“Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.”
Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death — Jesus makes a promise to those who keep (tērēi) his word: they shall 'never see death' (thanatos). The promise transcends physical mortality: eternal life is the gift to believers. 'Keeping' Jesus's saying involves both hearing and obeying, sustained adherence to his teaching. The promise is absolute: no believer will experience the final death (eternal separation from God), though all experience physical death. The statement reframes everything: the authorities threaten physical death, but Jesus offers eternal life.
Church Fathers on John 8:51
Whenever our Lord said any thing of lofty meaning, the Jews in their insensibility set it down madness: Then answered the Jews and said to Him, Say we not well that you are a Samaritan, and have a devil?
But how, we may ask, when the Samaritans denied a future life, and the immortality of the soul, could they dare to call our Savior, Who had preached so much on the resurrection and the judgment, a Samaritan? Perhaps they only mean a general rebuke to Him for teaching, what they did not approve of.
The Samaritans were hated by the Jews; they lived in the land that formerly belonged to the ten tribes, who had been carried away.
Read all 23 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS
Publish a reflection on this verse
No reflections on this verse yet. Be the first to write one!