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This Part: 99 Pages
Page 10
13 And these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves.
Keep in mind once more what we were just now saying, and you will easily understand the drift of the passage. For He on all occasions preserved the juxtaposition of the two aspects of His character, at the same time displaying the Divine majesty for which He was pre-eminent, and not discarding the proper limitations of the Human Nature which He assumed at His Incarnation. For there would be something absurd in the supposition that He wished to disown what He had willingly taken upon Himself. For being Himself in lack of nothing, but the all-perfect Son of a perfect Father, He emptied Himself of His glory, not to do Himself any service, but rather to convey to us the blessing which would result from His humiliation. Showing Himself, then, to them as at the same time both God and Man, He, as it were, induces His disciples to reflect that absent, as well as present, He would work the things which made for their salvation in God; and that, as He had them in His keeping while He was yet with them on the earth in the form of Man, so also would He keep them while absent from them as God, through the excellency of His Substance. For that which is Divine is not bounded by space, and is not far from anything that exists, but fills and pervades the universe, and though present in all things is contained of none. When, addressing His own Father, He says: Holy Father, keep them, He at once refers, by right of its existence, to the universal working of the power of the Father; and at the same time shows that He standeth not apart from His Nature, but, being in it and proceeding from it, is indivisibly united with it, though He be conceived of as independently existing. Keep them, He says, in Thy Name which Thou hast given Me; and again: While I was with them, I kept them in Thy Name which Thou hast given Me. We are bound, therefore, to think that, if He had kept them hitherto in the Name given Him by the Father, that is, in the glory of Godhead, for He gave unto Him the Name which is above every name; and if He wishes the Father Himself also to keep them in the Name given unto Him, He will not be excluded from acting in the work; for the Father will keep those who are knit to Him by faith through the agency of the Only-begotten, Who is His power and might. For He will not exercise His power in any way save through Him. Then, if even in the flesh He kept them, by the power and glory of His Godhead, how can we think that He will fail to think His disciples worthy of the mercy which they need; and how can they ever lose His sure support while the Divine power of the Only-begotten abideth evermore, and the power which is His by Nature is for ever firmly established? For that which is Divine admits of no variance at all, or of any change into any evil agency, but shines forth for ever in those attributes which belong to it eternally.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/cyril-alexandria/john-commentary-6.asp?pg=10
