After the conversation, John’s disciples go on eating again, and we eat too. Only some of the Pharisees present here fasted completely and would not eat until after sunset; for they were not given unleavened bread, which they did not have here among the Greeks, and so they fasted while their several colleagues and the scribes thoroughly enjoyed their food.
After a while, when the wine had made John’s disciples somewhat more talkative and courageous, one from their midst rose and wanted to learn from Me Myself the reason why they, as John’s disciples, had to fast so much and so strictly, and why I and My disciples did not. And so he asked Me: ‘Lord and Master! Why do we, like the Pharisees, fast so much, while your disciples do not fast?’
And I said to him: ‘Friend, you were with John when news of Me was brought to him, that I was baptizing people and many followed Me! Say aloud before everyone here: what did John answer?!’ John’s disciple says: ‘Then John spoke and answered: “A person can take nothing unless it is given to him from heaven. You are my witnesses that I said I was not Christ, but only sent before Him. Whoever has the bride is the bridegroom; but the bridegroom’s friend stands and listens to him and rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice! This joy of mine is now fulfilled! He must grow, but I must diminish! The One who comes down from above is above all; but whoever is of this earth is only of this earth; only the One who comes from heaven is above all!”
‘And there John paused and recounted everything he had seen and how he had borne witness to Him. But at the end, sighing deeply, he lamented that no one was willing to accept his testimony, which was surely so true! But whoever nevertheless accepted it sealed up within himself the great truthfulness of God out of fear of the world.
‘Even though he knew that the One whom, without any doubt, God alone had sent also spoke only the pure word of God, he nevertheless did not dare confess this before the world, because he feared God’s enemy, the evil world, more than God, for the sake of his wretched body, which is also world and pays homage to the world! But what use was it to know within oneself the right measure of God if one clung to the measure of the world? Yet God gave no one His Spirit according to the measure of the world, and so those were rejected who had indeed recognized the Spirit of God but nevertheless clung to the measure of the world, and have eternal life within them!
‘Only,’ John goes on to say, ‘“whoever believes in the Son has eternal life within him; for the Son Himself is the life of the Father! But whoever does not believe in the Son does not have eternal life either, and the old wrath of God remains over him!”
‘Look, that is what John said then; but up to this hour none of us has been able to grasp the meaning of such speech in full. We did grasp this much, that he had meant you; but how might all this fit together? How should we have grasped and understood it in all fullness?!’
I say: ‘Well, if you have heard such things from John about Me, surely you must know that I am the bridegroom whom John meant?! But if I am that same bridegroom, surely these here must be My wedding guests?!’
John’s disciple says: ‘Where, then, is the beautiful heavenly bride? How are you a bridegroom without a bride?!’
I say: ‘These wedding guests of Mine are at the same time My bride; for those who hear My word, keep it in their hearts and act according to it are truly My bride, just as they are also (Matt. 9:15) My wedding guests! But how can and should the wedding guests bear sorrow among themselves as long as the bridegroom is with them?! But when the time comes that the bridegroom is taken from them, then they too will fast!’
John’s disciples marvel greatly at this and are somewhat annoyed by it; for because I had spoken these words to them with a slightly smiling expression, they thought I had goaded them!? And then one of John’s disciples, wanting to be somewhat pointed too, said: ‘Remarkable! God’s Spirit spoke from John, and that same Spirit should speak from you all the more, because John’s testimony applied to you?! But it is strange that the same divine Spirit, through Moses, all the prophets and finally John, always proclaimed in the same way a strict life of repentance to the miserable people of this earth, and demanded its strictest keeping and observance; yet you seem, at least in actual fact, to be and teach the very opposite of all this?! Whoever, according to Moses, merely entered a sinner’s house became unclean and had to purify himself; whoever touched a maid on the Sabbath, or on another day a woman having her time, had to undergo purification, and there were many similar, still stricter things! But you and your disciples seem no longer to pay any attention to the Sabbath or to keeping one’s person clean! How, then, is your teaching divine, as it was from the mouths of the prophets?!’