Love, peace, and the true vine begins (John 14:23–15:1)

best; and by having and keeping his commandments he shows that not all may obtain such a gift, but the good; for after the resurrection those who believed rightly and lived perfectly will know perfectly the glory of the Godhead. Such people, he says, the Father will love, and the Son also will love, to whom the authority and power of the Godhead will be perfectly manifested.

As a lover of the good, Judas wanted all the good to enjoy the vision of God.

The Father is in the Son naturally, but in us relatively; and when we hear of union of Father and Son we understand the natural, but when union of God and human beings, we understand the relative that comes to the saints from faith and the communion from partaking of the Spirit. And by speaking in the plural he destroys Sabellius’s heresy that says one hypostasis and one person of Father and Son.

He teaches that only to the disciples exceptionally and beyond reason will the illumination be, for those who keep the commandments.

He seems to say the word is his and not his, because he speaks nothing outside the Father as his own, but what seems good to him—my word and the Father’s is common.

Therefore those around Montanus who came after two hundred years were not the first to obtain the Spirit; for what could the Spirit remind them of that they had not heard at all from Christ?

Do not take my absence hard; for when the Spirit comes he will be a provider of great goods to you, teaching you the security of my words and comforting you from the afflictions that press you. When the Spirit comes you will learn many things you do not know, and he will recall what I said.

Do not be troubled hearing that I am about to suffer; for there is much gain from this.

The world’s peace is where it also happens for evil; but Christ’s peace persuades not only to be at peace with those outside but also with yourselves, so that the flesh may not rebel against the soul.

You ought, hearing that I go to the Father, to take courage and not be grieved.

He calls return the time of the resurrection. The Father’s being greater does not make him of another essence, as the heretics say. When he was on earth as man he said the Father is greater. He says this because of the appearing body, since insofar as he is God he is not less than the Father, nor is he led up into the heavens—he who fills all things and is inseparable from the Father.

With the passion standing there is no longer need of words.

Dying willingly for love toward God—which has no harm—since the Father who loves him would not have wanted this otherwise.

Christ is the root, and without