Official believes as toward God; faith in Son is faith in the Sender

“So the father knew that it was in that hour in which Jesus said to him, Your son lives, and he himself believed and his whole house.” Christ raised the royal official’s son from the dead, having said to him, “Go, your son lives,” and then he has believed with his whole household. Has the official then, through authority so great and God-befitting, believed as into a human? Or has he known him to be God by nature, making alive with authority whom he chooses, and by word alone? But it is clear that he has believed as toward God.

“Amen, amen, I say to you that the one who hears my word and believes the one who sent me has eternal life.” God and Father has sent us his own Son from the heavens, “that everyone who believes into him may not perish but may have eternal life.” How then does he say in these words that the one who believes the one who sent him has eternal life? Into whom, then, is the faith? As into two gods, the Father and the Son? May it not be—but as into one true God. Therefore if someone believes into Christ, he has believed into God; and if he believes into God the Father, he will also have believed into the one Lord Jesus Christ.

“Jesus answered and said to them: This is the work of God, that you believe into him whom that one sent.” If we accomplish what seems good to God by believing into Christ—for the Father truly sent him into the world when he became a human as we are—how would he not be true God? For believing into him would not be a work of God otherwise.