John 14:19Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

It is true that, with regard to the superabundance and inexhaustibility of the Giver's grace, none of earth's inhabitants has remained without share in it. For it is said in the prophets, "I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh" (Joel 2:28). Yet each person becomes the cause for himself either of acquiring the good given by God, or of being altogether deprived of it. Some do not cleanse their mind at all through every virtue, but are greatly devoted to worldly evil. They will remain without share in divine grace, will not see Christ in themselves, and will have a heart bereft of the Spirit. For this reason, finding themselves as it were among orphans, they are oppressed by everything capable of violence. This may be passion, or a demon, or some worldly desire, or anything at all that draws and compels one toward sin. But to the pious, who have the capacity to receive Him, He rightly said, since they would suffer nothing of the kind: "I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you" (Jn 14:18). Therefore He calls Himself unseen and wholly invisible to those who think of worldly things, after His departure from here, I mean His ascent into heaven. But He says that He will be visible to the saints, placing in the eyes of their heart a certain divine and noetic radiance of the Holy Spirit, and sowing every good knowledge. Or we should understand it thus: "A little while, and the world will see Me no more; but you will see Me." Or, turning to another contemplation, especially since He added to these words, "because I live, and you will live," we may reason as follows. After He was made alive from the dead, He ordered for our nature its return to the state in which it was at the beginning. He showed man incorruptible, as in the firstfruits and in His own first temple, that is, in Himself. Then He ascended to the heavenly Father and God. But after a short interval of time, as we believe, He will descend again and come once more to us "in the glory of His Father with the holy angels" (Mt 16:27). He will set before all the dread Judgment, both the evil and the good. Everything that has been done will come to judgment. Rendering what is due according to each person's life, He will say to those on the left, that is, to those who once thought of the things in the world: "Depart from Me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels" (Mt 25:41). But to those on the right side, that is, to the holy and good, He will say: "Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world" (Mt 25:34). They will dwell and reign with Christ. They will enjoy heavenly blessings, having become conformed to His Resurrection and escaped the snares of the primordial corruption. They will be clothed in eternal and ineffable life, and will dwell without end with the ever-living Lord. Paul explains that those who have led a life beloved of God and excellent will be continually with Christ, evidently contemplating His divine and ineffable beauty. He says: "For the Lord Himself, with a command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God, will descend from heaven. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who remain, will be caught up with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we shall always be with the Lord" (1 Thess 4:16-17). And again, to those who have resolved to put worldly passions to death: "For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory" (Col 3:3-4). Therefore I shall state the general meaning of this saying. Those who love worldly evils will descend into Hades and be removed from the Face of Christ. But those who love virtue will be with Him and dwell with Him always. Having kept the pledge of the Spirit unharmed, they will be with Him and will contemplate His divine beauty without hindrance. For it is said, "The Lord will be your everlasting light, and your God your glory" (Isa 60:19). This, it seems, is precisely what the Lord wishes to indicate when we hear His words: "A little while, and the world will see Me no more; but you will see Me, because I live, and you will live." And surely He in no way speaks falsely when He calls the intervening time until His revelation "a little while." For God, who exists always, even a time long by our measure is reckoned as absolutely nothing. The Psalmist also testified to this in the words: "For a thousand years in Your sight, O Lord, are as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night" (Ps 89:5).

Moreover, after the Resurrection He refused to show to strangers even His flesh, which He showed His disciples not only for contemplation but also for touching. Perhaps in this sense we should understand the words: "A little while, and the world will see Me no more; but you will see Me, because I live, and you will live."

What does "because I live, and you will live" mean? Why did He say that He Himself lives in the present, while they will live in the future? Because He is speaking of life in the risen flesh, which He Himself would first reveal, and which He also promised to them.

Since His own Resurrection was to happen very soon, He used the present tense to indicate the nearness of the Resurrection. On the other hand, since their resurrection was deferred until the end of the age, He did not say, "and you live," but "and you will live."

Thus, by using two tenses of the verb, the present and the future, He very elegantly and briefly foretold two resurrections: His own soon, and ours at the end of the age.

"Because I," He said, "live, and you will live." That is, because He lives, we too will live. "For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead. As in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive" (1 Cor 15:21-22).

No one comes to death except through that Adam. No one comes to life except through Christ. Because we lived, we are dead. Because He lives, we too will live.

We are dead to Him when we live for ourselves. For He died for us and lives for Himself and for us. Since He lives, we too will live. By ourselves we were able to obtain death, but by ourselves we cannot likewise obtain true life.

If only this were meant here, then the promise, "I will not leave you orphans," would not be fulfilled.

The world, unworthy and incapable of inwardly receiving God into itself, can behold Christ only with bodily eyes. Therefore, together with the Lord's visible departure from the world, which is soon to take place, the world will not see Him.

The disciples, however, will see the Lord because they will live His life, having entered into inward communion with Him.

Together with the indwelling of the Spirit of God in them, they will receive true knowledge of the relation of the Son to the Father and to those who believe in Him. They will know that the Son has one essence with God the Father, and that He receives those who believe in Him into essential communion with Himself.

But this communion with Christ, and through Him with God the Father, is given on the condition of complete devotion to the Savior, expressed in the keeping of His commandments.

The Holy Spirit will be their Comforter and will teach them everything they need to know for their preaching activity. He will also remind them of everything Christ told them, which they could not understand at the time.

From the book of the Acts of the Apostles it is known that ten days after the Ascension of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles. He communicated to them the knowledge of everything necessary for them, the knowledge of the languages of the peoples to whom they had to go in preaching, and also the understanding of everything they had heard and seen while following Christ, but had not then understood.

Thus this whole discourse of Jesus contains the promise to send the Holy Spirit to the apostles and, in His person, to appear to them with the Father.

But since this discourse is broken and contains repetitions of what has been said, partly explained by the state of Jesus' own spirit, one may conclude from certain words in it, such as "I will come to you" and "you will see Me," that Jesus also spoke to the apostles about His coming appearances to them after His Resurrection.

See my booklet The Descent of the Holy Spirit, which contains a detailed study of the greatest miracle that transformed the apostles from men of little faith and doubt into such convinced preachers of the risen Christ that not even all the united powers of Hades could shake them.

"Because I live, and you will live." Therefore our communion will be entirely possible and necessary, as between the living.

"I live" does not mean only that after dying I will come to life or rise again, but that I live continuously, not subject to death. Therefore His death does not interrupt His life. Even in death He lives as the source of life, and death serves for Him only as a transition to the heavenly glory of His life, instead of His humble and self-abased life on earth.

"And you will live," that is, in union with Me as the source of life, you will live in the spirit. For the source of life is communion with God, and one who has such communion does not die spiritually.

By the power of this spiritual communion with Him, the source of life, they, being spiritually alive, will see Him or will behold Him in spirit. The unbelieving world, which has no communion with Him and therefore is not alive, will not see Him.

This spiritual vision of the Lord by them, or spiritual union with Him, will begin for them in its fullness with the sending down of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. On that day, or from that day, the Lord says, the mystery of My union with the Father and with you will be revealed to you.

You will know, so to speak, by experience, through the special enlightenment given you by the Holy Spirit, and not only by faith in My word. You will know that I am in My Father, cf. Jn 10:38, or that I and the Father are one, Jn 10:30, that is, one in essence and therefore in complete moral unity with Him.

You will know that you are in Me, that is, that you have the closest moral union with Me, and that I am in you by the power of this moral union, cf. Jn 15:1-7.

"When you hear the words, I am in the Father, and you in Me, and I in you, do not understand them in one and the same meaning. For the Son is in the Father as consubstantial, but He is in the apostles as helper and fellow-worker. The apostles are in Him as receiving from Him help, cooperation, and zeal" (Theophylact, cf. Chrysostom).

Yet because the world's failure to see the risen One depended properly on the incapacity of its spiritual sight for this vision, the vision promised to the apostles, together with bodily vision, included a spiritual vision of Christ. This was to unfold from the time of Christ's Resurrection.

So it was, according to the testimony of eyewitnesses of the Risen One, Lk 24:45, 51.

"Because I live, you will live also." Concerning Himself He says that, despite the death that lies before Him and will touch Him, He lives. He lives as eternal Life.

More than this, since He is the Author of life, Acts 3:15; 1 Cor 15:45, His faithful will also live despite every possible obstacle to life, amid the troubles and storms of the world, and amid inward and outward temptations.

Even after death they will live, not only in soul, but also with risen bodies, 1 Jn 3:2; 1 Cor 15:48-49.

He sanctified them by the Holy Spirit and made these trembling fishermen men of understanding, strength, and wisdom, men of God. Cf. Basil the Great, Homily 15. "A little while, and the world will see Me no more; but you will see Me." To the promise of His coming, the Lord adds that He will appear only to the disciples and not to the world. For from that time the right to preach and to remit sins would be handed to them by the Lord: Jn 20:22-23; Mt 28:19; Mk 16:15; Lk 24:47. Cf. also Acts 10:40-42, Peter's words about the Lord's appearing to the disciples and not to the world. The world that cried, "Crucify Him," is unworthy to see the Lord until it is "cut to the heart" (Acts 2:37). Then it must cry out with firm faith, "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord" (Mt 23:38-39). Until then, as the Lord said to the Jews, "their house is left desolate." God's mercy is great. We see that many of the hard-hearted Jews were later received into Christ's community, beheld the Lord spiritually, and were counted worthy of baptism by the Holy Spirit. Yet first they had to humble their hearts and not be of this world. "If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, and I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you" (Jn 15:19). They had to come out of it and seek the Lord, as He foretold to the Jews in Jn 7:34 and cf. 8:24, threatening the hardened that they would not find Him. But those who were "cut to the heart," like the thousands who listened to Peter on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:37-41), were received by the Lord according to His word: "He who comes to Me I will not cast out" (Jn 6:37). Jerusalem, "killing the prophets" (Mt 23:37), like the Gentiles, was unworthy to see the risen Lord in the flesh. To see Him was granted only to those sent as His witnesses and preachers of the "words of life" (Acts 5:20). In these disciples the whole moral future of mankind was henceforth concentrated. From that time they represented life, while the Gentile and Jewish world represented death. Therefore the Lord says to them, "I live," that is, I am He who lives forever, "and you will live." You are lamps kindled from the eternal Light. You are to bring My light and My life into the darkness and death of the world. From you other lamps must be kindled, until the whole world shines with My radiance and rises to share in My eternal life. The Lord knows that many of His words are still unclear to the disciples. Therefore He adds, "In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you." The Lord forewarns them not to be troubled because they do not yet understand everything. That day, still unknown to them, will come: the day of the radiant Resurrection of Christ. Then they will see that He has conquered death, and that He and the Father are one (Jn 10:30). They will also see that they, sinful and mortal men, are received into mysterious and gracious communion with God. This is by God's great love and for the sake of the great sacrifice of redemption. God manifests Himself to them and to all believers in the second Hypostasis of the Holy Trinity, one with the Father and the Holy Spirit, who assumed perishable flesh for the salvation of men.