John 8:52Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Yet by this very thing they are still more exposed as liars. They are more tightly strangled, as it were, by the chains of their own transgressions.

Here they speak very irrationally: "Now we know." They had often barked against Him and reviled Him as having a demon. Yet they say that only "now" they have "known," thereby condemning their earlier unbridled tongue.

For if they only now knew, then they did not know before. How, then, did they say that He was possessed, when by their own confession they did not yet know Him?

Yes, the impious Jewish people had long been lying from of old. With unbridled mouth they uttered diabolical malice against Christ. To confirm their chatter, they seize upon the saying of our Savior Christ.

Because of their great foolishness, as one must suppose, they hope to defend the truth by falsehood. Through the very thing by which they could have known that they were sinning impiously, unlawfully insulting the Giver of eternal life, they secretly intensified their illness again.

They do not think that they must repent of this. Rather, they now assert that they are convinced of the truth of their own words [...]

The prophet is true when he says, "The ways of the Lord are straight, and the righteous shall walk in them, but the impious shall grow weak in them" (Hos 14:10).

Here everyone should be struck by their incomparable madness. They saw how by one voice the Savior crushed countless demons and evil spirits, and drove them unwillingly out of those in whom they were.

Yet they do not fear to say that He has a demon. Necessary reasoning had assured them that Satan could not cast out Satan. For "every kingdom," Christ says, "divided against itself will be laid waste. Every house and city divided against itself will be laid waste.

"And if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand?" (Mt 12:25-26).

Someone else will also say, and quite justly, "A people truly foolish and heartless. They have eyes and do not see. They have ears and do not hear" (Jer 5:21).

They are not changed by word or teaching so as to desire a better mind. Nor do they see with the eyes of their mind the royal Nature that rules over all.

With excessive dishonor, as with stones, they strike it. Or rather, each one strikes his own soul.

"Abraham died, and the prophets died. And You say, 'If anyone keeps My word, he shall never taste death.'"

When the overbold Jewish people lied against its own head, saying to the Savior, "You have a demon," it wanted to express nothing other than this: You make Yourself God.

You transfer to Yourself the honor and glory proper to the divine Nature. This, as we have said elsewhere, is what demons usually do.

They understand nothing except what is visible. They do not acknowledge God the Word in human flesh. They do not raise their mind even a little above the bodily.

They are fixed only on earthly things and turn only among the lower realities subject to sense perception. For this reason the wretched men are scandalized.

They think that the Truth, that is, Christ, speaks falsely. They even suppose that He exalts Himself above the glory proper to God.

They think this because He dares to place Himself not merely on equal footing with the Almighty, but thinks something greater of Himself. They suppose He believes He can do, or even promises to do, what God and the Father has not done.

To confirm this, we must consider why they are indignant when they say that Abraham died and the prophets died. Why do they bring forward the death of the saints to refute the Savior's words?

They wish to say this: We are not deceived when we say that You have a demon. The proof of our words is not far away.

For behold, You promise to surpass even God Himself in wonders. You promise easily to accomplish what He Himself did not do.

Abraham and the prophets kept the word of God, yet they did not stand in contradiction to the laws of nature. They underwent and fell under this common death of the body.

Then You say that the guardian of Your words will not taste death at all. How do You not thereby claim that Your works are greater than His?

Is not the one who promises to surpass God an obvious madman? Because of their great ignorance, they think that in these words the Lord indicates only the death of the body.

They think He promises immortality of the flesh to those who obey Him. Yet prudent people should first have considered that nothing dies for God, if He gives it life even when it has died.

If what was not passed into being, then how much more easily and readily can what has already passed into being be called again to existence, even if it has slept for a time because of the divine economy?

Thus, not knowing the Savior's glory, the Jews become inflated against His words. They call Him possessed because He promised to do something very great, which God had not done.

As proof of this slander, they bring forward the death of Abraham and the holy prophets. Through this they think they convict Christ of boasting with empty words.

They say He promises to give unceasing life to those who keep His word, but destroys the glory of God by assuring them that He will give something greater than God gives.

Again, with what palate or throat is death tasted, so that its flavor may be recognized? When every sensation disappears at the moment of death, what will remain on the palate?

Here, however, "see" and "taste" are said in the sense of "experience."

The Lord said this, if one may say so, as One awaiting death to those who awaited death. For "the gates of death are in the power of the Lord" (Ps 67:21), as the psalm says.

Since He speaks to those awaiting death, and speaks as One awaiting death, what else does He want to say about Himself in the words, "If anyone keeps My word, he shall never see death"?

He means that the Lord had in view another death, from which He came to deliver us. This is the second death, eternal death, the death of Hades, the death of punishment with the devil and his angels.

This is the true death. That bodily death is a departure. What does that bodily death mean? It is the leaving of the body, the casting off of a heavy burden.

This is true, unless a man carries another burden, by the force of which he will be cast down into Hades. Of this very death the Lord said, "He who keeps My word shall never see death" (cf. Jn 8:51).

Therefore let us not fear that death of the flesh, but let us fear this one. It is heavier. Many, by fearing that death in vain, fall into this one.

Some were told, "Worship idols, for if you do not do this, you will perish." Or as Nebuchadnezzar said, if you do not worship, you will be cast into the furnace burning with fire (Dan 3:15).

Many were afraid and worshiped. Not wishing to die, they died. Fearing the death that could not be avoided, they fell into the death that they could have happily avoided, had they not unhappily feared the unavoidable death.

You were born a man. You will die. Where will you go to escape death? What will you do so as not to die?

Your Lord, to console you who were condemned to death, freely chose to accept death. When you see that Christ died, do you refuse to die?

Therefore you will die. It is not in your power to avoid this. Whether it happens today or tomorrow, it will happen. It is a debt that must be paid.

What does a man gain by fearing, fleeing, and hiding, so that his enemy may not find him? Does he seek not to die at all? No, only to die a little later.

He does not obtain release from the debt, but seeks a delay of payment. However long it is postponed, what was postponed will happen.

Therefore let us fear the death feared by the three men, tres viri, who said to the king. These are Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael. In Discourse 11, blessed Augustine uses pueri, "boys," usually aged seven to sixteen, but here in Discourse 43 he uses viri, "men."

"God is able to save us from the furnace, but even if not..." (cf. Dan 3:17-18). There was fear of the death now mentioned by the Lord, when they said, "If He does not wish to deliver us openly, He can crown us secretly."

Therefore the Lord Himself, intending to strengthen the martyrs and become the Head of the martyrs, said, "Do not fear those who kill the body, and after that can do nothing" (cf. Mt 10:28; Lk 12:4).

How can they do nothing? What can they do after they kill? They can throw the body to beasts and birds to be torn. It seems that cruelty can still do something.

But against whom? That man has gone away. The body remains, but it feels nothing. The dwelling of the true man lies there, but the inhabitant has departed.

Therefore they can do nothing after this, because they can do nothing to what feels nothing. But fear Him who has power to cast both body and soul into the Gehenna of fire (cf. Lk 12:5).

This is the death of which He spoke when He said, "If anyone keeps My word, he shall never see death" (Jn 8:51).

Therefore, brethren, let us keep His word in faith, as those who are to come to the vision of Him after we have received the whole fullness of freedom.

But those Jews, indignant, being dead and predestined to eternal death, answered with abuse and said, "Now we know that You have a demon. Abraham died, and the prophets" (Jn 8:52).

But neither Abraham nor the prophets died with the death which the Lord wished to explain. They certainly died, but they live. These Jews were alive, but dead.

For in one place, answering the Sadducees who raised a question about the resurrection, the Lord replied: "Concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what the Lord says to Moses from the bush?

"'I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.' God is not the God of the dead, but of the living" (cf. Mt 22:31-32; Ex 3:6).

If they are alive, let us strive to live in such a way that we may be able to live with them when we die.

"Who do You make Yourself," they said, "that You say, 'If anyone keeps My word, he shall never see death' (Jn 8:53, 52), when You know that Abraham and the prophets died?"

Just as the good must become better through insults, so the evil become still worse through benefactions. For after listening to the preaching, they again say: "Now we know that You have a demon."

They had sunk into eternal death and did not see the death into which they had sunk.

True, they thought that the Messiah abides forever (Jn 12:34). But they did not believe in the Lord as Messiah. Hence came their malice against Him, and their constant contradiction and opposition to Him.

Even now it seems to them the words of a demon-possessed man that the Lord attributes to His word, and therefore to Himself, a power of life and vitality greater than that possessed by the greatest of their forefathers.

Abraham and the prophets heard God Himself, yet did not escape death.

"Now we know." Previously they had only supposedly suspected it (Jn 7:20; Jn 8:48), but now they have supposedly become convinced and know.

"To taste death" is an image drawn from tasting the cup of death, that is, poison.

By "Seed" Christ is meant, the Savior of the world. As God and as the Son of God, the Savior is eternal. Yet at the appointed time He was pleased to become incarnate for the salvation of men. This very time of the Incarnation of the Son of God and of His coming to earth Abraham foresaw with the eyes of faith and rejoiced.

There is, without doubt, a historical and economic difference between the revelation of the Old Testament and that of the New. Yet the essential content is one and the same in both. The Savior is one, and God is one.

The books of the Old Testament are holy for every Christian as divinely inspired Scripture. They are not like monuments of ancient pagan literature.

Nevertheless, the new revelation is not only the revelation of the same Godhead. It is a fuller and clearer revelation of the Godhead known through the ancient revelation. Therefore our reverence for the new revelation must be higher and deeper.

"And you have not known Him, but I know Him."

The revelation of God concerning God and Christ is one thing. The understanding of that revelation among the Hebrew people is another. The Savior says to the Jews: you do not know Him, the heavenly Father.

Does this reproach refer only to the contemporaries of Jesus? "You always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you," says St Stephen (Acts 7:51).

The people of Israel were the chosen people, the best people. Yet their own monuments, the historical and prophetic books, clearly say that they understood God's revelation badly.

So they appeared also in their dealings with Christ Jesus. They do not recognize in Jesus the One of whom the prophets spoke. They fail to recognize Him because they formed false ideas of the Messiah and the God of the prophets.

In the tumult of earthly passions, they lost the pure concepts of the salvation of mankind. "I know Him," says the Savior.

This knowledge was not received from outside, as it is with men. It is the consequence of the inward consubstantiality of the Son with the Father.

The Savior says this because truth requires it. If He said otherwise, He would resemble the Jews, to whom lying is so characteristic. The faithfulness of such a testimony can be verified by deeds.

His whole life is dedicated to the glory of the heavenly Father. Thus it is not vainglory, but love of truth, that bears witness before the Jews that He knows the Father.

Therefore whoever values truth must value His testimony.

"Abraham your father rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad."

The Jews vainly regard the greatness of Abraham as inaccessible to Jesus. On the contrary, Jesus is far higher than Abraham. He is the Messiah awaited by the father of believers.

The "day" of Jesus is "the time of His coming" (Cyril of Alexandria). This is explained by the Savior Himself in Jn 9:4-5. Otherwise, it is the time of light indicated by the prophets (2 Pet 1:19).

It is the time of salvation, "concerning which the prophets searched and inquired" (1 Pet 1:10-12). Abraham desired to see this day, and saw it with rapture.

How and when did Abraham see the time of Jesus Christ? Some suppose that he saw it in types, for example in the offering of his son as a sacrifice, as Zigabenus, Augustine, and Origen say.

But Jesus Christ distinguishes the expectation of the manifestation from the seeing. In the latter, He lets us see a special state of Abraham.

Abraham was not glad only when he received promises concerning the Messiah, or when he was instructed about Him through types. He saw with rapture the very time of Christ, or what is the same, His manifestation to the world.

When and how? By a revelation given in the life beyond the grave. This thought is confirmed by the example of Moses and Elijah, who appeared on Tabor and spoke with Jesus about the Cross (Mt 17:4).

The Jews' guilt does not lie in their failure to understand this mystery. It lies in their deliberate and malicious resistance to the teaching of goodness and love. It lies in their blasphemy, which made them opponents of God and barred their entrance into the Kingdom of God. They could enter that Kingdom only by faith. In their hardness of heart they do not see that the Lord Jesus is the Representative of the Divine Word. They do not understand that He came forth from God, and therefore they perish in darkness.