Paul says, "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ." Do you dare promise yourself that you will not come into judgment? You say, "Far be it from me to dare promise myself this. I believe Him who promises it."
The Savior speaks. Truth promises. He Himself said to me, "He who hears My words and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life, and passes from death into life, and does not come into judgment."
Therefore I have heard the words of my Lord and believed. Though I was unbelieving, I became faithful. As He told me, I passed from death into life. I do not come into judgment, not by my own conjecture, but by His promise.
"Truly, truly, I say to you: he who hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed, not is now passing, but has already passed, from death into life."
Attend to the words: "he who hears My word." He did not say, "he who believes in Me," but, "he who believes Him who sent Me." Let this believer hear the word of the Son, that he may believe in the Father.
Why does he hear Thy word and believe Another? When we hear someone's word, do we not believe the one who utters the word? Do we not entrust faith to him who speaks to us?
What, then, did He wish to say by, "he who hears My word and believes Him who sent Me," except this: "His Word is in Me"? And what does "he who hears My word" mean, except "he who hears Me"?
"He believes Him who sent Me, because when he believes in Him, he believes His Word. When he believes His Word, he believes in Me, for I am the Word of the Father."
Therefore there is unity in the Scriptures. Everything is in harmony, and nothing is contradictory. Cast discord out of your heart, and understand the harmony of the Scriptures. Can anything contradictory be called truth?
"He who hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life."
You remember what we established above: "As the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom He will" (Jn 5:21).
He has already begun to reveal Himself and to speak of the resurrection of the dead. See, the dead are already rising. For "he who hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life, and does not come into judgment."
Show that he has risen. "He has passed," He says, "from death into life." Whoever has passed from death into life has undoubtedly risen. He could not pass from death into life unless he had first been in death, and not in life.
When he passes, he will be in life and not in death. Thus he was dead and came to life. He was lost and was found (Lk 15:32).
Therefore even now a certain resurrection is taking place. Men pass from a certain death to a certain life: from the death of unbelief to the life of faith, from the death of falsehood to the life of truth, from the death of unrighteousness to the life of righteousness.
This is a certain resurrection of the dead.
But lest, believing, you think that you will not die in the flesh, and lest, understanding carnally, you say to yourself, "My Lord said to me, 'He who hears My words and believes Him who sent Me passes from death into life. Therefore, if I have believed, I shall not die,'" know that you will pay the debt of death which you owe to Adam.
For He also received it, in whom we all were. It is said, "You shall surely die" (Gen 2:17). The divine saying cannot be void.
But when you are released by the death of the old man, you will be taken into the eternal life of the new man. You will complete the passage from death into life. Only complete the passage of life.
What is your life? Faith. "The righteous shall live by faith" (Hab 2:4; Rom 1:17). When Christ has enlightened you as a believer, you pass from death to life. Remain where you have passed, and you will not come into judgment.
After the discourses we held with you the day before yesterday and yesterday, the time has come for today's Gospel passage. Following the order of the text, we must explain it, not according to its worth, but according to our strength.
For you drink not according to the abundance of the spring that gives you drink, but according to your small measure. Nor do we bring to your ears as much as the Spring Himself pours forth from Himself.
We bring only as much as we ourselves have been able to drink, in order to pass it on to your understanding. Meanwhile He Himself labors in your hearts far more earnestly than we labor for your ears.
The question under consideration is great, but the interpreter is not great. Rather, he is very small. Yet He leaves us hope and grants us confidence, who, being great, became small for our sake.
If He had not stirred us, and had not called us to understand Himself, but had left us as though we deserved contempt, then we could not receive His Godhead.
If He Himself had not received our mortality and come to us to impart the Gospel to us, and if He had not willed to share with us what is contemptible and small in us, then we would think that He who took our lowliness did not wish to give us His greatness.
I have said this so that no one may condemn me for such an interpretation, as though I had attempted something great. I have also said it so that no one may despair of receiving, by God's gift, what the Son of God deigned to say to him.
We must believe, then, that He wanted us to understand what He deigned to say for our sake. But if we cannot understand by ourselves, let Him who gave us the word without our asking give us understanding when we ask.
Attend, then, to the mysteries contained in His words. "Truly, truly, I say to you: he who hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life."
We all, of course, seek eternal life. And He says, "He who hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life."
Did He not want us to hear His word? Did He oppose our understanding it? If eternal life consists in hearing and believing, much more does it consist in understanding.
Faith is a step of piety. The fruit of faith is understanding, by which we may attain eternal life. There the Gospel will no longer be read to us.
When there are no more pages of text, no voice of reader or interpreter, He Himself will appear who now has given us the Gospel.
All His children will stand beside Him with a pure heart and in an immortal body, never again to die. He Himself will adorn them and enlighten them, made alive and seeing that "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God" (Jn 1:1).
Let us now consider what we are, and let us recognize whom we must hear. Christ is God, and He speaks with men. He wishes to be received. Let Him make us capable of receiving.
He wishes us to see Him. Let Him open our eyes. He does not speak to us without reason, but because what He promises us is true.
"He who hears My word," He says, "and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life, and will not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life."
Where did this happen, that we have passed from death to life, so as not to come into judgment? In this life men pass from death to life. They pass in this life, which is not yet life.
Who is the one who passes? "He who hears My word," He says, "and believes Him who sent Me." If you keep this, you believe and pass.
Does one who stands still pass? Certainly, for he stands bodily, but passes in mind. Where was he, from where did he pass, and where is he passing? He passes from death to life.
Look at the man standing, in whom everything said here takes place. He stands and listens. Perhaps he did not believe. By hearing, he believed. A moment before he did not believe; now he believes.
He has made, as it were, a passage from the region of unbelief into the region of faith. He moves in heart and does not move in flesh. He moves toward the better, because those who abandon faith turn toward the worse.
See, in this life, which, as I said, is not yet life, men pass from death to life, so that they may not come into judgment.
Why did I say that this life is not yet life? If it were life, the Lord would not have said to a certain man, "If you would enter into life, keep the commandments" (Mt 19:17).
He did not say to him, "If you would enter into eternal life." He did not add "eternal," but said only "life." Therefore this life should not be called life, because it is not true life.
What life is true, if not that which is eternal life? Hear the apostle, who said to Timothy, "Charge the rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy."
He continues, "Let them do good, be rich in good works, generous, ready to share" (1 Tim 6:17-18).
Why does he speak this way? Hear what follows: "Let them lay up for themselves a good foundation for the future, that they may attain true life" (cf. 1 Tim 6:19).
If they must lay up for themselves a good foundation for the future, that they may attain true life, then clearly the life in which they were living is false.
Why do you desire true life, if you already possess true life? Must true life be attained? Then one must depart from false life.
How does one depart? Where does one go? Hear and believe, and you will pass from death to life, and you will not come into judgment.
What does this mean, "you will not come into judgment"? And who will be better than the Apostle Paul, who says, "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each may receive according to what he has done in the body, whether good or evil" (2 Cor 5:10)?
Paul says, "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ," and you dare promise yourself that you will not come into judgment.
"By no means," you say. "I do not dare promise this to myself, but I believe Him who promised it. The Savior speaks. Truth promises. He Himself says to me, 'He who hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life.'"
"He passes from death into life, and will not come into judgment. Therefore I have heard the words of my Lord and have believed. I who was formerly unbelieving have become a believer."
"As He warned me, I have passed from death to life. I do not come into judgment, not according to my own supposition, but according to His promise."
What then? Does Paul speak against Christ? Does the servant speak against the Master? The disciple against the Teacher? Man against God?
The Lord says, "He who hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life, has passed from death into life, and will not come into judgment." Yet the apostle says, "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ."
If one who appears before the tribunal does not come into judgment, I do not know how to understand this.
Our Lord God opens this to us and shows through His Scriptures how what is said about judgment should be understood. I urge you to be attentive.
Sometimes judgment means punishment. Sometimes judgment means discrimination. According to the sense in which judgment means discrimination, "we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ."
Each must receive according to what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. The very act of separation is carried out in order to assign good things to the good, and evil things to the evil.
If judgment were always understood in an evil sense, the psalm would not say, "Judge me, O God" (Ps 42:1).
Perhaps someone hears the words, "Judge me, O God," and is amazed. For a man usually says, "May God forgive me! Spare me, O God!" Who then says, "Judge me, O God"?
Sometimes this verse is placed in a psalm as an antiphon, when it is pronounced by the reader and the people answer it. Will someone's heart not shrink back? Will someone not fear to sing and say to God, "Judge me, O God"?
And yet the faithful people sing this and do not think that they are asking something evil for themselves when reading the divine verse. Even if one does not sufficiently understand what he sings, he still believes that it contains something good.
THEOSIS