John 5:40Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

But instead He accuses them of not wishing to come to Him, though through searching they are being led to this, saying: 'and you do not wish to come to Me.' Therefore, accepting the more fruitful sense, one corresponding to the preceding words, let us read it not as a command, but rather as an acknowledgment and indication.

The meaning of the saying will be as follows. He saw that they were constantly turning to the writings of Moses, and from there ignorantly gathering occasions for contradiction. They neither sought nor accepted anything else that could bring them to faith.

Therefore He again necessarily reveals to them the barrenness and uselessness of the labor of such inquiry. He clearly convicts them of not striving to use so great and beneficial a matter in the proper way.

For tell me, what benefit is there, He says, in your searching the divine Scriptures, thinking through them to enter into eternal life? Yet when you find them 'testifying of Me' and naming Me eternal life, 'you do not wish to come to Me, that you may have life.'

Thus, He says, from the very place whence you ought to receive salvation, you bring the greatest harm upon your souls, not understanding it. You sharpen yourselves from the sayings of Moses only for contradiction.

Yet you bring into your mind nothing by which you could acquire eternal life. That the Law and the holy Prophets say much about Life by nature, that is, about the Only-begotten, is known, I think, to all lovers of knowledge.

'Search the Scriptures,' Christ cried to the Jewish people. He said very clearly that no one can attain eternal life otherwise than by digging into the letters of the Law as though into a treasure.

There he must seek the pearl hidden in it, that is, Christ, 'in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,' according to the word of blessed Paul (Col 2:3).

Solomon also spoke in one place of such honorable and most wondrous wisdom and understanding: 'If you seek it as silver, and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God' (Prov 2:4-5).

Nothing can be compared with this for those who praise a pure life, who have resolved to accomplish only what is better and most excellent in all things, and who fill their mind with divine light.

For one must unceasingly delight in what is said concerning God. One must set Holy Scripture before oneself like a lamp, according to the holy Psalmist, who cries out and says: 'Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path' (Ps 118:105).

Therefore, since it is clear and evident that diligent search for the mystery of Christ grants eternal life and serves us as a path to every good courage, let us again apply labor useful above all to ourselves.

Let us strive to gather those passages in which the mystery of Christ is clearly indicated to us, and to set forth the meaning of each. Perhaps our words, containing subtle contemplations, will someday serve the prudent as a good occasion for contemplation of the truth.

They may also serve as a kind of step, raising them to a better and higher knowledge. Therefore we shall first profitably set forth what occurred historically, giving it the corresponding explanation.

As though transforming the narrative from type and shadow, we shall make it clear. Our discourse will incline toward the mystery of Christ and have Him as its goal, if it is true that 'the end of the Law' and the Prophets is 'Christ' (Rom 10:4; cf. Mt 5:17).

If somewhere, amid such great subtlety and obscurity of contemplation, we should fall short of what is most fitting, let the readers be indulgent toward us.

One must also know this. Having composed seventeen books On Worship and Service in Spirit and Truth, and having gathered in them a great multitude of contemplations, we deliberately omitted there and left unexamined the chapters placed in the present work.

Yet perhaps it was sometimes necessary to mention something from them. Therefore let us begin with what in the book of Genesis deserves a more skilled explanation.

Then, having followed all five books of Moses in order, we shall carefully examine besides them what is useful for our proposed purpose from the other Scriptures.

And since such lamps are rational, they shine and burn by the spirit. Even if they burn out and are extinguished, they still give off a smell. Literally, they emit a stench, the smell of a decaying body. Here the smell serves as testimony to the presence of the spirit in a dead man.

For the servants of God remain good lamps by the oil of His mercy, not by themselves. Truly, the grace of God sent down from above is that very oil in the lamps.

"I labored more abundantly than all of them," says one of the lamps. And lest he seem to speak by his own power, he added: "Yet not I, but the grace of God" (1 Cor 15:10).

Therefore every testimony before the coming of the Lord is a lamp. Peter says of it: "We have the prophetic word made more sure; and you do well to attend to it, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts" (2 Pet 1:19).

Thus the prophets are lamps, and all prophecy is one great lamp.

What then of the apostles? Are they not lamps? Certainly they are lamps. For He alone is not a lamp. He is neither kindled nor extinguished, because "as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son also to have life in Himself" (Jn 5:26).

Therefore the apostles are lamps. They give thanks because they have been kindled by the light of Truth, burn with the Spirit of love, and are filled with the oil of God's grace.

If they were not lamps, the Lord would not have said to them: "You are the light of the world" (Mt 5:14). After saying, "You are the light of the world," He shows that they must not think they are the Light of whom it was said: "There was the true Light, which enlightens every man coming into this world" (Jn 1:9).

"But if you search Scripture without hindrance, it itself will accuse you before God. Moses, in whom you hope, wrote directly about Me. He, and not I, will accuse you before My Father."

The Evangelist tells us nothing here about the results of this discourse. But from what follows we see that at the next Pascha the Lord could not go to Jerusalem. Even after one and a half years had passed since this discourse, the Jerusalem Pharisees still remembered it and sought Jesus' life (Jn 7:21-23).

There it speaks directly of one work, the healing of the whole man on the Sabbath, that is, both in body and in soul, as in Jn 5:14. Thus from this time the Jerusalem Pharisees began to persecute Jesus as their most dangerous enemy.

From this one may conclude that soon after that discourse the Lord was compelled to leave Jerusalem, which was hostile to Him.

Yet the seed of the divine teaching undoubtedly did not remain altogether without fruit even then. More attentive and impartial hearers of the Lord, such as Nicodemus, received in these instructions a new light for understanding the divine person of the Savior.

Other interpreters, relying on the past tense of the verb "has borne witness," distinguish this testimony of God concerning Christ as direct and already given in the Old Testament. They distinguish it from the direct and present testimony concerning Him through His works.

The words, "But you have never heard His voice, nor seen His form," are difficult to understand literally. There is no need to say that Christ's hearers had never heard God's voice or seen His form. This was too certain, and scarcely anyone could have asserted the opposite.

In connection with what follows in verses 38-39, one may understand here the different forms of divine revelation in the Old Testament. God sometimes spoke directly with chosen men of God, for example with Moses, through a voice, φωνή. At other times He revealed truth to them in various visions and types, εἶδος.

With this understanding, the words of verse 38, "and you do not have His word abiding in you," unfold the same subject, but from the inward side. The preceding words define it from its outward side.

The meaning of these words is this. Christ's hearers do not have the ability to understand and penetrate the true meaning of the Old Testament revelation. They do not have God's word abiding in them. They do not have this word so that it remains constantly within them and guides their whole life.

The proof of this is that they do not believe Him whom God, the author of this word, has sent.

In keeping with this train of thought, ερευνάτε in verse 39 should be translated: "you search." "You search and are much occupied with the examination of the Scriptures. For you think that in these occupations, or in the Scriptures themselves, apart from your moral amendment, you have eternal life. And they testify of Me. Yet you do not want to come to Me, that you may receive the eternal life for which you strive."

If, however, ερευνατε is translated as an imperative, then one must understand here a summons to the proper and due searching of Scripture. In that case, verse 40 will say that they will not want to come to the Lord, and therefore cannot find the testimonies concerning Him in the Scriptures.

Masel, under the influence of a preconceived idea, assigned to ερευναν the meaning "to break apart, to distort." But such a reproachful meaning of the word does not agree at all with its use in Scripture: 1 Pet 1:11; Rom 8:27; 1 Cor 2:10; Jn 7:52. Nor is it found among the Greeks.

Ερευναν means to search, to enter into the interior, into the foundation of a subject. Ερευτατε τ. γραφ. means: enter into the inner meaning, into the spirit of the Scriptures, and do not stop at the surface or at the letter.

"For you think that in them you have eternal life, and they are those that testify of Me." The Talmud, tract Pirke Aboth, says: "Whoever acquires for himself a saying of Scripture acquires for himself eternal life."

One modern Christian writer observed: "The Jewish opinion that they have eternal life in Scripture was as harmful as it was useful for the duty of examining the Scriptures, and it pleases ignorant men and frivolous deists."

There is some truth here. Yet one must add that the Jewish opinion is still to be preferred to contempt for the word of God, the irreplaceable guide of earthly life.

As a falsehood against conscience and reason, the opinion of the Jews could not be approved by the Savior. But He does not reject it in its better aspect.

Search the Scripture, He says, since you yourselves think that with Scripture and in Scripture you have eternal life. In this you are partly right. The unquestionable truth is that the Scriptures speak of the Messiah and therefore testify of Me.

For this reason you act against your own conscience and against your conviction about Scripture when you do not want to come to Me for your salvation. Such is the meaning of the Savior's words.

In another place, coming to Jesus is replaced by the word believing: Jn 6:35, 37, 41; 7:37. Thus the Savior justifies His teaching by His own moral character in verse 30, by the conscience of the Jews who turned to the Forerunner in verses 31-35, by His miracles in verses 32 and 36-38, and finally by Holy Scripture in verses 39-40.

In this philosophy one can clearly discern traces of the influence of both the Babylonians and the Persians. See the Kabbalah. In order to introduce certain thoughts into the biblical text, Jewish Kabbalists even read the words of Scripture as anagrams.

This is apart from allegorical interpretation on the broadest scale. See Franck, La Kabbale, p. 70. On the other hand, Greek and Roman influence introduced among the Sadducees especially the views of philosophical schools wholly foreign to the spirit of the Old Testament books.

The upper class, especially protected by the Romans, belonged to these adherents of teachings alien to Israel. Yet they strictly observed the rites of Judaism, lest they lose influence over the crowd.

By means of a strict ritual life, they also kept that crowd in obedience. Thus among the learned Jews there were no people who studied the word of God in the simplicity of an honest soul seeking truth and righteousness.

Some were partly infected by idolatrous and superstitious religious teachings. Others were infected by the indifferentism and even atheism of the Greek philosophers.

It is no wonder that they did not understand or grasp the true meaning of the Messianic prophecies. They sought in the Bible what they wanted, not what was in it.

If they had been able to study their sacred books with a pure heart, good will, and an undamaged mind, they would not have rejected Him who came into the world to save it.

He came not in glory and majesty, but in humiliation, suffering, and sorrows, 'to take upon Himself our infirmities and bear our sicknesses' (Isa 53:4).

'You do not wish,' says the Lord, 'to come to Me.' 'I know you, that you do not have the love of God in yourselves.' The Lord directly accuses the Jews of evil will and of the absence of love for God.

He sees these hearts that seek only earthly goods, and in which there was neither love for God nor love for neighbor. He sees these distorted minds, which set their own thoughts and dreams in place of the wisdom of God.

They thought to obtain salvation through petty ritual fulfillment of the Law. He tells them directly that the very Scriptures on the basis of which they think they will receive eternal life are their accusers.

For those Scriptures spoke of Him, the Son of God, who came into the world to save sinners. If they had recognized themselves as sinners and without understanding, the Lord would have saved them and enlightened them.

But they considered themselves righteous and knowledgeable, though they had neither desire for good nor the love of God. Therefore the Lord left them: 'Behold, your house is left to you desolate' (Mt 23:38).

'If you were blind, you would have no sin. But now you say, We see. Therefore your sin remains' (Jn 9:41).

In verse 41 there is still another indication: 'I do not receive glory from men,' says the Lord. In these words there seems to be a further hint that the scribes and Pharisees were especially embittered against the Lord because He did not seek their favor.

Not only did He refuse to rely on them in order to influence the people, but He also exposed the blackness of their hearts and the corruption of their minds. This class had clearly forgotten God and the moral meaning of man. For them, human glory stood above all else.