Tractates on the Gospel of John

⁷ With efficacious merit does He deliver from this bondage of sin, who says in the psalms: “I have become as a man without help, free among the dead.” For He only was free, because He had no sin. For He Himself says in the Gospel, “Behold, the prince of this world comes,” meaning the devil about to come in the persons of the persecuting Jews—“behold,” He says, “he comes, and shall find nothing in me.” Not as he found some measure of sin in those whom he also slew as righteous; in me he shall find nothing. And just as if He were asked, If he shall find nothing in You, wherefore will he slay You? He further said, “But that all may know that I do the will of my Father, rise and let us go hence.” I do not, He says, pay the penalty of death as a necessity of my sinfulness; but in the death I die, I do the will of my Father. And in this, I am doing rather than enduring it; for, were I unwilling, I should not have had the suffering to endure. You have Him saying in another place, “I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it up again.” Here surely is one “free among the dead.”