John 8:31Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

"What I say to the world" (Jn 8:26). By these words He already revealed that He is departing to the Gentiles. But since the Jews still did not understand that He had earlier spoken to them about the Father, He speaks again about Him. The Evangelist also presented the reason why He spoke in a lowly manner.

Behold, if with such care, and not casually, we search the Scriptures, we shall be able to attain our salvation. If we exercise ourselves in them constantly, we shall learn both right dogmas and a virtuous life. Even if someone were extremely stubborn, unyielding, and lazy, even if he had gained no profit before, he will still now gather fruit and receive some benefit. Though it may not be such that he can perceive it, he will still receive it.

If one who enters a perfumer's shop and sits in such places involuntarily receives the fragrance, much more does one who goes to church. As laziness is born from inactivity, so zeal appears from exercise. Therefore, even if you are filled with countless sins, even if you are unclean, do not flee from this assembly.

But what, you say, if I listen and do not perform? It is no small gain even to recognize oneself as worthy of pity. This fear is not useless, and this dread is not fruitless. If only you grieve because you hear and do not perform, you will certainly someday come to performance.

It is impossible for one who converses with God and hears God's discourse to receive no benefit. We immediately straighten our clothing and wash our hands when we wish to take up the Bible. Do you see what reverence appears even before the reading? If we also read attentively, we shall gain great benefit.

Indeed, if this reading did not lead the soul to reverence, we would not wash our hands. Moreover, if a woman is uncovered, she immediately puts on a veil, thereby bearing witness to her inward reverence. If a man has his head covered, he uncovers it. Do you see how outward appearance becomes a herald of inward reverence?

Then, after sitting down to listen, a man often cries out and condemns his present life. Let us therefore attend to the Scriptures, beloved. If nothing else, let the Gospel at least be the object of our special attention, and let it always be in our hands.

As soon as you open this book, you immediately see the name of Christ before your eyes and hear the words: "The birth of Jesus Christ was thus: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit" (Mt 1:18). Whoever hears this will at once desire virginity, marvel at the birth, and detach himself from the earth.

It is no small thing that you see the Virgin counted worthy of the Spirit, and the angel conversing with her. Yet this is only the beginning. If you continue reading to the end, you will immediately reject all worldly things and laugh at everything earthly.

If you are rich, you will count wealth as nothing when you hear that she, betrothed to a craftsman and sprung from a humble house, became the Mother of your Master. If you are poor, you will not be ashamed of your poverty when you learn that the Creator of the world was not ashamed of the poorest house.

Thinking on this, you will not take what belongs to others. Rather, you will become a lover of poverty and will despise wealth. Having attained this, you will escape every evil. Further, when you see Him lying in a manger, you will not try to adorn your child with gold or make a silver bed for your wife.

By not caring about these things, you will not become covetous or plunder for their sake. Many other benefits can be gained, which cannot now be recounted in detail. Those who make the trial will know them.

Therefore I implore you both to acquire the books of Holy Scripture, and to make their thoughts your own, and to inscribe them in your souls. Since the Jews were inattentive, they were commanded to bind books to their hands. We do not even place them on our hands, but in our houses, though we ought to imprint them on the heart.

Through this we shall purify the present life and attain the good things to come. May we all be counted worthy of them by the grace and love for mankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom and with whom be glory to the Father with the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.

"If you abide in My word." By this He showed that He knows the secrets of their heart. He knows that, although they had believed, they were not firm in faith. Here He promises them something great, namely, that they will be His disciples.

Since some had previously fallen away from Him, He alludes to them and says, "If you abide." For they too had listened and believed, but fell away because they were not firm in faith. Indeed, "many of His disciples went back and no longer walked with Him" (Jn 6:66).

When He says, "If you abide in My word," He is seen to be drawing them skillfully and gently away from the ordinances of Moses and removing them from attachment to the letter. He commands them no longer to attend to what is hidden or performed in figure, but to His teaching, which is clearly the evangelical and divine preaching.

It is true that He also spoke to us through the holy prophets, but they were mediators through whom He addressed us. In the proper sense, however, His word must mean the evangelical preaching, for we find that it came to us not through another, but through Him. Therefore, having become man, He says, "I Myself who speak am present" (Is 52:6).

Paul also will bear witness to the same when he says in the Epistle to the Hebrews: "In many and various ways God spoke of old to the fathers in the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us in the Son" (Heb 1:1). Therefore the Son appeared in His own person to teach us in the last times of the age. This is why His word, in the proper sense, must be called the evangelical teaching.

Thus it ought to be stated more clearly and directly in this way. You who have received faith in Me, and who, though late, have come to know Him who is proclaimed to you from above through the law and the prophets, must no longer cling to the figures given through Moses. You must not be carried away by the shadows under the law, nor place in them the whole power of salvation. Rather, you must abide in spiritual teachings, in the evangelical and My own proclamations.

Yet it was not unlikely, and indeed could not be doubted, that those who had only recently and barely received faith still had a wavering mind, easily inclined to change. They could not have endured such words. Being always ready to fall into anger over what these words would seem to inflict upon wise Moses, and over the setting aside, through disregard, of the ancient commandments given by him, they would easily have turned to their accustomed insolence. In their constant concern to agree with him, they would have counted the desire to believe in Christ as nothing.

Therefore, according to the divine economy and still in a veiled way, He sets His words against Moses, that is, the evangelical preaching against the law. Placing the new instructions far above the ancient, He says: "If you abide in My word," then you truly "are My disciples." Those who shine with wholly perfect faith, who receive the evangelical teaching into their mind without any wavering, and who do not greatly concern themselves with the shadow under the law, are truly disciples of Christ.

Those who approach Him without such a disposition make a mockery of themselves. They are not truly His disciples, and therefore they are deprived of salvation. So also blessed Paul spoke plainly in the Epistle to those who foolishly wished, after receiving faith, to obtain justification from the law: "You have been severed from Christ, you who would be justified in the law. You have fallen away from grace" (Gal 5:4).

Therefore wondrous and venerable is a single-minded faith and an unbending desire to follow Christ. It turns the shadows under the law into knowledge of Him, and transforms what was spoken enigmatically concerning Him into spiritual instruction. For through the law and the prophets the mystery concerning Him is proclaimed.

"If you abide," that is, if you remain in the faith that has begun to be in you who have believed, then where will you come? See what the beginning is, and where it leads. You have loved the foundation; attend to the summit.

From that humility go toward the height. For faith has humility. Knowledge, immortality, and eternity do not have humility, but elevation. They have upward striving, lack of deficiency, immovability, invincibility by the enemy, and absence of fear before destruction.

What comes with faith is great, yet it is despised. In construction also, inexperienced builders commonly neglect the foundation. A great trench is dug, stones are thrown in carelessly, and there is no finish or beauty there.

So too there is no visible beauty in the root of a tree. Yet everything that delights you in the tree grew from the root. You look at the root and are not delighted. You look at the tree and marvel.

Foolish man! What you marvel at grew from what you despise. The faith of believers seems something small, but you have no scales with which to weigh it.

Hear, then, what it can attain, and see how great it is, even if, as the Lord Himself says elsewhere, you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, Mt 17:20. What is humbler than this, and what is stronger? What is smaller, and what is more ardent?

And so He says, "If you abide in My word," in which you have believed, to what will you be brought? "You shall truly be My disciples." "And what does this give us?" someone asks. "And you shall know the truth," Jn 8:32.

Every slave, so long as he remains in slavery, has no self-mastery at all. The Lord said this to us, and the Apostle Paul cries with a great voice to the whole universe: "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" Rom 7:24.

It is self-evident that when someone frees another, he frees him, of course, from slavery. Therefore the same apostle says elsewhere: "Stand fast in the freedom by which Christ has made us free," Gal 5:1.

By this he shows that those who were freed were delivered from the slavery in which, while they remained, they had no self-mastery.

If you wish, He told them, to be My true disciples, for He saw that there was no sincere desire here, then abide in My word. That is, obey Me. Do not go beyond the limits of My instruction. Be inwardly joined to My word in your soul.

Then you will know the truth, because My word is truth. The truth will set you free. That is, then your complete deliverance, or redemption, will come and be accomplished.

"By such reception of My word, progress in the knowledge of the truth will become possible for you. This knowledge will grant you the true freedom which you hope to receive through Me," that is, freedom from bondage to sin.

This was immediately proved, for it did not withstand the test to which Christ subjected it. Almost at once it again turned into opposition against Him, cf. Chrysostom and Theophylact.

This testing of faith was indeed not easy. "The Lord pierces their soul with the most striking words," says Chrysostom. Yet such testing had to be applied to people who considered themselves representatives and guides of the people's faith.

The test was this. The Lord undoubtedly knew that the great work then wrongly expected from the Messiah was the liberation of the chosen people from the hated Roman yoke under which they then lived.

He raises this notion of freedom in the Messiah's Kingdom to its true spiritual meaning. Therefore the Lord speaks of their liberation by the Messiah, but not directly. He speaks somewhat veiledly, at first as it were not finishing His thought.

He offers them the real means to freedom, but at first does not define what freedom He means.

"If you abide in My word": this is the means to freedom. To abide in His word means to receive His teaching with faith and to stand firmly in it. It means not to waver, and to make it the basic principle of one's moral, religious, and entire life.

The conditional form of speech, "if," on the Lord's lips gave them to understand that obstacles would arise. In their hearts His word could meet such prejudices and preconceptions that it might not be received by them or take root, cf. Jn 5:38.

"Then you are truly My disciples": truly and actually, not only outwardly. Not merely by a temporary attraction, perhaps light and superficial, such as now, cf. Chrysostom and Theophylact.

So He hastened to help the young children of faith. A worthy disciple, He says, remains faithful to his teacher's teaching in life's hardest moments. He abides in the word with thoughts, feelings, and desires. By deeds he proves that the word abides in his heart, Jn 2:27-28.

Otherwise his faith would be a shoot without a secure root, Mt 13:20. The apostle wrote: "Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone hears the word and does not do it, he is like a man beholding his own face in a mirror. He looks at himself, goes away, and at once forgets what he was like. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and abides in it, being no forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, shall be blessed in his doing," Jas 1:22-25.

"And you shall know the truth," said the Lord. The truth is Christ's truth, the teaching of Christ, Gal 3:1; Col 1:6. The Lord makes knowledge of the truth depend on abiding in His word.

When Christ's teaching passes from word into life, then men learn the full dignity and meaning of Christ's truth.

"And the truth shall make you free." Freedom rooted in falsehood and error is false freedom, a wretched bondage. As Christ's truth grows in the soul, the soul's true freedom unfolds.

As abiding in the word precedes faithful knowledge of the truth, so knowledge of the truth precedes freedom of spirit. Such is the order indicated by the Lord.

At times people try to change this order. They first want to be free, so that they may freely investigate and discover the truth. But from this come only errors and crimes, to the misfortune of men.

It cannot be otherwise, because this inverted order of discovering truth is psychologically wrong.

"And the truth shall make you free." From what? First of all, from prejudices and errors of the mind, of which there are so many among men. Experience also confirms this.

From what dense darkness of pagan and Jewish life mankind was freed by the mercy of Christ's teaching!

From what else will it free? From sin, not only actual sin, but also delight in sin, which lies so close to the corrupted soul.

Whoever believes in the depth of his soul the divine truth that we, guilty and condemned for sins, have been reconciled with the righteousness of God by the death of the Son of God, receives grace. In him childlike love for God appears and grows.

This love gradually frees him from delight in sin, 1 Jn 3:1; 1 Jn 4:19; Rom 6:18; Rom 8:21; Jas 1:25. With this, he is also delivered from servile service to the law, Rom 7:6; Gal 5:1, 13; Gal 4:26, 31; 1 Tim 1:9.

They could not rise to love for God and for their neighbors, nor understand with the soul this great mystery of the Kingdom of God: that God is love; 1 Jn 3:8, 23; 4:21. The Lord wishes to lead them onto His own path, "I am the way" (Jn 14:6), saying to them: "If you abide in My word, you will truly be My disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free."

But the Jews did not wish to understand these deep and sacred words. They could not and would not understand that only by forever renouncing their arrogant reason and receiving the divine fire in their heart could they become the Lord's disciples. Only then could they walk on the path indicated by Him. That path would lead them to moral freedom, to the freedom that detaches man from the material bonds of the earth and from the environment in which he lives. It detaches him from all petty and vain influences, raising him above them and making him truly free from this brief life. For in truth, "we are strangers and pilgrims on the earth, and we seek an eternal homeland" (Heb 11:13-14).

Only by abiding in the Lord's words could the Jews understand the truth, the absolute truth, which could free them from the chains of their madness. Truth here is understood not merely as an abstract concept, but as the embodiment of God the Word Himself, the eternal Truth. For "God is truth, and His judgments are righteous"; Ps 18:9; 88:34; 110:7; Is 65:16. "Heaven and earth will pass away, but the Lord's words will not pass away" (Mt 24:35).

Therefore the Lord had said earlier, in verse 25: "I am the beginning, as I also speak to you." To understand the truth is to believe that the Lord Jesus is the Christ. At the same time it is to understand the will of God, and thereby to be freed from slavery to flesh, sin, and earth. For "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" (2 Cor 3:17).

Such is the teaching the Lord gave to the Jews. Such is the teaching of love, by which He drew even these blasphemers and embittered men to Himself. Yet not only was their heart deeply corrupted. Their very mind had been clouded by the decaying education of the Jewish schools.

Accustomed to the letter, the Jews did not understand the spirit of the Lord's words. They began to dispute about words, giving them the narrowest interpretation. By this they showed themselves utterly incapable of rising to the height where the Lord wished to lead them.

Before them hovered phantoms of the greatness of their people. Soon afterward the marketplaces of the East were flooded with this people as slaves; Josephus, Jewish War, book 6, ch. 44; book 7, chs. 25, 27. They pointed to Abraham and to the promises given him, forgetting that their sins and unbelief had already been the cause of their slavery in the hands of many nations. Above all, they did not understand that only "those who believe are blessed with faithful Abraham" (Gal 3:9, 16; cf. Gen 12:7).

Speaking of slavery, the Jews did not suspect that there is a spiritual slavery in which they themselves stood. Earthly slavery ends with the fleeting life of earth. No tyrant can hold a slave whose soul has been freed from earthly bonds. But spiritual slavery, slavery to sin, malice, and unbelief, fetters the immortal soul even beyond the grave.