Homilies on John, Homily 28

“For God did not send His Son to condemn the world, but to save the world.” [1.] Many careless people use God’s lovingkindness to make their sins greater and their indifference more extreme. They say, “There is no hell, there is no future punishment, God forgives us all sins.” To silence them, a wise man says, “Do not say, His mercy is great, He will be appeased despite my many sins; for mercy and anger come from Him, and His indignation rests upon sinners” ( Ecclus. v. 6 ): and again, “As His mercy is great, so is His correction also.” ( Ecclus. xvi. 12.) “Where, then,” someone says, “is His lovingkindness, if we will receive what our sins deserve?” To see that we will indeed receive “what we deserve,” listen to what both the Prophet and Paul declare. One says, “You will repay everyone according to his work” ( Ps. lxii. 12 , LXX.); the other, “Who will repay everyone according to his work.” ( Rom. ii. 6.) Yet we can see that even so God’s lovingkindness is great. By dividing our existence into two periods, the present life and the life to come, and making the first a time of trial and the second a place of crowning, He has shown great lovingkindness even in this. “How, and in what way?” Because when we had committed many terrible sins and had never stopped defiling our souls with ten thousand evil deeds, from youth to extreme old age, He did not demand an account of any of these sins from us. Instead, He granted us forgiveness for them through the washing of Regeneration and freely gave us Righteousness and Sanctification. “What, then,” someone says, “if a man who has been considered worthy of the mysteries from his earliest years commits ten thousand sins afterward?” Such a person deserves a more severe punishment. For we do not pay the same penalties for the same sins if we do wrong after Initiation. Paul declares this when he says, “Anyone who rejected Moses’ law died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severe a punishment do you suppose someone will be thought to deserve who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, considered the blood of the Covenant an unholy thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace?” ( Heb. x. 28, 29.) Such a person, then, deserves a more severe punishment. Yet even for him God has opened doors of repentance and granted him many ways to wash away his transgressions, if he is willing. Think, then, what proofs of lovingkindness these are: to forgive sins by Grace, and, instead of punishing someone who has sinned after grace and deserves punishment, to give him time and a set period to clear himself. For all these reasons Christ said to Nicodemus, “God did not send His Son to condemn the world, but to save the world.” For there are two comings of Christ, the one that has already happened and the one still to come, and the two do not have the same purpose. The first took place so that He might forgive, rather than examine our actions; the purpose of the second will be to investigate, rather than forgive. So of the first He says, “I did not come to condemn the world, but to save the world” ( c. iii. 17 ); but of the second, “When the Son has come in the glory of His Father, He will set the sheep at His right hand, and the goats at His left.” ( Matt. xxv. 31, 46.) And they will go, these into life, and those into eternal punishment. Yet by the rule of justice, His earlier coming called for judgment. Why? Because before His coming there was a law of nature, and the prophets, and also a written Law, and teaching, and ten thousand promises, and displays of signs, and punishments, and acts of vengeance, and many other things that could have set people right. It followed that He would demand an account in light of all these things. But because He is merciful, for a time He pardons instead of investigating. For if He had investigated, everyone would immediately have been swept away to destruction. For “all,” it says, “have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God.” ( Rom. iii. 23.) Do you see the indescribable abundance of His lovingkindness? Ver. 18. “Whoever believes in the Son is not judged; but whoever does not believe is judged already.” Yet if He “did not come to judge the world,” how is “whoever does not believe judged already,” if the time of “judgment” has not yet arrived? Either He means that the very fact of disbelieving without repentance is a punishment (for being without the light is in itself a very severe punishment), or He announces beforehand what will happen. For just as a murderer, though not yet condemned by the judge’s decision, is still condemned by the nature of his deed, so it is with the unbeliever. Adam, too, died on the day he ate from the tree, for this was the decree: “On the day you eat from the tree, you will die” ( Gen. ii. 17 , LXX.); yet he lived. How, then, did he “die”? By the decree, by the very nature of the deed. For someone who has made himself liable to punishment is under its penalty, and if he is not actually suffering it for a time, he is still under it by the sentence. So that no one, on hearing, “I did not come to judge the world,” should imagine that he could sin without punishment and become more careless, Christ checks such indifference by saying, “is judged already.” And because the “judgment” was in the future and not yet near, He brings the fear of vengeance close and describes the punishment as already here. This itself is a mark of great lovingkindness: He not only gives His Son, but even delays the time of judgment, so that those who have sinned and those who do not believe may be able to wash away their transgressions. “Whoever believes in the Son is not judged.” Whoever “believes,” not whoever pries too far; whoever “believes,” not the busybody. But what if his life is unclean and his deeds evil? It is especially of such people that Paul declares that they are not true believers at all: “They profess to know God, but by their works they deny Him.” ( Tit. i. 16.) But here Christ says that such a person is not “judged” in this one respect. For his works he will indeed suffer a more severe punishment, but having once believed, he is not punished for unbelief. [2.] Do you see how, after beginning His discourse with frightening things, He has ended it with the very same things? At first He says, “Unless a person is born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God”; and here again, “Whoever does not believe in the Son is judged already.” “Do not think,” He says, “that the delay does the guilty person any good unless he repents, for whoever has not believed will be no better off than those who are already condemned and being punished.” Ver. 19. “And this is the condemnation, that light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light.” What He says means this: “They are punished because they would not leave the darkness and hurry to the light.” From here He goes on to strip them of every excuse from now on: “If I had come,” He says, “to punish them and demand an account of their deeds, they might have been able to say, ‘This is why we drew back from You.’ But now I have come to free them from darkness and bring them to the light. Who, then, could pity someone who refuses to come from darkness into light? Though they have no charge to bring against us and have received ten thousand benefits, they draw back from us.” He has brought this charge elsewhere, where He says, “They hated Me without a cause” ( John xv. 25 ): and again, “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have had sin.” ( John xv. 22.) For someone who sits in darkness when there is no light may perhaps receive pardon. But someone who stays with the darkness after the light has come provides certain proof against himself of a perverse and quarrelsome disposition. Next, because His assertion would seem unbelievable to most people (for no one would prefer “darkness to light”), He adds the reason for their feeling this way. What is it? Ver. 19, 20. “Because,” He says, “their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light, so that his deeds will not be shown to be wrong.” Yet He did not come to judge or investigate, but to pardon and forgive transgressions and to grant salvation through faith. Why, then, did they flee? If He had come and sat on His Judgment seat, what He said might have seemed reasonable, for someone conscious of his own evil deeds usually flees his judge. But those who have transgressed actually run to someone who is granting pardon. If, then, He came to pardon, those conscious of many transgressions would naturally hurry to Him most eagerly. And this did happen with many, for even tax collectors and sinners ate with Jesus. What, then, does His statement mean? He says this about those who choose to keep living in wickedness. He came to forgive people’s former sins and protect them against future ones. But because some are so lax, so unable to bear the hard work of virtue, that they want to stay with wickedness until their last breath and never stop practicing it, He is speaking here to rebuke them. “For since,” He says, “professing Christianity requires a sound way of life as well as right doctrine, they are afraid to come over to us, because they do not want to lead a righteous life. No one would blame a man living in paganism, because with gods such as his, and rites as foul and ridiculous as his gods, his actions suit his doctrines. But those who belong to the True God, if they live carelessly, have everyone calling them to account and accusing them. Even its enemies admire the truth so greatly.” Notice, then, how precisely He states His point. His expression is not, “Whoever has done evil does not come to the light,” but, “Whoever always does it, whoever always wants to roll in the mire of sin, will not submit to My laws, but chooses to stay outside, commit sexual immorality without fear, and do every other forbidden thing. For if he comes to Me, he is exposed like a thief in the light, and so he avoids My rule.” For example, even now one can hear many pagans say “that they cannot come to our faith because they cannot give up drunkenness and sexual immorality and similar excesses.” “Well,” someone says, “are there no Christians who do evil, and no pagans who live with self-control?” I know that there are Christians who do evil, but I do not yet know for certain whether there are pagans who live righteously. For do not speak to me of those who are naturally good and well-behaved (this is not virtue), but tell me about the man who can endure the extreme violence of his passions and (yet) exercise self-control. You cannot. For if the promise of a Kingdom, the threat of hell, and so much other help can barely keep people practicing virtue, those who believe in none of these things will hardly pursue it. Or if any claim to do so, they do it for show; and someone who does it for show will not refrain from indulging his evil desires when he can escape notice. Still, so that we may not seem quarrelsome to anyone, let us grant that there are people among the pagans who live rightly. This does not go against my argument either, since I spoke about what generally happens, not what happens rarely. And notice how He strips them of every excuse in another way, when He says that “the light came into the world.” “Did they seek it themselves,” He says, “did they toil, did they work to find it? The light itself came to them, and even then they would not hurry to it.” And if there are some Christians who live wickedly, I would argue that He does not say this about those who have been Christians from the beginning and have inherited true religion from their ancestors (although even these, for the most part, have been shaken from right doctrine by their evil lives). Still, I think that He is not speaking about these people now, but about the pagans and the Jews who ought to have come to the right faith. For He shows that no one living in error would choose to come to the truth unless he had first planned a righteous life for himself, and that no one would remain in unbelief unless he had previously chosen to keep living wickedly. Do not tell me that a man exercises self-control and does not rob; these things by themselves are not virtue. For what good is it if a man has these qualities but is a slave to the desire for human glory and remains in his error out of fear of his friends? This is not right living. The slave to reputation is no less a sinner than someone who commits sexual immorality; indeed, his evil deeds are more numerous and more serious than that person’s. But tell me of anyone who is free from all passions and all wickedness and remains among the pagans. You cannot. For even those among them who have boasted of great achievements and have, as they say, mastered greed or gluttony have been greater slaves to reputation than anyone else, and this is the cause of all evils. This is also how the Jews have remained Jews. For this reason Christ rebuked them and said, “How can you believe, when you receive honor from people?” ( c. v. 44.) “And why, then, did He not speak about these matters with Nathanael, whose truthfulness He affirmed, or speak with him at any length?” Because even he did not come with as much zeal as Nicodemus. Nicodemus made this his main pursuit, and he turned the time others used for rest into a time for listening. But Nathanael came at someone else’s urging. Yet Jesus did not entirely pass him by either, for He says to him, “After this you will see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” ( c. i. 51.) But He did not speak this way to Nicodemus. Instead, He spoke with him about the Dispensation and eternal life, addressing each differently, as suited the state of his will. Because Nathanael knew the writings of the prophets and was not so timid either, it was enough for him to hear only this much. But because Nicodemus was still gripped by fear, Christ did not clearly reveal everything to him, but shook his mind so as to drive out fear by fear, declaring that whoever did not believe was being judged and that unbelief came from an evil conscience. For since he valued honor from people more than he feared punishment (“Many,” says the Evangelist, “of the rulers believed in Him, but because of the Jews they did not confess”— c. xii. 42 ;), Christ addresses this concern of his, saying, “It cannot be that someone who does not believe in Me disbelieves for any reason other than that he lives an unclean life.” Later He says, “I am the Light” ( c. viii. 12 ), but here, “the Light came into the world”; for at first He spoke somewhat obscurely, but afterward more clearly. Yet even so, the man was held back by concern for the opinion of the crowd, and therefore could not bring himself to speak boldly as he should. Let us flee the desire for human glory, then, for this passion is more tyrannical than any other. From it come greed and the love of wealth; from it come hatred, wars, and conflicts. For whoever wants more than he has will never be able to stop, and he wants it for no other reason than his love of human glory. Tell me, why do so many surround themselves with crowds of eunuchs, herds of slaves, and so much display? Because they want those who meet them to witness this inappropriate display, not because they need it. If, then, we cut this off, we will kill the other limbs of wickedness along with its head, and nothing will keep us from living on earth as though it were heaven. Nor does this vice merely drive its captives into wickedness; it also exists alongside their virtues. When it cannot drive us out of these entirely, it still does us great harm in the very practice of them, forcing us to do the work and depriving us of the fruit. For whoever fasts, prays, and shows mercy with this in view has his reward. What could be more pitiful than such a loss: for a person to beat his breast uselessly and in vain, become an object of ridicule, and lose the glory from above? For whoever aims at both cannot obtain both. It is indeed possible to obtain both when we desire only one, the glory from heaven; but whoever longs for both cannot obtain both. So if we wish to attain glory, let us flee human glory and desire only the glory that comes from God. In this way we will obtain both the one and the other. May we all enjoy them through the grace and lovingkindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom and with whom, to the Father and the Holy Spirit, be glory forever and ever. Amen.