John 5:43Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

On the contrary, he will violently seize everything that does not belong to him and call himself god over all. As Paul writes: "above all that is called God or is worshiped, presenting himself as God" (2 Thess 2:4).

This is precisely what it means that he "will come in his own name." But I, Christ says, have not come so, but in the name of My Father.

This alone was sufficient to prove that they do not love God, since they did not receive the One who told them about Himself that He was sent from God.

But in the present case He shows their shamelessness also from the opposite side, from the fact that they are ready to receive the antichrist. Since they did not receive the One who told them He was sent from God, but were ready to worship the one who does not acknowledge God and exalts himself as god over all, it is clear that the persecution of Christ was the work of envy, not love for God.

Paul, speaking prophetically about the antichrist, said: "God will send them a working of error, that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but loved unrighteousness" (2 Thess 2:11-12).

But Christ did not say that the antichrist will come, but, "if he comes," sparing His hearers, because their impiety had not yet been fully revealed. For this reason He was silent about the cause of the antichrist's coming.

Paul, however, precisely indicated this cause for those able to understand, and thereby deprived the Jews of every excuse.

From this, I think, blessed Paul, having understood something true, says concerning the Jews and the son of lawlessness: "Because they did not receive the love of the truth for their salvation. For this reason God sends them a working of error, that they should believe the lie, so that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but took pleasure in unrighteousness" (2 Thess 2:10-12).

Therefore what Christ said contains a prophecy of an event that will happen in its own time. It also serves as proof that the Pharisees are not struck by empty words from our Savior Christ.

How did the Son come in the name of the Father? Clearly as God, as Lord, as Life, as Almighty, as Light, and as the One able to give life to the dead. For the Father is all these things.

But if the Son is Truth by nature, and He certainly is, then none of the things listed can prove false in Him. Since He is by nature what the Father also is, except only being Father, how can He be created, when He who begot Him is not such?

Then He also presents the cause of their unbelief, namely love of glory. Since they did not want the people to prefer Jesus Christ to them, they stopped their ears and shut their eyes before the truth. They did all this so that they would not lose the glory they enjoyed among the people.

Jesus delivered it in complete calm, without passion, and without the slightest desire to exalt Himself. His sole purpose was to bring the erring Pharisees to understanding.

The true Messiah must be the Son of God, not a conquering king. He, Jesus, is this Messiah, the Son of God.

The arguments offered to convince the Pharisees of this truth are strictly logical. Only God can work miracles. No one doubts this.

Since He, Jesus, works them, He is equal to God. Therefore there is no ground for refusing to acknowledge Him as the Son of God.

Aware of the logic of these arguments, and not daring to deny that Jesus worked miracles, the Pharisees later devised a blasphemous objection against the Lord.

They began spreading among the people the rumor that He performed miracles not by divine authority, but by the power of the devil; Mt 12:24, Mk 3:22, Lk 11:15.

The stubborn scribes were not convinced by Jesus' arguments. They did not reject Scripture, but they had lost the ability to understand it.

They were not waiting for a Messiah who would rebuke them and place them below publicans. They were waiting for one who would value them according to their worth and set them above all in his kingdom.

They were waiting for a Messiah who would come in his own name and act on his own authority. Therefore they rejected Jesus, who came in His Father's name, from God.

As their spirit stood in hostile relation to Christ, so it was in communion with Antichrist. It was separated from him by a vast span of time, which now reaches the end of the second millennium.

"Every spirit," says the Theologian, "which does not confess Jesus Christ come in the flesh is not of God. This is the spirit of Antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and it is now already in the world" (1 Jn 4:3).

Those led by the spirit of Antichrist reject Christ. They have received Antichrist in their spirit, entered into communion with him, submitted to him, and worshiped him in spirit, acknowledging him as their god.

He will satisfy it by preaching what flatters your self-love: promises of earthly greatness and glory, and generally what the Jews falsely expected from the Messiah.

From the time of Christ, more than sixty such false messiahs have been counted among the Jews.

Therefore He who preached self-denial and promised neither honors nor fame, but the world's persecutions, could not please such men. Jesus seemed to them an object of stumbling; 1 Cor 1:23.

"If another comes in his own name, him you will receive." "Another will come in his own name," not sent by the heavenly Father, without any marks of a heavenly envoy, and with obvious marks of one seeking his own interests. "Him you will receive."

Why? Because he will flatter human passions and prejudices. He will promise an earthly kingdom, cherished in the dreams of earthly souls.

Since the coming of Christ, more than sixty false messiahs have appeared among the Jews, and they received each one with delight and triumph.

Yet another christ will appear: Antichrist. As the heavenly Father was revealed in Christ, so in Antichrist Satan will be revealed with false miracles; 2 Thess 2:9-10.

They will receive him also, before all others, as their messiah. Thus the ancient Fathers thought about the Jews, Irenaeus 5.25, Chrysostom, Ambrose, and others, pointing to these words of the Savior.

Therefore a prophet who comes in his own name, speaks pleasing words to the people, flatters them, and promises them earthly greatness, was received with joy from Isaiah's and Jeremiah's times even to the Lord's coming.

Among such false prophets one must also count those teachers of Israel who opposed the Lord.

This is what the Lord points out to the Jews, recalling in His words the whole past of this people, down to the day of His coming.

As a people, the Jews were always inclined to bow before rumor, earthly glory, and the opinion of the majority.

Moses had already pointed this out and restrained them from it, saying to them by God's command: "You shall not follow a multitude to do evil"; Ex 23:2.

Yet this aspect of the people's weakness never reached such development as after the captivity. Then the teachers of the people presented themselves to the crowd as absolutely infallible and supported one another.

They did this to secure for their class authority over the people.

Under such conditions, could they believe? "How can you believe, who receive glory from one another, and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?"

Glory from God is inward blessedness. This glory does not give earthly joys.

Could the glory of the apostles, martyrs, and confessors attract these hardened souls, for whom religion itself was only an instrument for earthly ends?

But one must look more deeply into this state of soul of the Jews, whom the Lord Himself called "hypocrites" in the fullest sense of the word; Mt 7:5, 15:7, 23:13, Mk 7:6, 12:15, Lk 12:1, 56, and many others.

The hypocrisy of the Jews reached such a point that many of them hid from themselves their atheism and complete indifference to inward religious life.

The Pharisee who thanked God that he was not like other men, Lk 18:11, and the teachers of Israel who taught that one might fail to honor one's parents by making a gift to the temple, Mk 7:11, are examples.

So are the Sadducees, who with an ironic smile tempted the Lord about marriage in the life beyond the grave; Mt 20:23-28, Mk 12:20.

Could they understand the life of the soul in eternity?

They knew the law, and with petty casuistry kept accounts with God. They taught and themselves believed that, if they could not be convicted of literal failure to observe the ritual law, they were righteous before God.

Above all, they were righteous before men. But they had forgotten the weightier matters of the law: "judgment, mercy, and faith"; Mt 23:23.