COMMENTARY ON JOHN, BOOK 1
it is concerning the world of the church that Scripture says, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn 1:29). I also suppose that the first-fruits of the gospel is the one which you have requested us to interpret to the best of our ability, the Gospel according to John, which speaks of the one who is given a genealogy and begins with one who has no genealogy (see Heb. 7:3).9 22 For Matthew, writing for the Hebrews awaiting the son of Abraham and David, says, “A book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Mt. 1:1) and Mark deliberately writes “the beginning of the gospel” (Mk. 1:1) so that doubtless we may discover his purpose in the Word “in the beginning” of John’s gospel, the Word who is God (see Jn 1:1). But Luke also reserves10 for him who reclined upon Jesus’ breast (see Jn 13:25) the better and more perfect discourses concerning Jesus, for none of them revealed his divinity straightforwardly as John did, who presented him saying “I am the light of the world” (Jn 8:12), “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6), “I am the resurrection” (Jn 11:25), and in Revelation, “I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last” (Rev. 22:13). 23 Further, if one must be so bold as to say that the gospels are the first-fruits of the entire Scripture, then the first-fruits of the gospels is [the Gospel] according to John. No one can understand11 this gospel unless he reclines on Jesus’ breast and unless he accepts Mary from Jesus as one who has become his own mother. And, in order to become another John, he must become such a person that, like John, he has been designated by Jesus as one who is Jesus. For no one but Jesus was a son of Mary according to those who soundly glorify her,12 but when Jesus says to his mother, “See, your son” (Jn 19:26), rather than, “See, this man is also your son,” it is the equivalent of saying, “See, this man is Jesus whom you bore.” For everyone who is perfected “no longer lives, but Christ lives in him” (see Gal. 2:20), and since Christ lives in him, Christ says to Mary concerning him, “See, your son.” 24 What also needs to be said about what kind of intelligence we must have to understand fully the discourse stored in the earthen treasure (see 2 Cor. 4:7) of ordinary speech, that is, a letter legible to anyone who chances to read it and audible by the sound of the sensible word to all who attend with their bodily ears? Someone who is going to comprehend it accurately must be able to say with truth, “We have the intelligence of Christ, so that we know the things graciously given to us by God” (1 Cor. 2:16 and 12).13 109