John 5:26Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Then He adds an explanatory argument to His words, saying: "For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself." Do you see what equality is revealed here, with only this distinction, that the One is Father and the Other is Son? The word "granted" alone expresses the distinction. In all else equality and unity are shown. From this it is clear that He does all things with the same authority and power as the Father, and that He does not borrow His power from anyone else. He has life in Himself just as the Father does. Therefore He immediately adds further words from which we may understand what came before. What are they?

"As," He says, "the Father has life in Himself, so He has given the Son also to have life in Himself," so that He may give life to those who hear His voice.

When you hear that the Father gave the Son life, and judgment, and all the rest (Jn 5:22, 26), understand the word "gave" as meaning that He begot Him. Thus He has life, judges, and all this comes from the Father to the Son by nature.

Observe, I ask you, the divine economy also in these words. Then you will marvel at His manner of speech and will not, through ignorance, fall into scandal and draw destruction upon yourself. As man, so far as this belongs to the nature of the body, the Only-begotten was still visible on earth with flesh, as one of us. In many ways He instructed the Jews toward salvation. He clothed Himself with the splendor of two divine works. He clearly affirmed that He would raise the dead and bring them to judgment before His throne. But this was probably very unpleasant to His hearers. They were already accusing Him and thought it just to persecute Him because "He called God His own Father, making Himself equal with God" (Jn 5:18).

Why does He add, "in Himself"? It would have been enough to say, "For as the Father has life, so He has given the Son also to have life." He added, "in Himself," because the Father Himself has life in Himself, and the Son has it in Himself.

He wanted us to understand something by saying, "in Himself." In this word a mystery is hidden. "Knock, and it will be opened" (Lk 11:9).

O Lord, what does what You said mean? "In Himself"; why did You add this? Did the apostle Paul, to whom You gave life, not have life? He had it, He says.

How many men are dead, so as to rise and come to Your word by faith? When they come, will they not have life in You? They will have it, for I said earlier: "He who hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life" (Jn 5:24).

Therefore those who believe in You have life. But You did not say, "in themselves." When You spoke of the Father, "as the Father has life in Himself," and again when You spoke of Yourself, You said, "so He has given the Son also to have life in Himself."

As He Himself has, so He gave Him to have. Where does He have it? In Himself. Where did He give Him to have it? In Himself. Where does Paul have it? Not in himself, but in Christ. Let us see whether the apostle says this: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me" (Gal 2:20).

But how is this so? "As the Father has life in Himself, so He has given the Son also to have life in Himself," so that He lives not by participation, but unchangeably, and is Himself Life.

Thus He gave the Son also to have life. As He has it, so He gave Him to have it. What is the difference? The one gave, and the other received. Was He already existing when He received? Are we to think that Christ was once without light, when He is the Wisdom of the Father, of whom it is said, "the radiance of eternal light" (Wis 7:26)?

Therefore, when it is said, "He gave to the Son," it is as if it were said, "He begot the Son." For He gave by begetting. How did He give that He should be? He gave so that He should be Life. He gave so that He should be Life in Himself.

What does it mean to be Life in Himself? He did not need life from outside, but was Himself the fullness of life, from which others, believers, live while they live. Therefore He gave Him to have life in Himself. To whom did He give? To His Word, to Him who "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God" (Jn 1:1).

Turn your thoughts to what we proposed to set aside, so that now, if possible, it may be made clear. Immediately concerning this resurrection He added: "For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has given the Son also to have life in Himself."

What does it mean that the Father has life in Himself? He does not have life somewhere else, but in Himself. Certainly His life is from Himself, and not from elsewhere or from another. He does not borrow life, as it were, nor does He become a sharer in a life that is not His. He has life in Himself, so that life itself belongs to Him.

Whether I can say anything more about this, offering examples for your instruction, will depend on the Lord's help and on the keenness of your attention. God lives, and the soul lives. But God's life is unchangeable, while the life of the soul is unstable.

God neither grows nor ages, but is always the same in Himself, such as He is. He is not one thing now, another later, and a third before. The life of the soul is very unstable. It lived foolishly, and now it lives wisely. It lived unrighteously, and now it lives righteously.

It sometimes remembers, sometimes forgets, sometimes learns, sometimes is unable to learn. Sometimes it loses what it learned, sometimes it grasps what it lost. The life of the soul is changeable.

When the soul lives unrighteously, it is dead. When it becomes righteous, it becomes a participant in another life, which is not ordinary life. It is raised to God and clings to God, by whom it is justified. For it is said: "To him who believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness" (Rom 4:5).

By falling away from Him, the soul becomes unrighteous. By turning toward Him, it becomes righteous. Do you not see that it is as if something cold were heated when placed in fire, and cooled when removed from fire?

Do you not see that it is as if something dark, when brought into the light, were illumined, and became dark when removed from the light? The soul is something like this, but God is not so.

A man may say that he has light in his eyes. But let the eyes, if they can, speak with a voice of their own and say, "We have light in ourselves." What you say is not true. You eyes say that you possess your own light in yourselves. Yes, you have light, but from heaven.

You have light, but if night comes, it is light from the moon or from lamps, not your own. When you are closed, you lose what you receive when you are open. You do not have light in yourselves.

Keep the light, if you can, when the sun sets. Night comes, and you enjoy the light of night. Keep the light when the lamp is taken away. Since, when the lamp is taken away, you remain in darkness, you do not have light in yourselves.

Therefore, to have light in oneself means not to need light from another. See, if anyone understands how He shows the Son equal to the Father, saying, "As the Father has life in Himself, so He has given the Son also to have life in Himself," then the only difference between the Father and the Son is this. The Father has life in Himself, which no one gave Him, while the Son has life in Himself, which the Father gave Him.

But here a cloud arises that must be dispersed. Let us not lose heart. Let us be attentive. There are pastures for the mind. Let us not reject them, that we may live.

Behold, you say, you yourself assert that the Father gave life to the Son, so that He might have it in Himself, just as the Father has life in Himself. You say that the Father possesses it and the Son possesses it. The Father is life and the Son is life. Both together are one life, not two, for there is one God and not two Gods. The same is true of life.

How, then, did the Father give life to the Son? Not as though the Son previously had no life and received life from the Father in order to live. If this were so, He would not have life in Himself.

Consider what I said about the soul. There is a soul which, even if it is irrational and unrighteous, is still a soul. Even if it is impious, it remains a soul. Thus it is one thing to be a soul, and another to be rational, righteous, and pious.

Therefore there is something in which it is still irrational, still unrighteous, still impious. Yet it is not nothing and is not without life. Through various actions the soul shows itself to be alive, even when it does not show itself to be rational, pious, and righteous.

Indeed, if it were not alive, it would not move the body. It would not command the feet to walk, the hands to work, the eyes to see, and the ears to hear. It would not open the mouth for speech, nor move the tongue to pronounce sounds.

By these actions it shows that it lives and that it is something better than the body. But does it show by these actions that it is rational, pious, and righteous? Do not foolish, impious, and unrighteous men walk, work with their hands, see, hear, and speak?

When the soul rises to something which it is not and which is above it, by which it exists, then it gains rationality, righteousness, and piety. Without this, although it exists, it is nevertheless dead. It does not have the life by which it itself lives, but only the life by which it gives life to the body.

For in the soul, one thing is that by which the body receives life, and another is that by which the soul itself receives life. The soul is certainly better than the body, but God is better than the soul itself.

Therefore the soul, even if irrational, unrighteous, and impious, is the life of the body. But since God is its own life, just as the soul, dwelling in the body, gives it energy, beauty, movement, and the work of its members, so God, being the life of the soul, gives it rationality, piety, righteousness, and love.

Thus what is given to the body by the soul is one thing, and what is given to the soul by God is another. The soul gives life and is given life. It gives life to what is dead, even if it itself has not been enlivened.

When the Word reached the hearers and entered them, and they not only heard but obeyed, the soul rose from its death to its life. That is, it rose from unrighteousness, irrationality, and impiety to its God, who is for it rationality, righteousness, and light.

Let it rise to Him. Let it be illumined by Him. "Look to Him," says the psalm. And what will this give us? "And you will be radiant" (cf. Ps 33:6). But if, by looking, you are illumined, and by turning away, you sink into darkness, then your light was not in yourselves, but in your God.

Look to Him, that you may rise. But if you turn away from Him, you will die. Therefore, if by turning toward Him you possess life, and by turning away you die, then your life was not in you. For your very life is the same as your light. "For with You is the fountain of life; in Your light we see light" (Ps 35:10).

It is not, then, that the Word of God, the Son of God, was something before receiving life and then had life through participation in the Father, as the soul is one thing before it is illumined and becomes better when illumined by participation in what is better. No. He has life in Himself, and by this He Himself is life itself.

What, then, does He mean when He says, "He has given the Son to have life in Himself"? I will say it briefly: it means that He begot the Son. Not that He was without life and suddenly received life, but that, being begotten, He became Life.

The Father is Life without being begotten. The Son is Life by being begotten. The Father is not begotten by any father. The Son is begotten by God the Father. The Father owes His being to no one, but that He is Father is manifested through the Son.

The Son, both in being Son and in being what He is, is from the Father. Therefore He said, "He has given the Son to have life in Himself," as if saying, "The Father, who is Life in Himself, begot the Son, who would be Life in Himself."

He wanted "gave" to be understood as "begot." It is as if we said to someone, "God gave you being." To whom did He give it? If He gave being to someone already existing, He would not have given him being, because the one able to receive would already have existed before it was given.

When you hear, "He gave you being," it means that you did not yet exist so as to receive being. By existing, you received that you should be. A builder gave being to this house, that it should be. What did he give it? He gave it to be a house.

To whom did he give it? To this house. What did he give it? To be a house. How could he give the house that the house should be a house? If the house was already a house, to whom did he give that it should be a house?

What then does it mean that he gave it to be a house? It means that he built it, that it should be a house. What did the Father give the Son? He gave Him to be His Son. He begot Him, that He should be Life.

That is, He "gave Him to have life in Himself," so that He should be Life, needing no other source of life. He was not to be thought to have life by participation in another. If He had life by participation, He could, by losing participation, be without life. You must neither imagine, suppose, nor believe this concerning the Son.

Therefore the Father has life, and the Son has life. The Father has it in Himself and not from the Son. The Son has it in Himself, but from the Father. He was begotten by the Father so that life would be in Him Himself.

The Father is not begotten and is Life in Himself. He begot the Son not as lesser, but by begetting made Him equal. For He who created all times in complete perfection did not need time in order to become perfect.

"He gave" is a humble expression and has a wise purpose. "To have life in Himself" means to serve as the source of life.

He testified that all that is living in Him is from the Living One. That the living is born living from the living is the continuation of birth, without any novelty with respect to nature.

For it is not new that what is born from the living is living. Life did not appear from nothing for birth.

The life that received birth necessarily comes from life, through the unity of nature and the mystery of perfect and ineffable generation. Thus life lives in the Living One and has the Living One in itself.

Having thus refuted the blasphemous accusation of the Jews, who charged Him with unjustly appropriating divine rights to Himself, the Lord deigned to unfold more fully what He had briefly said about the resurrection and judgment entrusted to Him. In the same way, He had earlier defended the divine authority to forgive men their sins. "I have spoken of resurrection. Its beginning and its universal manifestation depend on Me. It begins with My preaching, with My word. Whoever hears it and receives it with faith in Him who sent Me is raised by that very word to spiritual life. And this life is eternal, not cut off even by the limits of temporal life. But the Son also has power to restore life to man's dead flesh. This resurrection already lies in seed within that spiritual resurrection.

From this point onward, Jesus Christ speaks of resurrection and judgment as they take place in time. He beholds the time of both as already come, because here He speaks of spiritual resurrection. By the dead He means those spiritually dead who, through faith in His word, rise to a new and holy life. Here φωνη is a figurative expression in place of λόγος in verse 24. The possibility of accomplishing so great a work, proper to God alone, lies in this: God the Father is life in the proper sense. He has life in Himself independently and from Himself, and He is the source of life for all that exists. He gave the Son to have in Himself this same independent, self-originating life. Although life belongs to the Son as communicated from the Father, He nevertheless has it independently in Himself.

"For as the Father," and so forth: this is the inner ground why the Son can act in resurrection and judgment as the preceding verses indicate. He acts almightily, as God the Father does. The Father has life in Himself. God is the source of all life, and He is self-existent life. Therefore every living thing receives its life from Him. This self-existent life is also in the Son, as it is in God the Father (cf. Jn 1:4 and note). For this reason He gives life to the dead by His word, both spiritually and bodily. As the Word, the Son of God, consubstantial with the Father, He always had this life in Himself. Yet in His Incarnation, as the Son of Man, He also received from God to have this same self-existent life in Himself.

Verses 25-29. "They will hear the voice of the Son of God" means that they will feel and fulfill the mighty will of the Son of God (1 Cor 15:51-52; 1 Thess 4:16). The Lord seeks to awaken repentance in the hardened Jewish souls by pointing to their dependence on the mighty Judge. The power of the Son of God over the dead depends on His having life in Himself, verse 24, and on the Father having given Him authority, verse 27. The latter thought recalls the vision of the prophet Daniel (Dan 7:13-26). There the Son of Man appears before the throne of the Father and receives eternal dominion over the nations. This is the Messiah.

The one source of life is God. God alone is absolute life, one and undivided in the Father, in the Son who reveals the Father, and in the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and gives life to all creation redeemed by the Son. The Father and the Son are one, for we believe in the Son of God, Light of Light, true God of true God. Therefore the life of all the mysterious Hypostases of the Holy Trinity is one life, belonging as much to the Father as to the Son. For this reason the Son is said to have the same life that belongs absolutely to God, worshiped in the Holy Trinity. Thus it was said above, in verse 21: "As the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom He wills." The Son gives life both physically and morally.