A Commentary on John 14:28
By Giuseppe Monno
John 14:28
“You heard me say, ‘I am going away, and I will come back to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I.”
To express the distinction in condition between God the Father and Jesus Christ, the Evangelist uses the Greek term meízōn, meaning “greater,” “larger,” or “superior” in regard to rank or status. It does not, therefore, imply an ontological superiority—that is, a superiority of being—but rather a functional or economic one, relating to the mission and the state assumed by the incarnate Word.
Had the Evangelist intended to indicate a qualitative or ontological superiority of the Father over the Son, he would have used the term kreíttōn, which in Greek denotes what is “better,” “more noble,” or “more excellent” by nature. Instead, John deliberately chooses meízōn, thereby pointing to a superiority that pertains to the human condition assumed by the Word during the Incarnation.
When the fullness of time came, the eternal Word united to himself, in a hypostatic union, a true human body animated by a rational soul. Thus, while remaining fully God (John 20:28; Colossians 2:9; Titus 2:13; 2 Peter 1:1), the Lord also became fully man (John 1:14; Philippians 2:7).
When, after the resurrection, Jesus says that he is “going to the Father,” he speaks with reference to his human nature. As the eternal Word, he is always with the Father, sharing indivisibly in the very being of the Father; but as man, he goes to the Father, bringing with him his glorified human nature.
Therefore, the expression “the Father is greater than I” refers to Christ’s human condition. In his divinity, Jesus is consubstantialis Patri—of the same substance as the Father—and for this reason he can say, “All that the Father has is mine” (John 16:15), and “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). As a divine Person, Jesus is equal to the Father, possessing the same indivisible divinity.
Jesus is not the Father, yet he is one God with him and with the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son (Acts 16:6–7; Romans 8:9; Galatians 4:6; Philippians 1:19; 1 Peter 1:10–11) as from a single principle. The Father, in eternally generating his only-begotten Son, communicates to him the fullness of his own being, and through the Son communicates it to the Holy Spirit, in one single and indivisible Trinitarian communion. For this reason, the three are numerically one God (Matthew 28:19).