3. Finally, to what He had thus told them, He added the words: “But the hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service: and these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me.” That is to say, they have not known the Father, nor His Son, to whom they think they will be doing service in slaying you. Words which the Lord added in the way of consolation to His own, who should be driven out of the Jewish synagogues. For it is in thus announcing beforehand what evils they would have to endure for their testimony in His behalf, that He said, “They will put you out of the synagogues.” Nor does He say, And the hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. What then? “But the hour cometh:” just in the way He would have spoken, were He foretelling them of something good that would follow such evils. What, then, does He mean by the words, “They will put you out of the synagogues: but the hour cometh”? As if He would have gone on to say this: They, indeed, will scatter you, but I will gather you; or, They shall, indeed, scatter you, but the hour of your joy cometh. What, then, has the word which He uses, “but the hour cometh,” to do here, as if He were going on to promise them comfort after their tribulation, when apparently He ought rather to have said, in the form of continuous narration, And the hour cometh? But He said not, And it cometh, although predicting the approach of one tribulation after another, instead of comfort after tribulation. Could it have been that such a separation from the synagogues would so discompose them, that they would prefer to die, rather than remain in this life apart from the Jewish assemblies? Far surely would those be from such discomposure, who were seeking, not the praise of men, but of God. What, then, of the words, “They will put you out of the synagogues: but the hour cometh;” when apparently He ought rather to have said, And the hour cometh, “that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service”? For it is not even said, But the hour cometh that they shall kill you, as if implying that their comfort for such a separation would be found in the death that would befall them; but “The hour cometh,” He says, “that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.” On the whole, I do not think He wished to convey any further meaning than that they might understand and rejoice that they themselves would gain so many to Christ, by being driven out of the Jewish congregations, that it would be found insufficient to expel them, and they would not suffer them to live for fear of all being converted by their preaching to the name of Christ, and so turned away from the observance of Judaism, as if it were the very truth of God. For so ought we to understand the reference of His words to the Jews, when He said of them, “They will put you out of the synagogues.” For the witnesses, in other words, the martyrs of Christ, were likewise slain by the Gentiles: they, however, thought not that it was to the true God, but to their own false deities, that they were doing service when they so acted. But every Jew that slew the preachers of Christ reckoned that he was doing God serv
Complete source paragraph · Tractates on the Gospel of John, Tractate 93, source paragraph 6 · Original source