Homilies on John, Homily 15

“No one has seen God at any time; the Only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” [1.] God does not want us to listen carelessly to the words and sentences contained in the Scriptures, but with close attention. This is why blessed David placed the title “for understanding” before his Psalms in many places and said, “Open my eyes, that I may see wonderful things from Your Law.” ( Ps. xxxii; xlii, etc.; Ps. cxix. 18.) And after him his son again shows that we ought to “seek wisdom like silver, and trade for her rather than for gold.” ( Prov. ii. 4 and iii. 14 [partially quoted]; John v. 39.) And when the Lord urges the Jews to “search the Scriptures,” He urges us all the more to investigate them, for He would not have spoken this way if it were possible to understand them immediately on the first reading. No one would ever search for what is obvious and close at hand, but for what is wrapped in shadow and must be found through much investigation; and so, to stir us to search, He calls them “hidden treasure.” ( Prov. ii. 4; Matt. xiii. 44.) These words are spoken to us so that we will approach the words of the Scriptures with great care, rather than carelessly or at random. For if anyone listens to what they say without investigating the meaning and takes everything just as it is spoken, according to the letter, he will suppose many inappropriate things about God: he will believe that He is a man, that He is made of brass, that He is angry and furious, and many things even worse than these. But if he fully understands the underlying meaning, he will be freed from all these inappropriate ideas. ( Rev. i. 15.) The very text now before us says that God has a bosom, something that belongs to physical bodies, yet no one is so insane as to imagine that He who has no body is a body. So, to interpret the entire passage properly according to its spiritual meaning, let us examine it from the beginning. “No one has seen God at any time.” What line of thought leads the Apostle to say this? After showing the surpassing greatness of Christ’s gifts and the infinite difference between them and those delivered through Moses, he wants to explain the reason for the difference. Moses, being a servant, administered lesser things, but Christ, being Lord and King and the King’s Son, brought us far greater things, since He is always with the Father and continually sees Him. That is why He says, “No one has seen God at any time.” What, then, shall we answer Isaiah, whose voice is so powerful, when he says, “I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up” ( Isa. vi. 1 ); and John himself, who testifies about Him that “he said these things when he had seen His glory”? ( c. xii. 41.) What shall we answer Ezekiel? For he too saw Him sitting above the Cherubim. ( Ezek. i. and x.) What about Daniel? For he too says, “The Ancient of days was seated.” ( Dan. vii. 9.) What about Moses himself, who says, “Show me Your Glory, that I may see You so as to know You”? ( Ex. xxxiii. 13 , partly from LXX.) And Jacob received his name from this very thing, being called “Israel”; for Israel means “one who sees God.” And others have seen him. How, then, does John say, “No one has seen God at any time”? He means that all these were instances of (His) condescension, not a vision of the Essence itself unveiled. For if they had seen the very Nature, they would not have seen It in different forms, since It is simple, without form, parts, or boundaries. It does not sit, stand, or walk: all these things belong to bodies. But He alone knows how He Is. And He has declared this through a certain prophet, saying, “I have multiplied visions and used likenesses through the prophets” ( Hos. xii. 10 ), that is, “I have condescended; I have not appeared as I really was.” For since His Son was about to appear in actual flesh, He prepared them from ancient times to see the substance of God, as far as it was possible for them to see It. But what God really is, not only have the prophets not seen, but neither have angels or archangels. If you ask them, you will not hear them answer anything about His Essence, but you will hear them sing, “Glory to God in the Highest, on earth peace, good will toward men.” ( Luke ii. 14.) If you want to learn something from Cherubim or Seraphim, you will hear the mystic song of His Holiness, and that “heaven and earth are full of His glory.” ( Isa. vi. 3.) If you ask the higher powers, you will find only that their one task is to praise God. “Praise Him,” David says, “all His hosts.” ( Ps. cxlviii. 2.) But only the Son and the Holy Spirit see Him. How can any created nature even see the Uncreated? If we are utterly unable to discern clearly any incorporeal power at all, even a created one, as has often been proved in the case of angels, much less can we discern the Essence that is incorporeal and uncreated. That is why Paul says, “Whom no one has seen or can see.” ( 1 Tim. vi. 16.) Does this special attribute, then, belong only to the Father, and not to the Son? Absolutely not. It belongs to the Son as well; and to show that it does, listen to Paul declare this point when he says that He “is the Image of the invisible God.” ( Col. i. 15.) Now if He is the Image of the Invisible, He must be invisible Himself; otherwise He would not be an “image.” And do not be surprised that Paul says elsewhere, “God was revealed in the Flesh” ( 1 Tim. iii. 16 ), because this revelation took place through the flesh, not according to (His) Essence. Besides, Paul shows that He is invisible not only to human beings but also to the powers above, for after saying, “was revealed in the Flesh,” he adds, “was seen by angels.” [2.] So even to angels He became visible then, when He put on the Flesh; before that time they did not see Him in this way, because His Essence was invisible even to them. “How, then,” someone asks, “did Christ say, ‘Do not despise one of these little ones, for I tell you that their angels always see the face of My Father who is in heaven’? ( Matt. xviii. 10.) Does God, then, have a face, and is He confined by the heavens?” Who would be mad enough to claim this? What, then, do the words mean? When He says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” ( Matt. v. 8 ), He means the intellectual vision possible for us, and having God in our thoughts. So too, in the case of angels, we must understand that because their nature is pure and sleepless, they do nothing else but always picture God to themselves. And therefore Christ says, “No one knows the Father except the Son.” ( Matt. xi. 27.) Does that mean we are all ignorant? Certainly not; but no one knows Him as the Son knows Him. Just as many have seen Him in the kind of vision allowed them, but no one has seen His Essence, so many of us know God, but no one knows what His substance is except the One begotten of Him. For by “knowledge” here He means an exact understanding and comprehension, such as the Father has of the Son. “As the Father knows Me, so I know the Father.” ( c. x. 15.) Notice, then, how fully the Evangelist speaks. After saying that “no one has seen God at any time,” he does not go on to say, “the Son who has seen Him has declared Him,” but adds something beyond “seeing” with the words, “Who is in the bosom of the Father”; because “to dwell in the bosom” is far more than “to see.” Someone who merely “sees” does not have knowledge of the object that is exact in every way, but someone who “dwells in the bosom” can be ignorant of nothing. Now, to keep you from hearing that “no one knows the Father except the Son” and claiming that although He knows the Father better than everyone else, He still does not know how great He is, the Evangelist says that He dwells in the bosom of the Father. And Christ Himself declares that He knows Him as fully as the Father knows the Son. So ask the person who disputes this, “Tell me, does the Father know the Son?” Unless he is mad, he will certainly answer, “Yes.” Then ask again, “Does He see and know Him with exact vision and knowledge? Does He know clearly what He Is?” He will certainly admit this too. From this, then, infer the Son’s exact comprehension of the Father. For He says, “As the Father knows me, so I know the Father” ( c. x. 15 ); and elsewhere, “Not that anyone has seen the Father except He who is from God.” ( c. vi. 46.) So, as I said, the Evangelist mentions “the bosom” to show us all this through that one word: the close kinship and nearness of the Essence, that the knowledge is in no way different, and that the power is equal. For the Father would not have someone of another essence in His bosom, nor would He have dared, if He were one among many servants, to live in His Lord’s bosom. This belongs only to a true Son, One who has great confidence toward His Father and is in no way inferior to Him. Do you also want to learn of His eternity? Listen to what Moses says about the Father. When he asked what he was commanded to answer if the Jews asked him who had sent him, he heard these words: “Say, I AM has sent me.” ( Ex. iii. 14.) Now the expression “I AM” means that He exists eternally, without beginning, truly and absolutely. The expression “Was in the beginning” also declares this, indicating eternal existence; so John uses this word to show that the Son Is eternally in the bosom of the Father. To keep you from supposing, because the same name is used, that He is one of those made sons by grace, the article is first added, distinguishing Him from those who are sons by grace. But if this does not satisfy you, if you still look toward earthly things, hear a name more definitive than this: “Only-Begotten.” If even after this you still look below, “I will not refuse,” he says, (St. John,) “to apply to God a term that belongs to human beings, I mean the word ‘bosom,’ provided you suspect nothing degrading.” Do you see the Lord’s loving kindness and care? God uses expressions unworthy of Himself to describe Himself so that even through them you may see beyond them and form some great and lofty thought of Him; and do you still linger below? For tell me, why is that gross and fleshly word “bosom” used here? Is it so that we may suppose God to be a body? Certainly not; he says nothing of the kind. Why, then, is it said? For if it neither establishes that He is truly the Son nor that God is not a body, the word serves no purpose and has been thrown in needlessly. Why, then, is it said? For I will not stop asking you this question. Is it not perfectly clear that the only reason is so that through it we might understand that the Only-Begotten is truly the Son, and that He is Co-eternal with the Father? [3.] “He has declared Him,” John says. What has He declared? That “no one has seen God at any time”? That “God is one”? But all the other prophets testify to this, and Moses continually cries out, “The Lord your God is one Lord” ( Deut. vi. 4 ); and Isaiah, “Before Me no God was formed, nor will there be after me.” ( Isa. xliii. 10.) What more, then, have we learned from “the Son who is in the bosom of the Father”? What from “the Only-Begotten”? In the first place, these very words were spoken through His work; in the next, we have received far clearer teaching and learned that “God is a spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth” ( c. iv. 24 ); and again, that it is impossible to see God; “that no one knows” Him “except the Son” ( Matt. xi. 27 ); that He is the Father of the true and Only-Begotten Son; and everything else we are told about Him. But the words “has declared” indicate the plainer and clearer teaching that He gave and established, not only for the Jews but for the whole world. Not even all the Jews paid attention to the prophets, but the whole world yielded and obeyed the Only-Begotten Son of God. So “declaration” here indicates the greater clarity of His teaching, and for this reason He is also called “Word” and “Angel of great Counsel.” Since, then, we have been granted fuller and more perfect teaching, God no longer speaking through the prophets but “having in these last days spoken to us by His Son” ( Heb. i. 1 ), let us live lives far better than theirs, worthy of the honor given to us. It would be strange if He had lowered Himself so far as to choose to speak to us no longer through His servants but with His own mouth, and yet we showed nothing more than people in earlier times. They had Moses as their teacher; we have Moses’ Lord. Let us, then, display heavenly wisdom worthy of this honor, and let us have nothing to do with earth. This is why He brought His teaching from heaven above: to lift our thoughts there, so that we might imitate our Teacher as far as we can. But how can we imitate Christ? By acting in everything for the common good, rather than merely seeking our own. “For even Christ,” Paul says, “did not please Himself, but as it is written, The insults of those who insulted You fell on Me.” ( Rom. xv. 3; Ps. lxix. 9.) So let no one seek his own good. In truth, a person (really) seeks his own good when he looks after his neighbor’s. Their good is ours; we are one body, and parts and limbs of one another. So let us not act as though we were torn apart. Let no one say, “That person is no friend of mine, or relative, or neighbor. I have nothing to do with him. How can I approach him? How can I speak to him?” Even if he is neither relative nor friend, he is still a human being who shares your nature, acknowledges the same Lord, is your fellow servant and shares your temporary home, for he is born in the same world. And if he also shares the same faith, consider this: he has also become a limb of your own body: for what friendship could create such a union as the relationship of faith? Our closeness to one another must not be merely the closeness that friends should show friends, but that between one limb and another, because no one can possibly find any closeness greater than this kind of friendship and fellowship. Just as you cannot say, “Where does my closeness and connection with this limb come from?” (that would be ridiculous), so you cannot say this about your brother either. “We are all baptized into one body” ( 1 Cor. xii. 13 ), Paul says. “Why into one body?” So that we will not be torn apart, but will preserve the proper proportions of that one body through our dealings and friendship with one another. So let us not despise one another, or we will be neglecting ourselves. “For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it.” ( Eph. v. 29.) And therefore God has given us just one home, this earth, has distributed all things equally, has lit one sun for us all, has spread one roof above us, the sky, and has made one table, the earth, produce food for us. And He has given us another table far better than this, yet that too is one. (those who share our mysteries understand my words,) He has given everyone the same kind of birth, spiritual birth; we all have one country, the one in the heavens; we all drink from the same cup. He has not given the rich man a more abundant and honorable gift, and the poor man a lesser and smaller one, but has called everyone alike. He has given bodily things with equal regard for everyone, and spiritual things in the same way. Where, then, does the great inequality in people’s circumstances come from? From the greed and pride of the wealthy. But brothers, this must stop, it must stop; and when matters of common concern and more urgent necessity bring us together, let us not be divided by earthly and insignificant things: I mean wealth and poverty, family ties, hostility and friendship. For all these things are a shadow—indeed, less substantial than a shadow—to those who possess the bond of love from above. So let us preserve this bond unbroken, and none of those evil spirits who cause division will be able to enter such a perfect union. May we all attain this through the grace and loving kindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom and with whom, to the Father and the Holy Spirit, be glory, now and always, and forever and ever. Amen.