Here the high priest and many others are greatly taken aback, and after a while he says, ‘Yes, yes, now I understand it well! But why did the Lord not immediately speak as intelligibly as you have now spoken? Then I surely would not have sinned against Him!’
Nathanael says, ‘If a seven-year-old boy asked me this, I would not be surprised, since a seven-year-old boy asks in this way. But I am very surprised at you, since you are one of the foremost wise men of this place!
‘Would you not also like to put this wise prize question to the Lord: why did He place in seeds, which look so insignificant, the capacity to form and develop the tree that grows from them, extending into infinity? Should He not rather have let all the fruits rain down ripe from the air into people’s laps at once? Why the tedious development of a tree from a seed, and afterwards yet another long wait for the ripe fruit? Look, look, how dull you still are!
‘The Lord’s word and teaching are like all His works. He gives us His teaching in seed capsules; we must first sow these into the soil of our spirit, which soil is called love! Then the seed will sprout into a tree of the true knowledge of God and of ourselves, and at the proper time we shall be able to gather fully ripe fruits from this tree for eternal life.
‘But love comes first; without it no fruit of the spirit thrives! Sow wheat into the air and see whether it will grow and bring you fruit. But if you place the grain of wheat in good soil, it will grow and bring you manifold fruit. True love, however, is the proper soil for the spiritual grain of wheat given to us from the Lord’s mouth.
‘That is why the Lord has now abolished the harsh Mosaic law of punishment before all of you, so that you may very soon grow richer in good soil in your hearts. For the one who punishes according to the law has little love, or often even none at all, and so the divine seed of the word will thrive very poorly in him! But the one who is punished is in any case under judgment, in which there is no love, since judgment is the death of love.
‘Therefore you should rather not immediately notice the faults of your neighbors, but be forbearing and patient with them. And if they ask something of you in their weakness, you should withhold nothing from them, so that love may increase in yourselves and likewise in your weak brothers. Once this love is abundant in you as in your brothers, the divine seed will thrive well in you, and the weak person, then in his strength, will look favorably upon you and repay many times over what you showed him in his weakness.
‘But if you are stingy and hard toward your weak brothers, you yourselves will never attain a fruit of God within you, and the judgment of the weak will in the end draw you too into ruin.
‘When the Lord said, “Whoever asks for your coat, give him the cloak as well,” He meant only to indicate that if you are rich and possess much, you should give abundantly and much to the poor when they come to you. For by this you too will soon gain much soil in your hearts and thus be blessed in possessing such true soil, and the poor will truly bless you. For from your hearts they will hear the most active preaching of God’s true Gospel and through it become strong themselves as your eternal support! But if you give stingily and calculate when and how much you give, you benefit neither yourselves nor your poor brothers, and therefore they will never become a support to you.’