Hear also the apostle when he says, Love is the fulfilling of the law. Whence the love? By the grace of God, by the Holy Spirit. For we could not have it from ourselves, as if making it for ourselves. It is the gift of God, and a great gift it is: for, says he, the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, which is given to us. Wherefore love completes the law, and most truly it is said, Love is the perfecting of the law. Let us inquire as to this love, in what manner the Lord does commend it to our consideration. Remember what I laid down: I want to explain the number thirty-eight of the years of that impotent man, why that number thirty-eight is one of weakness rather than of health. Now, as I was saying, love fulfills the law. The number forty belongs to the perfecting of the law in all works; but in love two precepts are committed to our keeping. Keep before your eyes, I beseech you, and fix in your memory, what I say; be ye not despisers of the word, that your soul may not become a trodden path, where the seed cast cannot sprout, and the fowls of the air will come and gather it up. Apprehend it, and lay it up in your hearts. The precepts of love, given to us by the Lord, are two: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind; and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. With good reason did the widow cast two mites, all her substance, into the offerings of God: with good reason did the host take two pieces of money, for the poor man that was wounded by the robbers, for his making whole: with good reason did Jesus spent two days with the Samaritans, to establish them in love. Thus, while a certain good thing is generally signified by this number two, most especially is love in its twofold character set forth to us thereby. If, therefore, the number forty possesses the perfecting of the law, and the law is fulfilled only in the twin precepts of love, why do you wonder that he was weak and sick, who was short of forty by two?

7. Therefore let us now see the sacred mystery whereby this impotent man is healed by the Lord. The Lord Himself came, the Teacher of love, full of love, shortening, as it was predicted of Him, the word upon the earth, and showed that the law and the prophets hang on two precepts of love. Upon these hung Moses with his number forty, upon these Elias with his; and the Lord brought in this number in His testimony. This impotent man is healed by the Lord in person; but before healing him, what does He say to him? Will you be made whole? The man answered that he had not a man to put him into the pool. Truly he had need of a man to his healing, but that man one who is also God. For there is one God, and one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. He came, then, the Man who was needed: why should the healing be delayed? Arise, says He; take up your bed, and walk. He said three things: Arise, Take up your bed, and Walk. But that Arise was not a command to do a work, but the operation of healing. And the man, on being made whole, received two commands: Take up your bed, and Walk. I ask you, why was it not enough to say, Walk? Or, at any rate, why was it not enough to say, Arise? For when the man had arisen whole, he would not have remained in the place. Would it not be for the purpose of going away that he would have arisen? My impression is, that He who found the man lacking two things, gave him these two precepts: for, by ordering him to do two things, it is as if He filled up that which was lacking.

8. How, then, do we find the two precepts of love indicated in these two commands of the Lord? Take up your bed, says He, and walk. What the two precepts are, my brethren, recollect with me. For they ought to be thoroughly familiar to you, and not merely to come into your mind when they are recited by us, but they ought never to be blotted out from your hearts. Let it ever be your supreme thought, that you must love God and your neighbor: God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself. These must always be pondered, meditated, retained, practised, and fulfilled. The love of God comes first in the order of enjoying; but in the order of doing, the love of our neighbor comes first. For He who commanded you this love in two precepts did not charge you to love your neighbor first, and then God, but first God, afterwards your neighbor. Thou however, as you do not yet see God dost earn to see Him by loving your neighbor; by loving your neighbor you purge your eye for seeing God, as John evidently says, If you love not your brother whom you see, how can you love God, whom you do not see? See, you are told, Love God. If you say to me, Show me Him, that I may love Him; what shall I answer, but what the same John says: No man has seen God at any time? And, that you may not suppose yourself to be wholly estranged from seeing God, he says, God is love; and he that dwells in love dwells in God. Therefore love your neighbor; look at the source of your love of your neighbor; there you will see, as you may, God. Begin, then, to love your neighbor. Break your bread to the hungry, and bring into your house him that is needy without shelter; if you see the naked, clothe him; and despise not those of the household of your seed. And in doing this, what will you get in consequence? Then shall your light break forth as the morning light. Your light is your God, a morning light to you, because He shall come to you after the night of this world: for He neither rises nor sets, because He is ever abiding. He will be a morning light to you on your return, He who had set for you on your falling away from Him. Therefore, in this Take up your bed, He seems to me to have said, Love your neighbor.

9. But why the love of our neighbor is set forth by the taking up of the bed, is still shut up, and, as I suppose, needs to be expounded: unless, perhaps, it offend us that our neighbor should be indicated by means of a bed, a stolid, senseless thing. Let not my neighbor be angry if he be set forth to us by a thing without soul and without feeling. The Lord Himself, even our Saviour Jesus Christ, is called the corner-stone, to build up two in Himself. He is called also a rock, from which water flowed forth: And that rock was Christ. What wonder, then, if Christ is called rock, that neighbor is called wood? Yet not any kind of wood whatever; as neither that was any kind of rock soever, but one from which water flowed to the thirsty; nor any kind soever of stone, but a corner-stone, which in itself coupled two walls coming from different directions. So neither may you take your neighbor to be wood of any kind soever, but a bed. Then what is there in a bed, pray? What, but that the impotent man was borne on it; but, when made whole, he carries the bed? What does the apostle say? Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so shall you fulfill the law of Christ. Now the law of Christ is love, and love is not fulfilled except we bear one another’s burdens. Forbearing, says he, one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. When you were weak your neighbor bore you: you are made whole, bear your neighbor. So will you fill up, O man, that which was lacking to you. Take up your bed, then. But when you have taken it up, stay not in the place; walk. By loving your neighbor, by caring for your neighbor, do you perform your going. Where are you going, but to the Lord God, whom we ought to love with the whole heart, and with the whole soul, and with the whole mind? For we are not yet come to the Lord, but we have our neighbor with us. Bear him, then, when you walk, that you may come to Him with whom you desire to abide. Therefore, take up your bed, and walk.

10. The man did this, and the Jews were offended. For they saw a man carrying his bed on the Sabbath day, and they did not blame the Lord for healing him on the Sabbath, that He should be able to answer them, that if any of them had a beast fallen into a well, he would surely draw it out on the Sabbath day, and save his beast; and so, now they did not object to Him that a man was made whole on the Sabbath day, but that the man was carrying his bed. But if the healing was not to be deferred, should a work also have been commanded? It is not lawful for you, say they, to do what you are doing, to take up your bed. And he, in defense, put the author of his healing before his censors, saying, He that made me whole, the same said to me, Take up your bed, and walk. Should I not take injunction from him from whom I received healing? And they said, Who is the man that said to you, Take up your bed, and walk?

11. But he that was made whole knew not who it was that had said this to him. For Jesus, when He had done this, and given him this order, turned away from him in the crowd. See how this also is fulfilled. We bear our neighbor, and walk towards God; but Him, to whom we are walking, we do not yet see: for that reason also, that man did not yet know Jesus. The mystery herein intimated to us is, that we believe in Him whom we do not yet see; and that He may not be seen, He turns aside in the crowd. It is difficult in a crowd to see Christ: a certain solitude is necessary for our mind; it is by a certain solitude of contemplation that God is seen. A crowd has noise; this seeing requires secrecy. Take up your bed — being yourself borne, bear your neighbor; and walk, that you may come to the goal. Do not seek Christ in a crowd: He is not as one of a crowd; He excels all crowd. That great fish first ascended from the sea, and He sits in heaven making intercession for us: as the great high priest He entered alone into that within the veil; the crowd stands without. Do thou walk, bearing your neighbor: if you have learned to bear, you, who were wont to be borne. In a word, even now as yet you know not Jesus, not yet see Jesus: what follows thereafter? Since that man desisted not from taking up his bed and walking, Jesus sees him afterwards in the temple. He did not see Jesus in the crowd, he saw Him in the temple. The Lord Jesus, indeed, saw him both in the crowd and in the temple; but the impotent man does not know Jesus in the crowd, but he knows Him in the temple. The man came then to the Lord: saw Him in the temple, saw Him in a consecrated, saw Him in a holy place. And what does the Lord say to him? Behold, you are made whole; sin no more, lest some worse thing befall you.

12. The man, then, after he saw Jesus, and knew Him to be the author of his healing, was not slothful in preaching Him whom he had seen: He departed, and told the Jews that it was Jesus that had made him whole. He brought them word, and they were mad against him; he preached his own salvation, they sought not their own salvation.

13. The Jews persecuted the Lord Jesus because He did these things on the Sabbath day. Let us hear what answer the Lord now made to the Jews. I have told you how He is wont to answer concerning the healing of men on the Sabbath day, that they used not on the Sabbath day to slight their cattle, either in delivering or in feeding them. What does He answer concerning the carrying of the bed? A manifest corporal work was done before the eyes of the Jews; not a healing of the body, but a bodily work, which appeared not so necessary as the healing. Let the Lord, then, openly declare that the sacrament of the Sabbath, even the sign of keeping one day, was given to the Jews for a time, but that the fulfillment of the sacrament had come in Himself. My Father, says He, works hitherto, and I work. He sent a great commotion among them: the water is troubled by the coming of the Lord, but yet He that troubles is not seen. Yet one great sick one is to be healed by the troubled water, the whole world by the death of the Lord.

14. Let us see, then, the answer made by the Truth: My Father works hitherto, and I work. Is it false, then, which the Scripture has said, that God rested from all His works on the seventh day? And does the Lord Jesus speak contrary to this Scripture ministered by Moses, while He Himself says to the Jews, If you believed Moses, you would believe me; for He wrote of me? See, then, whether Moses did not mean it to be significant of something that God rested on the seventh day. For God had not become wearied in doing the work of His own creation, and needed rest as a man. How can He have been wearied, who made by a word? Yet is both that true, that God rested from His works on the seventh day; and this also is true that Jesus says, My Father works hitherto. But who can unfold it in words, man to men, weak to weak, unlearned to them that seek to learn; and if he chance to understand somewhat, unable to bring it forth and unfold it to men, who with difficulty, it may be, receive it, even if what is received can possibly be unfolded? Who, I say, my brethren, can unfold in words how God both works while at rest, and rests while working? I pray you to put this matter off while you are advancing on the way; for this seeing requires the temple of God, requires the holy place. Bear your neighbor, and walk. You shall see Him in that place where you shall not require the words of men.

15. Perhaps we can more appropriately say this, that in the saying, God rested on the seventh day, he signified by a great mystery the Lord and our Saviour Jesus Christ Himself, who spoke and said, My Father works hitherto, and I work. For the Lord Jesus is, of course, God. For He is the Word of God, and you have heard that in the begin ning was the Word; and not any word whatsoever, but the Word was God, and all things were made by Him. He was perhaps signified as about to rest on the seventh day from all His works. For, read the Gospel, and see what great works Jesus wrought. He wrought our salvation on the cross, that all things foretold by the prophets might be fulfilled in Him. He was crowned with thorns; He hung on the tree; said, I thirst, received vinegar on a sponge, that it might be fulfilled which was said, And in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. And when all His works were completed, on the sixth day of the week, He bowed His head and gave up the ghost, and on the Sabbath day He rested in the tomb from all His works. Therefore it is as if He said to the Jews, Why do you expect that I should not work on the Sabbath? The Sabbath day was ordained for you for a sign of me. You observe the works of God: I was there when they were made, by me were they all made; I know them. ‘My Father works hitherto.’ The Father made the light, but He spoke that there should be light; if He spoke, it was by His Word He made it: His Word I was, I am; by me was the world made in those works, by me the world is ruled in these works. My Father worked when He made the world, and hitherto now works while He rules the world: therefore by me He made when He made, and by me He rules while He rules. This He said, but to whom? To men deaf, blind, lame, impotent, not acknowledging the physician, and as if in a frenzy they had lost their wits, wishing to slay Him.

16. Further, what said the evangelist as he went on? Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill Him, because He not only broke the Sabbath, but said also that God was His Father; not in any ordinary manner, but how? Making Himself equal with God. For we all say to God, Our Father which art in heaven; we read also that the Jews said, Seeing You are our Father. Therefore it was not for this they were angry, because He said that God was His Father, but because He said it in quite another way than men do. Behold, the Jews understand what the Arians do not understand. The Arians, in fact, say that the Son is not equal with the Father, and hence it is that the heresy was driven from the Church. Lo, the very blind, the very slayers of Christ, still understood the words of Christ. They did not understand Him to be Christ, nor did they understand Him to be the Son of God: but they did nevertheless understand that in these words such a Son of God was intimated to them as should be equal with God. Who He was they knew not; still they did acknowledge such a One to be declared, in that He said God was His Father, making Himself equal with God. Was He not therefore equal with God? He did not make Himself equal, but the Father begot Him equal. Were He to make Himself equal, He would fall by robbery. For he who wished to make himself equal with God, while he was not so, fell, and of an angel became a devil, and administered to man that cup of pride by which himself was cast down. For this fallen said to man, envying his standing, Taste, and you shall be as gods; that is, seize to yourselves by usurpation that which you are not made, for I also have been cast down by robbery. He did not put forth this, but this is what he persuaded to. Christ, however, was begotten equal to the Father, not made; begotten of the substance of the Father. Whence the apostle thus declares Him: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God. What means thought it not robbery? He usurped not equality with God, but was in that equality in which He was begotten. And how were we to come to the equal God? He emptied Himself, taking upon Him the form of a servant. But He emptied Himself not by losing what He was, but by taking to Him what He was not. The Jews, despising this form of a servant, could not understand the Lord Christ equal to the Father, although they had not the least doubt that He affirmed this of Himself, and therefore were they enraged: and yet He still bore with them, and sought the healing of them, while they raged against Him.