(Hom. lxvii) He says, My Father will honour him, not, I will honour him; because they had not yet proper notions of His nature, and thought Him inferior to the Father.
(Hom. lxvi) To our Lord's exhortation to His disciples to endurance, they might have replied that it was easy for Him, Who was out of the reach of human pain, to talk philosophically about death, and to recommend others to bear what He is in no danger of having to bear Himself. So He lets them see that He is Himself in an agony, but that He does not intend to decline death, merely for the sake of relieving Himself: Now is My soul troubled.
(Hom. lxvii) As He draws near to the Cross, His human nature appears, a nature that did not wish to die, but cleaved to this present life. He shows that He is not quite without human feelings. For the desire of this present life is not necessarily wrong, any more than hunger. Christ had a body free from sin, but not from natural infirmities. But these attach solely to the dispensation of His humanity, not to His divinity.
(Hom. lxvii. 2) As if He said, I cannot say why I should ask to be saved from it; For for this cause came I unto this hour. However ye may be troubled and dejected at the thought of dying, do not run away from death. I am troubled, yet I ask not to be spared. I do not say, Save Me from this hour, but the contrary, Glorify Thy name. To die for the truth was to glorify God, as the event shewed; for after His crucifixion the whole world was to be converted to the knowledge and worship of God, both the Father and the Son. But this He is silent about.
Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.
(Hom. lxvii. 2) The voice though loud and distinct, soon passed off from their gross, carnal, and sluggish minds; only the sound remaining. Others perceived an articulate voice, but did not catch what it said: Others said, An Angel spake to Him.
Jesus answered and said, This voice came not because of Me, but for your sakes.
(Hom. lxvii. 2) The voice of the Father proved what they were so fond of denying, that He was from God. For He must be from God, if He was glorified by God. It was not that He needed encouragement of such a voice Himself, but He condescended to receive it for the sake of those who were by. Now is the judgment of this world: this fits on to the preceding, as showing the mode of His being glorified.
(Hom. lxvii. 2) What kind of judgment it is by which the devil is cast out, I will explain by an example. A man demands payment from his debtors, beats them, and sends them to prison. He treats with the same insolence one who owes him nothing. The latter will take vengeance both for himself and the others too. This Christ does. He revenges what He has suffered at the devil's hands, and with Himself He revenges us too. But that none may say, How will he be cast out, if he overcome thee? He adds, And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me. How can He be overcome, who draws others unto Him? This is more than saying, I shall rise again. Had He said this, it would not have proved that He would draw all things unto Him; but, I shall draw, includes the resurrection, and this besides.
(Hom. lxvii. 3.) Why then did He say above, that the Father drew men? (c. 6:46.) Because the Father draws, by the Son who draws. I shall draw, He says, as if men were in the grasp of some tyrant, from which they could not extricate themselves.
(Tr. lii. 2) I hear Him say, He that hateth his life in this world, shall keep it unto life eternal; and I am ravished, I despise the world; the whole of this life, however long, is but a vapour in My sight; all temporal things are vile, in comparison with eternal. And again I hear Him say, Now is My soul troubled. Thou biddest my soul follow Thee; but I see Thy soul troubled. What foundation shall I seek, if the Rock gives way? Lord, I acknowledge Thy mercy. Thou of Thy love wast of Thine own will troubled, to console those who are troubled through the infirmity of nature; that the members of Thy body perish not in despair. The Head took upon Himself the affections of His members. He was not troubled by any thing, but, as was said above, He troubled Himself. (c. 11:33)
(Tr. lii) Lastly, let the man who would follow Him, hear at what hour he should follow. A fearful hour has perhaps come: a choice is offered, either to do wrong, or suffer: the weak soul is troubled. Hear our Lord. What shall I say?
(Tr. lii. 3) He teaches thee Whom thou shouldest call on, whose will prefer to thine own. Let Him not seem to fall from His greatness, because He wishes thee to rise from thy meanness. He took upon Him man's infirmity, that He might teach the afflicted to say, Not what I will, but what Thou wilt. Wherefore He adds, But for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify Thy name: i. e. in My passion and resurrection.
(Tr. lii. 4) I have glorified it, i. e. before I made the world; and will glorify it again, i. e. when Thou shalt rise from the dead. Or, I have glorified it, when Thou wast born of a Virgin, didst work miracles, wast made manifest by the Holy Ghost descending in the shape of a dove; and will glorify it again, when Thou shalt rise from the dead, and, as God, be exalted above the heavens, and Thy glory above all the earth.
The people therefore that stood by and heard it, said that it thundered.
(Tr. lii. 5) i. e. It did not come to tell Him what He knew already, but them what they ought to know. And as that voice did not come for His sake, but for theirs, so His soul was not troubled for His sake, but for theirs.
(Tr. lii. 6) The judgment at the end of the world will be of eternal rewards and punishments. But there is another judgment, not of condemnation, but of selection, which is the one meant here; the selection of His own redeemed, and their deliverance from the power of the devil: Now shall the prince of this world be cast out. The devil is not called the prince of this world, in the sense of being lord over heaven and earth; God forbid. The world here stands for the wicked dispersed over all the world. In this sense the devil is the prince of the world, i. e. of all the wicked men who live in the world. The world also sometimes stands for the good dispersed throughout the world: God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. (2 Cor. 5:19) These are they from whose hearts the prince of this world shall be cast out. Our Lord foresaw that after His passion and glorifying, great nations all over the world would be converted, in whom the devil was then, but from whose hearts, on their truly renouncing him1, he would be cast out. But was he not cast out of the hearts of righteous men of old? Why is it, Now shall be cast out? Because that which once took place in a very few persons, was now to take place in whole nations. What then, does the devil not tempt at all the minds of believers? Yea, he never ceases to tempt them. But it is one thing to reign within, another to lay siege from without.
(Tr. lii. 11) What is this all that He draweth, but that from which the devil is cast out? He does not say, All men, but, All things; for all men have not faith. He does not mean then all mankind, but the whole of a man, i. e. spirit, soul, and body; by which respectively we understand, and live, and are visible. Or, if all means all men, it means those who are predestined to salvation: or all kinds of men, all varieties of character, excepting in the article of sin.
(Tr. lii. 11) If I be lifted up from the earth, He says, i. e. when I shall be lifted up. He does not doubt that the work will be accomplished which He came to do. By His being lifted up, He means His passion on the cross, as the Evangelist adds: This He said, signifying by what death He should die.
(Moral. xxviii.) When God speaks audibly, as He does here, but no visible appearance is seen, He speaks through the medium of a rational creature: i. e. by the voice of an Angel.
Why, then, do you make liars of both the Father and the Son? If either the Father spake from heaven to the Son when He Himself was the Son on earth, or the Son prayed to the Father when He was Himself the Son in heaven, how happens it that the Son made a request of His own very self, by asking it of the Father, since the Son was the Father? Or, on the other hand, how is it that the Father made a promise to Himself, by making it to the Son, since the Father was the Son? Were we even to maintain that they are two separate gods, as you are so fond of throwing out against us, it would be a more tolerable assertion than the maintenance of so versatile and changeful a God as yours! Therefore it was that in the passage before us the Lord declared to the people present: "Not on my own account has this voice addressed me, but for your sakes," that these likewise may believe both in the Father and in the Son, severally, in their own names and persons and positions.
We remember, indeed, that a voice was sometimes uttered from heaven for us so that the power of the Father’s words might confirm for us the mystery of the Son.… But the divine nature can dispense with the various combinations necessary for human functions, the motion of the tongue, the adjustment of the mouth, the forcing of the breath and the vibration of the air. God is a simple being: we must understand him by devotion and confess him by reverence. He is to be worshiped, not pursued by our senses, for a conditioned and weak nature cannot grasp with the guesses of its imagination the mystery of an infinite and omnipotent nature.
They thought that it thundered, or that an Angel spoke to Him. And how did they think this? Was not the voice clear and distinct? It was, but it quickly flew away from them as being of the grosser sort, carnal and slothful. And some of them caught the sound only, others knew that the voice was articulate, but what it meant, knew not. What says Christ? This Voice came not because of Me, but for your sakes. Why said He this? He said it, setting Himself against what they continually asserted, that He was not of God. For He who was glorified by God, how was He not from that God whose name by Him was glorified? Indeed for this purpose the Voice came. Wherefore He says Himself, This Voice came not because of Me, but for your sakes, not that I may learn by it anything of which I am ignorant, (for I know all that belongs to the Father,) but for your sakes. For when they said, An Angel has spoken unto Him, or It has thundered, and gave not heed to Him, He says, it was for your sakes, that even so ye might be led to enquire what the words meant. But they, being excited, did not even so enquire, though they heard that the matter related to them. For to one who knew not wherefore it was uttered, the Voice naturally appeared indistinct. The Voice came for your sakes. Do you see that these lowly circumstances take place on their account, not as though the Son needs help?
[AD 407] John Chrysostom on John 12:27-33
(Hom. lxvi) To our Lord's exhortation to His disciples to endurance, they might have replied that it was easy for Him, Who was out of the reach of human pain, to talk philosophically about death, and to recommend others to bear what He is in no danger of having to bear Himself. So He lets them see that He is Himself in an agony, but that He does not intend to decline death, merely for the sake of relieving Himself: Now is My soul troubled.
(Hom. lxvii) As He draws near to the Cross, His human nature appears, a nature that did not wish to die, but cleaved to this present life. He shows that He is not quite without human feelings. For the desire of this present life is not necessarily wrong, any more than hunger. Christ had a body free from sin, but not from natural infirmities. But these attach solely to the dispensation of His humanity, not to His divinity.
(Hom. lxvii. 2) As if He said, I cannot say why I should ask to be saved from it; For for this cause came I unto this hour. However ye may be troubled and dejected at the thought of dying, do not run away from death. I am troubled, yet I ask not to be spared. I do not say, Save Me from this hour, but the contrary, Glorify Thy name. To die for the truth was to glorify God, as the event shewed; for after His crucifixion the whole world was to be converted to the knowledge and worship of God, both the Father and the Son. But this He is silent about.
Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.
(Hom. lxvii. 2) The voice though loud and distinct, soon passed off from their gross, carnal, and sluggish minds; only the sound remaining. Others perceived an articulate voice, but did not catch what it said: Others said, An Angel spake to Him.
Jesus answered and said, This voice came not because of Me, but for your sakes.
(Hom. lxvii. 2) The voice of the Father proved what they were so fond of denying, that He was from God. For He must be from God, if He was glorified by God. It was not that He needed encouragement of such a voice Himself, but He condescended to receive it for the sake of those who were by. Now is the judgment of this world: this fits on to the preceding, as showing the mode of His being glorified.
(Hom. lxvii. 2) What kind of judgment it is by which the devil is cast out, I will explain by an example. A man demands payment from his debtors, beats them, and sends them to prison. He treats with the same insolence one who owes him nothing. The latter will take vengeance both for himself and the others too. This Christ does. He revenges what He has suffered at the devil's hands, and with Himself He revenges us too. But that none may say, How will he be cast out, if he overcome thee? He adds, And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me. How can He be overcome, who draws others unto Him? This is more than saying, I shall rise again. Had He said this, it would not have proved that He would draw all things unto Him; but, I shall draw, includes the resurrection, and this besides.
(Hom. lxvii. 3.) Why then did He say above, that the Father drew men? (c. 6:46.) Because the Father draws, by the Son who draws. I shall draw, He says, as if men were in the grasp of some tyrant, from which they could not extricate themselves.