Augustinus, In Joannis Evangelium tractatus LXXXV-CII

Tractate 85.

On what He says: You are My friends, if you do the things that I command you. Now I do not call you servants; because the servant does not know what his lord does. Chapter 15, verses 14, 15.

1. When the Lord Jesus had commended the charity which He showed us by dying for us, and had said, Greater love than this no one has, that one lay down his life for his friends, He said: You are My friends, if you do the things that I command you. Great condescension! Since a servant cannot be good unless he has done the commands of his lord, He willed that they should be understood to be His friends by the very thing by which good servants can be proved. But, as I have said, this is condescension, that the Lord should deign to call those whom He knows to be His servants His friends. For so that you may know that doing the commands of one's lord belongs to the duty of servants, in another place He indeed rebukes servants, saying: But why do you call Me, Lord, Lord, and do not do what I say (Luke 6:46)? When, therefore, you say Lord, He says, show what you are saying by doing what is commanded. Will He not Himself say to the obedient servant, Well done, good servant, because you have been faithful in a few things, I will set you over many; enter into the joy of your Lord (Matt. 25:21)? One can therefore be both a servant and a friend, one who is a good servant.

2. But let us attend to what follows. Now I do not call you servants; because the servant does not know what his lord does. How then are we to understand that a good servant is both a servant and a friend, when He says, Now I do not call you servants, because the servant does not know what his lord does? He establishes the name of friend in such a way as to take away that of servant; not so that both remain in one person, but so that the one succeeds as the other departs. What is this? Shall we then not be servants when we have done the commands of the Lord? Shall we then not be servants at the very time when we have been good servants? And who can contradict the Truth which says, Now I do not call you servants? And why He said this, He teaches: Because the servant, He

says, does not know what his lord does. Does his lord not entrust even his secrets to a good and approved servant? What then is it that He says, The servant does not know what his lord does? But granted, he does not know what he does; does he not know even what he commands? For if he does not know this either, how does he serve? Or how is he a servant who does not serve? And yet the Lord says, You are My friends, if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants. O wonderful thing! Since we cannot serve unless we do the Lord's commandments, how shall we not be servants by doing the commandments? If I shall not be a servant by doing the commandments, and unless I do the commandments I shall not be able to serve, then by serving I shall not be a servant.

3. Let us understand, brethren, let us understand, and may the Lord bring this about in us, that we understand; may He bring it about also that we do what we have understood. But if we know this, we surely know what the Lord does, since none but the Lord makes us such as we are, and through this we belong to His friendship. For just as there are two fears, which make two kinds of those who fear, so there are two servitudes, which make two kinds of servants. There is a fear which perfect charity casts out (1 John 4:18), and there is another fear, chaste, enduring for ever and ever (Ps. 18:10). That fear which is not in charity the Apostle had in view when he said: For you have not received the spirit of servitude again in fear (Rom. 8:15). But that chaste fear he had in view when he said: Do not be high-minded, but fear (Rom. 11:20). In that fear which charity casts out there is also a servitude which is to be cast out together with that fear itself: for the Apostle joined both, that is, servitude and fear, in saying, For you have not received the spirit of servitude again in fear. The Lord too was looking at the servant who belongs to this servitude when He said, No longer do I call you servants, because the servant does not know what his lord does. Not, certainly, that servant who belongs to chaste fear, to whom it is said, Well done, good servant, enter into the joy of your lord: but that servant who belongs to the fear that is to be cast out by charity, of whom He says elsewhere, The servant does not abide in the house for ever; but the son abides for ever (John 8:35). Since, then, He has given us power to become sons of God (John 1:12), let us be not servants but sons: so that in a certain wonderful and ineffable, yet true, manner we may be servants and not servants; servants, namely, by chaste fear, to which belongs the servant who enters into the joy of his lord; but not servants by the fear that is to be cast out, to which belongs the servant who does not abide in the house for ever. And in order that we may be such servants who are not servants, let us know that it is the Lord Who does [it]. But this that servant does not know who does not know what his Lord does; and when he does something good he is so lifted up as if he himself did it, not his Lord; and he glories in himself, not in the Lord, since he has deceived himself, because he glories as if he had not received (1 Cor. 4:7). But we, dearly beloved, so that we may be friends of the Lord,

we may know what our Lord does. For not only does He Himself make us men, but also just men, and not we ourselves. And that we may know this, who but He Himself brings it about? For we have not received the spirit of this world, but the Spirit Who is from God, that we may know the things that have been given to us by God (1 Cor. 2:12). Whatever is good is given by Him. Therefore, since this too is a good, it is assuredly given by Him that it may be known by whom every good is given; so that, concerning all good things whatsoever, he who glories may glory in the Lord (ibid. 1:31). But what follows, But I have called you friends; for all things whatsoever I have heard from My Father, I have made known to you, is so deep that it must by no means be squeezed into this sermon, but deferred to another.

Tractate 86. On what the Lord says, But I have called you friends; as far as this, That whatever you ask the Father in My name, He may give you. Chapter 15, verses 15, 16.

1. It is rightly asked how we are to take what the Lord says, But I have called you friends; for all things whatsoever I have heard from My Father, I have made known to you. For who would dare to affirm or believe that any man knows all things whatsoever the only-begotten Son has heard from the Father, when no one grasps even this, how He hears any word from the Father, since He Himself is the Father's only Word? What of the fact that a little later, yet in this very same discourse which He held with the disciples after supper before the passion, He says, I have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now (John 16:12)? In what way, then, are we to understand that He made known to the disciples all things whatsoever He heard from the Father, when He does not tell many certain things for this very reason, that He knows they cannot bear them now? But surely He says that He has done what He is going to do, He Who has made the things that are to be (Isa. 45:11). For just as He says through the prophet, They have dug My hands and My feet (Ps. 21:18), and does not say, they will dig, speaking as if of things past and yet foretelling things to come, so in this place too He says that He has made known to the disciples all those things which He knew He would make known in that fullness of knowledge of which the Apostle says, But when that which is perfect has come, that which is in part will be done away. For there he says: Now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I also am known; and now through a mirror in an enigma, but then face to face (1 Cor. 13:10, 12). For the Apostle himself also says that we have been saved through the washing of regeneration (Titus 3:5); yet in another place he says, By hope we have been saved. But hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man sees, why does he hope for? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it through patience (Rom. 8:24–25). Hence also his fellow apostle Peter says: In Whom, though you do not see Him now, you believe; Whom when you see, you will exult with joy unspeakable and honoured, receiving the reward of faith, the salvation of your souls (1 Pet. 1:8–9). If, then, now is the time of faith, and the salvation of souls is the reward of faith, who would doubt that the day must be spent in faith, which works through love (Gal. 5:6), and that at the end of the day the reward is to be received, not only the redemption of our body, of which the apostle Paul says

(Rom. 8:23); but also the salvation of our souls, of which the Apostle Peter speaks? For the happiness of both these things, in this time and in this mortality, is held in hope rather than possessed in reality. But there is this difference: our outer man, that is, the body, is still being corrupted, whereas the inner, that is, the soul, is already being renewed from day to day (2 Cor. 4:16). And so, just as we await the immortality of the flesh and the salvation of souls as things to come, although, having already received the pledge, we are said to have been saved, so we ought to hope for the knowledge of all things whatsoever the Only-begotten heard from the Father as something to come, although Christ said that He had already done this.

2. "You have not chosen Me," He says, "but I have chosen you." This is that ineffable grace. For what were we when we had not yet chosen Christ, and therefore did not love Him? For he who has not chosen Him, how does he love Him? Was there already in us what is sung in the Psalm: "I have chosen to be cast down in the house of the Lord rather than to dwell in the tents of sinners" (Ps. 83:11)? Certainly not. What then were we, if not wicked and lost? For we had not already believed in Him, so that He should choose us; for if He chose us when we were already believing, then the one chosen did the choosing. Why then would He say, "You have not chosen Me," unless because His mercy went before us (Ps. 58:11)? Here surely the vain reasoning of those people has no place, who defend the foreknowledge of God against the grace of God, and therefore say that we were chosen before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4) because God foreknew that we would be good, not that He Himself would make us good. He who says, "You have not chosen Me," does not say this. For if He had chosen us for this reason, that He had foreknown that we would be good, He would at the same time also have foreknown that we were not going to choose Him first. For in no other way could we be good, unless perhaps he is to be called good who has not chosen the good. What then did He choose in those who were not good? For they were not chosen because they were good, they who would not be good unless they had been chosen. Otherwise grace is no longer grace, if we contend that merits came first. For this is the election of grace, of which the Apostle says: "So then in this present time also a remnant has been saved through the election of grace." Whence he adds: "But if by grace, then no longer from works; otherwise grace is no longer grace" (Rom. 11:5–6). Hear, ungrateful one, hear: "You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you." There is no room for you to say, "I was chosen for this reason, that I was already believing." For if you were believing in Him, you had already chosen Him. But hear: "You have not chosen Me." There is no room for you to say, "Before I believed, I was already doing good works; for this reason I was chosen." For what good work is there before faith, when the Apostle says, "Everything that is not from faith is sin" (Rom. 14:23)? What then shall we say on hearing, "You have not chosen Me," unless that we were evil and were chosen, so that we might be good through the grace of Him Who chose us? For it is not grace if merits had come first; but it is grace; this grace, therefore, did not find merits but brought them about.