John 2:22Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Again He says, "No sign shall be given to you except the sign of Jonah" (cf. Mt 16:4). And here again, "In three days I will raise it up."

This especially showed that He was not a mere man. He was able to win victory over death, to destroy its long dominion so quickly, and to end the grievous warfare.

Therefore He says, "Then you will know." When is this? When, having risen, I draw the whole world to Myself (Jn 12:32).

Then you will know that I did this also as God and as the true Son of God, punishing the insult against the Father.

Why did He not say what signs were needed to end the existing evil, but only promised to give a sign? Because in that way He would have hardened them still more, while now He struck them more deeply.

Nevertheless they said nothing in reply. It seemed to them that He was saying something incredible, and therefore they did not continue questioning Him. They passed it over as something impossible.

But if they had had understanding, then even if it seemed incredible to them at the time, they could later have come and asked Him about it. After He had worked many signs, they could have resolved their perplexity.

But because they were senseless, they paid no attention at all to some of His words, while they listened to others with evil intent. Therefore Christ also spoke to them in parables.

Yet another question arises. How did the disciples not know that He had to rise from the dead? It was because they had not yet been counted worthy of the grace of the Holy Spirit.

Although they often heard the word about the Resurrection, they understood nothing of it. They only reasoned among themselves about what it might mean.

Indeed, it was exceedingly strange and wondrous to hear that someone could raise Himself, and raise Himself in such a manner. Therefore Peter was rebuked when, understanding nothing of the Resurrection, he said, "Mercy on You, Lord" (Mt 16:22).

Christ did not clearly reveal this to them before the event itself, lest they be scandalized. At the beginning they did not yet believe His words, because of their great strangeness.

They also did not yet clearly know Who He was. No one could disbelieve what the events themselves loudly proclaimed. But what was spoken only in words, of course, not everyone wished to believe.

Therefore at first He left this teaching veiled. But when He had proved the truth of His words by the deed itself, then at last He gave them understanding and such grace of the Spirit that His disciples grasped everything at once.

"He will bring all things to your remembrance," it is said (Jn 14:26). If in one evening they lost all courage toward Him, fled, and even said they did not know Him, then without the Spirit's special grace they would hardly have remembered all Christ did and said throughout His life.

You may say that they were to hear everything from the Spirit, and could not retain all Christ's teaching in memory by themselves. What need, then, did they have to remain with Christ?

They needed it because the Spirit did not properly teach them something else, but brought to remembrance what Christ had said before. The sending of the Spirit to remind them of what had been spoken also contributed greatly to Christ's glory.

Thus at first it was God's mercy that such great and abundant grace of the Spirit was sent down upon them. Later it was their virtue that they made this gift their own.

They displayed a radiant life, great wisdom, and great labors. They despised the present life and counted all human things as nothing.

They rose above everything and, like swift eagles soaring on high, reached heaven itself by their deeds. By this they acquired the ineffable grace of the Spirit.

Let us also imitate them and not quench our lamps, but preserve their light by mercy. In this way the flame of that fire is sustained.

Let us gather oil in our vessels while we are here, because after our departure there it can no longer be bought. It can be acquired only through the hands of the poor.

Let us gather it here in abundance, if we wish to enter the bridal chamber with the Bridegroom. Otherwise we shall have to remain outside the chamber.

It is impossible, utterly impossible, to enter the vestibule of the Kingdom without mercy, even if we have performed many other good works. Therefore let us show mercy with complete zeal.

Thus may we enjoy the ineffable good things, of which may we all be counted worthy, by the grace and love for mankind of our Lord Jesus Christ. To Him be eternal glory and dominion, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Otherwise, let them tell us: whose body, among all the saints who have ever lived, was called a temple? I think no one will point to such a saint.

Therefore I affirm, and careful examination of divine Scripture will prove it entirely true, that such honor cannot be assigned to any of the saints.

Even the blessed Baptist reached the summit of every virtue and yielded primacy in piety to no one. Through the madness of Herod he suffered beheading. Yet nothing similar is said of him.

On the contrary, the Evangelist used an expression for his remains that indicates their coarse fleshly condition. He did this, as it seems to me, with providential care, so that this dignity might be preserved for Christ alone.

He writes thus: "And sending," the murderer, that is, Herod, "he beheaded John in the prison. And his disciples came and took his corpse (πτῶμα)" (Mt 14:10, 12).

If John's body is called a corpse, whose temple will it be? True, we too are called temples of God (1 Cor 3:16; 1 Cor 6:19; 2 Cor 6:16, 19).

But this is in another sense, because of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us. Moreover, we are called temples of God, not temples of ourselves.

Yet perhaps someone will object: tell me, then, how does the Savior Himself call His body a corpse? For He says, "Wherever the corpse is, there the eagles will be gathered together" (Mt 24:28).

To this we answer: it is true that Christ said this of His own body. But He speaks in the form of a parable and figuratively indicates the future gathering of the saints to Him.

This will take place when He appears again from heaven to us with the holy Angels "in the glory of His Father" (Mt 16:27).

As flocks of flesh-eating eagles quickly fly together to corpses, He says, so you also will be gathered to Me. Paul clearly expressed this to us in the words: "The trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible" (1 Cor 15:52).

And elsewhere: "We shall be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord" (1 Thess 4:17).

Thus the use of comparison and likeness cannot in any way harm the true meaning of the expression.

Listen, for He too was God: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (Jn 2:19). Did He say, "Destroy the temple, and the Father will raise it in three days"?

But how is it, if the Father raises and the Son raises? Likewise, if the Son raises, then the Father also raises, for the Son said: "I and the Father are one" (Jn 10:30).

Rather, it came from a desire to remove an outside influence from themselves and to retain their age-old possession, as this is expressed in the parable.

Here the beginning was already hidden of that murderous plot against God which later developed. This prophet was superfluous to them.

They wished to remain with the former order of things and with their former power. They were ready to free themselves, by whatever means, from the mighty reprover.

All this was already hidden then in the question of the Jews. By His answer the Lord expressed the thought that their way of thinking would not restrain His activity.

Likewise, He leaves them free to do whatever their soul desires. The end of this will be that by their iniquities they will not only bring this temple to final desolation.

They will also raise their hands against Him who is greater than the temple. Yet this will not prevent the fulfillment of His great work.

Their triumph will last no longer than three days. "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."

The Jews referred His words to the temple in the proper sense and put a question to Him. Jesus left it unanswered, perhaps because they deliberately altered the meaning of His words.

Yet they remembered these words of the Lord afterward. Having distorted them, they turned them into an accusation against Him.

Such was the Lord's entrance into His ministry. Already then He saw its end and announced it to all in the temple.

But what could most influence His followers was the freedom, clothed with divine power and majesty, with which He rose against the trampling of the sanctuary.

This profanation was being carried out on days especially sacred in the eyes of the Jewish hierarchy. From this it was clear to all that whoever wished to follow Him need not be constrained by the opinion of the spiritual rulers about Him.

They unfortunately had reasons to be displeased with Him, because they did not wish to part with their passions.

Christ, as the Evangelist explains, speaks here of the temple of His body. But the Jews understood these words literally, and therefore said to Him mockingly: "This temple was built in forty-six years, and will You raise it up in three days?"

Even if the inward meaning of the Lord's words was dark and incomprehensible to them, they still should not have understood them so externally and literally. It was obvious that Jesus Christ was not speaking here of this visible temple.

He was pointing to certain events in the moral world. Yet the Jews deliberately did not seek a deeper spiritual understanding of the Lord's words.

Later they used them as testimony against Jesus (Mt 26:61; Mk 14:58), and now they used them to mock Him.

By expressing in this form the prophecy of His death and Resurrection, Jesus Christ gives these thoughts. All Old Testament institutions and rites pointed to the coming Messiah, to His person and His work.

Their center, the temple of Jerusalem, was the symbolic dwelling place of God. It was a type of Christ's body, in which God the Word truly dwelt.

"The defilement of this temple, already begun by you," the Lord speaks, as it were, "you will extend so far that you will destroy even what constitutes its essence. You will put Me, the Messiah, to death.

But I shall rise on the third day. Soon afterward this visible temple, then deprived of its inner meaning and essence, and therefore no longer needed, will be destroyed by God's judgment.

Together with it, the whole Old Testament religious order, whose center it served, will also be destroyed. But in place of the destroyed religion I shall raise up, through My Resurrection, a new and higher religion."

We are compelled to understand this prophecy so by observing other prophecies. What is foretold of the thing prefigured is also foretold, in its essential features, of the figure itself. The three days, with regard to the figure's fate, signify in general a short period of time.

Therefore the Jewish questioners regarded such a statement by the unknown Galilean as blasphemy, madness, and insolence. This temple had already been under construction for forty-six years and was still unfinished.

Even thirty years later, 18,000 workers were laboring to complete some of its parts. They finished their work and received their dismissal only a few years before the destruction of the city, under the procuratorship of Albinus in AD 63. Josephus, Antt. 20, 9, 6.

Moreover, the history of this temple was linked with a whole series of memories. They showed what evil fate befell all who defiled it or sought its destruction.

Antiochus Epiphanes perished shamefully and disastrously in Persia. Crassus, who plundered its treasury, perished with his army amid the waterless sands of the desert.

Pompey, who blasphemously entered the Holy of Holies itself, was killed by an Egyptian centurion. His headless corpse was cast upon the shore in Egypt.

In the eyes of a Jew, to touch this temple meant drawing upon oneself the vengeance of the Most High. By twisting Christ's answer into this external and literal sense, they expressed extreme indignation.

They saw in His words blasphemy and the gravest irreverence toward the sanctuary. Yet in this case their indignation was not without a mixture of craft and hypocrisy.

In reality the Jewish questioners partly guessed the meaning of these words. This may be judged from the later history, when after Christ's crucifixion they remembered that He had spoken of restoring the temple of His body in three days.

In fact, Christ never said this to them directly. If they pointed to it, they did so only by drawing an inference from this very figurative saying.

Indeed, "He was speaking of the temple of His body," the Evangelist John remarks. Yet he adds that His disciples themselves fully understood the meaning of these words only after Christ's Resurrection (Jn 2:21-22).

They believed the Scripture, that is, the prophetic passages concerning His death and Resurrection. Examples include Ps 15:8 and following; compare Acts 2:25 and following; Acts 13:35; Isa 53:8, compare Acts 8:35; Ps 67:19, compare Eph 4:8; 1 Pet 3:19, and others.

And the word which Jesus had spoken: that is, His word about the destruction and restoration of the temple of His body, and other similar sayings in which the Lord spoke of His death and Resurrection.

"It is no wonder that the Jews and the disciples did not understand the words of Jesus. For there were two greatest difficulties for them.

One was that the matter of the Resurrection is very hard to comprehend. The other was that He who dwells in the body is God. Yet after the Resurrection the disciples understood and believed the Scripture" (Theophylact; compare Chrysostom).

In the year when our Lord Jesus Christ first came forth to preach, forty-six years had elapsed from the beginning of Herod's works. It must also be added that, in substance, Herod I's temple was an entirely new temple (Fl. Ios., loco supra cit.).

Even the old foundations of Zerubbabel's temple, laid in 520 BC after the captivity (1 Esd 5:2; 6 and the passage cited above), were destroyed and replaced by a new foundation.

Under the Maccabees, in 163-164 BC, Zerubbabel's temple was only cleansed from defilement and renewed. It was not rebuilt anew (1 Macc 1:10, 21, 54; 4:56-59).

Concerning the fact that the Lord's disciples could understand the mysterious sacred meaning of the Lord's words only later, we note this. The disciples also understood fully the acclamations of the people who met the Lord on the Mount of Olives only after the Lord was glorified.

"His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered," John says of that meeting (Jn 12:16). The same must be understood here.

All the events of the Lord's earthly life are illumined for the disciples by the bright light of Christ's Resurrection. Their souls and minds are enlightened by receiving the Holy Spirit on the very first day of the Lord's Resurrection.

Then He breathed on them and said: "Receive the Holy Spirit" (Jn 20:22), and "He opened their mind to understand the Scriptures" (Lk 24; Acts 1:3).

Later, on the great day of Pentecost, they also received the power of the Holy Spirit for preaching and for conflict with the world.

The disciples "believed the Scripture." That is, after their spirit was enlightened by the Spirit of God, they began to understand that "not one iota, not one stroke, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished" (Mt 5:18).

At the same time they understood that the fulfillment of the Law and the prophecies had been marked out by the wisdom of God otherwise than the popular conviction had imagined.

They understood that all the popular beliefs and hopes of the Jews were only phantoms of their proud self-delusion. For the mercy of God embraced the whole world in His love and created not a Jewish carnal kingdom, but a spiritual and universal kingdom.