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| Chapter VIII. He confirms the judgment of the Apostle by the authority of the Lord.
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Chapter VIII.
He confirms the judgment of the Apostle by the authority
of the Lord.
And though this is the
saying of an Apostle, yet it is the very doctrine of the Lord. For the
same Person says this to Christians by His Apostle, who had Himself
said something very like it to Jews in the gospel, when He said:
“But now ye seek to kill me, a man, who have spoken the truth to
you, which I heard of God: for I am not come of Myself, but He sent
me.”2517
He clearly shows
that He is both God and man: man, in that He says that He is a man:
God, in that He affirms that He was sent. For He must have been with
Him from whom He came: and He came from Him, from whom He said that He
was sent. Whence it comes that when the Jews said to Him, “Thou
art not yet fifty years old and hast Thou seen Abraham?” He
replied in words that exactly suit His eternity and glory, saying,
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham came into being,
I am.”2518
I ask then,
whose saying do you think this is? Certainly it is Christ’s
without any doubt. And how could He who had been but recently born, say
that He was before Abraham? Simply owing to the Word of God, with which
He was entirely united, so that all might understand the closeness of
the union of Christ and God: since whatever God said in Christ, that in
its fulness the unity of the Divinity claimed for Himself. But
conscious of His own eternity, He rightly then when in the body,
replied to the Jews, with the very words which He had formerly spoken
to Moses in the Spirit. For here He says, “Before Abraham came
into being, I am.” But to Moses He says, “I am that I
am.”2519
He certainly
announced the eternity of His Divine nature with marvellous grandeur of
language, for nothing can be spoken so worthily of God, as that He
should be said ever to be. For “to be” admits of no
beginning in the past or end in the future. And so this is very clearly
spoken of the nature of the eternal God, as it exactly describes His
eternity. And this the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, when He was speaking
of Abraham, showed by the difference of terms used, saying,
“Before Abraham came into being I am.” Of Abraham he said,
“Before he came into being:” Of Himself, “I
am,” for it belongs to things temporal to come into being: to
be belongs to eternity. And so “to come into being”
He assigns to human transitoriness: but “to be” to His own
nature. And all this was found in Christ who, by virtue of the mystery
of the manhood and Divinity joined together in Him who ever
“was,” could say that He already
“was.”E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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