John 21:23Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Some understand it this way. Peter, hearing that he would die for Christ, said, "What then of John? Will he not die also?" Christ did not deny this, for everyone who has been born will die. Rather, He said, "If I will that he remain," that is, live until the end of the world, and then become a martyr for Me.

From this they say that he is alive, and that he will be slain by Antichrist when he preaches Christ together with Elijah. If they point to his tomb, what of it? He entered it alive and was afterward translated, like Enoch and Elijah.

Thus the Evangelist refutes the false opinion of those who thought that this disciple would not die, but would be immortal. It is utter falsehood that a man should be immortal. Although Enoch and Elijah have not died, yet they are mortal. So also John, though he has not died, will die.

Therefore the understanding of the words "will not die" in the sense that he will be immortal is false. Others maintain that he died, and understand the words "If I will that he remain" as we explained above.

We have stated all the opinions, so that none may be unknown to those who are curious. In our view, the words "that he remain until I come" are better understood not of life, but of separation from Peter, as the renowned golden-mouthed John understood them.

Therefore the wise and prudent man, when sufferings are before him, must be indifferent as to whether another is saved or not. He must endure his own sufferings, and he receives no relief from the calamity or prosperity of others. This is the meaning contained in the passage being interpreted.

Since he was thought to be dead, he was buried while sleeping. Thus he will remain until Christ comes, giving a sign of his life by the heaving of the dust. This, they think, is caused by the breathing of the sleeper rising from the depths to the surface of the grave. I consider it useless to argue against this opinion. Let those who know the place see for themselves whether what is told is now happening there, or has happened there. We have indeed heard this from people who cannot be called unreliable witnesses.

What does this mean? As far as I understand and grasp it, it means only this: "You follow Me by imitating Me in bearing temporal evils. Let the other remain until I come to restore the eternal good." More clearly it may be said in this way: "Let perfected action, having received the example of My sufferings, follow Me. Let contemplation, which has only just received its beginning, remain until I come, so that it may reach perfection when I come."

For the pious fullness of patience, reaching even to death, follows Christ. The fullness of knowledge, which is to be manifested then, remains until Christ comes. Here, on the earth of mortals, the evils of this world are endured. There, the good things of the Lord will be disclosed to sight in the land of the living.

The saying, "I will that he remain until I come," must not be understood as though He said that he must remain forever and abide continually. It means that he must wait, because what was signified through this John will certainly be fulfilled not now, but when He comes. But what was signified through that Peter, to whom it was said, "You follow Me," had to be accomplished now. Otherwise what is awaited would never be reached.

In this active life, the more we love Christ, the more easily we are freed from evil. He Himself loves us less as we now are, and therefore He frees us from evil, so that we may not always remain as we are. There He loves us more, because we shall not have what displeases Him and what He will separate from us. Here He loves us in order to heal and deliver us from what He does not love. Thus He loves us less here, where He does not want us to remain forever. He loves us more there, where He wants us to come and where He wants us to remain. Therefore let Peter love Him, that we may be freed from this mortal condition. And let John be loved, that we may abide forever in that immortal condition.

Through this line of thought it becomes clear why Christ loved John more than Peter. But it is not clear why Peter loved Christ more than John. For if Christ loves us more in the age to come, where we shall live with Him without end, than in this age, from which we depart in order to be there forever, it does not follow that we shall love Him less when we become better. We cannot become better except through ever greater love for Him.

Why then did John love Him less than Peter, if John symbolized that life in which He is to be loved far more? Perhaps because the words, "I will that he remain," that is, that he wait, "until I come," were spoken because we do not yet possess that love which will then be far greater. We await the future, that we may possess it when He comes.

For, as this same Apostle says in his Epistle, it has not yet appeared what we shall be. We know only that, when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is (1 Jn 3:2). Then we shall love more what we shall see. But the Lord Himself, in His predestination, loves more that future life of ours, knowing what it will be in us, in order to draw us to it by His love.

Therefore, since all the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth (Ps 24:10), we know our present wretched state because we feel it. For this reason we love the mercy of the Lord more, and we desire it to be shown for our deliverance from wretchedness. We ask for it daily and receive it, especially in the forgiveness of sins. This was expressed through Peter, who loved more but was loved less. For Christ loves those in wretchedness less than those in blessedness.

Yet we love less the contemplation of truth as it will then be, because we do not yet know it or possess it. This was expressed through John, who loved less, and who, until the Lord comes, awaits its attainment and the attainment in us of love for Him as it ought to be. Yet John was loved more, because what was prefigured through him makes him blessed.

Still, let no one divide these eminent Apostles. Both were in what Peter symbolized. Both will be in what John symbolized. In the figures, one followed the Savior and the other remained in this world. In faith, both endured the present miseries of this wretched state, and both awaited the future goods of that blessedness.

Not they alone do this, but the whole holy Church does it, the Bride of Christ. She is to be snatched from these trials and to abide in that blessedness. Peter and John symbolized these two lives, one one life and the other the other. But in this life both walked for a time through faith, and in that life both will rejoice eternally through vision.

For the sake of all the saints who share in the Body of Christ, and for the governing of this stormy life, Peter, the first of the Apostles, received the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, to bind and loose sins (cf. Mt 16:19). For the sake of all these same saints, and as a sign of perfect rest in the bosom of that hidden life, the Evangelist John reclined on the breast of Christ.

Yet Peter alone does not bind and loose sins, but the whole Church does. Nor does John alone quench his thirst from the fountain of the Lord's breast, so that from what he drank he might pour forth in preaching "God the Word in the beginning with God" (cf. Jn 1:1). He also proclaimed other lofty truths about the divinity of Christ, and about the Trinity and unity of the whole Godhead. These things must still be seen face to face in that Kingdom. Now, until the Lord comes, they must be seen through a glass darkly and in a riddle (cf. 1 Cor 13:12). Therefore the Lord Himself has poured out the Gospel over the whole circle of the earth, that all who belong to Him may drink from it, each according to his strength.

There are some, and they are worthy interpreters of Holy Scripture, who think that the Apostle John was loved more by Christ because he had no wife and from earliest childhood lived in perfect chastity. Although there is no clear testimony to this in the canonical Scriptures, this thought is greatly helped by the fact that he serves as a type of that life where there will be no marriage.

In his own writing he himself denies that a promise was given him that he would not die, lest anyone console himself with an empty hope. If desiring such a thing is excessive hope, how much more excessive is it to grieve without measure over what happens according to the order of things.

The Lord's words concerning John at the Lake of Galilee were probably passed from mouth to mouth as a precious memory. Their true meaning was likely lost, not in the mouths of those who had heard the Lord, but in the mouths of their numerous followers.

John the Theologian, as bishop, insistently indicates to his flock, and as Evangelist to the whole Christian world, that the Lord's words did not have the meaning which Christians had begun to give them in John's old age. This was especially so among the Christians of the Church of Ephesus, who warmly loved their pastor and took pride in him.

John, knowing the established opinion about him, corrects it by restoring the Lord's words in their purity. He does not permit himself any interpretation of them, for the future was hidden even from him. He did not know how God's will concerning him would be fulfilled.

In several places in his epistles, John expresses the thought that "the last hour is near," for example 1 Jn 2:18 and 4:3.

Regarding verse 23, we note that it decisively testifies that the final twenty-first chapter of John's Gospel was written by John himself. It does not allow the thought that it could have been added after his death. Only he, and he alone, could and had the right to reject the tradition already formed about him.

The addition of chapter 21 to the Gospel completed at chapter 20 is very natural. Most probably, the Gospel completed at chapter 20 was already being read with tenderness and reverence. Yet then, during John's lifetime, requests must have arisen that he write down the Lord's appearance in Galilee.

If, as is thought, Peter's martyr's death took place between the years 65 and 70, then perhaps when this news reached Ephesus, John found it necessary to cleanse and exalt Peter's memory fully. In view of Peter's denial, which neither John nor the other Evangelists concealed, he did this through the account of Peter's cleansing by the Lord Himself, with the charge to feed His sheep.

With this event John naturally connects the correction which he considered himself obliged to make to the false opinion formed about him, namely that immortality on earth had been promised to him.