The Dying and the Life of Jesus

“…to have died, and their departure was counted an affliction, and their going from us a ruin; but they are at peace, and their hope is full of immortality” (Wisdom of Solomon 3:2–4). What, then, is the meaning of their toils? Paul explains it again, saying, “Always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made manifest in our body” (2 Corinthians 4:10).

We say that the dying meant here is to be understood in two ways: one is inward and spiritual, the other is taken as something felt in the body. For the Only-begotten Word of God, being God and having come forth from God by nature, made His own the flesh that is from the earth, and clothed Himself with this mortal human body, having also a rational soul. And what was the reason for this? That He might put sin to death in the flesh, and blunt the sting of the impulses inborn in it that carry us away to improper pleasures.

It was not for His own sake that the Word, being God, achieved this, that He should be seen above the passions that are in us; for He knows no sin (2 Corinthians 5:21). Rather, He was, as it were, refashioning the whole of human nature in Himself into a holy and blameless life, when He became man and took the form that is ours. For He became “first in all things” (Colossians 1:18), so that we too, following in His steps (1 Peter 2:21), might have His dying in ourselves, that is, the power of sin made idle in the flesh, and so might be able to take up the blamelessness that leads to life.

You may also take the dying and the life of Jesus spoken of here in another way. For He became obedient to God the Father, as it is written, even to death itself (Philippians 2:8), and He laid down His life for the sheep (John 10:11). Yet “He died to sin once for all” (Romans 6:10), that is, for the sin of the world, for He has been set forth as a propitiation through faith (Romans 3:25); “but the life He lives, He lives to God” (Romans 6:10).

This dying, then, which passes through sufferings and reaches even to death itself, the guides into the mysteries carry about in their own bodies, “so that the life of Jesus,” as he himself says, “may be made manifest in our bodies” (2 Corinthians 4:10). For they too will live to God the holy, blameless, and blessed life.

That he is speaking here specifically of this dying, and of this life, is confirmed for the present by the sense of the preceding verses, which recount the trials and toils that anyone who wishes to complete the glorious course of the apostleship must endure. And he will persuade us no less to think so, all but explaining to his readers what he had said; for he at once adds what follows: “For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake,” and so on (2 Corinthians 4:11).

By these words he shows that they gladly choose to endure the death of the flesh for the sake of their devotion to Christ. For their aim is not to look at present things, but rather to look ahead to what is to come and to the rewards of their toils. They count as nothing the sweat of their struggles and rejoice instead in the good things from above, for they reckon how wide is God’s generosity. This is why they are given over to death for Jesus’ sake, “so that the life of Jesus may also be made manifest in the mortal flesh” (2 Corinthians 4:11).

And what is the life of Jesus? Incorruption and holiness, and a great glory beyond this world. For so it will be seen by us in its own time, when He comes down to us from above, from heaven, as Judge. And He will “transform the body of our lowliness, to be conformed to the body of His glory, by the working by which He is able even to subject all things to Himself” (Philippians 3:21).

“So death is at work in us, but life in you” (2 Corinthians 4:12). For the guides into the mysteries for the whole world under the sun have imitated their own Master: they too have laid down their lives, so that we who once went astray might gain the life that comes from faith in Christ. That is why…