Testimonia — Early Christian Bible Commentary

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John 14

1“Don’t let your heart be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me.

2In my Father’s house are many homes. If it weren’t so, I would have told you. I am going to prepare a place for you.

3If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will receive you to myself; that where I am, you may be there also.

4You know where I go, and you know the way.”

5Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going. How can we know the way?”

6Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through me.

7If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on, you know him and have seen him.”

8Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.”

9Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you such a long time, and do you not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father. How do you say, ‘Show us the Father’?

10Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? The words that I tell you, I speak not from myself; but the Father who lives in me does his works.

11Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me; or else believe me for the very works’ sake.

12Most certainly I tell you, he who believes in me, the works that I do, he will do also; and he will do greater works than these, because I am going to my Father.

13Whatever you will ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

14If you will ask anything in my name, I will do it.

15If you love me, keep my commandments.

16I will pray to the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, that he may be with you forever:

17the Spirit of truth, whom the world can’t receive, for it doesn’t see him and doesn’t know him. You know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.

18I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you.

19Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more; but you will see me. Because I live, you will live also.

20In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.

21One who has my commandments and keeps them, that person is one who loves me. One who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him, and will reveal myself to him.”

22Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, what has happened that you are about to reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?”

23Jesus answered him, “If a man loves me, he will keep my word. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.

24He who doesn’t love me doesn’t keep my words. The word which you hear isn’t mine, but the Father’s who sent me.

25“I have said these things to you while still living with you.

26But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things, and will remind you of all that I said to you.

27Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you; not as the world gives, I give to you. Don’t let your heart be troubled, neither let it be fearful.

28You heard how I told you, ‘I am going away, and I will come back to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced because I said ‘I am going to my Father;’ for the Father is greater than I.

29Now I have told you before it happens so that when it happens, you may believe.

30I will no more speak much with you, for the prince of the world comes, and he has nothing in me.

31But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father commanded me, even so I do. Arise, let’s go from here.

Early Christian commentary

c. 182–188 AD (historical editorial dating) | Irenaeus of Lyons

2. [They say, moreover], that there is this distinction between the habitation of those who produce an hundred-fold, and that of those who produce sixty-fold, and that of those who produce thirty-fold: for the first will be taken up into the heavens, the second will dwell in paradise, the last will inhabit the city; and that it was on this account the Lord declared, "In my Father's house are many mansions." For all things belong to God, who supplies all with a suitable dwelling-place; even as His Word says, that a share is allotted to all by the Father, according as each person is or shall be worthy. And this is the couch on which the guests shall recline, having been invited to the wedding. The presbyters, the disciples of the apostles, affirm that this is the gradation and arrangement of those who are saved, and that they advance through steps of this nature; also that they ascend through the Spirit to the Son, and through the Son to the Father, and that in due time the Son will yield up His work to the Father, even as it is said by the apostle, "For He must reign till He hath put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." For in the times of the kingdom, the righteous man who is upon the earth shall then forget to die. "But when He saith, All things shall be subdued unto Him, it is manifest that He is excepted who did put all things under Him. And when all things shall be subdued unto Him, then shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all."

Commentary · Against Heresies, Book V, Chapter 36, section 2 · Original source · Irenaeus of Lyons; The Writings of Irenaeus, Volume II, Ante-Nicene Christian Library IX; translated by Alexander Roberts and W. H. Rambaut; T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1869. Existing transcription supplied by Wikisource contributors. · Licence · Source revision · Whitespace normalized; source pagination and footnote reference markers removed. English wording unchanged.

c. 182–188 AD (historical editorial dating) | Irenaeus of Lyons

1. And such or so important a dispensation He did not bring about by means of the creations of others, but by His own; neither by those things which were created out of ignorance and defect, but by those which had their substance from the wisdom and power of His Father. For He was neither unrighteous, so that He should covet the property of another; nor needy, that He could not by His own means impart life to His own, and make use of His own creation for the salvation of man. For indeed the creation could not have sustained Him [on the cross], if He had sent forth [simply by commission] what was the fruit of ignorance and defect. Now we have repeatedly shown that the incarnate Word of God was suspended upon a tree, and even the very heretics do acknowledge that He was crucified. How, then, could the fruit of ignorance and defect sustain Him who contains the knowledge of all things, and is true and perfect? Or how could that creation which was concealed from the Father, and far removed from Him, have sustained His Word? And if this world were made by the angels (it matters not whether we suppose their ignorance or their cognizance of the Supreme God), when the Lord declared, "For I am in the Father, and the Father in me," how could this workmanship of the angels have borne to be burdened at once with the Father and the Son? How, again, could that creation which is beyond the Pleroma have contained Him who contains the entire Pleroma? Inasmuch, then, as all these things are impossible and incapable of proof, that preaching of the church is alone true [which proclaims] that His own creation bare Him, which subsists by the power, the skill, and the wisdom of God; which is sustained, indeed, after an invisible manner by the Father, but, on the contrary, after a visible manner it bore His Word: and this is the true [Word].

Commentary · Against Heresies, Book V, Chapter 18, section 1 · Original source · Irenaeus of Lyons; The Writings of Irenaeus, Volume II, Ante-Nicene Christian Library IX; translated by Alexander Roberts and W. H. Rambaut; T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1869. Existing transcription supplied by Wikisource contributors. · Licence · Source revision · Whitespace normalized; source pagination and footnote reference markers removed. English wording unchanged.