meanwhile, one of you is not only unready to wash the feet of his fellow disciples, but will soon set his foot even upon his own Teacher and Lord.

all the Lord's discourse in Mt 10:16-42). But then the Apostles probably could not yet fully understand the greatness of these words and of their ministry. Even in the final discourse they still did not understand the greatness of the One whose messengers they were preparing to be. Compare the questions of Thomas and Philip (Jn 14:5, 8), the question of Judas, son of James (Jn 14:22), and the disciples' perplexity (Jn 16:17-18, 29-30). But this is understandable. They were men who had not yet risen by the power of the Spirit of God from the flesh, so as to ascend into the higher world. That world was opened to them by the Lord's Resurrection and the gift of the Holy Spirit, Who opened their mind to understand the Scriptures and the events of the life of the Lord Jesus. But the Lord, knowing that His words would soon be illumined for them, leaves them a precious gift in His words. They would understand them after great sorrow and great joy. Therefore, immediately before His Passion, the Lord again repeats that whoever receives them receives Him. And whoever receives Him receives into the chamber of his soul the Father consubstantial with Him. By this reminder He clothes them with power from on high for the preaching that awaited them. He fills their hearts with joy when they will see the fulfillment of His words (cf. Jn 16:20-22): "Your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you."