{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/107/1070079.htm","path":"chr/ecf/107/1070079.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/107/1070079.htm","text":"1. While the disciples thus question, and Jesus their Master replies to them, we also, as it were, are learning along with them, when we either read or listen to the holy Gospel. Accordingly, because the Lord had said, \u201cYet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye shall see me,\u201d Judas\u2014not indeed His betrayer, who was surnamed Iscariot, but he whose epistle is read among the canonical Scriptures\u2014asked Him of this very matter: \u201cLord, how is it that Thou wilt manifest Thyself unto us, and not unto the world?\u201d Let us, too, be as it were questioning disciples with them, and listen to our common Master. For Judas the holy, not the impure, the follower, but not the persecutor of the Lord, has inquired the reason why Jesus was to manifest Himself to His own, and not to the world; why it was that yet a little while, and the world should not see Him, but they should see Him.\n2. \u201cJesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my word: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. He that loveth me not, keepeth not my sayings.\u201d Here we have set forth the reason why He is to manifest Himself to His own, and not to that other class whom He distinguishes by the name of the world; and such is the reason also why the one loveth Him, and the other loveth Him not. It is the very reason, whereof it is declared in the sacred psalm, \u201cJudge me, O God, and plead my cause against an unholy nation.\u201d 1342 For such as love are chosen, because they love: but those who have not love, though they speak with the tongues of men and angels, are become a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal; and though they had the gift of prophecy, and knew all mysteries and all knowledge, and had all faith so that they could remove mountains, they are nothing; and though they distributed all their substance, and gave their body to be burnt, it profiteth them nothing. 1343 The saints are distinguished from the world by that love which maketh the one-minded 1344 to dwell [together] in a house. 1345 In this house Father and Son make their abode, and impart that very love to those whom They shall also honor at last with this promised self manifestation; of which the disciple questioned his Master, that not only those who then listened might learn it from His own lips, but we also from his Gospel. For he had made inquiry about the manifestation of Christ, and heard [in reply] about His loving and abiding. There is therefore a kind of inward manifestation of God, which is entirely unknown to the ungodly, who receive no manifestation of God the Father and the Holy Spirit: of the Son, indeed, there might have been such, but only in the flesh; and that, too, neither of the same kind as the other, nor able under any form to remain with them, save only for a little while; and even that, for judgment, not for rejoicing; for punishment, not for reward.\n3. We have now, therefore, to understand, so far as He is pleased to unfold it, the meaning of the words, \u201cYet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye shall see me.\u201d It is true, indeed, that after a little while He was to withdraw even His body, in which the ungodly also were able to see Him, from their sight; for none of them saw Him after His resurrection. But since it was declared on the testimony of angels, \u201cHe shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven;\u201d 1346 and our faith stands to this, that He will come in the same body to judge the living and the dead; there can be no doubt that He will then be seen by the world, meaning by the name, those who are aliens from His kingdom. And, on this account, it is far better to understand Him as having intended to refer at once to that epoch, when He said, \u201cYet a little while, and the world seeth me no more,\u201d when in the end of the world He shall be taken away from the sight of the damned, that for the future He may be seen only of those with whom, as p. 338 those that love Him, the Father and Himself are making their abode. But He said, \u201ca little while,\u201d because that which appears tedious to men is very brief in the sight of God: for of this same \u201clittle while\u201d our evangelist, John, himself says, \u201cLittle children, it is the last time.\u201d 1347\n4. But further, lest any should imagine that the Father and Son only, without the Holy Spirit, make their abode with those that love Them, let him recall what was said above of the Holy Spirit, \u201cWhom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him: but ye shall know Him; for He shall dwell with you, and shall be in you\u201d (John 14.17). Here you see that, along with the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit also taketh up His abode in the saints; that is to say, within them, as God in His temple. The triune God, Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit, come to us while we are coming to Them: They come with help, we come with obedience; They come to enlighten, we to behold; They come to fill, we to contain: that our vision of Them may not be external, but inward; and Their abiding in us may not be transitory, but eternal. The Son doth not manifest Himself in such a way as this to the world: for the world is spoken of in the passage before us as those, of whom He immediately adds, \u201cHe that loveth me not, keepeth not my sayings.\u201d These are such as never see the Father and the Holy Spirit: and see the Son for a little while, not to their attainment of bliss, but to their condemnation; and even Him, not in the form of God, wherein He is equally invisible with the Father and the Holy Spirit, but in human form, in which it was His will to be an object of contempt in suffering, but of terror in judging the world.\n5. But when He added, \u201cAnd the saying which ye have heard is not mine, but the Father\u2019s who sent me,\u201d let us not be filled with wonder or fear: He is not inferior to the Father, and yet He is not, save of the Father: He is not unequal in Himself, but He is not of Himself. For it was no false word He uttered when He said, \u201cHe that loveth me not, keepeth not my sayings.\u201d He called them, you see, His own sayings; does He, then, contradict Himself when He said again, \u201cAnd the saying which ye have heard is not mine\u201d? And, perhaps, it was on account of some intended distinction that, when He said His own, He used \u201csayings\u201d in the plural; but when He said that \u201cthe saying,\u201d that is, the Word, was not His own, but the Father\u2019s, He wished it to be understood of Himself. For in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 1348 For as the Word, He is certainly not His own, but the Father\u2019s: just as He is not His own image, but the Father\u2019s; and is not Himself His own Son, but the Father\u2019s. Rightly, therefore, does He attribute whatever He does, as equal, to the Author of all, of whom He has this very prerogative, that He is in all respects His equal.\nPs. lxviii. 6: according to Augustin\u2019s translation and adaptation of the words \u05de\u05b9\u05d5\u05e9\u05b4\u05c1\u05d9\u05d1 \u05d9\u05b0\u05d7\u05b4\u05d9\u05e8\u05b4\u05d9\u05dd \u05d1\u05b7\u05bc\u05d9\u05b0\u05ea\u05b8\u05d4, and which the Vulgate has also rendered somewhat similarly, qui inhabitare facit unius moris in domo. The English version is rather more accordant with the context, \u201cwho setteth the solitary in families,\u201d or rather, \u201cwho maketh the solitary [lit. those standing alone] to dwell in a house,\u201d marg.; that is, if \u05d9\u05b8\u05d7\u05b4\u05d9\u05e8 might not even here retain its proper meaning of \u201conly one,\u201d and, hence \u201cbeloved one.\u201d At all events, the word thus used, and its place in the context (see especially the preceding verse), may warrant the combination of both meanings,\u2014that those who are \u201cones standing alone,\u201d friendless, cast off from others, in a human sense, are \u05d9\u05b0\u05d7\u05b4\u05d9\u05e8\u05b4\u05d9\u05dd, \u201conly ones,\u201d \u201cbeloved ones\u201d in the heavenly Father\u2019s sight, to whom He extends a special protection, and provideth a home.\u2014Tr.\n337:1346 338:1347 338:1348","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. VII: Lectures or Tra...","type":"page"}