And I know that his commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak.
All Commentaries on John 12:50 Go To John 12
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
And I know that His commandment is life everlasting. The way which leads to eternal life. "If thou wouldest enter into life, keep the commandments." It is also formally eternal life because the commandment of God is that eternal Law which lives in the eternal reason of things, in the living mind of God. But Christ is not speaking of this. And therefore He asserts that the command is eternal life, causally, because it causes, merits, and brings about eternal life. Christ says this, says S. Chrysostom, to induce the Jews to believe Him in those things which He spake by the command of the Father, to induce them by the hope of the highest reward, and consequently by the fear of the heaviest punishment if they do not believe in Him. He tacitly threatens them with this by way of antithesis. And to keep them from doubting this He boldly asserts it. I maintain, says Christ, and assert of My own sure knowledge, that the command of God is the cause of eternal life. I have heard it from God Himself, and I therefore know fully and surely that it has been decreed by Him as an inviolable law. In like manner Christ says, "This is life eternal" (that Isaiah , the way to life eternal), "to know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent" ( John 17:3).
Christ alludes to Ecclus. i5 , "The Word of God Most High is a fountain of Wisdom of Solomon , and the entrance thereto everlasting commandments;" and to Baruch iii9. "If then," says S. Augustine (Serm. clxxxvi. (nunc cclxvii.) De Temp.), "ye wish to have the Holy Spirit, hold fast to charity, love the truth, long for unity, and ye will attain to eternity."
Christ therefore summed up all His teaching to the people in this saying, "His commandment is eternal life," in order, when he was now going to death, to impress on the Jews and on all who should come after the perpetual memory of eternity, and a longing for life everlasting; to stimulate them to follow His faith and examples. For nothing so stimulates the mind for good, as a serious and frequent meditation on eternity. As the Psalmist says ( Psalm 119:96), "I have seen an end of all perfection, but Thy commandment is exceeding broad." This means, all sublunary things have an end, but the commandment of God has no end. It endures for ever, and leads those who keep it to a blessed eternity, but those who despise it to eternal punishments. Sufferings are momentary, but delights are eternal. But momentary are our delights, our sufferings eternal.
Symbolically, S. Augustine says, "If the Son Himself is eternal life, and the commandment of God is eternal life, what else is meant, but that I am the commandment of the Father?"
Whatsoever I speak therefore ("in announcing Myself to be the Word," says the Interlinear Gloss), even as the Father said unto Me, so I speak. That Isaiah , "As He who is True begat Me who am Truth, so I the Truth proclaim Myself as Truth." And S. Augustine, "Just as the Father spake as being True, so does the Son speak as being the Truth; the True begat the Truth."
The genuine printed commentary of S. Cyril here begins again.
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