Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
He shows how excellent is the new birth and sonship from God, by reason of its end and reward, which is eternal glory, in which we shall be like to Him. He prescribes the manner for retaining the former and obtaining the latter: First, the pursuit of holiness and the flight from sin, because he that is born of God doth not commit sin; but he that committeth sin is of the devil. Secondly, in verse 11, fraternal love, that we may love one another not in word, nor in tongue, but in deed and in truth. Finally, in verse 20, he teaches the fruit of all these things — namely, that he who is of a pure heart, and loves the brethren, and keeps the commandments of God, obtains from God all that he asks.
Vulgate Text: 1 John 3:1-24
1. Behold what manner of charity the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called, and should be the sons of God. Therefore the world knoweth not us, because it knew not Him. 2. Dearly beloved, we are now the sons of God; and it hath not yet appeared what we shall be. We know, that, when He shall appear, we shall be like to Him: because we shall see Him as He is. 3. And every one that hath this hope in Him, sanctifieth himself, as He also is holy. 4. Whosoever committeth sin committeth also iniquity; and sin is iniquity. 5. And you know that He appeared to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin. 6. Whosoever abideth in Him, sinneth not; and whosoever sinneth, hath not seen Him, nor known Him. 7. Little children, let no man deceive you. He that doth justice is just, even as He is just. 8. He that committeth sin is of the devil: for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God appeared, that He might destroy the works of the devil. 9. Whosoever is born of God, committeth not sin: for His seed abideth in him, and he can not sin, because he is born of God. 10. In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil. Whosoever is not just, is not of God, nor he that loveth not his brother. 11. For this is the declaration which you have heard from the beginning, that you should love one another. 12. Not as Cain, who was of the wicked one, and killed his brother. And wherefore did he kill him? Because his own works were wicked: and his brother's just. 13. Wonder not, brethren, if the world hate you. 14. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not, abideth in death. 15. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer. And you know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in himself. 16. In this we have known the charity of God, because He hath laid down His life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. 17. He that hath the substance of this world, and shall see his brother in need, and shall shut up his bowels from him: how doth the charity of God abide in him? 18. My little children, let us not love in word, nor in tongue, but in deed, and in truth. 19. In this we know that we are of the truth: and in His sight shall persuade our hearts. 20. For if our heart reprehend us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. 21. Dearly beloved, if our heart do not reprehend us, we have confidence towards God: 22. And whatsoever we shall ask, we shall receive of Him: because we keep His commandments, and do those things which are pleasing in His sight. 23. And this is His commandment, that we should believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ: and love one another, as He hath given commandment unto us. 24. And he that keepeth His commandments, abideth in Him, and He in him. And in this we know that He abideth in us, by the Spirit which He hath given us.
Verse 1: The Charity of the Father in Calling Us Sons of God
1. BEHOLD WHAT MANNER (in Greek ποταπήν, that is, how great) OF CHARITY THE FATHER HAS GIVEN TO US (unworthy, enemies, and sinners), THAT WE SHOULD BE CALLED AND BE THE SONS OF GOD. — Take charity both as active, namely the act of God's love by which He wondrously loves us, and as passive, communicated and infused into us by God, as if to say: See how much charity, benevolence, and love God has given to us, that is, has bestowed and shown. Vatablus: how much He has loved us, when He gave and infused into us created grace and charity, by which we are called and are sons of God. For from God's uncreated charity flows our created charity, as a ray from the sun, a brook from the fountain, a spark from the fire. For those whom God loves with uncreated charity, He makes to respond to Him in love, and to love Him in return through the created charity which He infuses into them. For charity is friendship, or mutual love between God and the just. Wherefore, just as to God, as to God and Creator, we as creatures owe all honor, religion, and worship; to the same, as to a Lord, we as servants owe fear, reverence, and obedience: so to the same, as to the highest Father, we owe the highest love, and indeed our whole heart, our whole will, our whole affection.
At the end of the preceding chapter, St. John had said that he who does justice is born of God, and is therefore a son of God; here he teaches and demonstrates the excellence, fruit, and reward of that birth and divine sonship, in order to incite the faithful through it to the works of justice just named, by which they may show themselves pleasing and worthy sons to God, and may preserve, increase, and bring this His sonship to the prize of eternal glory. For behold St. Augustine reads "ecce, as if admiring he extolled the divine charity." Each of St. John's words, if more deeply weighed, discussed, and pondered, have great emphasis and suggest new spurs and fires of love.
By Father understand the whole Holy Trinity, or rather properly the person of the Father; for although the whole Holy Trinity gives us grace and charity, by which He adopts us into sons for Himself, yet this same is appropriated to the Father, both because it belongs to the Father to beget sons like Christ His only-begotten Son, according to that passage of St. John's Gospel, chapter III, verse 16: "So God loved the world, as to give His only-begotten Son;" and because to the Father is appropriated the vocation, election, predestination, whose effect is justification and sonship. Furthermore truly St. Augustine, On Nature and Grace, last chapter: "Inchoate charity, he says, is inchoate justice; advanced charity is advanced justice; perfect charity is perfect justice. And St. Dionysius, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, part I, chapter II: The first, he says, motion and striving of the mind toward divine things is the charity of God; but the first progression of holy charity towards perfecting the divine precepts is that ineffable operation, because we have it divinely. For if the divine state is effected by divine origin, and, so to speak, by generation, certainly he who has not received the divine state will never know nor work any of the things which have been handed down by God." Hence St. Cyril in chapter XLIV of Isaiah, and book XII of the Thesaurus, chapter III, calls charity the character of God's substance, the sanctification, reformation, beauty, and form of the soul.
THAT WE SHOULD BE CALLED THE SONS OF GOD (by adoption, just as Christ is the Son of God by natural generation and birth) AND BE — because many are called what they are not; but we are so called that we may truly likewise be sons of God. Hear St. Augustine: "For those who are called but are not, what does the name profit them, where the reality is not? How many are called physicians, who do not know how to cure? How many are called watchmen, who sleep all night? Thus many are called Christians, and are not found in fact; because what they are called they are not, that is, in life, in morals, in faith, in hope, in charity. But what have you heard here, brethren? Behold what manner of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called and be the sons of God. This is what Paul says: God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying: Abba, Father," Galatians IV, 6.
Let the Innovators note these things, who hold that we are not really and intrinsically just on account of the always inherent concupiscence, but are only so called because of the justice of Christ imputed to us; against whom the Council of Trent speaks, session VI, chapter VII. The word simus ("we should be") is missing in many Greek codices, and is then included in nominemur ("we should be called"); for those things which are named by God truly are such, indeed are made by God such as they are named. For if a king, by calling someone noble, a Magnate, a Prince, a Duke, by this very act makes him noble, a Magnate, etc.: much more does God do the same, who infuses real gifts of grace into those whom He calls sons, by which they are made worthy of this name: which a king cannot do. Hence the Syriac translates: He who calls us, makes us sons. For just as God the Father, in begetting the Son, communicates to Him His very own nature and divinity, so by regenerating us, born of the flesh, through the Spirit, He communicates to us the highest participation in His divinity through grace, and makes us partakers of the divine nature, as St. Peter and the Psalmist say: "I have said, you are gods, and all of you the sons of the most High," Psalm LXXXI, 6. Wherefore by this very fact He makes us as it were gods, and like His Son. "By this grace each of the Saints is god," says St. Basil, homily On the Holy Spirit. Just as therefore God is holy by essence, so the just one begotten by God participates in this His holiness, and in all God's other attributes. For he becomes as it were omnipotent, so that with Paul he can do all things in God who strengthens him, Philippians IV, 13. He becomes immutable, so that, adhering to God, he allows himself to be moved from the right by no promises or threats. He becomes heavenly, so that, desiring heavenly things, he despises this point of earth. He becomes as it were impeccable, because as long as he persists in grace, he cannot sin, of which in verse 9. He becomes most good, because he extends the bowels of charity and the rays of beneficence, as a kind of saving sun, to all. He becomes as it were omniscient, because taught by God: for the unction of God teaches him about all things, as John says in chapter II, verse 27. He becomes imperturbable, because he has fixed his mind in God above all the vicissitudes of the world and the age. He becomes liberal, so as to envy no one, but to promote the goods of all as if his own. He burns with charity, so that he renders good for evil to his rivals, and thus makes friends out of enemies. He becomes upright, patient, constant, even-tempered, prudent, brave, sincere, because such is God his Father. See St. Thomas, Opusculum LXII, if indeed he is its author: for the style indicates another. This is what St. James says in chapter I, verse 18: "Of His own will He begot us by the word of truth, that we might be some beginning of His creature. And Hosea chapter I, verse 10: And it shall be in the place where it shall be said to them: You are not My people; it shall be said to them: You are the sons of the living God." See what has been said in both places.
From what has been said it follows that through justification we become sons of God in three ways, namely with respect to the past, the present, and the future. With respect to the past, through spiritual generation, by which, as James says, "He begot us by the word of truth;" and St. Peter, epistle II, chapter I, verse 4: "That we may be partakers of the divine nature;" and St. John in his Gospel, chapter I, verse 12: "He gave them the power to be made the sons of God;" and in this epistle, chapter IV, verse 4: "You are of God, little children;" and verse 6: "We are of God;" and chapter V, verse 18: "Whosoever is born of God does not sin, but the generation of God preserves him." Furthermore, this generation takes place not only through grace, but also through the deity itself, which is really communicated to us as sons by God the Father, as I said in II Peter 1:4.
Secondly, we become sons in the present through paternal care, by which God as a father loves us as sons, governs and forms us, perfects, directs, and protects us, according to that of Psalm LIV: "Cast thy thought (in Hebrew, thy burden, thy weight) upon the Lord, and He will nourish thee, in Hebrew, He will sustain thee; and in this epistle chapter V, verse 15: We know that He hears us in whatever we ask: we know that we have the petitions which we ask of Him. Luke chapter XII, 7: The hairs of your head are all numbered." What mother so loves her son as to number, preserve, and restore all his hairs? Yet God does this: therefore He cares for us more than a mother. "Why then, says St. Augustine, do you fear, O man, in the bosom of God," who is to you father and mother? Truly Blessed Theodore in the Lives of the Fathers: Even if, he says, heaven should fall to earth, Theodore does not fear, namely: Though the broken world should fall in ruins, the ruins shall strike him undismayed.
Thirdly, with respect to the future, through the heavenly inheritance, which He will give to us as sons, that we may be heirs of God, and joint-heirs of Christ, according to that: "The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup, Thou art He that wilt restore my inheritance to me," Psalm XV, 5.
Thus the Gentiles boasted that they were begotten by Jove or by the gods, but falsely: concerning which St. Augustine, book III On the City [of God], chapter IV: "Varro, he says, says that it is useful to states that brave men, even if it is false, should believe themselves to be begotten from the gods: so that in this way the human mind, bearing as it were the confidence of divine stock, may presume more boldly to attempt great things, may act more vehemently, and on this account may fulfill by its very security more happily." Thus Scipio never wished that estimation of men to be raised, that he had sprung from divine seed; and in Lucian's Dialogue of Diogenes, Alexander says it was useful to him for conducting affairs that he was held to be a son of Jupiter Ammon. For he was feared, nor did anyone dare to oppose him, namely one whom they believed to be a god. Thus they pretended that Romulus was begotten of Mars, and Julius Caesar of Venus. But Christians glory in being sons of God, and they truly are sons of God, and therefore the truer this is, the keener should be the spur to every virtue and to heroic, indeed divine works. Hear St. Cyprian, in the book On the Spectacles: "He will never admire human works, whoever has known himself to be a son of God; he casts himself down from the summit of nobility, who can admire anything after God. When therefore the flesh solicits you, answer: I am a son of God. I was born for greater things than to make myself the slave of the belly. When the world tempts you, when it displays gold and riches, answer: I am a son of God, destined for heavenly riches; it is therefore unworthy that I should pursue a speck of white or red earth. When the demon assails you, when he promises honors and pomps, answer: Go, Satan, into hell: far be it that I should make myself a son of the devil, who am a son and heir of God. Born for the eternal kingdom, I trample and tread under foot every honor and pomp of the earth as smoke." You are a son of God: therefore in the short time of life that remains to you, and perhaps in a few hours, set your mind to great, arduous, and divine works, such as Christ, such as the Saints accomplished. Are you called by God to the state of perfection, called to a life to be spent for the salvation of souls, called to the Japanese and the Indians, called to the cross, to martyrdom? Offer yourself generously to the calling, as becomes the son of so great a Father. Thus our Father Balthasar Alvarez, as Luis de la Puente relates in his Life, continually applied this admonitor and spur to himself and his own: "Do not degenerate from the most lofty thoughts of the sons of God."
FOR THIS REASON THE WORLD DOES NOT KNOW US (Cajetan, Vatablus, and Isidore read "you"; but the Greek, Syriac, St. Augustine, and the Latins read "us"), BECAUSE IT KNEW HIM NOT. — As if to say: For this reason worldly men and Gentiles do not esteem, indeed slight and despise this regeneration and sonship of Christians from God, because they have not known God at least practically, because they do not worship God, do not love Him; many also do not know God speculatively, like the atheists, idolaters, Pagans, etc. "They do not know, says St. Chrysostom in homily 78 on John, those who treat us with contumely, what we are, namely that we are citizens of heaven, enrolled in the heavenly fatherland, and companions of the Cherubim. But they will know on the day of judgment, when, stunned and groaning, they will say: These are they whom we held some time in derision and as a parable of reproach. We fools, esteemed their life madness, and their end without honor. Behold how they are numbered among the sons of God, and their lot is among the saints," Wisdom V, 4.
Verse 2: We Shall Be Like Him, for We Shall See Him as He Is
2. DEARLY BELOVED, WE ARE NOW THE SONS OF GOD, AND IT HAS NOT YET APPEARED WHAT WE SHALL BE (we shall be like to God; whence he adds): BUT WE KNOW THAT WHEN HE SHALL APPEAR (Syriac, when He Himself shall be revealed), WE SHALL BE LIKE TO HIM. — Like to Him, namely to God, not in nature, but in quality, in felicity, in eternal glory; as if to say: The world does not know us, because it does not see our internal beauty; but it will see now on the day of judgment, and then will know us, but too late, because then we shall no longer be obscure, vile, despised, but splendid; because we shall be like to God and to Christ, namely we shall be perfectly holy, just, pure, loving God, because we shall be blessed, glorious, divine: and just as God sees Himself and enjoys and is beatified by that vision: so also our mind shall see Him as He is, and all things which are formally in Him, and shall enjoy and be beatified by this vision for ever, and by it our sonship and adoption shall be perfected, because as sons of God we shall obtain the glory, inheritance, and felicity of God.
Note: The likeness of God in us is threefold. The first is by nature; for we are of a rational and intelligent nature, just as God is rational and intelligent. The second is by grace, which, as St. Bernard to the Brothers of Mont Dieu says, "consists in the virtues, in which the soul, by the magnitude of virtue, longs as it were to imitate the magnitude of the highest good, and by the constancy of perseverance in good, the immutability of His eternity."
The third likeness of God, the highest and most perfect in us, will be in heaven through beatific glory, in which, says St. Bernard, "man becomes one spirit with God, not only by the unity of willing the same thing, but by a more express unity of the strength of being unable to will otherwise."
This third likeness, then, of which St. John speaks, consists in heavenly glory and felicity, which, as the Theologians commonly teach, consists in the vision of God, one in essence, and triune in persons, through the light of glory. Hence, explaining "like, St. John adds: Because we shall see Him as He is." Wherefore Oecumenius places this likeness of God in the charity of adoption and in glory, according to that of Psalm XV, 11: "I shall be satisfied when Thy glory shall appear. And Psalm XLVII, 9: As we have heard, so we have seen in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God. And Psalm XXVI, 4: One thing I have asked of the Lord, this will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, that I may see the delight of the Lord. And Psalm XXXV, verse 10: O Lord, with Thee is the fountain of life, and in Thy light we shall see light. And Paul, I Corinthians XIII, 12: We see now through a glass in a dark manner; but then face to face." Hence the Scholastics, part I, Question XII, teach that the Blessed see the very essence of God in itself, and His three persons and all His attributes: for the Blessed possess God through vision, and as it were draw Him within themselves, and from there suck up every good. Hence St. Augustine, in the book On the Knowledge of True Life, at the end: "Such a vision, he says, and such a glory is called the kingdom of heaven, because only the heavens, that is the just enjoy this vision, whose first highest good it is, in which they have full joy from the fullness of all goods."
Again, while they see God, they form His likeness in their mind, namely the word of the mind which is fully like God, and represents and presents God to them. Hence St. Augustine in Enchiridion chapter III: "But when, he says, the mind has been imbued with the beginning of faith which works through love, it tends, by living well, also to attain to the vision, where to holy and perfect hearts is the known and ineffable beauty, whose full vision is the highest felicity." Hence again the Blessed will be like God, because they will participate in His blessed eternity, and will be happily eternal, just as He is happily eternal, as St. Gregory explains in homily 2 on Ezekiel, and Pope Evaristus, epistle 1, and our Vasquez part I, Question XII.
From this likeness of glory and vision of God which will be in the intellect, there will follow another in the will, namely the perfect love of God seen and possessed. Hence St. Fulgentius to Ferrandus the Deacon, Question III: "We shall be like to Him, he says, by the imitation of justice." For this love of God will not only exclude every sin, even the very least, but will also seize the whole man into God, so that he loves Him with his whole heart, with his whole mind, with his whole soul, and with all his strength and might, so that he loves nothing nor wishes nor is able to love anything, except God for His own sake, and all other things for God's sake. For just as God so loves Himself that He cannot turn His mind and love elsewhere: so also the Blessed so love God, as most beautiful, best, most delightful, and most full of all goods, that they cannot turn their mind elsewhere: thence they become not only impeccable, but also immovable from God, and from the contemplation and love of God. Hence St. Augustine in the Confessions: "When, he says, I shall cleave to Thee with all my whole self, nowhere shall I have grief or toil: my life shall be alive, wholly full of Thee; but now, since I am not full of Thee, I am a burden to myself."
Furthermore, this same love will always endure for all eternity, and therefore will continually kindle the Blessed to the praises of God. Hence St. Augustine, sermon 118 On Various Subjects, chapter V: "Now being already like to Him, when shall we fail, whither shall we turn aside? Therefore we are secure, brethren, the praise of God will not satiate us: if you fail in love, you will fail in praise: but if love shall be eternal, how unsatiating that beauty shall be, fear not lest you cannot always praise Him, whom you can always love." Thirdly, from this glory and vision will follow all the gifts of soul and body, like the gifts of the soul and body of glorified Christ: for in the soul there will be the highest peace, the highest concord, the highest harmony of all the powers, strengths, and actions.
In the body there will be impassibility, clarity, subtlety, agility, as St. Paul testifies in I Corinthians XV, 42. Hence Tertullian, On the Resurrection chapter XX, says: We shall be like Him, namely as to the resurrection and the immortality of the body; we shall therefore be like to Him, that is, we shall be as it were Gods. For just as the sun shining through a cloud produces a parhelion, so as to seem to be a new, second, and third sun: so Deity, shining through in the soul and body of the Blessed, will make as it were as many Gods as there will be Blessed. How great a felicity, how great a glory it will be to see as it were as many angels, indeed as many as it were Gods as there will be Saints in heaven! With St. John St. Paul agrees, Colossians III, 3: "You are dead, he says, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ shall appear, who is your life, then you also shall appear with Him in glory;" and I Corinthians XV, 45: "The first man (Adam) was of the earth, earthly, the second man (Christ) from heaven, heavenly. Such as is the earthly, such also are the earthly: and such as is the heavenly, such also are the heavenly. Therefore as we have borne the image of the earthly, let us bear also the image of the heavenly. And Philippians III, 21: We look for the Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ, who will reform the body of our lowness, made like to the body of His glory;" and II Corinthians III, 18: "But we all, beholding the glory of the Lord with open face, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord;" and Romans VI, 5: "For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also together in the likeness of His resurrection;" and Romans VIII, 29: "Whom He foreknew and predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He Himself might be the firstborn among many brethren," etc.
Because we shall see Him, — namely God, who has gone before, and Christ: for St. John bore Christ as His beloved with all his heart and mouth: we shall therefore see God's essence as it is in itself, as the Scholastics teach in part I, Question XII.
Again, we shall see Christ as man and clothed in flesh, as He is, that is, as He is clothed about with the glorious beauty and form of His body. Thus Bellarmine, book I On the Beatitude of the Saints, chapter III; Gregory of Valencia, I II, disputation I On Beatitude, question IV, point 2, and others.
Again, we shall see Him as He is; that is, not through a glass and in a riddle, but face to face: for in this life we do not see God as He is, but as He has been made for our dispensation, namely we see Him clothed in flesh, suffering, and crucified, says St. Augustine and Origen, homily 6 on Genesis, and St. Gregory, homily 2 on Ezekiel.
Verse 3: He Who Has This Hope Sanctifies Himself
3. AND EVERY ONE WHO HAS THIS HOPE IN HIM SANCTIFIES HIMSELF, AS HE ALSO IS HOLY. — St. John has said that we will be like Christ and God in the future life, because we shall see Him as He is; now he suggests the manner of attaining this, namely first, to place hope in God; for it belongs to God to give grace, which may lead us to so arduous a thing as the likeness of God. "The confidence of those who hope is the mercy of God," says St. Prosper on Psalm CXXX. Secondly, to strive for sanctity. For it is not enough to place hope in God, unless you yourself also put your hand to the work, and labor together with God: for no one will be like Christ in heaven, who in his morals was unlike Him on earth. Therefore that we may be alike in glory, we ought to strive to be like Him in holiness, virtue and grace — that is, in love, in labor, in the cross and in suffering, according to that saying: "Yet if we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together, Romans VIII, 17; and: Without holiness no man shall see God, Hebrews XII, 14; for it is written: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God, Matthew V, 8. St. Augustine puts it beautifully, De Cognitione veræ vitæ, at the end: To this highest good, he says, the just are drawn by a certain chain, which is connected from the virtues in this manner. First, faith embraces the soul as a kind of circle; faith is nourished by hope, hope is held by love, love is fulfilled by action, action is drawn to the highest good by intention, the intention of the good is closed by perseverance, and to perseverance God, the fount of all goods, will be given."
Finally St. Gregory Nazianzen, in Iambic XV: "What, he says, is holiness? To grow accustomed to God. And St. Bernard, book V De Consideratione, chap. XIV: Holy affection makes a man holy, he says, and this is twofold, the fear of the Lord and holy love. The soul perfectly affected by these, as if with two arms of its own, takes hold, embraces, presses, holds, and says: I have held Him, and will not let Him go. The same, sermon 25 among the lesser ones: There are three things, he says, that make a man holy: a sober manner of life, a just deed, a pious disposition. Life will be sober if we live continently, sociably, obediently — that is, chastely, charitably, humbly. For through continence chastity, through sociability charity, through obedience humility is acquired. And this is the virtue which makes the soul, perfectly subjected to God, live securely under the shadow of His wings. The deed will be just if it is upright, discerning, fruitful: upright through good intention, discerning by the measure of possibility, fruitful through the usefulness to one's neighbors. The disposition will be pious if our faith perceives God as supremely powerful, supremely wise, supremely good — so that through His power we believe our infirmity to be helped; through His wisdom we believe our ignorance to be corrected; through His goodness we believe our iniquity to be washed away. There are three things that make the death of the saints precious: rest from labor, joy in newness, security from eternity."
AS HE IS HOLY. — John alludes to, indeed cites, that passage of Leviticus chap. XXVI: "You shall be holy unto Me, for I the Lord am holy." See what is said there, and Leviticus XXVII, XXVIII. St. John demands a great holiness from the faithful — a holiness, namely, that resembles the holiness of God and of Christ — and therefore that they daily strive to be more sanctified, and to make great progress in holiness, so that by this means they may daily be made more like Christ and His holiness. Christ Himself enjoined the same thing, saying: "Be ye therefore perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect," Matthew V, 48.
Whoever, then, you are who endeavor to be holy, place before your eyes the exemplar of your holiness, and constantly meditate on the life and passion of Christ the Lord, imitate it, and express it in your deeds and manner. Hear St. Ambrose, book De Isaac, chap. VIII: "Let each one strip his soul of its grimier wrappings, and like gold approve it, cleansed of its mud, by fire: for thus is the soul purged like the finest gold; but the beauty of the soul is sincere virtue and grace, the truer knowledge of higher things, so that it may behold that good upon which all things depend, but which itself depends on nothing. And St. Gregory Nazianzen, rousing us to this very thing, says: Let us render the beauty of the image to the Image; let us acknowledge our dignity; let us pursue our exemplar with honor; let us understand the force of the mystery, and for whom Christ underwent death: let us be as Christ, since Christ also became as we are. Let us be made gods through Him, since He too became man for us. The same Nazianzen, oration 6, speaking of God: For the pure has nothing of so great worth, he says, as purity or purification."
SANCTIFIES HIMSELF, — ἁγνίζει ἑαυτόν, that is, makes himself chaste, as St. Augustine, Didymus, Clement, Œcumenius and others read; the Zurich version: purifies himself; others: cleanses, expiates himself. Some think that our Interpreter [the Vulgate] read ἁγιάζει, that is, sanctifies — but there is no need to take refuge there. For the interpreter learnedly translates ἁγνίζει, that is, purifies, as sanctifies, because "holiness, as St. Dionysius says, De Divinis Nominibus chap. XII, is purity free from all defilement, most uncontaminated and most perfect." Hence chastity, and especially virginity, is called holiness, according to the Apostle's saying, I Corinthians chap. VII, v. 34: "The unmarried woman and the virgin thinks of the things of the Lord, that she may be holy in body and in spirit." For to such, by Christ, is given a sure hope of the vision of God, according to that saying: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
True holiness of men, therefore, consists in the cleansing away of sins and the uprooting of vices, according to that saying of St. Paul: "He that shall cleanse himself from these, shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified and profitable to the Lord, prepared unto every good work," II Timothy II, 21.
Furthermore, this cleansing of vices is accomplished by the implanting and exercise of contrary virtues — for instance, of pride by humiliation and humility; of lust by mortification of the flesh and chastity; of impatience by patience; of intemperance by temperance; of hatred by charity, etc. Wherefore holiness is nothing other than humility, chastity, patience, temperance, charity and the other virtues by which the soul is sanctified and as it were dedicated and consecrated to God. For something is called holy as if sanctioned by blood — that is, dedicated and offered to God. Hence some explain he sanctifies himself thus: that is, he offers, dedicates, consecrates himself to God, as priests and Religious do. For in a similar though less perfect manner all the faithful in baptism are anointed and consecrated to God, and become a royal priesthood — that is, mystical kings and priests, as I said on I Peter II, 9. Thus Christ says: "For them I sanctify Myself, that is, I offer Myself as a holy victim, that they also may be sanctified in truth," that is, justified and assigned and dedicated to God, John XVII, 19.
Verse 4: Sin Is Iniquity
4. WHOEVER COMMITS SIN, ALSO (that is, even) COMMITS INIQUITY; AND (that is, because) SIN IS INIQUITY. — "Because whoever sins, by sinning becomes contrary to the equity of the divine law," says Bede. He proves that the faithful ought to sanctify themselves to be made like Christ, who is the Holy of holies, by an argument from the contrary — namely, because sin, which is the contrary, is nothing other than iniquity, in Greek ἀνομία, that is, transgression of the divine law; and therefore it makes us plainly unlike God, deformed and hateful; he is speaking properly of perfect sin, that is, mortal sin. Hence St. Augustine, XXII Contra Faustum, XXVII, defines sin thus: "It is something said, done, or desired against the eternal law. And St. Ambrose, book De Paradiso, chap. VIII: What else, he says, is sin but the transgression of the divine law and the disobedience of heavenly commands?" The word iniquity means the same thing — that is, a withdrawal from the equity which the law prescribes. In a similar manner sin is called injustice, because contrary to justice, that is, to what is just, fair, and right. So this is ἄνομον, that is, illegitimate, lawless, irregular, deviating from law and rule. Hence it is clear that for St. John sin is the same thing as iniquity, although in common usage iniquity signifies something greater and worse than sin, as St. Gregory teaches, XI Moralia, XXI or XXIII. Granted that St. Ambrose, Apologia David, chap. XIII, judges otherwise and thinks that sin sounds greater than iniquity, because "sin, he says, is the work of iniquity; whereas iniquity is the worker of fault or offense."
Furthermore, every sin — even one committed only against human law, that is, civil or Ecclesiastical — is against God, because it is against God's eternal law: for from this every positive and human law is derived and descends, like a stream from its source. For the eternal law, says St. Thomas, I II, Quæst. XCI, art. 1, is the supreme reason existing in the divine mind, according to which He directs all the actions and motions of creatures to their ends. For just as in God there is the reason of things to be created, which is called the idea, so also there is the reason of things to be governed, which is called the eternal law. And just as the reason of things to be created is nothing other than the concept of the divine mind by which He conceives the thing and judges how it ought to be made: so this reason which is the eternal law is nothing other than that concept by which He conceives and judges how every creature ought to discharge its functions, together with the will of binding it, or of impressing in it the inclination to follow that rule.
Verse 5: He Appeared to Take Away Our Sins
5. AND YOU KNOW THAT HE APPEARED TO TAKE AWAY OUR SINS. — He, namely the supreme Maker of things, supremely to be venerated, worshiped, and loved — that is, Christ the Son of God, whom I bear with all my heart and with my mouth, and whom all others ought to bear, as their Creator and Redeemer. Thus Moses calls God He who is, Exodus III, 14. And Pythagoras was held in such veneration and authority among his own that, when his disciples disputed about some question, when the opinion of Pythagoras was cited as that of an irrefragable master, all would say αὐτὸς ἔφα — He, namely Pythagoras, has said it; therefore one must acquiesce in him, and consequently let all disputes and reasonings cease. Christ purely takes away sins, because, as Bede says: "He takes them away by remitting what has been done, and by helping that they not be done, and by leading to a life where they can in no way be done."
For "should take away" the Greek is αἴρει, the Syriac נְסָא nasa, both of which mean to bear as well as to take away — and both senses suit this place. For Christ took away our sins in such a way that He took them upon Himself to be expiated, and so bore the punishment due to them. He alludes to, indeed cites, Isaiah LIII, 4: "Surely He hath borne our infirmities, and He hath carried our sorrows, where in the Hebrew there is the same נָשָׂא nasa; and v. 6: The Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all;" and v. 11: "By His knowledge shall My just servant justify many, and He shall bear their iniquities. Alluding to Isaiah, St. John the Baptist, seeing Christ, said of Him: Behold the Lamb of God; behold Him who takes away the sins of the world," John I, 29. Our St. John, here his namesake, also has this in view. The counterpart to St. John's saying is that of St. Peter, Epistle I, chap. II, v. 24: "Who His own self bare our sins in His body upon the tree;" and that of St. Paul: "Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, for the showing of His justice on account of the remission of past offenses."
Morally, learn here how grave an evil sin is, since to take it away Christ descended from heaven into the earth and into flesh, indeed suffered and was crucified, that He might teach us to do the same — namely, that for the abolishing of sins and the converting of sinners we should willingly undergo all labors, journeys, sorrows, punishments, and crosses. "Truly, says Œcumenius, no place at all is left to you for sinning; for since Christ came to destroy sin — He who was wholly free from every sin — you who are born in Him and confirmed by faith in Him are no longer permitted to sin." Every one of the faithful, therefore, ought to strive to abolish in others, just as in himself, every sin, that he may destroy the work of the devil — with as much zeal (indeed far greater) as hunters use to destroy the broods of serpents, the eggs of hawks, and the cubs of wolves.
AND IN HIM IS NO SIN. — And, that is, because — as if to say: For this reason Christ was able and fit to take away sin, because He was free from all sin, and indeed from any power of sinning. For He was naturally incapable of sin because of the hypostatic union; for through this the divine Person of the Word so assists the humanity of Christ — so as to direct it through all its actions, that He might not offend even in the least: for otherwise the offense and the sin would have rebounded upon the very Person of the Word (which is impossible), both because actions belong to the person or supposit, and because the person is bound to rule and govern the nature which it sustains, lest it sin. Finally, "Christ's will, since it is wholly deified, doubtless is not opposed to God," says St. Gregory Nazianzen, oration 36. And St. Cyril, De Recta fide ad Theodosium, teaches that the Word imbued the soul of Christ with His own holiness and immutability, just as a fleece is imbued with the color in which it is dyed. "Therefore, he says, as the flesh, once it had been made the flesh of the Word who quickens all things, knew no sin, immediately attained a firm and in every way stable state, and against the sin which once exercised tyranny over us became in many ways more powerful. St. John cites Isaiah chap. LIII, v. 9: Because He had done no iniquity, neither was there any deceit in His mouth. For, as St. Paul says, Hebrews VII, 26: Such a high priest became us, who is holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and made higher than the heavens. Because, as St. Augustine says here, He in whom there is no sin came to take away sin;" for if there were sin in Him, it would have to be taken away from Him, and He would not be the one to take it away.
Verse 6: Whoever Abides in Him Sins Not
6. WHOEVER ABIDES IN HIM SINS NOT, — in the composite sense, that is, so long as he abides in Christ and in Christ's grace, so long as he follows the lead of grace; because grace and sin are contraries, which fight one another more than heat and cold, whiteness and blackness; and because Christ's grace strengthens man to overcome every sin. Moreover, says Œcumenius, he abides in Christ "who without any interruption exercises the virtues and never desists from acting upon them."
AND WHOEVER SINS HAS NOT SEEN HIM, NOR KNOWN HIM. — "Has not seen, namely Christ, as to His humanity; has not known" the same, by faith, as to His deity, says the Gloss. But this is too subtle. Therefore has not seen means the same as nor known; for he who sins does not know Christ, namely practically, because practically he does not consider Christ's immense love, His redemption, His benefits and the rewards of eternal glory promised to the just, and the punishments prepared by Him in hell for sinners: for if he attentively considered these things, he would surely not sin. Hence St. Basil in his Morals, Rule 80, at the end: "What is proper, he says, to a Christian? To set the Lord always before his sight." Again, the one who sins does not know Christ — that is, with a savory and affectionate knowledge, which is joined to love and charity. He has not known, then, means he does not love Christ, does not strive to be pleasing to Him, does not contend to please Him. For if he truly loved Christ, when any temptation came upon him he would say with Paul: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation, or distress? etc. I am sure that neither death nor life, etc., Romans VIII; and with the Spouse, Canticles VIII: Many waters cannot quench love, neither shall the floods drown it." So throughout this Epistle St. John takes "to know" practically, for to love, to esteem, to be moved with affection. Hear Bede: "Every one, then, he says, who sins has not seen Him, nor known Him; for if he had tasted and seen how sweet the Lord is, he would by no means cut himself off by sinning from beholding His glory: and just as the just belch forth the memory of the abundance of His sweetness and exalt His justice, so they strive, by abstaining from sins, to be in concord with His unchangeable and incomparable justice. But Didymus puts it best in this place: Every one, he says, who sins, made a stranger to Christ, has no part with Him nor knowledge of Him. For when he says 'he does not see Him,' he signifies that he has no share in Him; from which it follows that he is seen also not to have any inward knowledge of Him."
Verse 7: He That Does Justice Is Just
7. LITTLE CHILDREN, LET NO MAN DECEIVE YOU, — as if to say: Let not Simon deceive you, nor the Gnostics, who teach that man is justified by faith alone, and that good works are not required for justice; that therefore anyone can be just and at the same time indulge his lusts and live impurely — for these things, they say, are no obstacle to justice, provided he keeps the faith: and that consequently Christians, endowed with liberty by Christ, can live freely and do whatever they please. Against this heresy St. Peter, John, and James wrote their Epistles: hence against it they teach that we are justified not by faith alone, but also by works. Therefore St. John adds:
WHOEVER DOES (not whoever believes) JUSTICE IS JUST. — Note, he does not say: Whoever does just works, but whoever does justice; for sinners and penitents do some just works and yet are not just (except dispositively and inchoately, namely because they dispose themselves toward justice and tend toward it), because they do not do justice — that is, full and entire — because they do not do all the things prescribed by God's law: for no one can fully fulfill God's law except through grace and charity, which only the just man has. For, as St. James says, chap. II, v. 10: "Whoever shall keep the whole law, but offend in one point, has become guilty of all:" see what is said there.
Secondly, here St. John contrasts those born of God — as he said in chap. II, v. 29 — with those born of the devil, that is, children of God with children of the devil, or the just with the unjust, in that the just man does the works of God, namely works of justice and holiness: for he takes justice here in the general sense, which is the comprehension of all virtues, or every virtue, as Nyssen says in his book De Beatitudinibus; while the unjust man does the works of the devil, namely works of injustice and iniquity, or sins.
Thirdly, "he who does justice is just," both because the works of justice which he does indicate that he is just — for they flow from the habit of justice and charity, with which he has been endowed by God, since he has been born again of Him — and because the works of justice merit its increase and make him more just; and because it belongs to a just man continually to exercise himself in works of justice, if he wishes to retain and increase the justice he has received. For it is here a question, not of the infusion, but of the exercise of justice, says Thomas Anglicus.
Morally, then, St. John teaches that the just man ought assiduously to exercise himself and grow in works of justice and virtue, and to have a perpetual zeal and effort for its increase, like the spouse of whom it is said in Canticles IV: "Who is this that comes forth like the rising dawn, fair as the moon, chosen as the sun?" and in Proverbs IV: "The path of the just, as a shining light, goes forwards and increases even to perfect day. Truly St. Augustine, in this Epistle, tractate 4: The whole life of a good Christian, he says, is holy desire. So St. Paul did, when he says: Forgetting the things that are behind, and stretching forth myself to those that are before, I press toward the mark, for the prize of the supernal vocation, Philippians III, 14. And of the holy living creatures Ezekiel I, 12 says: Each one of them went straight forward: whither the impulse of the spirit was, thither they went;" where see St. Gregory, homily 3, and St. Bernard, epistle 254 to Guarinus, and St. Basil, homily 11 of the Hexaemeron, and St. Jerome to Celantia.
AS HE IS JUST, — because He always and everywhere does justice, and that full and perfect — indeed divine — according to the saying: "All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth, Psalm XXIV, 10; and: The works of His hands are truth and judgment, Psalm CX, 7; and: The Lord is faithful in all His words, and holy in all His works."
Note: τὸ as does not signify equality but likeness: for no creature can equal the justice and holiness of the Creator, but only imitates and attains its shadow, just as a mirror shows the shadow or image of a man, not the man himself, says Bede. Hear St. Augustine: "He makes us chaste as He Himself is chaste; but He is chaste by eternity, we are chaste by faith. We are just as He is just; but He in unchangeable perpetuity itself, we just by believing in Him whom we do not see, that we may one day see Him. And when our justice shall be perfect, when we shall have been made equal to the angels, not even then shall we be equal to Him: how far, then, is he now from Him, who not even then will be His peer?"
Verse 8: The Son of God Appeared to Destroy the Works of the Devil
8. HE WHO COMMITS SIN IS OF THE DEVIL. — This is the antithesis of the preceding verse, as if to say: As he who does justice is just and born of God, so on the contrary he who commits sin is unjust and born of the devil, because he follows the devil's actions and suggestions, and from them, as from an evil seed, conceives and brings forth sin. To be of the devil is to imitate the devil, says St. Augustine: "For the devil has made no one, has begotten no one; but whoever has imitated the devil is, as it were, born of him and becomes a son of the devil by imitation, not properly by birth." Therefore he who commits sin is of the devil, that is, he is of the devil's kingdom, family, and lineage, and follows and imitates him, as a son does his father — not, however, as if he were begotten by transmission from the devil, as the Manichees dreamed. With a similar expression Ezekiel, chap. XVI, v. 3, says to the impious Jews: "Your mother is a Hittite, and your father an Amorite: and your elder sister is Samaria, etc., and your younger sister is Sodom."
BECAUSE THE DEVIL SINS FROM THE BEGINNING. — From the beginning, that is, of his creation: for though not at the first instant (since he was created in grace), yet a little after he sinned, growing proud and rebelling against God. Secondly, from the beginning of sin and of sinners, because he himself first sinned; whence he gave to Adam and to others the beginning and example of sinning. So Cyril, catech. 2: "The devil, he says, is the prince of sin and the father of evils. And St. Augustine here: From the beginning the devil sins — not from the beginning when he was created, but from the beginning of sin, which began to be sin from his own pride. Didymus adds, thirdly: From the beginning the devil sins, because he first sends out suggestions of sins," as if to say: The devil claims for himself for the most part the beginning of all sins, because he for the most part suggests them to man and impels him to them. Finally, the phrase sins from the beginning signifies that the devil persistently perseveres in his sin and rebellion, being damned and obstinate in evil, according to that Psalm LXXIII: "The pride of them that hate Thee ascends continually." He sins therefore, that is, he always persists in the affection of his first sin of pride and of others. St. John alludes to that passage of his Gospel, chap. VIII, v. 44: "He stood not in the truth, because as soon as he was made, he fell; he was indeed founded in the truth, but by not standing fast immediately fell from the truth, says Isidore, book I De Summo bono, chap. III. Bede adds: Because, he says, the devil sins from the beginning: since, he says, from the beginning when he began to sin, he has never ceased, restrained neither by the enormity of his present punishments, nor by the fear of those to come. Whence by that title he is said to be one who neglects to call himself back from sinning. Of what sort the devil's first sin was Bede explains in these words: He who was first created, as soon as he beheld the loftiness of his own brightness, swelled in pride against his Creator with his followers, and through that same pride, sinning from the beginning, was turned from an Archangel into the devil."
FOR THIS PURPOSE THE SON OF GOD APPEARED, THAT HE MIGHT DESTROY THE WORKS OF THE DEVIL. — He confirms what he had said, as if to say: So truly is he who sins of the devil, not of God, that to abolish sin as if His enemy, Christ willed to assume flesh and in it to appear. After his manner he repeats what he said in v. 5: "And you know that He appeared to take away our sins." Note τὸ that He may dissolve. For sins are like ropes which the devil weaves, after the manner of a spider catching flies, that he may entangle, ensnare, and net the sinner in them, so that he cannot extricate himself: which Christ therefore came to dissolve, that He might extricate and rescue the sinner from them. This is what the Wise Man says, Proverbs V, 22: "His own iniquities catch the wicked, and he is bound with the cords of his own sins;" and Isaiah V, 18: "Woe to you that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as the rope of a cart!" See what is said there. Hence Christ gave to Peter and to the Apostles the power of loosing, Matthew XVI, 19, and John XX, 23.
From this place and similar ones it is clear that Christ would not have become incarnate had Adam not sinned: some Scholastic Doctors deny this, but Scripture and the Fathers constantly assert it, who assign no other cause of Christ's Incarnation than our expiation and redemption from sin. Hear the Nicene Creed: "Who for us men and for our salvation came down from the heavens. Hence, from St. Gregory, the Church sings in the blessing of the Paschal candle: O truly necessary sin of Adam, which was blotted out by the death of Christ! O happy fault, which merited to have such and so great a Redeemer!" St. Ambrose, book De Sacramento Incarnationis, chap. LXI: "What, he says, was the cause of the Incarnation, except that the flesh which had sinned might be redeemed by itself?" St. Augustine, sermon 9 De Verbis Apostoli: "There was no cause for Christ the Lord to come, he says, except to save sinners. Take away the diseases, take away the wounds, and there will be no cause for medicine. St. Leo, sermon 3 De Pentecoste: If man had not gone astray, he says, the Creator would not have become a creature, nor would the eternal have undergone temporality, nor would the Son, equal to God the Father, have taken upon Himself the form of a servant and the likeness of sinful flesh." The rest say the same.
Verse 9: He Who Is Born of God Cannot Sin
9. AND HE CANNOT SIN, BECAUSE HE IS BORN OF GOD. — From this Jovinian of old, as St. Jerome attests in book II Against him, and lately Luther and Calvin, taught that a believer cannot fall away from faith, grace, and justice, and that he is certain of his perseverance and salvation. But this is an error condemned by Scripture and by St. John, chap. II, v. 1, where he says: "My little children, these things I write unto you, that you sin not;" therefore they could sin — and these were among the faithful. It also runs counter to daily experience, by which we see many believers each day becoming heretics and sinning. Finally, the contrary was defined by the Council of Trent, sess. VI, can. 23.
BECAUSE HIS SEED ABIDES IN HIM. — What is this seed? First, Œcumenius takes it as Christ; for Christ is the seed of the Father and the blessed seed of Abraham, Galatians III, 29. Secondly, St. Augustine, Clement of Alexandria, Bede, the Gloss and Hugh take it as the word of God, of which the parable of the seed and the sower stands, Luke VIII, 11; James I, 18; I Peter I, 23. Thirdly, and most aptly, Lyranus, Cajetan, Hugh and Thomas Anglicus say: The seed is the grace of God — first, because from grace and charity, as from a seed, the other virtues sprout, and likewise good works and merits. Secondly, because grace is the seed of glory, as St. Thomas beautifully teaches, I part, Quæst. LXII, art. 3. Thirdly, because, just as a seed must die in order to sprout and bear fruit, so grace begets the zeal for mortification and for martyrdom, from which every good, private and public, has flowed and flows, according to that saying of Christ in John XII, 24: "Unless the grain of wheat falling into the ground die, itself remains alone; but if it die, it brings forth much fruit. He who loves his life shall lose it; and he who hates his life in this world keeps it unto life everlasting."
There is therefore another sense of St. John's, namely that he who is born of God cannot sin — that is, gravely and mortally. First, in the sense not divided but composite, namely so far as he is born of God and as long as he keeps this birth and the seed of God's grace by which he was reborn, and follows its lead: so Œcumenius, Thomas Anglicus, Cajetan, and St. Jerome, book II Against Jovinian. So the theologians say that he who has efficacious grace cannot fail to do that to which grace impels him, and consequently cannot sin — namely in the composite sense, because efficacious grace in its very concept includes the effect. For grace is called efficacious which is foreseen as going to have its effect, namely that it will persuade free will to consent to a good work. Absolutely speaking, however, he who has efficacious grace can resist it and sin, as is clear from the Council of Trent, sess. VI, can. 4.
Secondly, he who is born of God cannot sin in the formal sense, namely as far as it depends on the divine birth — that is, if you regard the force of the birth and of the divine grace; for this, if it is allowed to act and operate, and if free will does not resist it, is powerful and effective so as to exclude every sin, so that sin cannot stand with it. So St. Augustine, De Gratia Christi, chap. XXI. Thus Adam in the state of innocence is said to have been immortal, because as long as he persevered in it, he could not die; but just as he could desert it, so also could he die. So we shall say: this medicine, e.g. theriac, is so powerful and so resistant to the plague that whoever takes it cannot die of plague; as Mithridates, taking daily the mithridatic invented by him and named after him, became so hardened against poison that, when reduced to extreme straits by the Romans and taking poison to kill himself with it (lest he come alive into the Romans' power), he was for a long time unable to do so, his nature so strengthened by mithridatic that it broke the whole force of the poison. But just as one can refuse to use the theriac he has, or even cast it up and vomit it once taken, and so be touched by the plague and die: so likewise he who has God's grace can refuse to use it, and cast it away, and sin. Furthermore, St. John here distinguishes the supernatural habits of divine grace from the natural habits of the moral virtues, in that the former exclude every sin, but the latter do not. For a habit, e.g. of temperance, is not lost by a single act of intemperance, just as it is not acquired by a single act of temperance. Again, he distinguishes Christ's grace from Adam's grace, in that the latter gave Adam the power to do, not the will to do; while the former gives Christians, even the weaker, both the power and the will: see St. Augustine, De Correptione et Gratia, chap. XII: "Provision was made, he says, for the weakness of the human will, that divine grace might act upon it indeflectibly and inseparably, and so, however weak, it should not fail nor be overcome by any adversity, etc., so that by His own gift it might most invincibly will what is good, and most invincibly refuse to abandon it. In this way St. John explains it in chap. V, v. 18, saying: Whoever is born of God sins not, but the generation of God preserves him."
Thirdly, he cannot sin, that is, can scarcely or with difficulty sin: because, reborn into a new man, he is wholly clothed and imbued with the grace of God, so that he can scarcely be unmindful and ungrateful for so great a benefit of God.
Œcumenius adds to this: "He cannot, he says — that is, he is unwilling — sin. Others by metathesis: he cannot sin," that is, they say, he is able not to sin; because this properly is power and capacity, since on the contrary to be able to sin and to sin is weakness and impotence — as if to say: The seed, that is, the grace of God, gives us the power and strength by which we may be able not to sin, and to overcome every sin, if we are willing to cooperate with it.
Fourthly, St. Augustine, De Natura et Gratia, chap. XIV: He cannot sin, namely by right, not in fact — as if to say: By right he cannot sin; it does not become him, it is not fitting that he should sin; if he sin, he acts against all duty, right and propriety, because he is ungrateful for so great a grace, for the birth and adoption received from God.
Fifthly, Gagnaeus: He cannot sin, namely with the sin of affected infidelity, or of the impugning of acknowledged truth, which St. John calls sin unto death, chap. V, v. 16.
Sixthly, others take this of the predestined and absolutely elect to eternal life; for although these can for some time be in mortal sin, yet at the last moment of life they cannot be in it nor die in it. In a similar way Christ says, Matthew XXIV, that the elect cannot be led into error; and John X, that no one can snatch the elect out of His hand. Hence St. Fulgentius, De Fide ad Petrum, chap. XXV: "Hold most firmly, he says, that none of those who are predestined can perish;" understand this of an impossibility not antecedent but consequent, which logicians call the impossibility of consequence, which is rightly consistent with the freedom of our will, because it includes and presupposes it.
The first exposition and the second seem most genuine.
Anagogically St. Augustine, book II De Peccatorum meritis, chap. VII: "The just man, he says, cannot sin, not in reality, but in hope; because he hopes for, indeed has a right to, eternal life, in which he will be incapable of sin."
In like manner St. Augustine, book I De Nuptiis et Concupiscentia, chap. XXIII and XXIX, and De Spiritu et Littera, last chap., says that the precept You shall not covet, and You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart and with all your strength, cannot be perfectly fulfilled in this life, but that by it we are admonished to strive toward that place where we shall perfectly fulfill it, which will be in heaven. Understand these things in the anagogical sense. For it is commanded by that saying You shall not covet that we feel no movement of concupiscence, which we cannot do in this life but shall do in heaven; for in the literal sense the precept You shall not covet only commands that, though we feel concupiscences, we do not consent to them — which we are able to perform in this life. The same must be said of that: You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart and with all your strength, as I said on Romans VII, 7.
Morally, St. John here teaches the faithful an easy and certain way to flee any sin and to become morally fixed, as it were incapable of sinning, namely if they continually attend to the seed of God — that is, the holy inspirations and dictates of faith and Christian prudence, which God by faith and prudence suggests and inspires to the mind; for so long as we attend to them and fix our mind upon them, we exclude every seed of the devil — that is, all suggestions of concupiscence and of sin — and so we cannot sin. For he who sins must necessarily attend to and aim at some concupiscence forbidden by God; if he does not attend to it, he cannot sin, because the appetite and the will can desire and will nothing except what the imagination and the mind propose and suggest to them as good, desirable, and to be coveted. Hence the Blessed cannot sin, because they see God as the supreme and immense good; whence they cannot turn their eyes away from Him, but are immersed and absorbed in Him as in an abyss of all good.
Wherefore it is most useful always to occupy the mind with good thoughts, as St. Xavier used to do — for example, to ruminate some pious sentence of Holy Scripture or of the Holy Fathers, or some act or virtue of one of the Saints; for the mind, occupied with this thought, excludes and dashes out every other alluring thought that might move the appetite to sin: so much for the intellect. The same applies to the will. For he who attends to the seed of God — that is, to the pious affections, desires, impulses, terrors, promises, etc., which God inspires and infuses into the will — cannot attend to concupiscence, and consequently cannot sin. So he says, with St. Joseph when solicited by the adulteress: "Behold, my master has handed over all things to me except you; how then can I do this evil and sin against my God?" Genesis XXXIX, 9. See what is said there. Hear St. Leo, sermon 8 De Epiphania: "Whoever, he says, desires to test whether God dwells in him, of whom it is said: 'Marvelous is God in His Saints,' let him with sincere examination shake out the inward parts of his heart, and sagaciously inquire with what humility he resists pride, with what benevolence he struggles against envy, how he is not captured by flatterers' tongues, and how he delights in the goods of others. Whether for evil he does not desire to render evil, and prefers to forget injuries unavenged, than to lose the image and likeness of his Creator, who, inciting all to the knowledge of Himself by general gifts, rains upon the just and the unjust, and makes His sun rise upon the good and the evil. And lest the inspection of careful discrimination labor in many things, let it search out in the secrets of its mind that very mother of all virtues, charity; and if it finds in itself the love of God and of neighbor intent with the whole heart, so that it wishes the same things to be given even to its enemies as it desires to be bestowed on itself — whoever is of this sort, let him not doubt that God is both his governor and His indweller."
Verse 10: The Children of God and the Children of the Devil
10. IN THIS THE CHILDREN OF GOD ARE MANIFEST, AND THE CHILDREN OF THE DEVIL (as if to say: By these two signs you may manifestly distinguish the children of God from the children of the devil, that is, the just from the unjust; namely first, that) WHOEVER IS NOT JUST (the Greek and Syriac: whoever does not work justice, just and holy works), IS NOT OF GOD; (secondly), WHO LOVES NOT HIS BROTHER, — that is, his neighbor, especially a Christian: repeat: he likewise "is not of God," that is, is not a son of God, but of the devil. Whence by contrast he leaves it to be inferred that a son of God is, first, he who works justice; secondly, he who loves his brother. These then are the two tokens, and as it were the two badges of the children and soldiers of God, namely justice and charity; but of the devil, injustice and hatred. Note: He who loves his brother works justice. For justice here is taken in the general sense, which embraces love and every virtue, just as a genus embraces its species; yet here St. John distinguishes it, in order to show that among all species of justice none more reveals — indeed makes — us children of God than charity and the love of neighbor; nor on the contrary does any species of injustice more reveal and make us children of the devil than hatred and envy. Hence St. John, the beloved of Jesus, breathes nothing but love. Properly therefore charity distinguishes between the children of God and of the devil. Hear St. Augustine here, tract 5: "Love alone discerns between the children of God and the children of the devil. Let all sign themselves with the sign of the cross of Christ; let all respond Amen; let all sing Alleluia; let all be baptized; let all enter the churches, let them build the walls of basilicas: the children of God are not distinguished from the children of the devil except in charity. Those who have charity are born of God; those who do not, are not born of God. Have whatever you wish; if you lack only this, it profits you nothing. Even if you lack other things, have this, you have fulfilled the law." Now by charity God is loved for His own sake, and one's neighbor for God's sake; whence "the fullness of the law is love, Rom. XIII, 10. The same Augustine, On Nature and Grace, ch. XLII: Charity, he says, is the truest, the fullest, and the most perfect justice." Tertullian, in his book On Patience, calls it "the highest sacrament of faith, the treasure of the Christian name, which the Apostle commends with all the powers of the Holy Spirit." Clement of Alexandria, in his Exhortation to the Gentiles, names it "the chief office of the Christian man;" Cyprian, On the Good of Patience, "the foundation of peace, the tenacity and firmness of unity, which precedes both works and martyrdoms;" Basil, oration 3, calls it "the root of the commandments;" St. Gregory Nazianzen, epistle 20, "the head of our teaching;" Jerome, in his epistle to Theophylact, "the mother of all virtues;" Ephrem, Doctrine on humility, "the column of all virtues;" Augustine, sermon 53 De Temp., "the citadel of all virtues;" Prosper, book III On the Contemplative Life, ch. XIII, "the most powerful of all affections, always unconquered in all things, the sum of good actions, the health of morals, the end of heavenly precepts, the death of crimes, the life of virtues;" Cyril on chapter XIII of St. John, "steadfast in every virtue;" Gregory, book VI, epistle 60, "the mother and guardian of all good things;" Bernard, epistle 2, "the mother of men and of angels, pacifying not only the things that are on earth, but also those that are in heaven."
Finally St. Basil, On the Institute of Monks: "Wherever, he says, charity suffers a failure, in that very place hatred succeeds. But if, as John says, God is charity, then without doubt the devil must be hatred. Therefore, just as he who has charity has God, so he who has hatred nourishes the devil within himself." These passages our Benedict Justinus had collected before me.
Verse 11: That You Love One Another
11. For this is the announcement, — that is, the thing announced, and always to be announced and proclaimed; as if to say: This is the message brought from heaven by Christ, which we Apostles, the messengers of Christ, ceaselessly announce to you. The Syriac has this is the precept; for a precept must be promulgated and announced to subjects. The Greek ἀγγελία alludes to the Gospel, as if to say: The sum of the Gospel is to love one another. Again, the Gospel, that is the joyful message which Christ brought us from heaven, was that we should love one another, as Christ loved us. God could have demanded from us, as sinners, many painful and arduous works of fasts, hairshirts, labors, torments, martyrdoms, but He would not: He is content if we love one another. This is the Gospel. For what is more joyful, what more pleasant, what easier than to love, and to love one another, that is, mutually, reciprocally? For just as God commanded us to love our brothers, so in turn He commanded our brothers to repay us with reciprocal love. For our love elicits and demands this; for the most efficacious philter, the lynx, the magnet, and the lure of love is love, according to that saying of Martial:
"That I may show myself a Pylades, let someone show himself an Orestes to me;
This is not done by words: Marcus, that you may be loved, love."
Again, this is ἀγγελία, that is, the announcement, teaching, and life of the angels; for the angels love one another most ardently. By this Christ commands us to imitate them, that we may emulate the manners and felicity of the angels, and begin them through mutual love.
He alludes to, indeed cites, that saying of Christ: "This is My commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you," John XV, 12, where St. Augustine notes, tract 83 on John, that the as I have loved you distinguishes charity from human and carnal love, as if to say: Love one another, not as men love each other because they are men, but as they love each other because they are gods, and sons of the Most High. "For why, he says, does Christ love us, unless that we may be able to reign with Christ? Few therefore love each other to this end, that God may be all in all."
Verse 12: Not as Cain, Who Killed His Brother
12. THAT YOU LOVE (Greek ἀγαπῶμεν, that is, that we love) ONE ANOTHER; NOT AS CAIN, — supply "let us do," or "let us love." For Cain loved only himself, but hated his brother Abel, and killed him out of envy; namely because he saw that his brother's sacrifices, being better, were pleasing to God, and were therefore kindled by Him with heavenly fire; but his own, being worse, were displeasing to God and rejected by Him. This is what God said to Cain according to the Septuagint: "If thou offer rightly, but dost not divide rightly, hast thou not sinned?" For Cain "in this very thing was dividing badly, giving to God something of his own, but to himself himself, says St. Augustine, XV On the City, VII: This is what all do, he says, who, not following God's will but their own — that is, living not with an upright heart but with a perverse one — offer to God a gift, by which they think He may be bribed, so that He may aid them not in healing their depraved desires, but in fulfilling them." Wherefore Eusebius notes, book XI of the Preparation of the Gospel, ch. IV, that Cain was named appositely and as if by a divine omen; for although his mother Eve called him Cain, that is, her possession and private property, saying: "I have possessed a man through God," Gen. IV, 1, from the root קנה kana with ה, that is, he possessed; nevertheless Cain may equally well be derived from קנא kana with א, that is, he was jealous, he envied; and so Cain is the same as "the jealous one" or "the envious one," which is what he was. See Prosper, book I On Promises and Predestination, ch. VI On the love of neighbor; see St. Gregory, X Morals, VI; Chrysostom, homily 18 on Matthew, where he assigns nine grades of love. And St. Augustine, book I On Christian Doctrine, XXII: "This, he says, is the rule of love divinely established: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, but God with the whole heart, and with the whole soul, and with the whole mind, so that you direct all your thoughts and all your life and all your understanding to Him from whom you have those very things which you direct. But when He says with the whole heart, the whole soul, the whole mind, He left no part of our life which ought to be free, and as it were to give place, as if it should wish to enjoy something else. But whatever else comes into the mind to be loved, let it be carried away to where the impulse of the whole love runs. Whoever therefore rightly loves his neighbor must so act with him that the latter also may love God with his whole heart, his whole soul, his whole mind. For thus loving him as himself, he refers all love of himself and of him to that love of God, which suffers no rivulet to be drawn from itself outside, by whose diversion it might be diminished."
WHO WAS OF THE EVIL ONE. — That is, of the devil, as if to say: Cain was a son not of God, but of the devil, not by generation, but by imitation and suggestion. For the devil, out of hatred for God, since he cannot harm Him, desires to harm His image, namely man, and to destroy him; just as a leopard, when it cannot wound a man, tears apart the man's image, says St. Basil, homily On Envy. The malignity of Cain therefore, like that of the devil, consists in hatred and envy, which are the vices of tyrants, robbers, and murderers, "who lead the life of fish; for these, whatever others they fall upon, devour, the stronger driving off the weaker," says Athenagoras, oration For the Christians. Whence among the Egyptians the fish was the hieroglyph of hatred, says Clement of Alexandria, book V of the Stromata.
AND WHY DID HE KILL HIM? BECAUSE HIS WORKS WERE EVIL (πονηρά, that is, evil and depraved). — Namely, because he esteemed God of little worth, indeed of less than himself, he offered Him the worse victims, reserving the better and fatter for himself; and he envied Abel, because by offering better things to God, Abel was more pleasing to Him, and was honored by Him with the heavenly burning of his victims: Cain's sin therefore was envy, in that he envied his brother Abel for the goodwill and grace of God, by which He accepted his victims by kindling them from heaven, but not Cain's. From envy was born hatred, from hatred murder, indeed parricide. These are the offspring and fruits of envy.
Hear St. Cyprian, treatise On Jealousy and Envy: "Jealousy stirs up ambition when one sees another more advanced in honors: when jealousy blinds our senses and reduces the secrets of the mind under its dominion, the fear of God is despised, the teaching of Christ is neglected, the day of judgment is not foreseen; pride is inflated, savagery exasperated, perfidy transgresses, impatience shakes a man; discord rages, anger boils up; nor can he restrain or govern himself, who has become the property of an alien power. Hence the bond of the Lord's peace is broken, hence brotherly charity is violated, hence truth is adulterated, unity is rent, men leap forward into heresies and into schisms, when priests are slandered, when bishops are envied, when one either complains that he himself was not rather ordained, or disdains to bear another set over him. Hence the proud man kicks back, hence he rebels through jealousy; perverse through emulation, by animosity and envy he is the enemy not of the man, but of the honor. What a moth of the soul it is, what a wasting of thoughts, how great a rust of the breast, to be jealous in another either of his virtue or of his felicity — that is, to hate in him either one's own merits or the divine benefits; to convert another's goods into one's own evil, to be tortured by the prosperity of illustrious men, to make the glory of others one's own punishment, as it were to bring executioners against one's own breast, to apply tormentors to one's own thoughts and senses, who tear themselves with inward torments, who beat the hidden places of the heart with the talons of malevolence: to such men no food is joyful, no drink can be pleasant: he sighs always, and groans, and grieves; and since by the envious envy is never laid open, the breast besieged day and night is torn without intermission."
BUT THE WORKS OF HIS BROTHER WERE JUST — namely innocent, pious, and holy; because esteeming God of higher value than himself, he offered the better sacrifices to Him, and therefore was slain by his brother Cain out of envy. There were three chief commendations of justice in Abel, namely virginity, priesthood, and martyrdom, says St. Augustine — or whoever is the author of the book Divers. Quæst. ad Onosium; whence also St. Cyprian, in his book De Bono Patientiæ before the middle, says that Abel inaugurated martyrdom, and set him forth as an example for the Martyrs to imitate. So also Rupertus on Isaiah, ch. LIX, calls Abel the Protomartyr. Hence Abel was also a type of Christ, who was the head and prince of the Martyrs, as Irenæus teaches, book IV, ch. XLII; St. Augustine, book XII Contra Faustum, ch. ix and x; Prosper at the cited place, and others. See what is said about Cain and Abel, Gen. IV, and the Epistle of Jude, verse 11. For this reason St. Augustine begins the City of God with Abel, and the city of the devil with Cain, book XV De Civit., ch. viii.
Verse 13: Wonder Not if the World Hates You
13. DO NOT WONDER, BRETHREN, IF THE WORLD HATES YOU. — St. John deduces this statement as a consequence from the preceding antithesis of the children of God and the children of the devil, e.g. Cain and Abel, as if to say: Just as Cain hated Abel because Cain's works were evil but Abel's were just, so likewise the world — that is, the Gentiles and worldly men — hate Christians and the true faithful, because their own works are depraved while those of the faithful are holy. He alludes to that saying of Christ in His Gospel, ch. XV, vers. 18: "If the world hates you, know that it hated Me before you." What wonder if the children of the devil hate the children of God, since their father the devil utterly hates God and God's children? Just as it is no wonder for the children of serpents to hate the children of men: for one contrary hates its contrary, just as blackness hates — that is, turns away from — whiteness, cold from heat, bitterness from sweetness, malice from goodness, vice from virtue, etc.
Furthermore, the causes why the world hates both the faithful and the saints are five. The first is dissimilarity of morals; for worldly men have worldly morals, but the saints have heavenly ones. The former swell with ambition, avarice, gluttony, lust; the latter humble themselves with humility, poverty, sobriety, chastity. For just as similarity is the cause of love, so dissimilarity is the cause of hatred, says Aristotle; hence that saying of Horace, book I, epistle 19:
"The sad hate the cheerful, and the merry the gloomy,
The quick hate the sedate, and the slack the nimble and energetic."
The wicked give this cause in Wisdom 2:15: "He is grievous unto us, they say, even to behold, for his life is unlike other men's, and his ways are of another fashion. And St. Leo, sermon 9 De Quadrages.: To those, then, who are established in a good purpose, he says, the enmities of the dissimilar are not lacking, with the devil instigating, and they easily break out into hatreds, whose wicked morals are the more detestable by comparison of the upright. Iniquity has no peace with justice; drunkenness hates temperance; falsehood has no concord with truth. Pride does not love meekness, nor wantonness modesty, nor avarice generosity; and this diversity has such stubborn conflicts that even if it grows quiet outwardly, it nevertheless does not cease to disturb the inmost recesses of pious hearts. So that it is true that those who wish to live piously in Christ shall suffer persecution; so that it is true that all this life is a temptation." Then he soon brings forward another cause of this matter, drawn from the envy and ill-will of the demons. "Through this contest, dearly beloved, he says, as men strive toward the eternal rewards, the cunning of the devil especially lies in wait, so that he may undermine the faith of those whose uprightness he cannot pervert." For a similar reason there is antipathy and hatred among unlike beasts, e.g. between the hyena and the panther, concerning which Pliny says (book XXVIII, ch. 8): "Hyenas, he says, are reported to be a terror to panthers, so that they do not even attempt to resist, and one having any of their hide upon him is not attacked; and, marvelous to relate, if the skins of the two adversaries are hung up, the panther's hairs fall out." A similar hatred exists between the wolf and the sheep, between the dog and the hare, between the mouse and the cat, between the elephant and the rhinoceros.
The second cause of hatred is envy; for because worldly men, ensnared by their own desires, cannot rise to the purity, virtues, and holiness of the Saints, they grieve and envy them these things; especially because they see them advancing with great and sure steps toward heavenly blessedness and glory, while they themselves by their own crimes are tending toward damnation and Gehenna. Therefore just as the damned and the demons hate the Saints, so also do worldly men.
The third is that worldly men see that the Saints have separated themselves from their company and constantly flee from it; whence they hate them as apostates from their own assembly. Christ assigns this cause in John 15:18: "If you had been of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. And the wicked, in Wisdom 2:16, say: We are esteemed by him as triflers, and he abstains from our ways as from filthiness."
The fourth cause is that the Saints censure and rebuke the depraved morals of the world; indeed the very life of the Saints is a silent reproof of the worldly. The wicked give this cause in Wisdom 2:12: "Let us lie in wait for the just, they say, because he is useless to us, and is contrary to us, and reproaches us with sins against the law, and publishes against us the sins of our way of life. And Christ in John 16:8: When He (the Paraclete) comes, He will convict the world of sin, and of justice, and of judgment."
The fifth cause is that worldly men are full of self-love, to which the Saints are opposed, being full of the love of God; hence they acquire praise, dignity, and glory, which worldly men envy them. There is that common saying:
"While a dog gnaws a bone, he hates the companion he loves."
Whence he growls and snarls, because he fears that his fellow-dog may snatch the bone or part of it from him. And this is the cause why even now the world and worldly men hate religious men: namely, because they see them preferred to themselves on account of their wisdom and virtue in sermons, pulpits, professorial chairs, etc., and these things being snatched from themselves; which truly arises from love of self and of the world, not of God. See Philo, book Quod deterius potiori insidiatur.
St. James echoes St. John in chapter IV, vers. 4: "Adulterers, he says, do you not know that the friendship of this world is enmity with God?" See what is said there; and St. Paul saying: "If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ," Galatians 1:10. Note: For nolite mirari (do not wonder), St. Fulgentius, book III ad Trasimundum, and Tertullian in Scorpiaco, ch. XII, read nolite expavescere (do not be terrified). For some Christians more bashful and timid were marveling, as at something new and unusual, that on account of having received the faith of Christ and a holy life they were despised by their Gentile friends, and held in hatred, even harassed and stripped of their goods, when they ought rather to have been honored and loved and helped on account of their holiness; and so they were terrified at these hatreds. St. John therefore strengthens them, and teaches that this is not to be wondered at nor feared, but rather to be rejoiced and gloried in; because those whom the world hates, God loves. "It would be more wonderful if wicked men loved those who live piously according to Christ," says Didymus. Wherefore on account of these hatreds not even a hairsbreadth must be relaxed of holiness or love; rather the soul must be fortified, intensified, and perfected by greater increases in them; just as heat, when cold is set against it, by antiperistasis intensifies, strengthens, and increases itself; so much so that we should strive even to overcome by charity those worldly men who hate us, and to make friends out of enemies.
This is what St. Peter says, epistle 1, ch. IV, vers. 12: "Dearly beloved, do not be alarmed in the trial by fire which is to test you, as though some strange thing were happening to you; but rejoicing communicate in the sufferings of Christ, that when His glory shall be revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy. Truly Seneca, book De Providentia, ch. 1 and following: God, he says, does not keep the good man in delights; He tests him, hardens him, prepares him for Himself, etc. The good man considers all adversities as exercises, etc.: virtue grows weak without an adversary; then it appears how great it is, how much it avails and prevails, when patience shows what it can do;" and St. Basil, Admonit. ad filium spirit.: "Son, he says, take up patience, because it is the greatest virtue of the soul, that you may swiftly ascend to the height of perfection." St. Augustine gives the cause, sermons 11 and 149 De Tempor., namely that through the world's hatred God may draw us to the love of Himself and of heaven. "O unhappy lot of the human race!" he says. The world is bitter, and yet it is loved; for were it sweet, how would it be loved? How would you gather its flowers, you who do not remove your hand from its thorns?
Verse 14: We Have Passed from Death to Life Because We Love the Brethren
14. WE KNOW — not by believing with divine faith that we are just and predestined, as the heretics maintain, but by moral and conjectural certitude, conceived from the testimony of a good conscience, an innocent life, and the consolation of the Holy Spirit. St. John says this for the consolation of the faithful, that they may not fear the world's hatreds, as if to say: In these hatreds and persecutions of the world let this console you, O faithful, and add and sharpen courage in you, that through faith and Christianity you have been translated from the death of sin to a heavenly and divine life, namely in this life through grace, in the future through glory, which is superior to all hatreds; and the judgment, indeed the effect, of this life is certain, "because we love the brethren," that is, our neighbors. For this love is the sign and the undoubted effect of sanctifying grace and of the Holy Spirit, from whom as from an uncreated fount flows every love and affection. Truly St. Basil in his Brief Rules, Rule 41, and in his Longer Disputation, Rule 296: "How, he says, can anyone be certainly persuaded that God has remitted his sins? Truly if he perceives in himself an affection of soul similar to that of him who said: Iniquity I have hated and abhorred," etc.
Here he gives three signs of indwelling grace and justice: First, hatred of sin; second, mortification of the flesh and of all evil desires; third, zeal for the salvation of one's neighbor proceeding from love of God, such as Paul had, saying: "Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is scandalized, and I am not on fire?" II Corinthians ch. XI; and St. Gregory, book I Dialog., ch. 1: "The mind, he says, which is filled with the divine Spirit has its most evident signs, namely virtues and humility; and if both these meet perfectly in one mind, it is clear that they bear witness to the presence of the Holy Spirit." St. Leo, sermon 8 De Epiphan., assigns these three indications of grace and holiness: First, humility; second, the pardoning of injuries; third, bestowing upon others those things which one wishes bestowed upon oneself: "Whoever, he says, is of this sort, let him not doubt that God is his ruler and indweller," that is, in such a way that the mind is not in suspense, but believes it with probability.
Who loves not (namely when one ought to love; or who does not love, that is, who hates, so that it is litotes or meiosis), ABIDES IN DEATH — namely abides in the stain of habitual sin, remaining after the transient act of sin, and thence remains in guilt and obligation to eternal death, from which by himself he cannot escape, but only through the grace of Christ, says Thomas Anglicus. How the soul, although immortal, can nevertheless die through sin, St. Augustine elegantly explained, book III De Civit. Dei, ch. 1: "The death of the soul takes place when God forsakes it; just as the death of the body when the soul forsakes it. Therefore the death of both, that is, of the whole man, occurs when the soul forsaken by God forsakes the body; for thus neither does the soul itself live from God, nor the body from it. In agreement with this, Cyril of Alexandria, oration De exitu animæ: Death properly is not that which separates the soul from the body, but that which separates the soul from God: God is life, and whoever is disjoined from Him, perishes."
Indeed this death of the soul is called death absolutely in sacred discourse; for that death of the body which we so greatly dread is only a shadow and image of this true death, and not even to be compared with it. Whence St. Gregory, book IV Moral., ch. xvii: "In Scripture, he says, the death of the flesh is called the shadow of death; because just as true death is that by which the soul is separated from God, so the shadow of death is that by which the flesh is separated from the soul." Finally sin begets that fearsome death of eternal damnation, concerning which St. Augustine, book VI [should be XII] De Civitate Dei, last chapter: "If the soul lives in eternal punishments, that death is rather to be called eternal than life; for there is no death greater and worse than where death does not die. Wherefore St. Basil, homily 5 on Julitta the Martyr: Sin, he says, is the sickness of the soul; sin is the death of the soul, otherwise immortal. Sin is worthy of mourning and inconsolable lamentation. For sin let copious tears flow, and let not the deep-sighing groan from the inmost recess of the breast cease ever to leap forth. For this very reason St. Jerome calls the sinner the corpse of the devil: He who reads that sin is most foul, he says, cannot doubt that he is the rotting corpse of the devil because of the greatness of his sins, with the sinner himself saying: My scars have putrefied and are corrupted because of my foolishness:" so he himself, book VI on Isaiah ch. xiv.
Verse 15: Whoever Hates His Brother Is a Murderer
15. EVERYONE WHO HATES HIS BROTHER IS A MURDERER. — He proves what he said: "He who does not love, abides in death," by this syllogism: Every murderer abides in death; but everyone who does not love, but rather hates his brother, is a murderer: therefore everyone who does not love his brother, abides in death. Moreover, St. John takes not loving the brother and hating the brother as the same thing, both by meiosis (because less is said but more is understood — namely, by the negation the affirmation of the contrary is understood); and because not loving one's brother, when one ought to love him, is reckoned as interpretative hatred, and often arises from express and formal hatred.
Moreover, he who hates his brother is a murderer, not in act and deed, but in affection and will; because, as St. Jerome says, epistle 36 to Castorinus: "Since murder often arises from hatred, whoever hates, even if he has not yet struck with the sword, is nevertheless in his mind a murderer." So Christ says that he who covets his neighbor's wife is an adulterer, because he has committed adultery with her in his heart. Matthew ch. v, 28. Second, he is a murderer dispositively, because hatred disposes and is the way to murder, just as concupiscence to adultery: so says Dionysius the Carthusian. Finally, hatred is full desire for murder: for it is most difficult to wish that one whom you hate should remain alive: see Antiochus Monachus, homily 28.
Mystically, he who hates his brother is a murderer of himself, because by hatred he kills his own soul. So St. Ambrose, Precat. ad Missam: "He who envies, he says, he who hates, kills no other before himself; he who exults in his neighbor's adversities, and is afflicted by his prosperities, attacks his neighbor with another's sword, but himself with his own;" and St. Gregory, book X Moral., ch. xi, no. 18: "Fault pollutes the life of the soul, he says, but grief preserved against one's neighbor kills it; for it is fixed in the mind like a sword, and by its point the very inmost recesses of the bowels are pierced — and if this point is not first drawn out from the transfixed heart, nothing of divine help is obtained in prayers: because the medicines of healing cannot be applied to wounded limbs unless the iron is first withdrawn from the wound."
In like manner, he who hates his brother often kills the brother's soul; because he provokes him to hatred, vengeance, and quarrels, by which the brother destroys his own soul.
Moreover, Pope Alexander, epistle 3, reads thus: "Everyone who detracts from his brother is a murderer, and every murderer has no part in the kingdom of God." For, as Dionysius says here, murder is threefold: the first, bodily, which takes away the being of nature; the second, of detraction, which takes away the being of reputation, and kills civilly; the third, of hatred.
HAS NOT ETERNAL LIFE ABIDING IN HIMSELF, — as if to say: He has not grace abiding in him, grace does not abide in him, nor does he abide in grace, by which eternal life is obtained — taken as metonymy: so Cajetan and others. Or properly, "he has not," that is, he will not have, or he cannot have, the glory of eternal life, as the Syriac translates, taken as enallage of tenses, by which the present is put for the future; as if to say: He who hates has no hope of eternal life, nor can he hope for it, but abides in the death of sin, hence to pass over to the eternal death of Gehenna (it is meiosis, as I said), according to that saying of St. Augustine, Preface on Psalm 31: "As a bad conscience is wholly in despair, so a good conscience is wholly in hope;" whence Cain: "From Your face, he says, I shall be hidden, and I shall be a wanderer and fugitive upon the earth; whoever therefore finds me, shall slay me, meaning, as St. Jerome says (epistle 121 to Damasus, question 1): Each one, from the trembling of the body and the agitation of a furious mind, will perceive me to be him who deserves to be killed." Thus the Poets feign that Orestes was driven by continual furies on account of the killing of his mother. See St. Augustine pondering this saying of St. John, homily 40 (among 50), ch. ii; and homily 42, ch. vi.
Verse 16: He Laid Down His Life for Us
16. IN THIS WE HAVE KNOWN THE CHARITY OF GOD, BECAUSE HE LAID DOWN HIS LIFE FOR US, AND WE OUGHT TO LAY DOWN OUR LIVES FOR THE BRETHREN. — St. John returns to the power, nature, and law of perfect charity, and proposes Christ as its idea and living example. As if to say: Christ showed the eminence of charity and fixed its law, not so much by word as by deed, when He Himself laid down His soul, that is, His life, for ours: for He died to free us from present and eternal death, and to bring us across to the life of grace and of blessed glory; by which deed He as it were depicted for us in an image the law of charity, namely that we likewise ought to lay down our soul, that is, our life, for the brethren. Therefore he says: "In this we have known the charity of God," as if to say: In this clearly shines forth the immense charity of God surpassing every charity and love of parents, kinsmen, friends; namely that God, infinite and immense, for His creatures — that is, for sinful men, unworthy and ungrateful — freely and liberally, without any benefit or fruit to Himself, indeed with great inconvenience and reproach, laid down His life. And by this He at the same time tacitly enjoined us to imitate Him, and likewise lay down our lives for the brethren.
Note: It is not lawful to lavish one's soul — that is, the eternal salvation of the soul — for the eternal salvation of one's neighbor's soul; because the order of charity requires that I should love my own salvation, grace, and glory more than my neighbor's. Wherefore I am bound to will and procure for myself, more than for my neighbor, spiritual goods — namely grace and glory — and their increase; for this is what charity and its order dictates. It is, however, lawful to lavish one's soul — that is, the temporal salvation of the soul and life — for the eternal salvation of one's neighbor, because that is to be esteemed far more than one's own temporal salvation. Hence, when in order to obtain that it is necessary to lavish or to expose to peril this temporal life, it must absolutely be done: for this is what the order of charity dictates and commands. Thus St. Paul and St. Paulinus laid down their lives for the brethren. Thus St. Sebastian exposed his life to death and martyrdom, so that he might confirm Sts. Marcus and Marcellianus, who were wavering in the faith from the temptation of their parents. Thus St. Vitalis, by strengthening Ursicinus the physician who was wavering in martyrdom, gained death and the laurel of martyrdom. We read of similar things in the Acts of other Martyrs and Saints.
But you may ask: is it lawful, and is one bound, to lay down one's life — that is, temporal life — for the temporal life of one's neighbor? For since by charity I am bound to love myself more than my neighbor, it seems likewise that I ought to love my own temporal life more than my neighbor's.
I answer: Ordinarily that is true; extraordinarily, however, on account of other concurrent causes, it must often be done otherwise. First, then, one is bound to expose his life for others if he has obliged himself to it by a pact, promise, or oath. Thus soldiers in battle must in justice fight and expose their lives, as long as there is hope of victory, because they have obliged themselves to it by pact and oath.
Second, by legal justice the citizen is bound to expose his life for his country and city: for right reason dictates that the part is to be exposed to peril for the safety of the whole, e.g. of the Republic. Thus Samson, by dashing down the pillars of the house, crushed himself together with the Philistines under its ruin, that he might free the people of God from their servitude, Judges ch. xvi. Thus the Decii devoted themselves to death for the Roman army, Codrus for the Athenian, Leonidas for the Spartan, as Livy, Plutarch, Valerius Maximus, and others relate.
Third, a friend is not bound to expose his life for the life of his friend: for this is to love one's neighbor, "not as oneself, but more than oneself," which exceeds the rule of doctrine, says St. Augustine, book De Mendacio, ch. vi. If, however, he should expose it, he will act laudably: for he will expose it for the honor and good of the virtue of friendship; for it is lawful, both for it and for another virtue (e.g. chastity), to expose one's life. For the good of virtue is greater than that of life: for the former is honorable and spiritual, the latter merely natural and corporeal. Then, therefore, one's own life is exposed, not from love of another's life, but from love of virtue and as an example to others, that he may show them the dignity of the virtue of friendship, and that he may excel in it: so teaches St. Augustine, book De Amicitia, ch. x; St. Jerome on ch. vii of Micah: "When someone was asked, he says, what a friend was, he answered: Another self. Hence the Pythagoreans gave themselves up as two sureties to a tyrant in turn;" St. Ambrose, book III Offic., ch. XII; Franciscus Victoria, Relect. de homicidio, no. 24; Dominicus Soto, book V De Justitia, quæst. I, art. 6; indeed St. Thomas, II II, Quæst. XXVI, art. 4, ad 2, and there Valentia, who also adds another case, namely if someone attacks me out of anger and so presses me that either I must be killed or kill the assailant, I may lawfully permit myself to be killed rather than kill another, because I am not bound, with such difficulty and the inconvenience of another's slaughter, to preserve my own life — especially because if I kill him, I destroy not only his body but also his soul, since he exists in the flagrant offense of invasion and attempted murder. In a similar way I can expose my life for the protection of another's chastity. Whence St. Ambrose, book II De Virginit., celebrates that soldier who, by exchanging clothes with St. Theodora condemned to a brothel, rescued her from the peril of violation; for, having gone out in male and military attire instead of her, he was condemned to death, and then she who came running of her own accord to the place of execution had him as a companion in martyrdom, lest the tyrant's sword separate those whom the love of Christ had joined. Similarly St. Paulinus exposed himself to slavery — which is civil death — for the son of a widow, out of love of charity; namely so that he might leave to posterity an example of an heroic act, indeed of an excess of charity: whom accordingly St. Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome, and others wonderfully celebrate everywhere. Finally the saying of Christ is clear: "Greater love than this no man has, that a man lay down his life for his friends," John 15:13.
The Gentiles saw the same, who praise the friends Pylades and Orestes, Nisus and Euryalus, Damon and Pythias, of whom one freely offered himself to death for the other. See Valerius Maximus, book IV, ch. vii, and Aristotle, book VII Eudemian Ethics, ch. vii: "So, he says, both to be together and to live together, to rejoice together, to grieve together, that they cannot even live without each other (for they are one soul), but to die together is the mark of that one true friendship. Seneca, epistle 9: For what do I prepare a friend?" he says. That I may have one for whom I can die, that I may have one whom I may follow into exile.
Verse 17: He Who Shuts Up His Bowels from His Brother
17. HE WHO SHALL HAVE THE SUBSTANCE (Syriac, possession) OF THIS WORLD, AND SHALL SEE HIS BROTHER IN NEED (St. Cyprian, in his book De Opere et Eleemosyna, reads desiring; or, as the old Edition has it, hungering...), AND SHALL SHUT UP HIS BOWELS FROM HIM, HOW DOES THE CHARITY OF GOD ABIDE (St. Augustine reads, will be able to abide) IN HIM? — He draws this statement as a consequence from the preceding verse; and it is an argument from the less likely to the greater, as if to say: If the charity of God and Christ obliges us to lay down our soul for the brethren — which is most difficult — then much more does it oblige us to give alms to him in need, which is most easy. Again, since that case in which we are obliged to give our soul for the brethren rarely occurs, but the obligation of relieving his neediness through almsgiving frequently does, hence he passes from the former to the latter, as if to say: If it is hard for you to give your life, give at least alms to your neighbor, which is easy for you: so Œcumenius and St. Augustine. Thus John the Almsgiver, when someone was celebrating his lavish liberality toward the poor, would reply: "Brother, I have not yet shed my blood for you, as the Lord God Christ commanded me," as Leontius relates in his Life.
From this passage many Doctors teach that the precept of almsgiving binds not only in the extreme need of one's neighbor, but also in grave need; so much so that the rich man is then bound to give out not only what is superfluous, but even what is necessary to his own state, if he can avert a grave inconvenience to his neighbor with lesser inconvenience to himself. For St. John says: "He who has substance," in Greek βίον (bion), that is, livelihood — not superfluities; for livelihood and substance includes both superfluous and necessary. Again he says: "And shall see his brother in need," not utterly destitute; for grave need is true need, even if it is not extreme. See Gregory of Valencia, tome III, disp. III, Quæst. IX, point 4, and Bellarmine, book III De Bonis Operibus in particulari, ch. vii. Hence Ecclesiasticus 4:1 says: "Son, defraud not the poor of his alms," as if to say: You do him an injury and a fraud if you deny him the alms due to him. And St. Ambrose, book I Offic., ch. xxxi: "It is a great fault, he says, if a faithful man should be in want with you knowing it, if you know that he is without resources, suffering hunger, enduring distress — especially one who blushes to be in need." See St. Gregory Nazianzen, oration De Cura Pauperum, and St. Chrysostom, throughout De Eleemosyna.
AND SHALL SHUT UP HIS BOWELS FROM HIM. — For the bowels are the seat of compassion and the symbol of mercy, according to Lamentations 2:11: "My bowels are troubled, my liver is poured out upon the earth, for the contrition of the daughter of my people." See what is said there. Œcumenius examines the term bowels, as if to say: He who does not admit into his bowels the compassion of the wretched excludes and empties charity from them. Whence Paul commands, Colossians 3:12: "Put on bowels of mercy." The bowels are the symbol of paternal — indeed of maternal — love; for fathers and mothers call their sons their bowels, as Paul calls Onesimus his spiritual son, epistle to Philemon, vers. 7, where St. Jerome says: "All children, he says, are the bowels of their parents." The bowels, then, signify that we are all made of the same flesh, and are sons of one Adam, and still more of God, and therefore ought mutually to have compassion and help one another as brothers help brothers, according to Isaiah 58:7: "Despise not your own flesh." Again, the bowels signifies that almsgiving is to be done with great affection of compassion, and that we are always to show this to our neighbor, if we cannot achieve the effect. See St. Gregory, XX Moral., ch. xxvi: "Let the hard and unmerciful, he says, hear the thunder of the Wise One, Proverbs 21:13: Whoever stops his ear at the cry of the poor, shall himself also cry, and shall not be heard."
Salvian, book IV ad Ecclesiam Catholicam, urges the faithful to put on these bowels of mercy, while teaching that Christ is a beggar in the poor and lacks all things; wherefore those are cruel toward Christ who give out their goods to relatives who are not in need, and let Christ in the poor go in want. "There are some, he says, who, even if they lack many things, do not lack everything. Christ alone is the only one to whom nothing belongs, that is not lacking in the whole human race. None of His servants is in exile, none is tortured with cold and nakedness, with whom He is not also chilled. He alone is hungry with the hungry, He alone thirsts with the thirsty. And therefore as far as His piety is concerned, He needs more than all others; for every needy man needs only for himself and in himself: Christ alone is He who in the whole company of the poor begs. And since this is so, what do you say, O man, you who say that you are a Christian, when you see Christ in want, that you may leave your possessions to whomsoever does not need them? Christ is poor, and you heap up the riches of the wealthy? Christ is hungry, and you prepare delicacies for the affluent? Christ even complains that water is lacking to Him, and the wine-cellars of drunkards are filled by you? Christ is consumed by want of all things, and abundance is gathered by you for the luxurious? Christ promises you eternal rewards for the gifts given by you, and you bestow everything on those who will give back nothing? Christ proposes to you both immortal goods for good deeds, and eternal evils for evil deeds; and you are neither moved by heavenly goods, nor stirred by everlasting evils; and you say you believe in your Lord God, whose recompense you do not desire, nor whose anger do you tremble at." Then he shows that such men do not have faith, nor do they believe Christ who promises the almsgivers an ample recompense: "If you leave to others what you leave because you are sure it will benefit him to whom you have left it: so truly, if you believed that whatever you would have given out as religious gifts would benefit you, you would without doubt set them aside especially for yourself; because the more you love yourself than those to whom you leave them, the more you would leave them for yourself, if you judged them to be of benefit to you, even with the slightest opinion. For you do not hate yourself, that you should be unwilling to do yourself good; but what you have left to the poor, you do not believe will benefit you: hence why do you take counsel for others more than for yourself? because you do not believe that a religious work will benefit you; as therefore you believe, so you will receive. You weigh the Savior at very little, and the Savior weighs you at nothing. You set Christ behind others, and Christ sets you behind all. Even in comparison with lost men the Lord is cheap to you, and you will be reckoned among the last of those who shall perish."
Then he shows that they sin gravely, both because they do not help the poor, and because they confer the goods acquired by their great labor and grief upon those who abuse them for pomp, gluttony, and luxury; whence he exclaims: "O how much better, whoever you are, how much better and more wholesome it would have been for you to have been poor and needy, than rich! For poverty could have insinuated you to God, but riches have made you guilty. Therefore you would more rightly be saved through indigence, than by your wealth have weighed down both yourself and others — yourself, while you wickedly leave it to others; others, when after being left by you they themselves wickedly possess it with the most inhuman use, and wickedly bequeath it to others after them. If therefore, whoever you are, you wish to be well-counseled, if you wish to have eternal life and desire to see good days, leave your substance to the needy saints, leave it to the lame, leave it to the blind, leave it to the languishing; let your means be the food of the wretched, let your wealth be the life of the poor, that their refreshments may be your rewards, that their restoration may restore you." For you will receive all these things from Christ, because you have made Christ the heir in the poor; and below, attacking them more sharply: "You give, he says, your goods to the rich, and deny them to the needy. You give to the luxurious, and deny to the saints. You give to whatever lost man, perhaps, and deny to Christ: as therefore you have judged, so will you be judged; as you have chosen, so will you receive. You will not have with Christ the part you despised; with these you will have whom you preferred."
Let rich Christians take note of these things, especially Ecclesiastics, who are bound to render to the Church and to the poor the goods they have received from the Church, and they sin gravely if they enrich their relatives with them; "because the goods of the Church are nothing else than the votive offerings of the faithful, the price of sins, and the patrimony of the poor," says St. Prosper, book II De Vita contempl., chs. ix and x; whom see, as well as St. Bernard, epistle 24, where he says: "Woe to you, Bishop, who eat the sins of the people, as though your own goods seemed to be insufficient for you, etc.; you may not luxuriate in the goods of the Church, nor consume them in superfluities, but only live: you may not enrich yourself, you may not exalt your kinsmen, you may not build palaces; finally, whatever you keep from the altar beyond necessary food and simple clothing is not yours — it is robbery, it is sacrilege. And St. Basil, in his oration on the text, I will pull down my barns: But you, he says, are you not a plunderer, who reckon as your own what you have received to dispense? It is the bread of the famished which you hold; the tunic of the naked, which you keep in the closet; the shoe of the unshod, which moulders by you; the silver of the needy, which you possess inhumanely. Wherefore you do injury to as many poor as you would have been able to give to." Wherefore the saying and opinion of the Stoics and of Seneca, book II De Clementia, ch. v, that mercy is not a virtue but a vice of a soft, pliant, and effeminate mind, is heathen, inhuman, beastly, and barbarous; equally as that of Plautus (witnessed by Lactantius, book VI, ch. xi):
"He deserves ill who gives to a beggar what he may eat,
For what he gives, perishes,
And prolongs life into misery for the beggar."
More humanely, more wisely, and more piously Valerius Maximus, book IV, ch. viii: "There was, he says, Gillias, eminent in wealth, but much more enriched in soul than in riches, and always more occupied in giving out than in collecting money, so that his house was thought to be a kind of workshop of munificence. Provisions were given out to those laboring in want, dowries to virgins pressed by poverty, aids to those shaken by losses. Guests also, most kindly received, were sent away adorned with various gifts. At one time he fed and clothed five hundred Geloan horsemen at once, who had been driven by the force of a storm into his estates. Why say more? You would say he was not some mortal, but the kindly bosom of propitious fortune; what Gillias possessed was as it were the common patrimony of all." What will Christians say here, who have heard from Christ the Lord the most ample promise: "Give, and it shall be given to you."
Verse 18: Let Us Not Love in Word, but in Deed and Truth
18. MY LITTLE CHILDREN, LET US NOT LOVE IN WORD, NEITHER WITH THE TONGUE, BUT IN DEED AND IN TRUTH. — St. John has sanctioned the precept of love; here he declares what kind of love it ought to be: namely, not verbal but real; not idle but operative; not loquacious but truthful — that is, not flattering, feigned, and hypocritical, but sincere, cordial, and true, because such was Christ's. For he opposes the tongue to truth, as it were hypocrisy and pretense to sincerity and cordial love, in order to exclude from Christian charity and faithful love all fraud, deceit, and fiction. For there are many friends of the tongue, whom Theognis calls ἀνὰ γλώττης καὶ μέχρι προσηγορίας (only as far as the tongue and a greeting), who are liberal in words but stingy in deed; who promise mountains of gold, but give not an obol; who pour out sackfuls of flatteries, but do not provide an ounce of gold, nay not even of bread. These are painted-up and hypocrites, because words do not satisfy the hunger and thirst of the hungering and thirsting, but food and drink; nor do promises clothe the naked, nor free him from prison, but clothes and money. Hence concerning such men St. James says, ch. II, vers. 15: "But if a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you should say to them: Go in peace, be warmed and filled; if you do not give them what is necessary for the body, what does it profit? So also faith which has no works is dead in itself;" in like manner love, which has no works, is dead: see St. Gregory, Morals XXI, ch. 14, where after much he concludes: "Our love must always be displayed by the reverence of speech and the ministry of generosity. And St. Bernard, Sermon 50 on the Canticle, explaining the verse: He has set in order charity in me, and citing these words of St. John: Neither does this love admit anything feigned of a lying tongue, he says, nor again does it demand the taste of an affecting wisdom. Let us love in deed and in truth — that is, that we be moved to act well rather by some impulse of lively charity than by the savor of that delightful charity;" and below: "Give me a man who loves God with his whole heart, and himself and his neighbor, etc., and who in this manner directs his ordered love to all other things of God, despising earth, looking up to heaven, using this world as though not using it, and discerning between things to be used and things to be enjoyed by some inmost taste of the mind, so that he may treat transitory things transitorily, and care for them only insofar as need requires and as need requires, while he embraces eternal things with eternal desire: such a one, I say, give me, and I will boldly pronounce him wise, to whom indeed all things truly taste as they are, and to whom it belongs in truth and security to glory and to say: Because He has set in order charity in me. But where is such a man, or when do these things happen?"
Note: If anyone cannot help by work and effect, because, for example, he is poor, it is enough for him to help by tongue and affection — by consoling, praying, advising, etc. Again, he who helps by effect ought also to help by affection, so that he gives alms not as one sad, peevish, or scolding, but as one cheerful and gracious, according to that of Paul: "He who shows mercy with cheerfulness, Rom. 12:8; and Eccli. 18:15: My son, in good things mingle no complaint, and in every gift give no sadness of an evil word. Will not the dew cool the heat? so also a word is better than a gift. Behold, is not a word above a good gift, but both are with a justified man," in Greek κεχαριτωμένῳ, that is, gracious — as if to say: A just man will furnish both, namely as much the gift as the good word.
Finally, St. Gregory excellently in Homily 3 on the Gospel: "Yet, he says, let no one trust himself in whatever his mind answers him without the attestation of work; for the love of the Creator, tongue, mind, and life are required; God's love is never idle: for it works great things, if it is; but if it refuses to work, it is not love. And St. Chrysostom, Homilies 53 and 68 to the People: The more you have given to God, he says, the more He loves you; to those to whom He owes more, He bestows even more grace; when He sees one to whom He owes nothing, He flees and opposes him; but when He looks upon one to whom He owes something, He immediately runs to him. Therefore all things must be done by you so that you may have God as your debtor. And by what means this can come about, he plainly explains thus: Now is the time of this very thing: for now He hungers, now He thirsts, now He is naked in the poor; but when this life has passed away, He will not need you; and now He wills to be in need for your sake. He wills to be fed by you, that He may feed you; to be clothed, that He may clothe you. Therefore despise money, that you may not be despised; that you may be rich, give yours generously; that you may gather, scatter — imitate the sower. Sow in blessings, that you may also reap of blessings."
And St. Leo, Sermon 6 On the Fast of the Tenth Month: "Be steadfast, he says, O Christian giver: give what you would receive, sow what you would reap, scatter what you would gather. Do not fear loss, do not sigh over an uncertain return. Your substance, when well dispensed, is increased; and to desire the just gain of mercy is to pursue the commerce of eternal profit. Your Rewarder wills you to be munificent, and He who gives that you may have, commands you to bestow, saying: Give, and it shall be given unto you; you must embrace the joyful condition of that promise. And after a few words he adds: He therefore who loves money and desires to multiply his wealth with immoderate increases, let him rather practice this holy usury, and grow rich by this art of interest — not seizing on the necessities of laboring men, lest by deceitful services he fall into the snares of insoluble debts, but let him be the creditor, the lender, of Him who says: Give, and it shall be given unto you, and with what measure you measure, it shall be measured to you again. And he concludes: If he were kind to his own soul, he would entrust his goods to Him who is both a fitting surety for the poor and the most generous repayer of interest." Wherefore Chrysostom rightly said that almsgiving is the most profitable of all arts.
Verse 19: We Persuade Our Hearts in His Sight
In this (namely, if we love not in word and tongue, but in deed and in truth) we know that we are of the truth — that is, we are truthful, we walk truthfully, we have true love, we are as it were sons of truth, that is, of true and sincere charity.
Secondly, of the truth, that is, of God and Christ, we are: so Œcumenius. For God is the first and highest truth, and true charity, according to that saying: "I am the way, the truth and the life, John 14:6; and chapter 18, verse 37: For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice. Wherefore St. Augustine rightly concludes in On the Morals of the Church, ch. 33: To charity is the food adapted, to charity the speech, to charity the dress, to charity the countenance; men come together and conspire into one charity; to violate this is said to be as nefarious as to violate God; if anyone resists this, he is overcome and cast out; if anyone offends this, he is not allowed to last one day (in the monastery): they know that it is so commended by Christ and the Apostles that, if this one thing be lacking, all is empty; if this be present, all is full."
And in His sight we shall persuade our hearts. — First, Hugo, Lyranus, and Dionysius expound it as if to say: We shall persuade our hearts that they may strive to advance to better things, and devise better things, and direct all their thought, zeal, and intention to God, taking pains to please Him more and more day by day.
Secondly, Joannes Ferus explains, as if to say: In His sight we shall persuade our hearts, that is, we shall obtain confidence of obtaining whatever we wish from God.
Thirdly, and more genuinely, "we shall persuade our hearts," that is, we shall persuade to our hearts, as St. Augustine, Pagninus, and the Zurich version translate; Vatablus renders, we shall pacify our hearts; the Syriac, we shall render our heart persuaded; others, we shall make our hearts secure — as if to say: We shall have a quiet and secure conscience in the sight of God; for we shall truly persuade our heart that we are of the truth, that is, that we truly pursue charity, while we love not in word and tongue, but in deed and in truth. For the Greek πείθω, that is, I persuade, is constructed with the accusative, which by Latin syntax is to be rendered by the dative: so St. Augustine, Bede, and others. The interpreter here therefore Grecizes, just as in Judith 12:10: "Persuade that Hebrew woman," instead of "persuade to that Hebrew woman." But because this sense is included in what immediately preceded — "In this we know that we are of the truth" — in order to distinguish it from what follows, "And in His sight we shall persuade our hearts," therefore,
Fourthly, and most plainly, the sense is, as if to say: If we love not with the tongue, but in deed and in truth, "in His sight, that is, before God and Christ who behold all things, we shall persuade," that is, we shall prove and persuade our hearts, namely that they are of the truth, as he just said; for he gives the fruit of laborious and true love, that he may invite the faithful to it, as if to say: Those who love only in word and tongue can lie to men and feign that they love from the heart, but not to God; for He, beholding the heart, sees that love to be of the lips, not of the heart. But those who love their neighbor in deed and in truth do not dread the eye and judgment of God; but they dare to appear in His sight, they dare with free brow to present themselves at His tribunal, they dare to lay open and prove their hearts to Him, and to show that they are founded in truth and true charity: namely that they truly love God and their neighbor for God's sake, that they fulfill God's law and will, and strive to please Him alone: so Œcumenius. In like manner Paul says, Gal. 1:10: "Do I now persuade men, or God?" as if to say: I take pains to prove and persuade my cause to God, not to men: so St. Chrysostom. Hence St. Augustine reads: "I desire to render myself approved to God, not to men. See what is said there, and St. Augustine, Book I Against Secundinus, ch. 1: Think of Augustine whatever you please, only let conscience not accuse me in the eyes of God."
Morally, St. John here teaches us to examine all our works by the rule and file of divine inspection and judgment; for often concupiscence, the world, or the demon deceives us so that we suppose we are acting purely for love of God in what we are doing impurely for concupiscence or love of self. Therefore before you undertake any action, conform it to this rule: "Perform this action so sincerely, as one who is being beheld by God, who sees and notes all things, and who will exact from you an exact account of all things; so perfectly do this, as though this work were your last, as though you were about to die immediately after it. When you doubt what is to be done, solve the doubt by this principle: In doubt choose this, which at the hour of death you will wish you had chosen. In this business do this, as you would wish to give an account to Christ on the day of judgment."
So did the Psalmist: "I set the Lord, he says, always in my sight, Ps. 15:8. Elisha to King Joram: As the Lord lives, he says, in whose sight I stand, 4 Kings 3:14. So Paul: For our glory is this, he says, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity of heart and sincerity of God, and not in carnal wisdom, but in the grace of God, we have conversed in this world," 2 Cor. 1:12.
So St. Xavier: "Wherever I shall be, he said, I shall remember that I am in the theater of the world and in the eyes of God. So our Campion, about to undergo the contest of martyrdom: We are made, he said, a spectacle to the world, and to angels, and to men," 1 Cor. 4:9. Let us imitate these men, and so "in His sight we shall persuade our hearts."
Verse 20: God Is Greater Than Our Heart
20. For if our heart reprove us (καταγινώσκῃ, that is, accuse, condemn, as Œcumenius renders it) — namely, that we love with the tongue, not in deed and in truth, even though we dissemble this very thing and outwardly boast the contrary, in vain do we do so, because — God is greater than our heart, and knows all things. — As if to say: If you cannot hide your hypocrisy from your heart, much less will you hide it from God, who is greater and more profound than your heart, and sees it more inwardly, and is more present to it than you yourself are. If your conscience reproves and condemns you, how much more will God reprove and condemn you, who is the president and judge of conscience? Hence the Syriac renders: but if our heart reproves us, how much greater is God than our heart? "If from our heart, says Œcumenius, which is small, we cannot lie hid, how shall we be able to lie hid from God who is everywhere present;" and St. Augustine: "You hide your heart from man, he says, hide it from God if you can;" and presently: "Let your conscience bear witness to you that it is of God. If it is of God, do not wish to boast of it before men, because neither do the praises of men lift you up to heaven, nor do their vituperations therefore depress you; let Him see, who crowns; let Him be the witness, by whose judgment you are crowned. Truly Diadochus, On Spiritual Perfection, ch. 100: Far greater, he says, is God's judgment than our conscience. Hence Paul: To me, he says, it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you, or by man's day. But He who judges me, is the Lord:" so he himself, 1 Cor. 4:4; and the Psalmist, Ps. 63:7: "Man shall come to a deep heart (in Greek βαθεῖα, that is, profound), and God shall be exalted," as if to say: Man with deep and hidden heart and counsel will devise many evils, deceits, and dissimulations; but God will be the higher and more profound, for He enters more deeply, that He may behold and judge his counsels by dissipating and avenging them. Hence Symmachus, Aquila, and Theodotion, instead of יָרוּם yarum, that is, "shall be exalted," reading יָרֵם yarem, that is, "shall shoot," translate: God shall pierce or shoot through the deep mind and heart of man.
Wherefore the exposition of Thomas of England is accommodated, not genuine, as if to say: If great is the heart's offense and self-reproof, greater is God's mercy in pardoning it. For impious is Cain's saying, Gen. 4:13: "My iniquity is greater than that I should deserve pardon. And that of others: Greater, that is, more liberal, richer, fuller, more perfect, is God than our heart;" because He alone satisfies and fulfills the desires of our heart, indeed overflows them immensely, nor can He be contained by them, just as the sea cannot be contained by a spoon.
Verse 21: If Our Heart Does Not Reprove Us, We Have Confidence
21. If our heart does not reprove us. — καταγινώσκῃ, which St. Augustine renders, "if our heart has not thought ill;" Œcumenius, "if it does not condemn, and we are uncondemned in our own sight, we have confidence toward God," that all things which we ask and which we need we shall obtain from Him, as follows. This is what the Psalmist sings in Ps. 118:6: "Then I shall not be confounded, when I have looked into all your commandments." On the other hand, of the impious man with an evil conscience, the Wise Man says, Prov. 28:9: "He who turns away his ears that he may not hear the law, his prayer shall be execrable." For, as St. Gregory says, Morals X, ch. 15 or 17: "He distrusts that he can receive what he desires, who indeed remembers that he is unwilling still to do what he has heard from God; and the heart reproves us in our petition, when it remembers that it is resisting the precepts of Him whom it asks." The Author of the Imperfect Work, Homily 15 on Matthew: "As oil, he says, kindles the light of the lamp, so good works give confidence to the soul; for the just man is bold as a lion," Prov. 28:1.
Verse 22: Whatever We Ask We Shall Receive
22. And whatever we ask (that is, what is to be asked — namely, what is truly good and pertaining or conducing to God's glory and our own and others' salvation. Thus John explains himself, ch. 5, v. 14, saying: "Whatever we ask according to His will, He hears us"), we shall receive from Him — or certainly something better than what we ask. He here explains the confidence which a good conscience produces before God, from its effect, which is that it obtains all that it requests from God. He gives the cause: "Because we keep His commandments, and do those things which are pleasing in the sight of God." For it is fitting, and a fitting reward of obedience and friendship, that if a man does God's will, God in turn should do man's will, according to that saying: "He will do the will of those who fear Him," Ps. 144:19. By commandments he understands those of love, that we should love one another, as preceded. So St. Augustine.
He alludes to that promise of Christ: "If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, whatever you will, you shall ask, and it shall be done unto you," John 15:7. For action must be supported by prayer and, in turn, prayer by action, according to that of St. Gregory, Book IX, Epistle 45: "Prayer becomes empty when action is wicked; for action surpasses the prayers of the good. This is what Jeremiah says, Lam. 3:41: Let us lift up our hearts with our hands to God in the heavens. For, as St. Jerome explains — or rather Rabanus: He lifts up his heart with his hands who strengthens his prayer with works. For whoever prays but neglects to act, lifts up his heart and does not lift up his hands; but whoever acts and does not pray, lifts up his hands and does not lift up his heart. According to John's saying, therefore, the heart receives confidence in prayer when no perversity of life contradicts it, and the prayer of good works harmonizes with the prayer." And indeed it was a proverb of the Lacedaemonians, as Plutarch attests in his Laconica: "Fortune must be implored with the hand applied, by which they meant, that God is invoked in vain unless one, adding industry, applied his hand to the wheel."
St. John therefore teaches here that prayer has power from confidence, and that confidence arises from the observance of the commandments; for the Lord threatens the impious who violate them, Isa. 1:15: "When you stretch forth your hands, I will turn away my eyes from you; when you multiply prayer, I will not hear: for your hands are full of blood. Elsewhere: His ear is not heavy that He cannot hear, but your iniquities have separated between you and your God;" and Mal. 2:2: "I will curse your blessings. And to the same effect Solomon, Prov. 28:9: He who turns away his ears that he may not hear the law, his prayer shall be execrable. Finally, David: But to the sinner God has said: Why do you declare my justices, and take my covenant in your mouth?" Ps. 49:16. Having experienced this very thing, the royal Prophet sings: "But me you have upheld for my innocence, and you have confirmed me in your sight forever, Ps. 40:13; and: The eyes of the Lord are upon the just, and his ears toward their prayers, Ps. 33:16; and: Our soul waits for the Lord, for He is our helper and protector: in Him our heart shall rejoice, and in His holy name we have hoped, Ps. 32:20. Hence the same one teaching others: Delight, he says, in the Lord, and He will give you the petitions of your heart," Ps. 36:4. Indeed, He will anticipate the petitions themselves, according to that saying: "The Lord has heard the desire of the poor," Ps. 9:17. Therefore the Lord anticipates and fulfills not only prayers themselves, but also silent thoughts and desires, before they are uttered in prayer, in those who are truly poor in spirit. So St. Dominic used to say that he had asked nothing of God which he had not received. The same was professed by St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Scholastica, sister of St. Benedict; St. Catherine of Siena, and others.
And we do those things which are pleasing in His sight. — Pleasing, because commanded by Him. Therefore the things pleasing are God's precepts, just as the king's pleasure is the king's command. Yet pleasing also are God's counsels, namely the Evangelical counsels. For he who labors to please God perfectly embraces not only His commands and precepts, but also His nods and counsels: which, as it is arduous, so it is most pleasing to God; whence St. Bernard, Sermon 1 On the Dedication of the Church, calls a religious or monk a perpetual miracle. In this therefore consists all our sanctity, namely in the study and effort of pleasing God always, everywhere, and in all things. For this is the act of purest and perpetual charity.
Note here: Love is twofold, namely of concupiscence and of friendship. Love of concupiscence is that by which we strive to please God, that we may be granted eternal glory as a reward; this is a good act, but more of hope than of charity, according to that saying: "I have inclined my heart to do your justifications forever, on account of the recompense," Ps. 118:112. Love of friendship is that by which we purely strive to please God and to fulfill what is pleasing to Him, not for hope of reward, but out of pure love; because we love Him and desire to do for Him a thing pleasing and grateful, in which He may be pleased with Himself and delight Himself, that we may feed His eyes, mind, and heart. This is the act of pure and perfect charity.
Christ had this love from the first instant of His conception, and continued it throughout His whole life, until on the cross He resigned His last breath into His Father's hands. "I, He says, do always those things that please Him, John 8:29; and: In the head of the book it is written of me, that I should do your will. My God, I have willed it, and your law in the midst of my heart," Ps. 39:9. So Paul admonishes the Romans, 12:2, that they should studiously search out, "what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God;" and in Col. 1:9, "asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, that you may walk worthy of God, in all things pleasing."
Hence wise men teach that the best practice for increasing God's grace and merits is, if at every hour you think: What does God require of me at this hour? what does He wish me to do at this moment? what is most pleasing at this instant? And, having recognized it, immediately to carry it out and complete it in deed. Thus the king's servants at every hour think what may please the king, what he wills, and observe all the king's nods, and immediately accomplish what he indicates, so that they seem not so much to walk as to fly: how much more ought we to observe the nods of the Lord our God, and obey Him in all things? Of God, I say, who is that august and supreme majesty, supreme equity, supreme sanctity, supreme wisdom, supreme goodness, supreme power; of God, who is our supreme and the supreme Lord of all, legislator, judge, and avenger; of God, who created us, preserves, redeems, sanctifies us, and at each single moment heaps innumerable benefits upon us. This is what St. Gregory says, Morals VI, ch. 12 or 14: "In all things which we do, let us seek the force of the supreme will. Abbot Ammon in St. Ephrem, vol. II, in chapter Paraenetic 10 and following: Desire, he says, to fulfill God's will at every time, as truly the kingdom of heaven and the crown of perfect life, believing with the whole heart that it surpasses all human prudence in usefulness, and in whatever matter you ought first to test whether this be God's will. Abbot John, when dying, rejoiced, and taught the same to others, saying: Never have I done my own will," as Cassian relates, Book V On the Institutes of Renunciation, ch. 28. Our Blessed Aloysius Gonzaga used to say that he was dying gladly, and had no scruple of any thing, especially of excessive austerity, because he had done nothing except by the will of God, whose interpreter was his superior. This is what God praises and celebrates, saying: "You shall be called my will in her," Isa. 62:4. See St. Bernard, Sermon 38 on the Canticle, and the treatise On Loving God.
Verse 23: This Is His Commandment: Faith and Mutual Love
23. And this is His commandment (St. John had said that we shall receive whatever we ask of Him, "because we keep His commandments:" here he explains what those commandments are, and says that they are two. First), that we believe in the name (that is, on the name — it is a Hebraism: in Greek ὀνόματι, that is, to the name) of His Son Jesus Christ (this is, that we believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God: for the name is put for the thing named by metonymy, according to that saying: "In the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, which explaining he adds: And every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father," Phil. 2:9. Second), and that we love one another. — For in these two, as in foundations and roots, the rest are contained: for to believe in Jesus Christ is at the same time to hope in Him, to love Him, to worship, adore, and obey Him in all things. So Œcumenius. Again, to believe in Jesus Christ the Son of God is equally to believe in God the Father and in the Holy Spirit. For the Father is the Father of the Son; and the Father and Son include the power, indeed the act, of breathing forth the Holy Spirit, as I have said elsewhere. Finally, the precept of loving one's neighbor includes and presupposes the precept of loving God: for the neighbor is to be loved for God's sake. "On these two commandments depend the whole law and the Prophets," Matt. 22:40. "For he loves you less, O Lord, says St. Augustine, Confessions X, ch. 29, who loves anything with you which he loves not for your sake. O love who always burns, and is never extinguished, charity, my God, enkindle me. Continence you command; give what you command, and command what you will."
As He has given us commandment. — The word commandment so often repeated signifies that Christ uniquely and frequently commanded and commended the precept of mutual love, both to the Apostles, that they should preach and often inculcate this very thing everywhere; and to the faithful, that they should plainly and fully obey it.
Verse 24: He Who Keeps His Commandments Abides in Him
24. And he who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. — The word abides signifies dwelling and habitation, also intimate conjunction and fellowship. Therefore God abides in the one who obeys.
First, through commandment and legislation: for the law, and consequently the legislator, abides in the subject who obeys him; just as the doctrine of the teacher abides in the disciple, who hears and drinks it in, according to that saying: "The word of God abides in us," ch. 2, v. 14; and conversely the subject abides in the law and legislator through discipline and obedience, by which he cleaves to him and obeys him.
Secondly, through love: for he who keeps God's commandments loves God and is loved by Him. Whence he abides in God, as the lover through affection and love abides in the beloved. For the soul is more where it loves than where it animates; in turn it abides in God, as the beloved objectively abides in the lover. In the same way God abides in him, namely both as lover and as the thing loved: "For he who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit," 1 Cor. 6:17. See St. Bernard, Sermon 71 on the Canticle.
Thirdly, the loving and obedient one abides in God through clientship; in turn God abides in the loving one through patronage, direction, and rule, as it were his guardian and protector, according to that of Ps. 90:1: "He who dwells in the help of the Most High, shall abide in the protection of the God of heaven." Hence the Syriac renders: He who keeps His commandment is kept by Him. This is what Zechariah says, ch. 2, v. 8: "He who touches you, touches the apple of my eye. It was little to say, touches me;" but he named that part which is dearest in a man, and most tender to the sense. And God to Abraham: "Do not fear, He said, I am your protector, and your reward exceedingly great. Hence the Psalmist prays: Be unto me a protector and a house of refuge, Ps. 30:3. Hence Bede elegantly: Let God be a house to you, he says, and be a house of God: abide in God, and let God abide in you. God abides in you, that He may contain you: you abide in God, that you may not fall. Keep His commandments, hold to charity, do not tear yourself away from faith in Him, that you may glory in His presence, and you shall securely abide in Him, now through faith, then through vision. He Himself also shall perennially abide in you, according to what the Psalmist sings to Him: They shall rejoice forever, and you shall dwell in them," Ps. 5:12. And St. Chrysostom in ch. 8 to the Romans, explaining that, v. 14, Whoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God: "In order to obtain, he says, the inheritance of sons, it is not enough to be once imbued with the divine Spirit, unless we be perpetually ruled by His leadership, since He is the steersman of our soul, the charioteer and leader, driving us into battle against the spiritual wickednesses in the heavens."
Fourthly, God abides in the lover, as the placed in the place: For a holy soul is a throne, temple, and heaven of God, as Paul teaches 1 Cor. 3:17, and Isaiah ch. 66, vv. 1 and 2.
Finally, God abides in the just substantially, because He communicates His essence and substance to the just; for He makes him a partaker of the divine nature, 2 Peter 1:4. See what is said there.
And in this (by this) we know (as if to say: by this token we recognize) that He abides in us (namely) by the Spirit (the Greek and Syriac: out of the Spirit) which He has given us. — He proves that those who keep the commandments, and therefore love God, abide in God, and God in them, as if to say: From the Holy Spirit and His charity, which makes us love one another, and from His other virtues and gifts as it were from effects, we know that the Holy Spirit Himself, and consequently the Father and the Son, abide and dwell in us, according to that saying: "The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us," Rom. 5:5. Hence it follows that we in turn abide in God. "For God is charity, and he who abides in charity abides in God, and God in him," ch. 4, v. 16. So St. Augustine, Bede, Œcumenius, and others. "This connection, says St. Augustine, sufficiently and openly declares that fraternal love is not only from God, but also is God, which we see preached with such great authority. When therefore we love our brother out of love, we love our brother out of God."
Note, first, we know, not by divine faith, which the heretics call special, as if the faithful ought to believe with certainty that they have the faith and grace of God; nor by physical and absolute certainty, as Catharinus would have it, but by moral and conjectural certainty, such as is wont to be had from signs and conjectures, namely from flight from sins, zeal for virtues — especially humility, mortification, charity, contempt of the world, etc.: and the greater the signs one experiences in himself, the greater certainty he has that he is in the grace of God. Hence the more he grows in virtues, the more certain he is of his grace and salvation; and so Andreas Vega, Book IX on the Council of Trent, last and second-to-last chapters, teaches that the Saints can have such certainty as excludes every doubt and fear of the contrary, so that morally they do not doubt of their grace: just as we certainly believe that Constantinople exists from the common assertion of all, even though we have not seen it; or rather as a priest duly ordained certainly knows that he is a priest, and a baptized person knows that he is baptized, either because he heard it from men worthy of credit, or because as an adult he saw himself being baptized; for which reason St. Anthony used to say: "I love my God, I do not fear." This belongs to few, and to most eminent Saints, who have served God long and fervently; who, however, if they look to their own weakness, can fear that they may perhaps be deceived in this their credulity, even though in act they do not fear. The rest can both fear and actually fear. So St. Jerome on Micah ch. 6: "We must, he says, sleep at no hour, be secure at no time, but always await the day of judgment. St. Gregory, Book VI, Epistle 22 to Gregoria, the Empress's chamber-maid: You ought not, he says, to be secure about your sins, and until the last day of your life comes, you ought always to be suspicious, always trembling, to fear faults. St. Bernard, Sermon 3 On Advent: Since I ought to keep watch over both my own and my neighbor's conscience, neither is sufficiently known to me: each is an unsearchable abyss, each is night to me." See the Council of Trent, sess. VI, ch. 16. Therefore commonly the certitude and confidence of the Saints is mixed with fear and dread of the opposite, according to that of Paul: "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling," Phil. 2:12. God willed this, that this fear might be for us a bridle to humility and a spur to keenness of virtue.