John 6:40Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Why does He speak so often, and on every occasion, about the resurrection? It is so that they might not think God's providence is limited only to present things.

If they do not enjoy good things here, they must not fall into despondency. They must hope for the good things to come. If they suffer no punishment in the present life, they must not despise Him, but expect the life to come.

But if they, the Jews, gained nothing from His frequent discourse about the resurrection, let us strive to gain something. If we wish to enrich ourselves unjustly, steal anything, or do some other shameful deed, let us immediately bring that day to mind.

Therefore, He says, I will not lose those whom the Father gives Me, that is, those who believe in Me. Rather, I will raise them up, that is, I will deem them worthy of the radiant resurrection.

Resurrection is of two kinds. One is common and universal, by which all sinners also will rise. The other is that by which only the righteous will rise.

They will be caught up in the clouds through the air to meet the Lord and will meet Him with boldness. Paul calls this latter resurrection an elevation because of the raising up from the earth.

For sinners, though they will rise from the graves, will not be lifted from the earth into the air. They will remain below, as condemned.

Having already defined the good will of the Father, He explains it again and sets it more fully before His hearers by repeating the same thing.

He clearly reveals the manner by which believers are brought by the Father to the Son, and what those who are brought gain through this bringing.

Therefore the Father gives to the Son, who is able to give life, that which needs life. He gives in this way: through knowledge He implants in each person the true understanding of the Son.

He also gives the ability to understand clearly that He is God from God the true Father. Thus disposed and illumined by contemplation of Him, the believer is raised to the reward of faith, that is, to eternal life and endless blessedness.

He named two things. Who will understand? "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent." And here He also added: seeing and believing.

The Jews saw, but did not believe. They had one thing and lacked the other. Without this other thing, how could they attain eternal life?

Therefore, if those who saw did not attain it because they did not believe, what are we to do, who believe but do not see?

If these two conditions are necessary for eternal life, seeing and believing, and whoever lacks one will not be deemed worthy of the reward of eternal life, what are we to do?

The Jews lacked one thing, and we lack the other. They had what it means to see, but lacked what it means to believe.

He explains the same words and often repeats them, so that the Jews cannot easily forget them. He wants them to know firmly that there is a resurrection, a recompense for faith in Him, and a reward for spiritual labors here.

They will receive this reward, if not in the present life, then certainly in the life to come. "Everyone who sees the Son" means, of course, with spiritual eyes, that is, everyone who believes in Him.

The doctrine of the resurrection was in no way regarded among the Greeks as worthy of discussion. How could it have been, when most of them thought that the soul does not continue to exist after separation from the body?

The Jews were not far from this belief. Some of them, namely the Pharisees, boasted over many others precisely because they expected a resurrection. But their expectations were neither correct nor sincere.

For us, who are named after Christ, our Lord and God Jesus Christ Himself lived this life and became like us. By His words, deeds, and being, He established firm assurance that our bodies will rise after this visible dissolution and corruption.

First, He Himself, or through those who were with Him, raised many others, some even already corrupted. Yet all of them afterwards submitted to necessity, awaiting the common regeneration. Second, He Himself became the firstborn from the dead, as the only one who rose incorruptible and no longer feared death.

This will one day also happen to our bodies, when we receive them by His grace. "For the one who believes in Me," He says, "I will raise up on the last day" (Jn 6:40, Jn 6:54).

If this simple and guileless faith in the dogma were sufficient for most people, we would not need to prove it. It is complete madness to confess Christ risen from the dead, while judging this certain proof inadequate for oneself.

But there are some who follow contrary arguments. They say that it is impossible, and even impious, and in any case wholly unnecessary, for this rotted and dissolved body to be called back again to life.

Therefore we too shall try, as far as possible from arguments, to defend what has been set forth. It would be crying madness if they, on the basis of their own assertions and sensory knowledge, tried to overthrow what is reasonable.

We, for our part, would be ashamed to make an irrational alliance with believers. We intend to base what will be said on what has itself been written.

What now lies before us is this. For those who acknowledge the uselessness of bodies, it would not be useless to state the following judgments concerning God. Everyone acknowledges the common position that God is simple by nature and surpasses every composition, so much so that we compare Him with simplicity.

But if we conceive Him in this way, we can immediately draw a conclusion about complexity itself. On the one hand, there is perfect simplicity, God, the blessed essence. On the other, what has proceeded from Him is subject to complexity because of its falling away, since it lacks simplicity.

For this, the diminution of simplicity is the excess of a certain matter. Existing in its own form, in ourselves and in beings below us, in soulless and irrational things, this is called body.

Among the angels, who are incorporeal in essence and are called incorporeal, there is no body. Yet the distinction is still material and is contemplated in them. According to this, by a simple conception, we distinguish in them a subject, or substrate, and, according to the predicate, its form.

In other words, we think that substrate and form belong to the blessedness of their essence. Therefore they are describable and occupy different places at different times. "They are sent forth for ministry," says the great Paul.

For God alone is completely simple and immaterial. In Him no composition or distinction whatever can be conceived. Many other saints also testify to this, as for example the theologian of Damascus in his Theological Chapters.

We ourselves, being on the boundary between noetic and sensible creation, possess an essence composed of soul and body. When it is divided in mortal dissolution, it must necessarily be joined again. What has been separated must come into one for the fullness of the whole, so that the correspondence of which we spoke may abide forever.

On the one hand, God is conceived as wholly simple by nature. On the other hand, those immediately around Him, that is, the angels, are simple and immaterial for us. They are not subject to the dissolution to which we are subject, but remain unchanged in their essence.

Yet they too possess immutability by choice. As some think, they received it after the fall of the one who "began" and was Lucifer. In relation to God, however, they preserved neither simplicity nor, still less, immateriality.

We remain what we were created to be, soul and body, since everything created must be composite. What then, tell me, is the meaning of the existence of angels? I say that the whole heavenly order remains as it was.

It was not by the destruction of essence that all created things became composite. But if the souls of those who have dissolved no longer touch their corresponding bodies, then those who are composite from the beginning later become simpler than angels.

It seems to me that the creation of the body itself was accomplished by God before the soul. But perhaps there is another meaning, more ineffable and profound, known only to the few to whom it has been given to search the depths of the Spirit.

This too can serve to the body's honor, lest anyone think that, when the body is separated from the soul, it is definitively dissolved, receives a lesser portion, and returns to non-being. That this is so, Scripture testifies, saying of the same man, "God formed," and of the soul, "God created."

Do you see that He addresses both with equal honor? The one formed is the same as the one created, because neither the soul alone nor the body alone, but both together, are deemed worthy of his name, that is, of man.

When this man, I mean the man of soul and body, was created in the beginning for immortality, punished with death for transgression, and again restored by grace to his first dignity, he repeats that to which he was called for immortality. In this way he will not be himself, that is, such as he was, if he lacks it.

If what is said about the soul seems absurd to someone, namely that the body has the meaning of form in relation to matter, we do not suppose, as they philosophize, that forms are separable from matter. We affirm that by their own nature forms are inseparable from the underlying substrate and are distinguished only by reason.

By the power of God, who brought them out of non-being, they can of course be separated. Thus, for example, we have known the primordial light, created as such and coming to be before the sun, as the form of the sun.

We have believed that afterwards, separated again from its fiery essence, it will become a portion for the blessed in the future life. What then is astonishing in supposing that the soul, created in the beginning together with the subject, has the meaning of form, as light does in the sun?

If to someone it seems to have many parts after its fall because of its attraction to the body, then later, once separated, it will again be joined to the body and become single in form. It will be clothed in the body proper to it.

This, I think, was hidden from the Greek sages and led to ignorance, darkness, and error in their arguments about the soul. They did not know God in their study of the laws of the whole and in seeking everywhere only what is natural.

Because they stand for the inseparability of forms, they assert that the soul is wholly inseparable from the body and, at the same time as death, is dissolved into non-being. Others, starting from the separability and self-subsistence of other forms, agree that the soul is immortal and in all things alike among irrational and rational beings.

As for the soul of an irrational being, we are content with what is said in Scripture: the soul of every animal is its blood. By this we wish to show that in every animal its innate force, which moves it, is called blood in Scripture.

Perhaps this is because this fluid is especially abundant and is therefore spread throughout the whole body. This is the soul of the animal, and at the same time it establishes movement. Movement ceases because nothing remains except a dead body.

But the rational and noetic soul, created according to the image of God and separated from its own matter, I mean the body, remains diminished in nothing. Even separated from the body, it remains joined to it.

It strives toward its own body and receives the mode of life proper to it, that is, the bodiless mode. Likewise the body, dissolved into the elements of which it is composed, awaits the proper time when it will touch the soul.

But they say that the soul now lives by itself and has no need of the body. What prevents it from being the same in the future? Why should such a weight and time be necessary for it, when it had to become lighter than it was and then come to stability?

Why, through the destruction of those materials into which, through the body, it distributed its energies? As for the body's alleged uselessness, we shall answer this below. But we do not entirely agree that the soul of the dead is now lighter and removed from the heaviness of the body.

Indeed, it has been released from the body and freed from bodily passions, but not from its unique conjunction with the body. As it flies away, it still directs its gaze toward its dwelling.

Even if it is freed from that of which it is composed, I mean the compound elements, and from whatever it was composed, a certain ineffable bond passes through the middle of them. It brings the soul into contact with its own body and with the elements allotted to it, with which it will again surround that body.

Then it will be fitting for us to recall the words of divine Paul about the seed cast into the earth. The grass that grows stands in the interval between the decayed seed and the ripening of the full grain to come.

It remains the bond between both states of the grain, until it renews what has rotted and then shows it again more splendid. The relation and bond of the soul with the body has the same meaning.

There is only this difference. In the example given there, both limits are accessible to sense: the beginning of natural growth, and that toward which the grain strives in its intermediate states. These, beyond all doubt, are sensible: roots, stem, the greenery surrounding it, then ears, awns, and in them the grain gradually ripening.

Here, however, one of the limits is beyond sense, namely the soul existing by itself. In its own time it will make for itself a new body. The bond between them is certainly supernatural and intelligible.

Because we see neither the soul itself nor its bond with the body, we suppose that the soul is altogether separated from it. Yet again we do not see the body itself, which soon dissolves into the parts of which it is composed.

On the other hand, the souls of the saints testify that the soul, existing by itself and somehow bound to the body, returns again to its dwelling. After death they appear in their bodies and, acting in them, greatly astonish the worthy.

If even the magnet stone draws iron by a mysterious power of nature, and if the nature of the phenomenon changes so that their relation, though invisible, nevertheless brings the endpoints into contact and joins them to each other, what is strange in our supposition?

The soul, existing in itself, draws the body to itself and dwells in it, until, having refined and purified it, it shows it to be suited to itself and then is clothed in the body akin to it.

But, as may be observed, another consideration is also admissible. After sin and transgression the soul, more bound to the body, differs from it still more. Since the body became thick, earth-like, and subject to countless passions, the soul, compelled to suffer this together with the body, falls from its own dignity, grows thick, and darkens its spiritual eye.

Insofar as the soul cares for the body, it itself alienates the body from its own dignity. But by the rational faculty it frees itself from bodily things and turns toward what belongs to it. This is what the wise define as the practice of death.

"Good," the Jews answered, "then give us always such bread." They were asking for more than they themselves clearly understood, like the Samaritan woman when she asked for living water.

"Do you wish it? I Myself am this bread of life." Of course, this bread can be eaten only by faith.

So you see that you again come to the same conclusion. To receive life, you must believe in Me. You yourselves wish to eat the bread of life.

And this bread of life, which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world, is I Myself. It can be eaten by faith.

The Jews did not expect to come to such a conclusion. Without confirmation by new miracles, they did not wish to acknowledge such a high dignity in Jesus.

Like the Samaritan woman (4:13-15), the hearers of Jesus Christ understood His words about the bread of life in a sensual sense. By this bread they meant something like the manna in the wilderness.

But Christ says: "I am the bread of life. Therefore you need not ask for this bread to be sent down. It has already been sent down to you from God, and you need only receive Him, that is, believe in Me.

Yet you have seen Me, and do not believe. But if you had faith in Me, I would impart eternal life to you. For all that the Father gives Me, all who obey the Father's grace calling them to salvation, come to Me.

With full and all-embracing love I answer this obedience to the Father's saving call. For I came down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of the Father who sent Me.

"He who sees the Son" means one who, "with spiritual eyes" (Euthymius Zigabenus), beholds in Jesus the true Only-begotten Son of God as the Messiah. Such spiritual contemplation is accompanied by faith in Him.

"I will raise him up": compare the note on Jn 5:21, 26, 28. Why does He speak so often and on every occasion about the resurrection?

So that they should not think God's providence is limited only to present things. Thus they would not fall into despondency if they do not enjoy blessings here, but would hope for the blessings to come (Chrysostom).

Then Jesus Christ speaks directly: "I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall not hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst" (v. 35).

In these words Jesus Christ speaks, as it were, in this way: "You ask that the bread of which I speak always be given to you.

But this depends on you yourselves. Come to Me and believe that I speak to you the truth, the truth which God has made known to Me.

Then you will not be tormented by the search for truth and for the path to the blessedness of eternal life. You will know both the truth and the way.

You will no longer suffer from the unsatisfied demands of the spirit, from the hunger of the soul. But for this you must believe that I have been sent by My Father."

Verses 38-40. "For I came down from heaven, not to do My own will... The will of Him who sent Me is that of all He has given Me, I should lose nothing."

Let them not fear that the lot of one who believes in Jesus is hardly as secure as the lot of Moses' disciples was.

The works of the highest minds and strongest characters are unreliable when they act by human will alone. It would be well if brilliant reformers of faith, laws, and social life did not bring new disorder into human societies.

In reality this is rare, very rare. There is no need to speak of how firm and long-lasting their constructions are.

The Son of Man appeared from heaven not in order to do His own will (Jn 5:19, 30). He does the will of the Father who sent Him.

The final goal is resurrection on the last day: in verse 39, "all that the Father has given Me," and in verse 40, every believer.

Not without reason one may see in this double saying about resurrection, first, the whole totality of believers from all ages and peoples.

This is the whole Church of Christ in its broadest meaning, as a grace-filled society of people united by common love for Christ, despite the space and time that divide them on earth.

The Lord promises resurrection to all this countless multitude of chosen persons as to one Church.

Second, in verse 40, the Lord repeats the same promise of resurrection unto eternal life to each individual Christian, as an eternal soul.