Since you have not received Him who is the express image of God the Father, how can you be conformed to Him? It is not open to all without distinction, He says, to call God Father. This belongs, I think, to those adorned with the beauty of piety toward Him, and not to others.
Behold, I have come from heaven to give the best instruction. My word calls you to likeness with God. If you truly desired and strove to have God as Father, you would surely love Me.
For I am the Guide and Teacher of this path. I inspire longing for likeness to the one true Son. Through the Holy Spirit I make those who receive Him conformed to Myself.
How, He says, could one adorned with true likeness to God fail to love Him who is from God? Tell me, how will one honor the tree if he senselessly despises the fruit born from it? Therefore He says, “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad” (Mt 12:33).
If the tree is noble, that is, God the Father, and you wished to crown your heads with His glory, why did you not believe that the Fruit from Him is such also? Why did you not love Him?
Thus the saying under discussion contains a bitter accusation against the Jews. It shows them to be liars, since they try to call God Father, yet through their lack of love for Him who is from God by nature, they stand far from the virtue of those called to this sonship.
At the same time, He profitably introduces mention of the ineffable generation. Thus in this also they are shown to be impious, since they called Him an ignoble and illegitimate son.
Therefore, when He says, “I proceeded from God,” He indicates His ineffable and beginningless generation from the Father. When He adds, “and have come,” He points to His coming into this world in the flesh.
He certainly does not say that God the Word first shone forth from God the Father only when He became man, as certain impious heretics imagine. On the contrary, this saying must be understood piously and according to the sequence of the discourse.
From the fact that He joined the words “proceeded” and “came,” it does not follow that the Logos who is from the Father is coeval with His existence according to the flesh. Each word must be given its own fitting meaning.
We believe that the first indicates the beginningless and incomprehensible generation of the Word from the Father. This is expressed in the words, “I proceeded from God.” The second, according to the flesh, is expressed in the words, “For I have not come of Myself, but He sent Me.”
He was incarnate like us, that is, He became man. By the good pleasure of God the Father He came into this world, to impart to us the teaching of God and explain to the ignorant what accords with the will of God.
But you, He says, did not love the Savior and Teacher who appeared to you by the divine good pleasure. How then can you still be called children of God? How will you obtain the grace of kinship with Him, if you have not honored Him who is begotten from Him?
Yet here also the Lord seems again to say something veiled. By these words He seeks to silence the Jewish people, who reviled Him in vain. Let us say briefly what is being indicated here.
Many among the Jews set the divine fear at nothing, and valued and accepted only human honors. Giving way to shameful gain, they dared to prophesy “from their own heart and not from the mouth of God,” as it is written (Jer 23:16).
The Master of all Himself accused them of this, saying, “I did not send the prophets, nor did I speak to them, yet they prophesied” (Jer 23:21). Then He also threatened to do something terrible to them, crying, “Woe to those who prophesy from their own heart and see nothing at all” (Ezek 13:3).
Such was Shemaiah, or Hananiah, who set his own falsehood against the words of Jeremiah. Taking the wooden yoke and breaking it, he said, “Thus says the Lord: I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon” (Jer 28:2, 13).
When our Savior Christ said, “But now you seek to kill Me, a Man who has told you the truth which He heard from God” (Jn 8:40), the Jews murmured. Not knowing who He truly was, they regarded Him as a false prophet.
For this reason they became hardened. They dared not only to revile Him, but even fiercely and impetuously attempted to put Him to death.
Therefore He again profitably frightens them by showing that He did not come of Himself, as was usual with those who falsely prophesied among them. Rather, He was sent by God.
By this He at once rejects from Himself the reputation of a false prophet. He teaches that they will suffer no small punishment, since they dishonor the One sent from God the Father and have already dared to murder Him. Thus He restrains their unbridled boldness.
Such is the meaning of these words. Yet it is possible that the heretic will turn even this saying into nourishment for his own impiety. Perhaps he will accuse the essence of the Only-begotten and consider it lesser than the Father, because He uses the word “sent” of Himself.
Let such a man again consider the form of the divine economy that we have just described. Let him recall the words of Paul concerning the Son: “Who, being in the form of God, did not consider equality with God robbery, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death” (Phil 2:6-8).
If He humbled Himself voluntarily, clearly with the Father’s good pleasure and agreement with Him, what accusation can be brought against Him? He fulfilled the form of the divine economy as was fitting.
But if, on the basis of the word “sent,” you think the Son is lesser than the Father, tell me this. How, if He is lesser according to your ignorant opinion, does He always and unchangeably act altogether as God?
Where is this inferiority shown in Him, if He perfectly possesses the property of the Begetter and the fullest divine authority? Therefore He must not be conceived as lesser because He is sent.
He is God from God by nature and truly, since He is the Wisdom and Power of the Father. He is sent to us like the light spread forth from the sun, to make wise what needs wisdom.
Thus what had become powerless is raised up through Him. It is strengthened in every knowledge of God the Father and roused to every virtue. This is because every good in human nature has appeared through Christ alone.
Thus there is nothing servile or inferior at all in Christ, except only the form according to the flesh, μορφῆς ϰατα σάϱϰα. On the contrary, His authority and power over all things are divine, though in speaking of Him we use human language suited to the state of His humiliation.
On verses 41-42. How can those who did not love the Son, who sprang from God the Father, speak the truth when they claim to love Him from whom He is? What honor will those who despised the fruit give to the tree?
If the fruit of God the Father is the Son, for this is what the words mean, “I proceeded from God and have come,” how can He be created? How could the ineffable nature of the Godhead produce something alien and foreign to itself, when not even created nature admits this?
For man is born from man, and ox from ox. Therefore it is necessary to confess that the Son was begotten God from God, lest the Father appear inferior to His own creatures.
When the Son says that He was sent by Him, He does not mean a movement from place to place, for this belongs to bodies. He means it as heat is sent forth from fire, or as radiance flows from light.
THEOSIS