Church Fathers Commentary John 8:21-24

"He said therefore again unto them, I go away, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sin: whither I go, ye cannot come. The Jews therefore said, Will he kill himself, that he saith, Whither I go, ye cannot come? And he said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world. I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for except ye believe that I am [he], ye shall die in your sins." — John 8:21-24 (ASV)

St. Augustine of Hippo: In accordance with what was just, He said that no one laid hands on Him because His hour had not yet come. He now speaks to the Jews of His passion as a free and not a compulsory sacrifice on His part. Then Jesus said to them again, I go My way. For our Lord, death was a return to the place from where He had come.

The Venerable Bede: These words could have been spoken at the same time and place, or at a different time and place, as it is possible that nothing, some things, or many other events intervened.

Origen of Alexandria: But someone will object: If this was spoken to people who persisted in unbelief, why does He say, You shall seek Me? For to seek Jesus is to seek truth and wisdom. You might answer that this was said of His persecutors, who sought to capture Him.

There are different ways of seeking Jesus. Not all seek Him for their health and benefit; only those who seek Him rightly find peace. And they are said to seek Him rightly who seek the Word who was in the beginning with God, so that He may lead them to the Father.

St. Augustine of Hippo: He says, then, You shall seek Me, not from compassionate regret, but from hatred. For after He departed from human sight, He was sought by both those who hated Him and those who loved Him—the former wanting to persecute Him, the latter wanting His presence. And so that you do not think you will seek Him for a good reason, He tells you, You shall die in your sin. This is what it means to seek Christ wrongly: to die in one's sin. This is to hate Him from whom alone salvation comes. He prophetically pronounces this sentence on them: that they will die in their sins.

The Venerable Bede: Note that the word for sin is singular, while the pronoun "your" is plural, expressing that the same wickedness is in all of them.

Origen of Alexandria: But I ask, since it is said later that many believed in Him, whether He is speaking to everyone present when He says, You shall die in your sins? No, He speaks only to those whom He knew would not believe and would therefore die in their sins, unable to follow Him. He says, Where I go, you cannot come—that is, to the place where truth and wisdom are, for Jesus dwells with them. He says they cannot come because they are not willing; for if they had been willing, He could not have reasonably said, You shall die in your sin.

St. Augustine of Hippo: He tells His disciples this in another place, but without saying to them, You shall die in your sin. He only says, Where I go, you cannot follow Me now, not preventing their coming, but only delaying it.

Origen of Alexandria: The Word, while still present, nevertheless threatens to depart. As long as we preserve the seeds of truth implanted in our minds, the Word of God does not depart from us. But if we fall into wickedness, then He says to us, I go away. When we then seek Him, we will not find Him, but will instead die in our sin—caught in our sin.

But we should not overlook the expression itself: You shall die in your sins. If “you shall die” is understood in the ordinary sense, it is clear that sinners die in their sins and the righteous in their righteousness. But if we understand it as death in the sense of sin, then the meaning is that their souls, not their bodies, were sick unto death. The Physician, seeing them so gravely sick, says, You shall die in your sins.

This is evidently the meaning of the words, Where I go, you cannot come. For when a person dies in his sin, he cannot go where Jesus goes; no one who is dead in sin can follow Jesus. As it is written, The dead do not praise the LORD.

St. Augustine of Hippo: They take these words, as they usually do, in a fleshly sense and ask, “Will He kill Himself?” because He said, “Where I go, you cannot come.” A foolish question! Why? Could they not go where He went if He killed Himself? Were they never to die themselves? When He says, Where I go, then, He does not mean His departure at death, but where He went after death.

Theophylact of Ohrid: He shows here that He will rise again in glory and sit at the right hand of God.

Origen of Alexandria: However, might they not have a higher meaning in saying this? For they had opportunities to know many things from their apocryphal books or from tradition. Just as there was a prophetic tradition that Christ was to be born in Bethlehem, so there may have also been a tradition about His death—namely, that He would depart from this life in the way He declares: No man takes it from Me; I lay it down of Myself.

So then, the question, Will He kill Himself? is not to be taken in its obvious sense, but as referring to some Jewish tradition about Christ. For His saying, I go My way, shows that He had power over His own death and departure from the body, so that these actions were voluntary on His part. But I think that they bring forward this tradition about Christ's death contemptuously, not with any intention of giving Him glory. They say, “Will He kill Himself?” when, in fact, they should have used a more exalted way of speaking, such as, “Will His soul wait for His command to depart from His body?”

Our Lord answers, You are from beneath—that is, you love earthly things; your hearts are not raised upward. He speaks to them as earthly people, for their thoughts were earthly.

St. John Chrysostom: It is as if He were saying, “No wonder you think as you do, since you are of the flesh and understand nothing spiritually. I am from above.”

St. Augustine of Hippo: From where above? From the Father Himself, who is above all. You are of this world; I am not of this world. How could He be of the world, by whom the world was made?

The Venerable Bede: And He was before the world, while they were of the world, having been created after the world began to exist.

St. John Chrysostom: Or, He says, I am not of this world, with reference to worldly and vain thoughts.

Theophylact of Ohrid: I pursue nothing worldly, nothing earthly; I could never descend to such madness as to kill Myself. Apollinarius, however, falsely infers from these words that our Lord’s body was not of this world but came down from heaven. Did the Apostles, then, to whom our Lord says later, You are not of this world, all derive their bodies from heaven? In saying, I am not of this world, He must be understood to mean, “I am not one of you who set your minds on earthly things.”

Origen of Alexandria: “Beneath” and “of this world” are different things. “Beneath” refers to a particular place. This material world contains different regions, all of which are “beneath” when compared with things immaterial and invisible; but when compared with one another, some are beneath and some are above. Where each person’s treasure is, there his heart is also. If someone lays up treasure on earth, he is “beneath”; if anyone lays up treasure in heaven, he is “above.” Indeed, he ascends above all heavens and attains a most blissful end.

Again, the love of this world makes a person to be “of this world,” while he who does not love the world or the things in the world is not of the world. Yet beyond this world of sense, there is another world in which there are invisible things, the beauty of which the pure in heart will behold. Indeed, the First-born of all creation may be called “the world,” insofar as He is absolute wisdom, and in wisdom all things were made. In Him, therefore, was the whole world, differing from the material world insofar as a blueprint differs from the material substance itself. The soul of Christ, then, says, I am not of this world, because its way of life is not in this world.

St. Augustine of Hippo: Our Lord expresses His meaning in the words, You are of this world—that is, you are sinners. All of us are born in sin, and all have added by our actions to the sin in which we were born. The misery of the Jews, then, was not that they had sin, but that they would die in their sin. Therefore, I said to you, that you shall die in your sin.

Among the multitude who heard our Lord, however, there were some who were about to believe. Yet this most severe sentence had been pronounced against all: You shall die in your sin, destroying all hope even in those who would later believe. So His next words recall these people to hope: For if you believe not that I am He, you shall die in your sin; therefore if you believe that I am He, you shall not die in your sin.

St. John Chrysostom: For if He came to take away sin, and a person cannot put it off except by the washing of baptism, and cannot be baptized unless he believes, it follows that he who does not believe must depart from this life with the “old man”—that is, sin—still within him. This is not only because he does not believe, but because he departs from here with his former sins still upon him.

St. Augustine of Hippo: His saying, If you believe not that I am, without adding anything else, proves a great deal. For this is how God spoke to Moses: I am that I am. But how do I understand I am that I am and If you believe not that I am? In this way: Any excellence, of whatever kind, if it is mutable, cannot be said to truly exist, for there is no true being where non-being is possible.

Analyze the idea of mutability, and you will find past and future. Contemplate God, and you will find only the present—“is”—without the possibility of a past. To truly exist, you must leave that mutability behind. So then, If you believe not that I am means, in fact, “If you do not believe that I am God.” This is the condition on which we will not die in our sins. Thanks be to God that He requires us to believe, not to understand, when He says, If you believe not—for who could understand this?

Origen of Alexandria: It is clear that anyone who dies in his sins, even if he says he believes in Christ, does not really believe. For he who believes in His justice does not commit injustice, and he who believes in His wisdom does not act or speak foolishly. In the same way, regarding the other attributes of Christ, you will find that the one who does not truly believe in Christ dies in his sins, because he becomes the very opposite of what is seen in Christ.