Homilies on the Gospel of John

“Did not Moses give you the Law? And yet none of you keeps the Law? Why go ye about to kill Me?”

“And what connection,” says some one, “has this, or what has this to do with what was said before?” The Jews brought against Him two accusations; one, that He broke the Sabbath; the other, that He called God His Father, making Himself equal with God. And that this was no imagination of theirs, but His own declared judgment, and that He spoke not as do the many, but in a special and peculiar sense, is clear from this circumstance. Many often called God their Father; as “Have we not all one Father, has not one God created us?”, but not for that was the people equal to God, on which account the hearers were not offended. As then when the Jews said, “This man is not from God,” He often healed them, and made defense for the violation of the Sabbath; so now had the sense they assigned to His words been according to their imagination, not according to His intention, He would have corrected them, and said, “Why suppose ye Me equal to God? I am not equal”; yet He said nothing of the kind, but, on the contrary, declared by what followed, that He is equal. For, “As the Father raises up the dead, and quickens them, so also the Son”; and “That all may honor the Son as they honor the Father”; and “The works which He does, the same does the Son likewise;” all these go to establish His equality. Again, concerning the Law He says, “Think not that I have come to destroy the Law or the Prophets.” Thus He knows how to remove evil suspicions which are in their minds; but in this place He not only does not remove, but even confirms their suspicion of His equality. On which account also, when they said in another place, “You make yourself God,” He did not remove their suspicion, but even confirmed it, saying, “That ye may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins, He says to the sick of the palsy, Take up your bed, and walk.” This then He first aimed at, to make Himself equal with God, showing that He was not God's adversary, but that He said the same and taught the same with Him, and afterwards He sets Himself to the breach of the Sabbath, saying, “Did not Moses give you the Law, and none of you keeps the Law?” As though He had said, “The Law says, You shall not kill; but you kill, and yet accuse Me as transgressing the Law.” But wherefore says He, “None of you”? Because they all sought to kill Him. “And if,” He says, “I even have broken the Law, it was in saving a man, but you transgress it for evil. And if My action was even a transgression, yet it was in order to save, and I ought not to be judged by you who transgress in the greatest matters. For your conduct is a subverting of the whole Law.” Then also He presses it farther, although He had said many things to them before, but at that former time He spoke after a loftier manner, and more suitably to His own dignity, while now He speaks more humbly. Wherefore? Because He would not continually irritate them. At present their anger had become intense, and they went on to murder. And therefore He continues to check them in these two ways, by reproving their evil daring, and saying, “Why go ye about to kill Me?” and by modestly calling Himself, “A Man that has told you the truth”, and by showing that murderers in heart are not worthy to judge others. And observe both the humility of Christ's question, and the insolence of their answer.