Tractates on the Gospel of John

¹⁹ I have spoken of the power: look now to the meaning. It is a great criminal that is signified by that four days' death and burial. Why is it, then, that Christ troubles Himself, but to intimate to you how you ought to be troubled, when weighed down and crushed by so great a mass of iniquity? For here you have been looking to yourself, been seeing your own guilt, been reckoning for yourself: I have done this, and God has spared me; I have committed this, and He has borne with me; I have heard the gospel, and despised it; I have been baptized, and returned again to the same course: what am I doing? Whither am I going? How shall I escape? When you speak thus, Christ is already groaning; for your faith is groaning. In the voice of one who groans thus, there comes to light the hope of his rising again. If such faith is within, there is Christ groaning; for if there is faith in us, Christ is in us. For what else says the apostle: “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.” Therefore your faith in Christ is Christ Himself in your heart. This is why He slept in the ship; and why, when His disciples were in danger and already on the verge of shipwreck, they came to Him and awoke Him. Christ arose, laid His commands on the winds and waves, and there ensued a great calm. So also with you; the winds enter your heart, that is, where you sail, where you pass along this life as a stormy and dangerous sea; the winds enter, the billows rise and toss your vessel. What are the winds? You have received some insult, and are angry: that insult is the wind; that anger, the waves. You are in danger, you prepare to reply, to render cursing for cursing, and your vessel is already near to shipwreck. Awake the Christ who is sleeping. For you are in commotion, and making ready to render evil for evil, because Christ is sleeping in your vessel. For the sleep of Christ in your heart is the forgetfulness of faith. But if you arouse Christ, that is, recallest your faith, what do you hear said to you by Christ, when now awake in your heart? I [He says] have heard it said to me, “You have a devil,” and I have prayed for them. The Lord hears and suffers; the servant hears and is angry! But you wish to be avenged. Why so? I am already avenged. When your faith so speaks to you, command is exercised, as it were, over the winds and waves, and there is a great calm. As, then, to awaken Christ in the vessel is just to awaken faith; so in the heart of one who is pressed down by a great mass and habit of sin, in the heart of the man who has been a transgressor even of the holy gospel and a despiser of eternal punishment, let Christ groan, let such a man betake himself to self-accusation. Hear still more: Christ wept; let man bemoan himself. For why did Christ weep, but to teach man to weep? Wherefore did He groan and trouble Himself, but to intimate that the faith of one who has just cause to be displeased with himself ought to be in a sense groaning over the accusation of wicked works, to the end that the habit of sinning may give way to the vehemence of penitential sorrow?

20. “And He said, Where have ye laid him?” Thou knew that he was dead, and are You ignorant of the place of his burial? The meaning here is, that a man thus lost becomes, as it were, unknown to God. I have not ventured to say, Is unknown— for what is unknown to Him? But, As it were unknown. And how do we prove this? Listen to the Lord, who will yet say in the judgment, “I know you not: depart from me.” What does that mean, “I know you not”? I see you not in that light of mine— in that righteousness which I know. So here, also, as if knowing nothing of such a sinner, He said, “Where have ye laid him?” Similar in character was God's voice in Paradise after man had sinned: “Adam, where are you?” “They say unto Him, Lord, come and see.” What means this “see”? Have pity. For the Lord sees when He pities. Hence it is said to Him, “Look upon my humility [affliction] and my pain, and forgive all my sins.”

21. “Jesus wept. Then said the Jews, Behold how He loved him!” “Loved him,” what does that mean? “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” “But some of them said, Could not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not die?” But He, who would do nought to hinder his dying, had something greater in view in raising him from the dead.

22. “Jesus therefore again groaning in Himself, comes to the tomb.” May His groaning have you also for its object, if you would re-enter into life! Every man who lies in that dire moral condition has it said to him, “He comes to the tomb.” “It was a cave, and a stone had been laid upon it.” Dead under that stone, guilty under the law. For you know that the law, which was given to the Jews, was inscribed on stone. And all the guilty are under the law: the right-living are in harmony with the law. The law is not laid on a righteous man. What mean then the words, “Take ye away the stone”? Preach grace. For the Apostle Paul calls himself a minister of the New Testament, not of the letter, but of the spirit; “for the letter,” he says, “kills, but the spirit gives life.” The letter that kills is like the stone that crushes. “Take ye away,” He says, “the stone.” Take away the weight of the law; preach grace. “For if there had been a law given, which could have given life, verily righteousness should be by the law. But the Scripture has concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.” Therefore “take ye away the stone.”

23. “Martha, the sister of him that was dead, says unto Him, Lord, by this time he stinks: for he has been [dead] four days. Jesus says unto her, Have I not said unto you, that, if you believe, you shall see the glory of God?” What does He mean by this, “you shall see the glory of God”? That He can raise to life even one who is putrid and has been four days [dead]. For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; and, “Where sin abounded, grace also did superabound.”