Fragments on Romans

The Son by Nature and God Who Is True§1

1The surviving fragments of Cyril, Archbishop of Alexandria, on the Epistle to the Romans.

“Concerning his Son, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh” (Romans 1:3). He says that the one born of the seed of David according to the flesh was declared Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead (Romans 1:4). For we too have been declared sons, but not in power; it is rather by way of grace, as those counted worthy of the calling, who gain this by the will of God the Father alone. But with Emmanuel it would not be so; far from it. Even though he was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, and as one of us is reckoned Son of God because of his humanity, he is nonetheless Son in power and in truth, by nature; and through him we too are made sons, since it is indeed true to say that, once we have been enriched with his Spirit through holy baptism, then truly we say without fear of rebuke, “Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15). So, as images stand to their archetype, so we, who are sons by adoption, stand to him whom the Father has attested to be Son by nature, in power, and in truth.

“His eternal power and divinity” (Romans 1:20). How is his eternal power known through creation? Because the things brought into being and called into existence in time have a perishable nature, their Maker must surely be imperishable and eternal. So they will find no defense on the day of judgment.

“Will their unbelief nullify the faithfulness of God?” (Romans 3:3). More honored than the rest are those who were foreknown, who received the law as their tutor (Galatians 3:24), who held promises concerning Christ, who indeed received them, and who were called before the others; for the Savior said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 15:24). They also became the firstfruits of those saved through faith. For if some, out of madness, slipped away from believing, God would not on that account, he says, fail to be true. So then, the Father sent the Son from heaven, yet not all believed in him. Because some have become insolent and unbelieving, will God not be true on that account? By no means!

“Let God be true, and every man a liar” (Romans 3:4). That is, let him be thought and spoken of by us as true, and let falsehood be charged, as it were, to every human being. For the divine nature is wholly unchangeable and unalterable, while human nature is badly shaken, and, as far as possibility goes, every man is a liar. For falsehood, as a sin, sometimes overpowers the human mind, and our nature is in some way open to this sickness as well. But of God, who rules over all, it is not right to think or say any such thing. So the charge will be true in this sense: that human nature, that is, the mind, can suffer falsehood. This, I think, is what is also said by…

What the Law Could Not Do§2

2…the blessed David: “I said in my alarm, ‘Every man is a liar’” (Psalm 116:11). The same reasoning would apply to God and to us in all other matters too; for example, in the matter of righteousness. For one could say, and not unreasonably, “Let God be righteous, and every man unrighteous.”

“But if our unrighteousness shows the righteousness of God” (Romans 3:5). The occasion for this slander arose in this way. After the return from Babylon, the sons of Israel, ordered by Cyrus to rebuild the temple, to pay their vows and to offer sacrifices, grew slack, pleading poverty and the hardship left by the captivity. For this they were corrected by measured chastisements: failed harvests and lack of rain (Haggai 1:9–11). Chafing at such blows, they called the foreigners and those who did not serve God happy, as living in good cheer, and said that those people were better off than they were. And so the prophet Malachi said to them: “You have made your words heavy against me, says the Lord. And you said, ‘How have we spoken against you?’ You said,” he says, “‘It is vain to serve God. What more have we gained because we kept his charges, and because we walked as suppliants before the Lord Almighty? And now we call strangers happy, and those who do lawless deeds are built up; they opposed God and were saved.’ This is how those who feared the Lord spoke against him, each to his neighbor; and the Lord gave heed and heard” (Malachi 3:13–16).

For this reason, he says, some thought that the Jews were saying, “Let us do evil so that good may come” (Romans 3:8). But when he says that their condemnation is just, he means those who pinned those words on the Jews, or rather those who dared to say, “Let us do evil so that good may come.”

“But now the righteousness of God has been made manifest apart from the law” (Romans 3:21). I know that it is written of certain people that “they were both righteous, walking blameless in the commandments and ordinances of Christ” (Luke 1:6); and the blessed Paul too said that he himself had become “blameless as to the righteousness that is in the law” (Philippians 3:6). But one who is blameless in these things has not yet done the deeds that will make him illustrious and renowned. Indeed, the blessed Paul himself said again that he counted everything in the law as loss and reckoned it as so much refuse, and that he would seek instead “the surpassing excellence of the knowledge of Christ” (Philippians 3:7–8).

Again, the law condemns those who transgress; that is why he says elsewhere, “For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, much more does the ministry of righteousness abound in glory” (2 Corinthians 3:9). And since the law contains a great many commandments, even the careful keeper of the law must surely stumble in some of them and become a transgressor of the law. The inspired disciples plainly admitted that it is truly burdensome, for they said: “Now therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing on the neck of the disciples a yoke that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?” (Acts 15:10).

Justified Freely in Christ§3

3When, then, the Greeks were under sin for not knowing the Creator, and the Jews as guilty of transgressing the law, those on the earth necessarily had need of Christ, who justifies. For we have been justified “not by works of righteousness that we have done, but according to his great mercy” (Titus 3:5). For it was he who long ago said through the voice of the prophets, “I am he who blots out your transgressions, and I will not remember them” (Isaiah 43:25). Justifying grace passes to all alike, I mean to Jews and Greeks, because “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). The glory of God may fittingly be understood as this: neither to know how to do wrong nor to be of a nature that can do wrong. And the whole created order surely falls short of the glories of the Godhead, for even some of the angels slipped. Yet God the Father was pleased “to sum up all things in Christ” (Ephesians 1:10), who justifies freely by his grace (Romans 3:24). For he has been set forth as a propitiation through faith in his blood (Romans 3:25). Since he made his own blood the price given in exchange for the life of all, he has saved the world under heaven and made the Father and God in heaven merciful and kindly toward us.

“Where then is boasting? It is excluded” (Romans 3:27). For who at all will boast, or in what, when all have become worthless and turned aside from the straight way, and there is no one at all who does good (Psalm 14:3; Romans 3:12)? So, he says, boasting is excluded; that is, it has been thrown out and done away with, and has no place at all among us. And how was it excluded? We have been enriched with the forgiveness of sins committed before (Romans 3:25), being justified freely, by mercy and grace, in Christ.

“Do we then nullify the law through faith?” (Romans 3:31). The God of all said to the inspired Moses: “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers, and I will put my word in his mouth, and he will speak to them whatever I command him. And the man who does not listen to his words, whatever the prophet speaks in my name, I will take vengeance on him” (Deuteronomy 18:18–19). How then do we not uphold the law through faith, when we receive the word that comes from him? Emmanuel has been called a prophet because of his humanity, standing, as it were, in the place of Moses as mediator between God and men (1 Timothy 2:5). And again, the law was in shadows, yet it is seen to be in labor with the form of the truth; and the truth does not abolish the types but makes them clearer.

“For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God” (Romans 4:2). I think, someone has said, that those who look closely into the account of our forefather Abraham ought to say this: it has been said somewhere by one of the holy disciples that faith without works is dead (James 2:26). And to this he adds: “Do you want to know, you empty man, that faith without works is dead (James 2:20)? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up Isaac his son on the…

Abraham's Faith and the Father's Love§4

4…altar?” (James 2:21). Do the Spirit-bearing writers, then, say things contrary to one another? What, then, do we say to this? To him, when he was already far on in years, the God of all promised a son, quite beyond all expectation, and said that the offspring to come from him would rival the countless multitude of the stars (Genesis 15:5). And because he honored the one who promised, bearing witness to God by this that he can accomplish all things, he was justified before him (Genesis 15:6), and received, as a reward worthy of so God-loving a mind, the forgetting of his former offences. In due course God made the oracle concerning Isaac a trial for the righteous man (Genesis 22:1–2); but in this too he was faithful and loved God, as one who put nothing ahead of his love for God. Yet, as the Savior's disciple says, “Faith was working together with the works, and by the works faith was made firm” (James 2:22). And the admirable Paul himself said somewhere of our forefather Abraham: “By faith he offered up Isaac when he was tested; he who had received the promises was offering up his only son, he to whom it was said, ‘Through Isaac shall your offspring be named’; for he reasoned that God is able even to raise from the dead” (Hebrews 11:17–19). So even if it should perhaps be said that he was justified by works because, when tested, he offered up Isaac, this too was for him a clear proof of the firmest faith.

“Not only that, but we also boast in God” (Romans 5:11). Our Lord Jesus Christ, making plain the truly admirable love of God the Father which he showed toward us, brought forward as proof the goal of his work in the flesh and his suffering on the cross, saying somewhere: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). For he truly gave his own Son for us; and we have been redeemed, set free from death and sin. For the Word “became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14) for no other reason than this: that by enduring the death of the flesh he might triumph over the rulers and authorities (Colossians 2:15) and destroy “the one who has the power of death, that is,” Satan (Hebrews 2:14); that he might do away with corruption and, with it, remove the sin that had tyrannized over us; and that he might thus make powerless from then on that ancient curse which human nature underwent in Adam, as in the firstfruits of the race and as in its first root. For Adam, by transgressing the commandment, offended his Creator; that is why he became both accursed and subject to death. But the Master of all took pity again on those who were utterly lost. For the Son came down from heaven, forgiving offences, justifying the ungodly by faith (Romans 4:5), and, as God, reforging human nature into incorruption and bringing it back to what it was in the beginning. For a new…

Sin and Death Through Adam§5

5…creation is what is in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17), because a new root has been set in place; and he has become the second Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45–47). He is not, like the first, the cause of wrath and of heaven's turning away for those born of him; rather, he procures and gives closeness to God, through sanctification, incorruption, and the righteousness that is by faith. The wise Paul explains this to us in the passage before us. So he says: “As through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12). For, as I said, death slipped in through sin in the first-formed man, at the beginning of the race; then it overran the whole race in turn. Moreover the dragon, the inventor of sin, having prevailed in Adam by the ways of wickedness, made the human mind a road he could tread: “For all have turned aside, together they have become worthless” (Psalm 14:3; Romans 3:12). So, having gone out from the presence of the all-holy God, because the human mind is intently set “on evil from youth” (Genesis 8:21), we lived a life more like that of brute beasts. And “death, having grown strong, swallowed up,” as the prophet says (Isaiah 25:8), and “Hades enlarged its appetite and opened its mouth without ceasing” (Isaiah 5:14). For since we became imitators of the transgression in Adam, in that all sinned, we came under the same penalties as he did. But the world under heaven has not been left without help: sin has been pulled down, Satan has fallen, and death too has been abolished.

“For until the law sin was in the world” (Romans 5:13). The law given through Moses was, as I said, an exposure of the weakness of those who stumble, not a release from sin; rather, it brought about wrath (Romans 4:15). For those who transgressed had to come under the penalties set down in the law; and wherever there is any form of transgression at all, there sin surely is too. And if sin brings about death, we must surely say that the death which sprang from it shares its strength, and that when sin is pulled down death is shaken down with it and perishes together with it, as with its own mother. So, he says, sin was in the world until the law: for while the law still stood, the charges of transgression held firm against those who stumbled; but now that it has become inactive, the indictment for transgressing has ceased along with it. And once sin has ceased, as I said, death too will cease with it.

“Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses,” and so on (Romans 5:14). But if so, someone might ask, how did death gain the mastery over those on earth even before the law? For even if some were not liable for transgressions of the law, since the law had not yet been given, they too still came under corruption after the likeness of Adam's transgression. It is as if he were saying: death overran the whole race that came from Adam, in the likeness of Adam; just as, when a plant has been harmed at its root, the shoots that grew from it must all wither. Yet he says that Adam is a type of the one who was to come (Romans 5:14), that is, of Christ, although he had already come and had brought to completion the…

Adam, a Type of the One to Come§6

6…mystery of the dispensation in the flesh. How, then, does he call him “the one to come” (Romans 5:14)? someone might perhaps ask. For having set before us the first man and recalled the times of the transgression, he named Christ the one who would be present after those times, and the last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45). He had indeed been foreordained as Saviour and Redeemer in the will and forethought of God the Father, but he appeared at his own proper times, those the Sovereign willed (1 Timothy 6:15); and these are the times at the end, at the sunset, as it were, of the present age.

So, having made the second correspond to the type of the first, he all but questions his hearer, speaking the next words with a pause, as a question: “But is it not so with the free gift as with the trespass?” (Romans 5:15). It is as if he were saying: We were condemned to death through the transgression in Adam, since the whole of human nature suffered this in him, for he was the firstfruits of the race; but in Christ we blossomed again into life. And Adam was a type of the one to come (Romans 5:14), that is, of Christ, who brings in for us a grace equal in measure to the perversity of those who went before. Have I, then, he says, missed the truth in saying this? Am I carried beyond what is reasonable? Is it not so with the free gift as with the trespass? Or did death prevail through one, while life through one will be powerless? And yet how is it not true to say this: “For if by the trespass of the one the many died, much more have the grace of God and the gift in the grace of the one man Jesus Christ abounded for the many” (Romans 5:15)? For the Creator, since he loves mankind, will by no means allow death to prevail through the one, and the life that comes through one man to accomplish nothing. Grace will rise above what comes from wrath.

“And the gift is not as it was through the one who sinned” (Romans 5:16). He refers, as it were, the nature of the matter and the force of the thought to what most befits God. For if, he says, the condemnation that came from one, that is, through one, Adam, passed on to all after his likeness (for, as I said, he was the root of the race and suffered corruption), how could it not be both acceptable to faith and dear to God that many should be justified from many trespasses by one act of righteousness (Romans 5:16)? Or is saving not what God prefers to destroying? Just as, then, Adam was condemned, and the power of the curse prevailed over Moses, making those on earth subject to corruption, so, since Christ, the second Adam, has been justified, justification will surely travel to us as well along the same road as the first. We say that Christ has been justified, not as though he had once been unrighteous and then advanced to justification by progress toward better things, but because he himself, first and alone of men on earth, “committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth” (1 Peter 2:22).

“For if, by the trespass of the one, death reigned through the one,” and so on (Romans 5:17). See again how he reckons the grace that justifies stronger than the curse that condemns. For no one, he says, could claim it was fitting that death through one should prevail over those on…

How the Many Were Made Sinners§7

7…earth, while life had no share of strength. For much more will those who have the grace that comes through Christ and the gift of righteousness from the bounty above shake off the power of death and reign together with Christ, who gives life to all things (Romans 5:17).

“Therefore, as through one trespass there came condemnation for all people,” and so on (Romans 5:18). To the thoughts already set out the inspired Paul adds, as it were, the conclusion, saying, “Therefore, as through one trespass,” and what follows. For we were condemned in Adam, as I said before, and death, which came from the curse, passed as from the first root into all that sprang from it. But we have been justified and have sprouted again into life, since Christ was justified on our behalf. For our forefather disregarded the commandment given to him, offended God, and underwent what comes from divine wrath, for he slid into corruption. Then sin also burst into human nature; and so the many were made sinners (Romans 5:19), that is, those throughout the whole earth.

But someone might say: Yes, Adam slipped, and because he disregarded the divine commandment he was condemned to corruption and death. But then how were the many made sinners because of him? What are his failings to us? And how at all were we, who had not yet been born, condemned along with him? And this although God says, “Fathers shall not die for their children” (Deuteronomy 24:16), nor children for their fathers; “the soul that sins, it shall die” (Ezekiel 18:20). What, then, would be the way of our defence? Certainly, “the soul that sins, it shall die”; but we became sinners through Adam's disobedience in the following way.

He had been made for incorruption and life, and in the paradise of delight he lived a life fit for the holy. His mind was wholly and constantly taken up with the vision of God, and his body was in calm and stillness, with every shameful pleasure at rest, for there was no tumult of unruly impulses in him. But when he fell under sin and slid into corruption, from then on pleasures and impurities rushed into the nature of the flesh, and the law that rages in our members sprang up (Romans 7:23). So nature caught the sickness of sin through the disobedience of the one, that is, Adam. In this way the many were made sinners (Romans 5:19): not as having transgressed together with Adam, for they did not yet exist at all, but as being of his nature, which fell under the law of sin.

Just as, then, human nature fell sick with corruption in Adam through disobedience, and so the passions slipped into it, so it has been set free again in Christ; for he became obedient to God the Father (Philippians 2:8) and committed no sin (1 Peter 2:22).

“The law came in, so that the trespass might increase” (Romans 5:20). Someone, he says, will reasonably argue along these lines and say: Adam “was a type of the one to come” (Romans 5:14), and just as we were made sinners in him through the transgression, so in Christ we have been justified through obedience. Then, he says, the justification in Christ should have appeared to those on earth with nothing coming in between.

Why the Law Came In§8

8…What need, then, was there, as a matter of necessity, for the laws given through Moses? Against such thoughts the inspired Paul all but rises up again, saying, “The law came in, so that the trespass might increase” (Romans 5:20). The words “came in” mean that the law was brought in between the condemnation in Adam and the righteousness in Christ. And if one asks again what need there was for the law’s coming in, he will hear Paul say plainly, “So that the trespass might increase.” What are you saying, Paul? Was the law, then, also a promoter of sin, and has the trespass multiplied through it? By no means.

We must, then, open out more fully the way this sacred teaching works. David said, accordingly, “All have turned aside, together they have become worthless; there was none who did good, there was not even one” (Psalm 14:3). For after the transgression in Adam all who were on the earth had corrupted their way (Genesis 6:12). That is why they were punished: all of them together underwent a common penalty, the flood, and they were also punished in particular ways, at certain times and in certain lands and cities. For even though there was no law, human nature was still being trained by God, through its inborn impulses, toward the knowledge of what is good.

So God took pity on those on earth, who were faring wretchedly, and in his love of goodness he planned to set them free in Christ from the sin that tyrannized them. But he judged, and very rightly, that those on earth must first be shown to be gravely sick, so that the justification in Christ might then be seen to make its entry into the world as something most needed. For we say that it is not the one already righteous who is justified, but whoever is liable for sins. How, then, were those on earth to be shown beforehand as needing the grace that is in Christ? “The law came in, so that the trespass might increase” (Romans 5:20); that is, so that among those under the law the trespass might appear great, since plainly no one could be justified because of the weakness of nature, and all, as it were, fell under the charges that arise from transgression. The law, then, was laid down as a kind of proof of the weakness of all, so that human affairs might be seen to need the healing that comes through Christ alone. That is why he says, “But where sin increased, grace overflowed all the more” (Romans 5:20). For grace had to be so great that it would be seen to surpass the law that condemns.

“Or do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus…?” (Romans 6:3). As all agree, we have been baptized into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19). Yet if he should say that we have been baptized into Christ Jesus, he will not be speaking beyond what is reasonable. It is quite true that by names, by hypostases, and by the differences of the persons, the Father stands apart from the Son in a certain particular otherness, and the Spirit from both. For the Father is the Father and not the Son; again, the one who is from him by nature is the Son and not the Father; and the Holy Spirit is, in his own proper way, the Spirit. But since the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son (John 14:10), and the Holy Spirit is in both because the substance is the same, then even if someone names only one, by the force of the ideas involved, the declaration of the whole…

Buried with Christ in Baptism§9

9…has made a declaration of the whole. So the one who names Christ will not leave the Father or the Spirit unremembered. But since Jesus, having become man, endured death for the life of all, the blessed Paul had to go on to what was most needful for the sacred teaching at hand, for he had to name the one who suffered. That is why he says, “All of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death” (Romans 6:3).

For having first given, as it were, the good pledge of an upright conscience toward Christ (1 Peter 3:21), and having accepted by faith that he died for us, was buried, and came to life again, we have received the forgiveness of sins through holy baptism. We undergo the deadening of sin, and as it were die together with him who died for us, by putting to death our members that are on the earth (Colossians 3:5). For Christ “died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God” (Romans 6:10). We undergo a death equal to his and are all but buried with him, carrying about his dying in our own bodies (2 Corinthians 4:10); and we were buried with Christ (Romans 6:4). What we gain from this he will make clear himself, saying, “so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). For since we have been buried with him, we must also rise with him spiritually. And if being buried with Christ is having died to sin, then surely it is clear that rising with him can rightly be understood as nothing other than living in righteousness.

He affirms, indeed, that Christ was raised through the glory of the Father, not as though Christ lacked strength, for he himself is the Lord of hosts (Psalm 24:10), but because it is the custom of Christ himself and of his own to ascribe what is beyond human nature to the glory of the supreme nature. So even if God the Father is said to accomplish something, he does not shut the Son out of his activity over all things. For if all things came into being through him (John 1:3), how could anyone doubt that he worked through the Son the resurrection of that holy body as well? Indeed the Son, showing himself active in this, said to the Jews, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). See, then, how he promises to raise his own temple himself, although God the Father is said to have raised it. For since he is himself the life-giving power of God the Father, he gave life to his own temple.

“For if we have been united with the likeness of his death,” and so on (Romans 6:5). The inspired Paul says that those who have been buried with Christ ought also to expect to rise with him. The word “united” would suggest, in a spiritual sense, something like “conformed” and “of the same form.” But this point must be examined closely. Emmanuel laid down his own life for us (1 John 3:16) and died according to the flesh. In what way, then, have we who are baptized been buried with him? Was it by enduring with him the death of the flesh? Not at all. How, then, have we been united with the likeness of his death? Come, then, let us say it. He died…

Our Old Self Crucified with Christ§10

10…Christ died according to the flesh, so that he might undo the sin of the world. We, however, do not die according to the flesh—how could we?—but to sin, as it is written (Romans 6:2); that is, we render sin idle and ineffective in ourselves by putting to death “the members that are on the earth: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed” (Colossians 3:5). We have been united, then, not merely with Christ’s death according to the flesh, but with the likeness of his death. And this would be understood as dying for sin, and not for his own sin—far from it! For God is blameless and utterly far from being able to do wrong. Rather, as I said, it was for the sin of the world: “For the death he died to sin, he died once for all” (Romans 6:10). So we have been united with him in the likeness of his death (Romans 6:5). And we shall certainly be united with him and share the same form in his resurrection as well, for we shall live in Christ. The flesh will come back to life, and we shall also live in another way, having dedicated our own souls to him and being transformed toward holiness and into a glorious way of life in the Holy Spirit.

“Knowing this, that our old self…,” and so on (Romans 6:6). Who is our old self, what is the body of sin that is done away with, and in what way was it crucified with Christ? We must look into this closely. Some will perhaps suppose that the earthly flesh is called the body of sin because it was given to the human soul by way of punishment, since the soul had sinned even before there were bodies; for that is how some think and speak. But since this opinion belongs to the Greeks, let us thrust it away as untrue.

By “body of sin” and “our old self,” then, he means the earthly body, which, from the old condition in Adam, must waste away into corruption; for we were condemned in him, the first man. Besides this, it is also sick with the love of pleasure, for that is how the flesh is by nature, because of its inborn impulses. How, then, was it crucified with Christ? The Only-begotten became man and clothed himself with the earthly flesh, which, as I said, had fallen sick with death because of the old condition in Adam, and which carried within itself, as if in labour, the tendency to be sharpened toward sin by its inborn impulses.

Yet the law of sin lies still in the holy and all-pure flesh of Christ. We certainly do not say that the more unseemly of the human passions were stirred in him, except those whose movement is blameless—I mean hunger and thirst and weariness, and whatever else the law of nature has kept free of blame even in us. Still, even though the law of sin was not stirred in Christ, because it was lulled to sleep by the power and working of the Word who carried out the dispensation, yet when the nature of the flesh is examined by itself, even if it is considered as it is in Christ, we shall find that it is no different from ours. So we were crucified with him when his flesh was crucified, flesh that held, as it were, the whole nature within itself; just as…

The Body of Sin Done Away§11

11…just as in Adam too, when he came under the curse, the whole of human nature fell sick with that curse.

So too we are said to have been raised with Christ and to be seated with him in the heavenly places (Ephesians 2:6).

For even though Emmanuel is above us as God, yet since he became like us as one of us, he has been raised and sits beside God the Father.

So our old self was crucified with him (Romans 6:6), for through the resurrection the power of that ancient curse has been broken.

The body of sin has also been done away with (Romans 6:6). This does not mean the flesh itself, but the inborn savagery of the impulses within it, which always drags the mind down toward what is more shameful and sinks it, as it were, into the mud and marshes of earthier pleasures.

That this too has been accomplished for human nature in Christ, who could doubt, when Paul says plainly, “For what was impossible for the law, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh” (Romans 8:3)?

Do you see, then, how the body of sin has been done away with? For the sting of sin has been condemned in the flesh. It was put to death first in Christ, and the grace has passed from him and through him to us as well.

“Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law…” (Romans 7:1).

Everywhere he shows that to seek to be under the law is dangerous.

He urges us rather to long for, and with our whole mind to thirst after, the grace that comes through faith, that is, justification in Christ. He firmly declared that the baptized have been buried with Christ (Romans 6:4), so that, having been put to death to sin, they might live to God in righteousness (Romans 6:11).

That is why he said, “So do not let sin reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its desires. Do not present your members to sin as weapons of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as alive from the dead, and your members to God as weapons of righteousness. For sin will no longer have dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace” (Romans 6:12–14).

See, then, how he commands them to leave the shadow of the law (Hebrews 10:1) and instead to take shelter under the grace that is in Christ.

Yet the Spirit-bearer was well aware that some would surely say, or at least reason to themselves, that in that case the fathers had strayed from the straight road and from life, that the law had done them no good, and that the glories of their way of life had somehow already come to nothing.

For if it is absurd to seek to be under the law, and this was the aim of life for the people of old, how could it not be true to say that they missed what was fitting?

So he who has Christ within him takes up the contest. He skilfully gives the impression that he wishes to speak on behalf of those who lived under the law, but in many ways he turns the argument toward the view that, when the time calls to faith, one must not be too eager to linger over the ancient customs.

This is why he says, “Or do you not know, brothers, for I am speaking to those who know the law, that the law has dominion over a person for as long as he lives?” (Romans 7:1).

This is a general rule, holding both for…

Dead to the Law§12

12…every law and for those who are under law.

For laws define, for all who live under the sceptres of kings, what must be done and what must not; but they have force only among those who are still alive.

If someone who is under law departs from life in the body, he has put off, together with his life, the authority of the laws as well. For if he has ceased from wrongdoing, the law too will surely have nothing more to do with him.

It is true, then, that the law has dominion over a person for as long as he lives (Romans 7:1).

We must also say what the aim of the passage is. He brings two useful points into it.

We, he says, who have been buried with Christ through baptism (Romans 6:4), who have died to sin (Romans 6:2), have passed outside the authority of the law, for we have been remade for another life.

But those who lived before his coming, not yet having undergone the death that is understood in Christ, were still living to sin.

So the law ruled over them as over the living, just as a husband rules over his wife.

For as a married woman, while the man lawfully joined to her is still alive, cannot unite with another man without answering for it, yet if he dies, he says, she will be free of penalty even if she chooses to do this, since she does it lawfully (Romans 7:2–3), in the same way, I think, those who did not yet have the deadening of sin in Christ, but were living, as it were, in sin, were rightly under law as well; for the law has dominion over a person for as long as he lives.

But those who have already come under the grace that is in Christ, through which they have died to sin and been put to death to the flesh, that is, to the passions of the flesh, may lead a life outside the law without blame, if they are no longer reckoned as people living in the world (Colossians 2:20).

For, as I said, they have been put to death through the body of Christ, and they died to the law (Romans 7:4), being justified through faith.

“For while we were in the flesh, the passions of sins, which were through the law, were at work,” and so on (Romans 7:5).

By “flesh” he means the fleshly mind, as he says elsewhere too: “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Romans 8:8).

And yet who would deny that he gives such instructions to those he was initiating into the mystery as to people who had not left the body?

What he means to show must be examined closely.

When we lived in a fleshly way, he says, and the earthly mind ruled in us, then the passions of the flesh were at work in us through the law, to bear fruit for death (Romans 7:5).

“What then?” someone might say. “Were the passions of the flesh brought in through the law? Then how shall we clear the law of the charges against it?”

What do we say to this? The passions of the flesh were not stirred in us through the law. Rather, they are born from inborn pleasure and they plunder the weak mind.

He makes this plain to us when he says, “The flesh desires against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other” (Galatians 5:17).

Here, leaving this aside, he says that the flesh is set in battle against the Spirit, with nothing placed between them.

So the passions of the flesh are not stirred in us through the law, but rather by nature; and, strange to say, they rise up against the will of the law, as he himself somewhere…

The Law Shows Sin§13

13…Paul says, “The mind of the flesh is hostility toward God, for it does not submit to the law of God, nor indeed can it” (Romans 8:7).

If the mind of the flesh fights against the law, how is it not senseless to think that things so opposed to the law are stirred into action through it?

What then does Paul say? He speaks to those who have been buried with Christ through baptism (Romans 6:4) as to people who are dead to sin, and as to people already rich in the deadening of the passions. It would be fitting for them to go outside the law, since they have been freed from the passions that the law condemned.

So, he says, while we still remained in the mind of the flesh, the passions that the law denounced and named were at work in us; and at that time we were also answerable to the law, because sin was still alive in us.

“But now we have been released from the law, having died to that in which we were held captive” (Romans 7:6).

We were liable to the law, he says, because sin had made us subject to it. But if we have died to that in which we were held captive, that is, to sin, then the law too will surely cease to act, together with sin; for the law was decreed because of sin, to convict those who transgress.

So those who have been put to death to sin no longer need the law. For we have come to belong to another (Romans 7:4), and let us serve him in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter (Romans 7:6).

“What then shall we say? Is the law sin?” (Romans 7:7).

See how wisely he frames what he says about the law. He had said, “When we were in the flesh, the passions of sins, which were through the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death” (Romans 7:5).

But that statement would by no means have been free from suspicion. Someone would at once have replied, “Is the law, then, the director and author of sin? For if it is true that the passions of the flesh are at work in us through the law, how could it not be thought the very origin of sin?”

What, then, does the teacher of the mysteries do? He meets the objection sharply. He denies that the law is the father of sin, and instead lays the blame on human nature, as weak and, through the law, falling under penalties.

This is why he says, “What then shall we say? Is the law sin? By no means! Yet I would not have known sin except through the law” (Romans 7:7).

Notice his sober care. He did not say, “I would not have had sin except through the law,” but rather that he would not have known it.

So the law is not the occasion of sin, but rather points it out, making it plain to those who did not know it. It does this not so that, having learned of it, they might commit it, for even before they knew it they were surely committing it anyway, “for there was none righteous, not even one,” as the Psalmist says (Psalm 14:3; Romans 3:10), but so that, knowing what is wrong, they might turn to better things.

It seems to me that something like this happened to the people of old through the commandment of Moses.

For the sake of the argument, let us suppose a broad road leading somewhere. Let many stones be scattered along its middle, and, if you like, let pits be dug in it as well.

Then let there be some who walk along it by night and in darkness, stumbling very often over what lies in the way, and falling into the pits against their will.

With matters standing so, someone took a torch and, right at…

The Law Points Out Sin§14

14[…] set it up at the crossroads, and so made plain to those on the road what lay in their path, not so that they would stumble over these things again, but rather so that they might step over them and escape the harm. Did the light, then, do them wrong because it showed them what was hurting them? Or shall we say instead that it did them the greatest possible good and made them safer? This, I think, is clear to everyone.

So when we, who were sinners and stumbled into a great many offenses, came to know sin through the law, the law could not reasonably be thought or called sin, far from it. Rather, as I said, it is what points sin out.

“For I would not have known covetous desire if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’ But sin, seizing an occasion through the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire” (Romans 7:7–8; Exodus 20:17). Here he also brings in the weakness of our nature: the law, given for our benefit, turned against us when no one expected it, as the light of the sun does to those whose eyes are weak. So when he says that the commandment in a way became an occasion for desires, let no one suppose that he is accusing the law. He is rather crying out against the weakness in us, since we, who ought to have been held back by the law, are spurred on by these very things toward what is worse.

For the human mind is always sick with a love of empty things that draws it toward desires. The one who carries out his desires lives as he pleases and is left untroubled; but the one who checks them meets a fiercer onslaught of the passions. No one desires what lies ready to hand; what a person is forbidden, that he desires. So when the law forbade what does harm, it became for the weaker an occasion to desire that very thing all the more.

“For apart from the law sin is dead” (Romans 7:8). If no law were laid down, he says, to condemn the way of wickedness, evil would become powerless. For through the law it is all but provoked into strength. In some people the sting of pleasure will press with less force when no one rebukes it; it is all but blunted, charmed by the wide freedom it is given. For where there is nothing at all to resist, there the urge to contend surely lies idle as well. Sin, then, is dead when the law does not declare what must be done.

The guide into the mysteries says that he once lived without the law, and then, when the commandment came, he insists that sin came back to life, while he himself died (Romans 7:9–10). In these words he frames the argument in his own person, but I think he wishes to show something like this. It is agreed that even sinning in ignorance is liable to judgment. But that the punishment will be heavier for those who know, the Savior has made fully certain when he says, “The one who knows his master’s will and does not do it will be beaten with many blows; but the one who does not know and does not do it will be beaten with few” (Luke 12:47–48). It is agreed, then, that it is better to sin in ignorance than with knowledge of the laws. But suppose someone has come under the law after once living his life outside the law, and then, having chosen to disregard its decrees, has been convicted on a charge of sin and has fallen […]

Sin Comes Back to Life§15

15[…] under sentence. Then indeed, grieving over his own carelessness and all but crying out against the strictness of the law, he will say, “I once lived apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin came back to life, and I died” (Romans 7:9–10).

For if sin is truly dead apart from the law, is it not reasonable to think that sin is in a way brought to life through the law? For the law makes it manifest and, as it were, puts breath into it, though it was not known before, even if it was in us. For we were not righteous; but since sin was, as it were, dead, perhaps because there was no law to condemn it, we lived, and our ignorance gave us a ready plea for excuse. “For where there is no law, there is no transgression either,” as he himself says (Romans 4:15). So when the commandment came forward into the open, sin, as it were, came back to life, and death and curse and penalty were made ready for those who fall into transgressions out of weakness.

And what came of this? Something beyond all hope and expectation happened in our case. For the commandment, he says, which was given for life, was found to lead to death (Romans 7:10). Just as the light of the sun’s ray somehow harms those whose sight is sick, though by nature it is sweet and greatly longed for, and it is not the light itself at all that does the wrong, but the harm they receive from it should rather be laid to the charge of the sufferers’ sickness, so in the same way, I think, he says that the commandment gave sin an occasion, and that he was deceived through it and brought down even to death (Romans 7:11).

One might also put it another way: the love of pleasure is always very prone, in one way or another, to fight against the purposes of the law. The ways of wickedness, when they are checked by decency, march out against it the more stoutly. At times they plunder the mind, overturning it into transgression and bringing it under the penalties of the law, though it was the law that gave them the occasion for this war. This is why Paul, wise as he is, says that he was deceived through the commandment and died through it (Romans 7:11). For in effect it killed, by sharpening the pleasures within us to resist, in the ways already described.

“So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good” (Romans 7:12). The law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good, for it makes holy and just and good those who choose to keep it, so that they may in no way be caught by the charges that arise from transgressions. But this was, in some way, beyond reach; for “who will understand his offenses?” as it is written (Psalm 19:12).

“Did that which is good, then, become death to me?” (Romans 7:13). The law is holy, and the commandment too is holy and good. How, then, did he say, “And the commandment meant for life was found, for me, to lead to death” (Romans 7:10)? Tell me, then: has the good become the bringer of ruin? “By no means,” he says (Romans 7:13). “In these words I am least of all blaming the law; I stand, as it were, as the accuser of sin. For sin so overpowers human nature and has so mastered the mind within us that the very law given to us for salvation […]

Sin Beyond Measure and the Spiritual Law§16

16[…] and life, the commandment that is truly holy and good, became an occasion of death for those under its yoke.” How, and in what way? If penalty always follows those who break the law, and we have now sunk so far into weakness that we are always being caught in transgressions, it is already fairly plain that in this way the law that saves, holy and good as it is, seems somehow to have become the sinews of sin and a road to death for those who are under sin.

And perhaps, he says, it was “so that sin might become sinful beyond measure through the commandment” (Romans 7:13). Those who did not know what the Master wills will certainly be caught by penalties, for they have acted lawlessly, even if they did not know it. Yet they have, I think, a plea in their defense that is not unconvincing, for they will likely put forward their ignorance. But for those under the law, to say that they did not know the Master’s will is surely empty. So if such a person is seen to have chosen to live an unholy life, the charge against him will be not ignorance but reckless folly, and, beyond that, the utmost lack of love for God. In this way sin might be called sinful beyond measure. For the one who has done wrong as in ignorance is also a sinner, but he is by no means called, nor is he, a sinner beyond measure.

“For we know that the law is spiritual” (Romans 7:14). He calls the law spiritual because it makes spiritual those who follow it. And a person is understood to be spiritual who does not live according to the flesh, but has turned rather toward the wish to follow the will of the Spirit. The blessed David also said, “The law of the Lord is blameless, turning souls back; the testimony of the Lord is faithful, making infants wise. The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever and ever” (Psalm 19:7, 9). Just as he says that the law is blameless, because it knows how to make people blameless, and the testimony faithful, because it makes them faithful, and the fear pure, because it makes pure, so you will take it here too that the law is called spiritual because it makes spiritual those who follow it. For even if it is in shadows, it still holds the form of the truth (Romans 2:20).

What, then, does Paul do? He insists that the law is spiritual, but he blames human nature as gravely sick with sin. And he tries to convince us that, because the law is spiritual, for that very reason it is most burdensome to human nature. For what, tell me, he says, if “the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh” (Romans 7:14), that is, ruled as by a tyrant by the mind of the flesh? Do you see how great an opposition of wills his words set before us? For the will of the Spirit is one thing, and the will of the flesh must be understood as another. They are opposed to each other (Galatians 5:17), and they cannot possibly come together into one. When, then, man is of the flesh and the law is spiritual, how could the law even be bearable to those so sick with sin? And this is said very wisely. For if he is of the flesh, he might be thought of as a kind of captive and […]

Paul Does Not Teach Fate§17

17… in the rank of a household slave.

“For what I am doing, I do not understand” (Romans 7:15).

Some of the more ignorant Greeks, as one might expect, suppose that he means to confirm a myth, one which, I do not know how, they have decided to champion, deceiving and being deceived (2 Timothy 3:13). For they invent a Fate and a Fortune to suit their own opinion, then hand control of our affairs to things that do not exist, and so they rob man of what most befits him: I mean that he should live freely, with an unhindered and voluntary inclination toward whatever course of action he chooses.

By subjecting him, as it were, to necessity and to the limits and decrees laid down by those powers, they do no small wrong to those who live this life. For if, on their view, someone goes on to do what is unlawful, since he cannot escape the nod of Fate even if he should wish to, no one in his right mind would blame him at all, even if he were seen doing wrong. What he had to do by necessity and not by choice would surely leave him beyond blame and punishment, if he were caught having done it. And it would not be very sensible to praise the gentle and well-ordered man either. For what if he became such a man not by his own will, but carried into it by another’s nod, or rather because Fortune rose up against him with a necessity he could not fight?

It is therefore wholly out of tune to say that the teacher of the noblest things is swept along with the quibbles of the Greeks, or to think that the one who became steward of the divine mysteries for us trails behind their folly, if he says, “For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I do not practice what I want, but I do what I hate” (Romans 7:15).

If someone should insist on it, and choose to think that Paul has assigned to Fate and Fortune the authority over our affairs, how could one not rightly put this question to the apostle: “If we are caught in harsh and unyielding necessities and are in no way masters of what we do or leave undone, but rather yield to others as our rulers and are kept from acting by our own judgment, how did you yourself write to us, ‘Or do you not know, brothers (for I am speaking to those who know the law), that the law has dominion over a person for as long as he lives?’ (Romans 7:1)”

So the law has dominion over the living in a certain way. For it will surely be idle among the dead; it does not set its bounds for them (how could it?), but for those who still spend their life in the body. It crowns with praise the one who habitually does well, and it votes punishment against the profane. How then will the Lawgiver be a holy judge, if he punishes as sinners those whom Fortune compelled to fall into sin against their will? Or rather, why did he lay down the law at all?

For those who have it in their power to do whatever they wish, the law sets a holy penalty if, when they could have won approval by giving their mind to good deeds, they have themselves preferred the more shameful things and exchanged the better for what the law condemns. But for those who have the yoke of necessity hanging over them, and who always turn whichever way their rulers please, the decree is, I think, superfluous. And yet how is it not true to say that not even …

Paul Speaks for the Weak§18

18… would the One who knows all things have laid on us the yoke of the law, which so well directs what pleases him and trains us toward what is profitable, if he had known that we were caught in the nooses of Fate? Either let our opponents say that God did not know this; or, if they have chosen to think rightly and are deeply afraid to pour ignorance over his ineffable glory, they say that he gave laws, and indeed they will plainly confess that he fixed the penalties for wrongdoers. Then surely he knows that man lives with a free mind and is able to move by voluntary inclination toward whatever he wishes, with nothing to hinder him.

That is why the inspired Paul said that the law has dominion over a person for as long as he lives (Romans 7:1). He does not say such things, then, as though the human mind were subject to the nod of others. Rather, he reasons as a philosopher and examines closely the passions of human nature. He all but digs out with precision the sicknesses that reach inward to the mind, and he brings a charge against the body for its inborn love of pleasure, very fittingly taking on himself the part of one who is still sick with love of the flesh.

For though he himself had been crucified to the world, and the world to him (Galatians 6:14), and was truly worthy of admiration, he still thought it wise not to look to his own gift, but to make the weakness of those not yet like him the necessary subject of his discourse.

So when you hear him say, “For what I am doing, I do not understand” (Romans 7:15), think of certain exceedingly great sinners who suppose that they are living the truly best life, and that nothing could equal the luxury and the fleeting things of this world. They loathe the ways of decency, but they take pride in their own pleasures and wallow in them without restraint. It is of them, I think, that Paul says, “Those who set their minds on earthly things, whose god is the belly, and whose glory is in their shame” (Philippians 3:19). These people, carrying out what is base as though it were something highly praised, might fittingly say, “For what I am doing, I do not understand.”

Let them hear, then: “Wake up, you drunkards, from your wine” (Joel 1:5). For just as lovers of drink and the drunken, their clear thinking impaired by the passion, would not know what they were doing while they were drunk, so those whose minds have grown sick from love of the flesh and the most shameful pleasures would not know what they are doing at all. So Paul is explaining to us a disease of the human heart when he says, “For what I am doing, I do not understand.”

But suppose there is someone who offers a tenderer heart, as it were, to the reproofs of conscience, who is grieved that he does wrong, yet is still overpowered by the pleasures that lead to sin, and goes toward wrongdoing as if against his will. He might fittingly say, “For I do not practice what I want, but I do what I hate” (Romans 7:15). How many people, how many times, have admired self-control, and even begun the practice of it, and then been overcome by the goads of loathsome pleasure; and with their mind giving way to the worse, they have committed the …

The Flesh Overpowers the Willing Mind§19

19… sin, but afterward they are filled with dejection. It would be quite fitting for these people, who have grown weak almost against their will, to say in turn, “But now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me” (Romans 7:17).

“Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good” (Romans 7:16).

Again he turns the precision of his inquiry to the nature of the body, and examines the power of the sicknesses that are in it by nature. For the appetites that carry us off toward every kind of passion, and the faults of a pleasure-loving life, have their source in the flesh. The Savior’s disciple confirms us in this when he says, “Where do wars and where do quarrels among you come from? Do they not come from here, from your pleasures that wage war in your members?” (James 4:1).

“For willing lies close at hand for me, but accomplishing the good I do not find” (Romans 7:18).

“For willing,” he says, “lies close at hand for me, but accomplishing the good does not,” and so on. To show that the flesh stands accused, since it is in terrible labor with sin within itself, he wisely grants that the good lies close at hand for us, but not also the power to carry it through. For the flesh forces the mind, against its will, to turn aside where it does not wish to go. So as far as the mind’s own choice went, it would be free even of sin. But since it suffers an overpowering that is hard to escape, the blame would rightly belong not so much to the mind as to what overpowers it. That is why he says, “Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me” (Romans 7:20).

But someone might say: suppose some wicked barbarians laid waste a city or a country, then took some of its inhabitants as captives of the spear and laid on them the yoke of slavery, and those who suffered this yielded by necessity to the bonds and laws of their masters. Would they deserve blame and indictment because they are not stronger than necessity, and do not strive to carry out what pleases themselves in defiance of the authority of those who have seized power over them? No one, I think, could fairly find fault with them. For they serve as slaves because they cannot be set free, and they yield, as I said, to misfortunes they did not want. They are distressed that they have been robbed of freedom, but, overcome by necessity by those who are stronger, they serve against their will. Now if this is not far from reason, let the human mind be acquitted of any charge over the sicknesses of the flesh.

“But it was in its power,” someone says, “not to choose to do it; for it holds the reins of its own will.” Then let it be stronger than that overpowering and free from the tyranny of sins. But if the nature of the flesh is hard to bear and hard to resist, stirring up untamed pleasure against the mind, and the law is too slow to help (for it does not have the power to put sins to death), no one could justly accuse the mind of failing to do the better thing and let go of the more shameful, even if it does perhaps hold the reins of the will within us.

“So I find this law: that when I want …” (Romans 7:21)

The Law Advises but Cannot Redeem§20

20“…to do what is good, evil lies close at hand for me” (Romans 7:21). Notice again how wisely and skillfully he approves of the law: not as able to blunt the sting of sin, nor as capable of putting to death the sin within us, but only as instilling into the mind the knowledge of what is beneficial. For if, he says, evil lies close at hand for me as something that dwells in the flesh, the law nonetheless exposes it as counterfeit; it grants its help and is understood as a counselor, but not also as a redeemer.

Yet those who are sick with sin surely need not only to know clearly that they ought to do what is better, but also to be able to accomplish whatever is good and seems right to the law. So too, of course, for those who wish to win distinction in battle, bare knowledge of tactics alone is not enough; only if strength is added to it would such men then, and scarcely then, be brilliant and admired. If, then, the law teaches skill in what is good, but in no way helps those who are overpowered by cutting the sinews of sin, it is good because it is also a teacher; but it could not fairly be counted equal to the grace that comes through Christ, who is able both to make us wise and to make us stronger than evil.

“For I delight in the law of God in my inner self” (Romans 7:22). As I have already said, the mind thirsts for freedom, longs to be rid of what stands condemned, and crowns the law with the highest honors as the guide to what is noblest; but the nature of the flesh forces it toward disordered pleasures, while the law of sin wages war and presses hard upon it (Romans 7:23). By the law of sin he means the inborn impulse, and whatever one might suppose the passion of love for the flesh to be, just as he called the law of the mind its inclination and will toward the good.

“Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 7:24–25). For now he laments and cries out against the flesh; and he calls the earthly, pleasure-loving body a “body of death,” because in it the law of sin is a sickness. He says that he seeks the one who is able to free us from such evils, and he does so in order to bring in the Redeemer for us at a fitting moment, that is, Christ, to whom he also gives all thanks. For through him we have been redeemed, not from the flesh but from the death of the flesh; not by dying, but by being set free from the death in our members, that is, from the savage pleasure in our members. For Christ has made us stronger than pleasure and sin.

“So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh the law of sin” (Romans 7:25). “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit” (Romans 8:1). He has worked out a long discourse, examining minutely each of the things within us and the ways in which we are overpowered, which it is usual for the…

The Law of the Spirit of Life§21

21…human mind to endure, while evil is ranged against it. He insisted that the mind of the more upright is at times distressed when it is tyrannized by the passions of the flesh, that it is deeply troubled and ashamed of its weakness; yet it has no means at all of throwing off the burden of the sin it does not want, since pleasure falls upon it so fiercely. That is why it is too weak to resist, receiving no help whatever toward this, at least from the law.

So the inspired Paul speaks the truth when he insists that with the mind he serves the divine law, but with the flesh the law of sin (Romans 7:25); and this, I think, is what he meant when he said, “For willing lies close at hand for me, but accomplishing the good does not” (Romans 7:18). Formerly, then, as I said, so far as the mind and the will within it were concerned, we had the choice to serve the divine law; but the flesh forced us toward sin, raising up its own will in opposition, as it were. So there was, then, condemnation for those who wished to accomplish the good but were not able, because they were tyrannized by the passions; but in Christ what condemned has come to an end, that is, the domination of the fleshly impulses.

“For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:2). To make the ideas in these words perfectly clear, I think it necessary to say this: just as he calls the fleshly way of thinking, which carries us off toward every kind of wickedness, the law of sin and death, so he calls the spiritual will, that is, the mind’s inclination toward the good, the law of the spirit of life. But “the one who sows to the flesh will reap corruption from the flesh, while the one who sows to the spirit will reap eternal life from the spirit” (Galatians 6:8).

So the law of the spirit of life, that is, the will of the mind that carries us toward life, was in us even before, for with the mind we served the law of God; but, as I said, it was sick, powerless to resist, and, overcome by the desires of the flesh, it was condemned by the law. But since it has cast off its sickness and been made strong through Christ — for through him we have been sealed with the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:13) and have been clothed with “power from on high” (Luke 24:49) — for this reason we have been redeemed and are no longer yoked to evil, but, as I said, we have been called to the dignity of freedom.

So the law of the spirit of life, that is, the will of the mind, which inclines toward doing good and carries us toward life, once it has been enriched with the grace that comes through Christ and set free from its ancient weakness, then, disregarding the evils that come from sin and prevailing over the law of the flesh, “has set me free,” he says (Romans 8:2). Not that it gives the freedom by itself, of course; rather, it has become for us the one who procures the freedom that comes through Christ. And just as those under the law of sin must, by every necessity, also be bound in the snares of death, so those who have come out from sin and been set free through Christ must in turn be beyond death, be seen to be above corruption, and live in holiness.

“For the law’s inability, in that it was weak through the flesh” (Romans 8:3). Admirable indeed is the…

What the Law Could Not Do§22

22…guide into the mysteries, and most penetrating in contemplation, yet he says he is unskilled in speech (2 Corinthians 11:6). That is why we say without blushing that in the arrangement of the words before us something small is missing for full clarity. For he ought to have said, “For the law’s inability, in that it was weak through the flesh, has been undone,” perhaps, or “has ceased”; then to supply the conclusion of the matter and attach the manner of its undoing, adding in turn, “For God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, has abolished sin in the flesh” (Romans 8:3), and what follows.

Since the arrangement of the words stands thus, at least according to the purpose he has in mind, let us consider the manner of the healing that comes through Christ: how the law’s inability has ceased, what the law’s inability should be understood to be at all, and of which law; for the herald of God argues very finely here.

He approves, then, as able to help, both the law of God (I mean the written law) and the law of the spirit, by which we have come to will the good, even if the power to do it may not lie close at hand. For he said, “For willing lies close at hand for me, but accomplishing the good does not” (Romans 7:18), clearly because sin gains the upper hand and the law of the flesh turns the mind, against its will, toward its own ends. In this same way, I think, one may rightly understand the law’s inability: both of the law that is written and given through Moses, as I said just now, and also of the law that is inborn and within us, by which even the Gentiles, though they do not have the written law, are seen to do by nature what the law requires and are a law to themselves (Romans 2:14); “for they show the work of the law written in their hearts” (Romans 2:15), as it is written.

Now is the time to examine what the inability in both consists of. The written law was a teacher of good order and a guide to what is best, but it justified no one at all; while the inborn law within us, which he also calls the law of the spirit, inclines toward the good but is thoroughly defeated by the law that calls us toward what is more shameful. So the inability, that is, the weakness, whether of the written law or of the inborn law, has come to an end through Christ. For once the flesh has in a certain way been put to death, and the pleasure within us has been, as it were, destroyed, the law of the spirit, or of the mind, will in no way be weak.

How the sin within us has been put to death, let us say as far as we can. The Word of God, by the good pleasure of God the Father, came to be in the likeness of sinful flesh, so that he might condemn sin in the flesh (Romans 8:3). For he became man, lowering himself into self-emptying (Philippians 2:7); and that his body was of the same form and the same nature as our bodies, how could anyone doubt? Yet the bodies of all others might be called flesh of sin, because by nature they suffer the rise of disordered pleasures; but one would say that the body of Christ is not flesh of sin, by no means, but rather the likeness of sinful flesh, that is, resembling…

Sin Condemned in Christ’s Flesh§23

23…to our bodies, yet not prone to the sickness of fleshly impurity; for that divine temple was holy from the womb.

As far as the concepts and principles that belong to nature are concerned, no one would hesitate to say that, since it was flesh, it would have had in itself its own innate movement.

But since the Word who sanctifies the whole creation made his dwelling in it, the power of sin has been condemned, so that what was achieved might pass over to us as well.

For we have shared in him both spiritually and bodily: when Christ comes to dwell in us too, through the Holy Spirit and through the mystical blessing, then surely the law of sin is condemned in us as well.

It is true, then, that the law’s inability, in that it was weak through the flesh, has ceased through Christ, who condemned and abolished sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us (Romans 8:3-4).

For the just requirement of the law has been fulfilled, that is, the force of what the law decreed, namely the will that looks toward virtue, since the law within us is, as I said, in no way weak any longer through being tyrannized by innate pleasures.

So the just requirement of the law has been fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh (Romans 8:4) but wish rather to live spiritually.

For the mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace (Romans 8:6).

He says, and quite rightly, that the mind of the flesh is death, while that of the spirit is life and peace. For love of the flesh truly brings about death, whereas the choice to live one’s life spiritually brings about life everlasting and the good things from above.

For if the mind of the flesh is enmity toward God (Romans 8:7), since it does not bear to yield to the divine laws—indeed it cannot, for how could a foul and profane pleasure please God?—then surely the mind that is clean of filth and passions is at peace with God, so far as human nature allows.

Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh but in the spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you (Romans 8:8-9).

When earthly pleasure prevails over a person’s understanding, he is in the flesh, as one who sets his mind on the things of the flesh; and such a one could not please God.

But when the mind has grown rich in the grace that comes through Christ, is filled with strength from above, is fervent in spirit (Romans 12:11), and hastens toward virtue, such a person is understood to be not in the flesh but in the spirit, and readily does what is pleasing to God.

Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him (Romans 8:9).

If, then, anyone is in the spirit, he will also be in righteousness and in life, since the body of sin is all but dead and every unseemly pleasure has been quenched. For righteousness and unrighteousness, holiness and impurity, cannot exist in the same person at one and the same time.

By “spirit” we mean the human spirit; and in the words “the spirit is life” (Romans 8:10), we mean the spirit given life by the grace of the Holy Spirit and enriched, through its communion with him, …

Sons of God and the Waiting Creation§24

24…with righteousness. For in this way we are partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), since Christ makes his dwelling in us through the Holy Spirit.

But if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you (Romans 8:11).

Our Lord Jesus Christ was raised by the Father, life being worked in his flesh through the Holy Spirit, who is his own.

For he himself gave life to his own temple, as he shows when he says to the Jews, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19).

So even if he is said to have been raised by the Father, it was nonetheless he himself who raised it up through the Holy Spirit; for every work befitting God is worked by the Father through the Son in the Spirit.

Christ, then, will also raise our bodies from the dead.

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God (Romans 8:14).

Those who live by the spirit are the ones who are also led by the Spirit, because they have been sealed with the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:13), set free from the slavery that lies in law and letter, and passed over instead into freedom, and because the Spirit of adoption bears them witness that they are sons of God and that in that same Spirit of adoption they have cried out, “Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15-16).

If indeed we suffer with him, so that we may also be glorified with him (Romans 8:17).

The good is not achieved without toil, but for the saints the toil rests on great hopes. For nothing earthly has been promised them, but glory without measure and a share in what lies beyond mind and speech.

For those who disdain the things of earth are worthy of the highest rewards, and those who have first toiled with courage and endurance will enjoy crowns of a preeminence beyond compare; for the toil spent on virtue falls short of the honors that follow.

He speaks of the glory of the saints because in due time the righteous will shine like the sun (Matthew 13:43), having come into honor, glory and incorruption when their bodies are changed, just as Christ was transfigured on the mountain (Matthew 17:2).

For the eager expectation of creation awaits the revealing of the sons of God (Romans 8:19).

“Eager expectation” means hope: the looking for and watching out for how events will turn out.

Creation does await the revealing of the children of God, not because it knows in any way what is to come—how could it, or from where?—but because, by the hidden dispensations of God, who reshapes all things for the better, matters will come to this end.

For when the children of God—that is, those who have achieved a life of good repute—are refashioned, as it were, from dishonor into glory and from corruption into incorruption, creation itself too will surely be changed for the better.

On this point the inspired Peter does not let us doubt, when he says, “We await new heavens and a new earth, and the things he has promised” (2 Peter 3:13).

For creation was subjected to vanity (Romans 8:20).

Here he calls “vanity” those who live in vanity, that is, in a fleshly mind. Of them it might be said quite fittingly, “Man has become like vanity” (Psalm 144:4), and indeed also that…

Creation’s Groaning and the Spiritual Body§25

25…“he has been compared to the senseless beasts and has become like them” (Psalm 49:12). For the life of such people is truly vanity.

To them creation is subjected, and certainly not willingly (Romans 8:20)—how could it be?

But in what sense do we say even this? The creation that is perceived and seen knows nothing at all of our affairs, for it is not rational.

Yet even if one were to grant that it could understand something, it would not, he says, have endured so shameful a slavery, nor would it have wished to be subjected to and to serve those who have chosen to spend their lives on nothing needful, that is, on nothing good.

Rather, he says, it has been subjected for the time being in hope (Romans 8:20-21), the hope of those who will be saved and of the saints and elect of every age. God yokes it and, as it were, keeps it for the freedom it will have under the saints and those who love him, so that it may serve his children alone and be at hand for the needs of the chosen.

For it is all but distraught, in labor and in pain (Romans 8:22); and if it could know anything of our affairs, it would perhaps even be wailing aloud.

Yet yielding to the divine will, it waits in its own way for “the revealing,” as I said, “of the sons of God” (Romans 8:19).

And not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, we ourselves also groan within ourselves (Romans 8:23).

He takes as proof of what has been said what naturally happens within us.

For we ourselves, he says, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan within ourselves, weighed down, as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our body (Romans 8:23).

For it is true that “a perishable body weighs down the soul, and this earthly tent burdens the mind with its many cares” (Wisdom of Solomon 9:15).

But once the Spirit has come to be in us and is remaking us toward a longing for virtue, love of the flesh, as it were, leads out its forces against us, and the law that has fastened on our members (Romans 7:23), ever goading us toward unseemly pleasures, rises up against us without mercy.

That is why we groan, counting the redemption of our body as our adoption.

For what we thirst for is not to lay our bodies aside, nor do we say that this is the redemption. Rather, we expect the body to become spiritual (1 Corinthians 15:44), that is, to have cast off entirely the fleshly and earthly mind, and the sting of sin (1 Corinthians 15:56). This is what we call the spiritual body.

If the grace of adoption includes the redemption of our body, then let no one distort the resurrection for us in any way. Nor let anyone come to such folly as to treat the flesh as something to be thrown away, and to say that once it has fallen into the earth it will vanish entirely, while something else rises in its place, something spiritual—thin, I mean, and airy. For that is how they understand “spiritual.”

For in hope we were saved (Romans 8:24).

We believe that our bodies too will come to be beyond corruption and death. This is laid up for us in hope, not as something already present, but as something that will certainly come to be in every way; and we wait for it with patience (Romans 8:25), enduring hardship, so that we may obtain so holy a gift.

Likewise the Spirit also helps… (Romans 8:26).

Not Knowing What to Pray For§26

26…our weaknesses, and so on (Romans 8:26). “But the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (Romans 8:26). It is our own spirit, plainly, that intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; for at times we groan when we are eager to make our supplications to God. So this too we learn in the Holy Spirit, for the Spirit is wise, just as the Son is.

But since he says, “We do not know what we should pray for as we ought” (Romans 8:26), let us look into this. And yet we have already been taught by Christ how we ought to pray, for he says plainly, “Pray, then, like this: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven” (Matthew 6:9–10), and all that follows. Since, then, we know the fitting way to make our supplications, tell me, what would be the sense of the apostle’s words? Or at what would the words spoken through Paul’s voice be aimed?

We say, then, that we do pray, seeking to ask for good things, and before all else for what serves the glory of God, and for the things by which we may live rightly and achieve a life that is truly approved. But “having the firstfruits of the Spirit, we ourselves also groan within ourselves, waiting for adoption, the redemption of the body” (Romans 8:23); and it is in this respect, at least, that “we do not know what we should pray for as we ought” (Romans 8:26). For if “no eye has seen and no ear has heard, nor has it entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9), what shall we ask for when we draw near? Or how could we know what we have not seen, or rather, things that lie beyond the mind and are not known to human hearts? What the redemption of the body will be, or what its refashioning is, and how it is re-formed into incorruption and glory, only he who is the craftsman of these things would know.

The Savior’s disciple, too, said somewhere to some who did not know how to pray as they ought, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your pleasures” (James 4:3). It would therefore be quite fitting, and with good reason, for those in such a state to say, “We do not know what we should pray for as we ought” (Romans 8:26). So with groanings too deep for words we ask in the spirit for things that we believe will come to be, though we are wholly ignorant of the manner in which they will come.

“We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to purpose” (Romans 8:28). All things do work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to purpose. But according to whose purpose? And what is meant by “according to purpose”? “According to purpose” would mean “according to will.” Then according to whose will have those under discussion been called: that of the one who called them, or also that of those who were called? Now every longing that carries us toward righteousness would come to us from God the Father; for Christ said somewhere (John 6:44), “No one can come to…

Foreknowledge Wrongs No One§27

27…me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44). Yet in this matter one would not miss what is fitting if one said that some have been called according to purpose, both the purpose of the one who called them and their own. “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed,” and so on (Romans 8:29). Many, he says, are called according to purpose, but not all are chosen (Matthew 22:14); only those have been honored who were also foreknown as those who would be conformed to the image of his Son.

What the image of his Son should be understood to be, the blessed Paul himself will make clear again, saying, “For just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, let us also bear the image of the heavenly one” (1 Corinthians 15:49). For those who have paid no heed to fleshly desires are the ones who have imitated the image of Christ, that is, the way of life and conduct that is in holiness. For just as we say that the image of the man of dust, that is, of Adam, is the life lived in disobedience and sins, so too the image of the heavenly one, that is, of Christ, is holiness, justification and obedience. All, then, who were foreknown as those who would, in their own times, be conformed to the life of Christ and be its imitators, so far as human nature allows, these have also been called. “And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified” (Romans 8:30).

It is not at all unlikely that some, carried away by ignorance, should make this matter a ready pretext for unbelief and say, “If those whom he foreknew according to purpose and predestined are the ones who have been called, it has nothing to do with us who have not yet believed; for we have not been called, nor have we been predestined.” To them we will say that the one who gave the wedding feast for his son sent his servants to gather those who had been called, but they would not come (Matthew 22:2–3). After them, those who were called according to their own purpose came in, and so the wedding hall was filled with guests (Matthew 22:10). So nothing is seen standing in the way of those who are willing to come. Foreknowledge does no wrong to anyone at all, nor does it give anyone an advantage. Otherwise, let them teach us whether those who in their disobedience outraged the God who called them were not foreknown as well. More than that, some were called and rushed into the wedding, yet they did not become chosen, nor were they justified or glorified. For what reason? Because they were not wearing a garment fit for the wedding (Matthew 22:11–12).

Besides, we shall find our Lord Jesus Christ himself saying openly, “Come to me, all who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). See, he was already calling all people to himself, and no one would be without a share in the grace of being called; for in saying “all” he sends no one away at all. “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son” (Romans 8:31–32). For those who have chosen to do good, all things work together, since God shields them. For he who did not spare the one who is his Son by nature, so that he might save those in danger and…

Paul’s Grief for Israel§28

28…set them free from dangers, how will he not also, with him, give us all things (Romans 8:32)? “Who will bring a charge against God’s chosen? It is God who justifies; who is the one who condemns?” (Romans 8:33–34). Perhaps Paul, with a wise purpose, does not let the minds of the called fall into helplessness, but teaches that they will be set free from their former sins and will be justified, as God grants it. For although every sin involves a transgression of the divine law and condemns the careless, yet if the Lord of the law himself forgives, who is the one who condemns the sinner?

“I am speaking the truth in Christ, I am not lying; my conscience bears witness with me” (Romans 9:1). In the beginning God made Israel his chosen one and even called him firstborn (Exodus 4:22). But they became boastful and insolent, and, what goes beyond even this, slayers of the Lord. That is why they have perished; for they have been sent away and cast out, and, having slipped wholly from their closeness to God, they have been placed behind the nations; and they have shown themselves strangers to the hope of the fathers.

Now the blessed Paul had been appointed a minister of the divine gospel and was proclaiming Jesus to the nations. Again and again he said that those of Israel’s blood had fallen away, and he insisted that those who were once in darkness and served demons had become called according to the purpose and foreknowledge of God. So that none of the less instructed might think he was all but leaping on his own kin as they lay fallen, and smiling over their fall, he makes a necessary defense and says, “I am speaking the truth in Christ, I am not lying,” and what follows (Romans 9:1).

Over those who have gone so far in perversity as to slip from their love for God, and then to suffer harsh penalties for it, one might well grieve; and to shed a tear for them out of fellow feeling would not be beyond reason; or rather, it is the fullness of love. But to wish even to be accursed from Christ on their behalf (Romans 9:3) goes beyond the measures of love. For no one, if he is in his right mind, would choose to offend God for the sake of the salvation of others, counting his own life as nothing while choosing that others should have it.

What, then, does he mean in putting forward his own salvation as the price of the salvation of the Jews? The statement is a hyperbole, and it gives proof of the most perfect love. “For I could wish,” he says, “that I myself were accursed from Christ for the sake of my brothers” (Romans 9:3). It is as if he were saying, “If Israel were saved by my offending Christ, I myself would have chosen it.” He who said to those justified in faith, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2); he who proclaims to all, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?” (Romans 8:35): to undergo so dreadful an evil, and one on behalf of…

Paul’s Grief and God’s Sure Word§29

29…for all, to go to destruction. This was the act of one who was drawing the Jews into ready obedience as with a net, and beating back the slanders of the foolish. For some of the Jews thought that the inspired Paul had, as it were, lost his mind and was setting himself against the laws given through Moses. That is why he writes to those who had believed, “For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you” (2 Corinthians 5:13).

So, he says, I for my part would very gladly choose to be accursed from Christ, if only I could save those of my own blood (Romans 9:3). Then he adds, as if to show that the cause of his grief over them is quite able to work such a disposition in him, so that he might not seem to have said something harsh and jarring in offering his own life in exchange for the life of others: For first, he says, they are Israelites; theirs are the adoption and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the worship and the promises; and from them, according to the flesh, comes Christ himself (Romans 9:4–5).

Now if they had been among those who had not known from ancient times the One who is God by nature and in truth, if the law given through Moses had not become for them the steward of their closeness to him, if they had not sprung from the root of the holy fathers and been made heirs of their good name, if they had not been the first to practice the ways of worshiping God and had not grown rich in the hopes of the promise, then one would have grieved over them more moderately. But since “theirs are the fathers,” and the rest (Romans 9:5), and since, when their affairs were all but running before a fair wind, they have fallen into an end no one expected and have missed their hope, how is what has befallen these wretched people not truly dreadful?

“But it is not as though the word of God has failed” (Romans 9:6). The statement is exact. For he says that the word of God has by no means proved false, that is, that it cannot fall away from the truth. For the God of all, as everyone agrees, promised Abraham at the beginning that he would be the father of many (Genesis 17:4–5), and again, “I will surely multiply your offspring like the stars of heaven in number” (Genesis 22:17).

Abraham, then, had to be shown to be the father not of those from Israel alone. For the nation that came from him was one, but the nations throughout the whole earth are past counting, and they too have been reckoned as Abraham’s children, if indeed they are of the promise and “walk in the footsteps of the faith” he had “in uncircumcision” (Romans 4:12), as it is written. For as blessed Paul himself says somewhere, “The promise to Abraham that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if those who are of the law are heirs,” he says, “faith has been emptied and the promise made void” (Romans 4:13–14).

Since, then, the offspring of Abraham has been reckoned as being in Isaac, that is, according to promise (Romans 9:7–8), for this is the word of promise, “About this time I will come, and Sarah shall have a son” (Romans 9:9), it would surely be plain that the children of the flesh would not, simply and in every case, be counted as children of God (Romans 9:8). Rather, it is the children of the promise, that is, those who come through faith, who would have that honor for themselves.

“And not only so, but also Rebecca, by one…” (Romans 9:10).

Jacob and Esau: Not Arbitrary Choice§30

30“…having conceived by our father Isaac” (Romans 9:10).

One should note that the aim of this sentence is by no means brought to completion; rather it is left hanging and needs a brief addition, that is, words to be understood, so that it may not appear to limp.

What I mean is this.

He had already shown, from the fact that Isaac was given to Abraham by promise, that the children of the flesh would not necessarily be counted to him as offspring, and that it would rather befit him to bear the name of father of those who are of faith and promise.

Then he takes up Rebecca and what happened in her case, and says, “And not only so,” that is, my argument will not stop at the birth of Isaac alone, “but also Rebecca, having conceived by one, our father Isaac” (Romans 9:10).

And he needed to add something like this: “will also be brought in as proof and assurance,” that is, “will serve as a pattern and image of the calling and grace that come by election and foreknowledge.”

For had something of that kind been added, his sentence would then have seemed complete.

But I do not know how he came to pass this over and go straight on to what was said and done at the birth of Isaac’s sons.

“What then shall we say? Is there injustice with God? By no means” (Romans 9:14), and so on, down to “he called us, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles” (Romans 9:24).

It was likely that some fault-finders would suppose that Jacob and Esau had met with an untested swing of will, and that the one was loved because God nodded assent out of personal favour, while the other was hated (Romans 9:13).

So the apostle of necessity does away in advance with this view of the matter as ruinous, and tries to speak in defence of the decrees from above, setting against his own words, as it were, what seems to oppose them.

For if, he says, even before the infants had done anything, before any testing of them and before any deeds, the one was thought worthy of love and the other was hated, and was even appointed to serve the younger (Romans 9:11–12), then perhaps, he says, God is even unjust.

And then how is this not senseless?

For if Jacob had not become a good man, if Esau had not been wicked, one might reasonably say that the foreknowledge had perhaps gone astray, and that what was determined for both of them was the work of a random impulse and an unsteady will.

But since Esau was very perverse and Jacob wise, God’s foreknowledge would do no wrong at all in granting, even ahead of time, to the one who was good in his ways that he should be loved, and to the one who was not such that he should be condemned.

For it would have been no hard thing for God to bear with them patiently and wait for the time of their deeds, so that each might be shown plainly by his own actions.

But since the mystery of grace by election and of the gift given in foreknowledge had to be sketched out beforehand, for that very reason God, our supreme craftsman in such things, put the moment to good use and all but seized it.

At the birth of the children he assured Isaac that, though he was the one and only son from Abraham, he would be the father of countless nations, those who are of the promise and who would be called in faith.

But if, in keeping with…

Who Are You to Answer God?§31

31…knowledge, he, as God, again has pity on those he may choose, or rather on those to whom it is fitting that mercy be shown, for he said somewhere to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion” (Exodus 33:19; Romans 9:15), then how will the matter not be beyond all reproach?

The apostle, I think, clearly foresaw that some would perhaps suppose that it is by God’s nod that some are good and others disobedient.

So of necessity he himself puts forward the objection that springs from their ignorance, and says, “So then it depends not on the one who wills, nor on the one who runs, but on God who has mercy” (Romans 9:16).

For if Esau was hated even before he had done anything wicked, and Jacob was honoured even before he came into being, and if again God has mercy on whom he has mercy, is it not then right to conclude that the one who runs or wills, that is, the one eager to do something good, gains nothing, and that everything about us hangs on the nods of God?

Then he heaps on top of these the words that could fix that opinion still more firmly, and says, “For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, ‘For this very purpose I raised you up, that I might show my power in you’” (Romans 9:17; Exodus 9:16).

To these he adds what is, as it were, the conclusion of the whole problem, and says, “So then he has mercy on whom he wills, and he hardens whom he wills” (Romans 9:18).

“You will say to me then, ‘Why does he still find fault? For who has resisted his will?’” (Romans 9:19).

What, then, was his way of answering?

It is very obscure, and perhaps even seems to support the objections they raise; yet it is enough to assure us that nothing could come from God that lies outside what is fitting.

For he gives to each what befits him: he pities and has mercy on those for whom mercy is fitting, and he subjects the wicked to punishment.

Yet his wrath does not follow the offences at once and on their heels; rather, a long patience goes before it, so that some even suppose that God has stopped caring about those on earth.

So Paul brings out his reply and stands up to those who say such things, directing the force of his words at the persons who had been brought forward, I mean Esau and also Pharaoh.

He spoke, then, as though to each of those he had named: “But who indeed are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is moulded say to the one who moulded it, ‘Why have you made me like this?’” (Romans 9:20).

For he shows, as from a plain example, that it is a very grave thing to find fault with God’s judgments.

For if anyone chooses to think as he ought, he will leave to God, who knows all things, the judging of each matter in whatever way God himself knows, and he will not doubt in the least that whatever God chooses to do is holy, as he shapes with full authority whatever concerns each one.

So he sharply blames those who bring a probing mind to bear at all on God’s decrees, as to whether they are right or not.

For they ought, he says, rather to imitate what is moulded by the potter’s hand, and to bear in silence what comes from God, for “what is moulded will not say to the one who moulded it, ‘Why have you made me like this?’” (Romans 9:20).

But perhaps some say this in reply as well: “If…”

Vessels Made by Their Own Choices§32

32“…like a potter, God moulds in whatever way he wishes, so as to make one vessel for honour and another for dishonour (Romans 9:21), how will reason not persuade anyone at all to think that whatever has come to be is in every way and wholly just as it was made? So one person has come into being for dishonour and has been allotted a nature of that kind, while another has been made, or rather raised up, hard, so that, as he himself says, his name may be proclaimed in all the earth (Exodus 9:16; Romans 9:17). What charge, then, can still be brought against those who fall? For they were made for this.”

To such arguments one might reply, first of all, that they could not claim that the force of these thoughts hints to us at differences of nature. For he did not say that some were made harsh and hardened, or made into vessels of honour and of dishonour, nor did he assign them such a nature at all. Rather, he leads us to think this: that some are moulded like vessels of clay, some for honour and some for dishonour; and we have been taught the meaning of the illustration from the words of the prophets. In what way, then, some are moulded as if by a potter, some for honour and others for dishonour, and for what causes, anyone may learn by reading the words of Jeremiah. It is written thus:

“Arise and go down to the potter’s house, and there you will hear my words. And I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was, making a piece of work on the stones. And the vessel that he was making fell in his hands; and again he made it into another vessel, as it seemed good in his sight to make it. And the word of the Lord came,” he says, “to me, saying: Shall I not be able to make you as this potter does, house of Israel? Look, like the potter’s clay, you are in my hands. At last I will speak against a nation or against a kingdom, to root them out; and that nation will turn from all its evils, and I will relent concerning the evils that I planned to do to them. And at last I will speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to build it up and to plant it; and they will do evil before me, so as not to hear my voice, and I will relent concerning the good things that I said I would do for them” (Jeremiah 18:2–10).

Do you see how some are moulded for honour and for dishonour, not because they were allotted a nature made that way, but because they receive an equal and fitting return for what they do? So if the Maker of all punishes the one who passes from good ways to more shameful ones, and crowns with honours the one who moves from the more shameful to the better, how is it not true to say that some have by no means become evil by nature, or been moulded so by him, but have rather become vessels of dishonour because, though it was open to them to choose to win approval with God, they fell sick with a willing inclination toward evil? But…

Why Pharaoh Was Raised Up§33

33…he himself, someone says, hardened Pharaoh’s heart (Exodus 9:12); and indeed he said to him, “For this very purpose I raised you up, that I might show my power in you” (Exodus 9:16; Romans 9:17). If, then, he both hardens some and raises them up, who are vessels of wrath and are said to be prepared for destruction (Romans 9:22), “why does he still find fault? For who has resisted his will?” (Romans 9:19). And how could the one hardened by him have become good?

What, then, could I say to this? To know the truth, it is enough to be settled in the conviction that God could never be the maker of evil things; for all that he made was very good (Genesis 1:31). If, then, they insist that the Egyptian was not a human being and did not share the same nature as we do, let them prove it, and we too will keep silent. But if he was like us, let them either openly accuse the divine voice of not seeing what is good and what is not; or, if they shudder at that, let them confess that the things he brought into existence are good. In this way they will reject that most rash opinion.

The words spoken to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I raised you up” (Exodus 9:16), do not mean “I created you” or “I made you”, but rather “I called you forth, to the point of choosing to set yourself against me”; and this not at the start of his life, but when Moses was being sent to redeem Israel. On what grounds, and for what reason, the all-wise Paul will make plain to us: “For God,” he says, “desiring to show his wrath,” and the rest (Romans 9:22).

In times long past the whole earth had gone astray. Some worshipped the creation (Romans 1:25); others made an object of reverence of whatever seemed good to them. At length Abraham was called to knowledge, and so the race descended from him sprang up, devoted to the worship of God. But when they too went down into Egypt and then spent a long time there, they slid into deception and worshipped the gods of the land. Yet God remembered what he had promised to the fathers (Exodus 2:24). Moses had been appointed to the mission, to release Israel from slavery; but it was necessary, both for those called to worship him and for all on earth, not only to learn that after long ages the God of the Hebrews had been made manifest, but also to be confirmed by surpassing wonders in faith in him and in the conviction that he is not, like the other gods, voiceless and powerless, but rather himself steers the universe, and that wrath strikes those who act against his will.

Yet, on the other hand, God, wishing to work wonders, had to be seen to have good grounds for doing so. So Pharaoh was raised up to resist, by God’s providential ordering, and grew hard against the divine power. For this reason he was punished, and not unjustly: for he was unholy and an idolater, he maltreated Israel with clay and brickmaking (Exodus 1:14), and he made toil their wage. Therefore he was of necessity named a vessel of wrath, and was prepared for destruction (Romans 9:22), that is, …

The Remnant and the Stone of Stumbling§34

34…he drove so far into wicked ways as to be from then on a vessel of wrath and of destruction. God made use of this man to display the strength that is in himself, so that his name might be proclaimed in all the earth (Romans 9:17), and so that Pharaoh, when he suffered, might be seen to deserve his suffering; for suffering was owed to him for his first sins, even if he had not offended by his later ones. So let every reproach and every idle charge against God be dismissed. For “desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, he endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction” (Romans 9:22), in order to benefit vessels of mercy (Romans 9:23), that is, those who have received mercy through faith; for we have been called not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles (Romans 9:24).

“As indeed he says in Hosea” (Romans 9:25). We too, the servants of idols, who did not know the one who is God by nature and in truth, were not his people (Hosea 2:23); but we have received mercy through faith, have come under him, have been called through grace, and have been justified and sanctified through Christ.

“Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea” (Romans 9:27). So even if Israel were as many as the sand, “the remnant will be saved” (Romans 9:27; Isaiah 10:22), that is, those who have been justified through faith in Christ; and this has come about because God had mercy on them. “For he is completing and cutting short the word” (Romans 9:28). He saved, he says, by “completing and cutting short the word”; that is, he declared to us the preaching of the gospel as an apt and concise and, so to speak, cut-short saying. For the law and the prophets, by a long circuit of words, scarcely set before us through the letter the meaning of what they say; but the preaching of the gospel is simple and a word cut short.

“But Israel, pursuing a law of righteousness” (Romans 9:31). In giving the reasons why not all the Jews have been saved, he at once weaves wonder into his argument and says: What a strange thing! The crowd of those who had gone astray, with no aim at all of doing good, has been justified (Romans 9:30), while Israel, though trained toward righteousness by the law given through Moses, missed its hope and has had no share in the gift that leads to it (Romans 9:31). What the cause is, then, is plain: they did not accept salvation through faith and justification in Christ, but thought that the boasts they had, as in shadows, were enough for them (Romans 9:32).

“A stone of stumbling” (Romans 9:33). Surely we do not say that Christ was set in Israel for this purpose; but since this was foreknown to God, he of necessity foretold what was to be: that a cause of slipping would lie in the foundations of Zion, and that some of the foolish would fall upon it and suffer this from their disobedience (Isaiah 8:14; Isaiah 28:16). He made the prediction for their benefit, not that they should stumble, but that, knowing it beforehand, they might rise above the evil. So Christ has been laid as a precious stone (Isaiah 28:16); but for those who stumble out of unbelief the loss was ruin, while for those who have believed the gain is life and justification.

“For I bear them witness” (Romans 10:2). He bears them witness, then, to their zeal for God; yet he convicts them of having gone astray, because, when they ought to have marvelled at Christ, from the works he was doing, as being by nature…

Christ the End of the Law§35

35…God, they said instead, “It is not for a good work that we stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God” (John 10:33). Or it may be read in this way: they have not known the righteousness that comes from God (Romans 10:3), that is, Christ, or else the righteousness that comes through faith in him. Supposing that they were fighting side by side with the law given through Moses, they remained disobedient, not seeking the Son who is able to set free (John 8:36), who justifies the ungodly (Romans 4:5), and who, in his saving dispensation, cuts short the righteousness of the law, so hard to achieve, to give release from hardship and toil.

“For Christ is the end of the law” (Romans 10:4). The law, then, was brought in beforehand to be a tutor for the people of old, leading them to the mystery of Christ (Galatians 3:24), and to give them glimpses of the truth through riddles. That is how we define Christ as the fulfilment of the law and the prophets, and quite rightly. Or would not the truth reasonably be understood to be the fulfilment of every obscure riddle? And how could anyone doubt it? So the passage from what was in shadows to the truth does not do away with the laws given through Moses; rather, it makes their meaning clearer.

Now that things have passed over into truth, and what was in types and riddles has been changed for the better, we do not say that the law has been abolished, but rather that it has been brought to completion at the time when the truth, that is, Christ, shone upon us. For Christ is the end of the law and the prophets, and he would not speak falsely when he says, “I did not come to abolish the law but to fulfil it” (Matthew 5:17). For just as the many colours, added in due time, by no means do away with the shadowy outlines first sketched on painted panels, but rather bring them into clearer view, in the same way we say that the shadows of the law have not been overturned, but rather brought to completion, as in an advance toward the truth.

“For Moses writes of the righteousness that is from the law,” and the rest (Romans 10:5). “For Moses writes,” he says, “of the righteousness that is from the law, that the person who does it shall live by it” (Romans 10:5; Leviticus 18:5). But there was no one at all who could carry it out blamelessly; for “who will understand transgressions?” (Psalm 19:12). So the grace that justifies is better, and it frees us from the indictment that stands in the law.

“But the righteousness that is from faith speaks thus” (Romans 10:6). He usefully lays down how faith should be practised on our part, if it is to be blameless before God and to seem very well done indeed. For to doubt at all, and to be given to being tossed about into feeble double-mindedness, is utterly to be rejected; and it is perhaps superfluous, and among the most dangerous things of all, to think one must pry into what lies beyond all reason and above our understanding. For how could the things God works in ways beyond words be plain to see? And what eye of the heart could be so great as to be able to behold God? Or rather, who will understand, even if someone chose to speak and set out things that are very far above us? For…

Faith, and Israel Not Cast Off§36

36…our Lord Jesus Christ once set before Nicodemus the words about spiritual rebirth, and he said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born from above, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:3, 5). [Then he added to these the words that follow.] But when Nicodemus understood nothing at all, then indeed Christ, showing how far the dullness of the human mind stands from the fineness of these thoughts, says, “If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” (John 3:12). And to these he added, “Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and bear witness to what we have seen, and no one receives our testimony” (John 3:11).

So the things that are beyond us are not to be put to the test. For if it is true that “we find with difficulty the things that are in our hands,” as it is written (Wisdom of Solomon 9:16), how can we not see that, in matters beyond reason at least, faith is of the greatest use, with no inquiry following after it and no idle questioning brought to bear? For it is by understanding that matters of this kind are splendidly honoured.

“Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame” (Romans 10:11), and the rest. Let Israel not make salvation through faith its own private good. For, he says, “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13), whether he is a Jew or a Greek, a slave or free. The God of all saves without distinction, for all things are his. In this sense we say that all things are summed up in Christ (Ephesians 1:10).

“Has God rejected his people? By no means” (Romans 11:1). Paul acts wisely. Although Israel had suffered the darkening, he does not let it be hardened still further by utter despair, but he goes after it, as it were, with skill and with kind words. For just now he was accusing Israel of disobedience; yet he does not strip it of the hope that comes from above, nor does he say that it has been wholly thrust out of its closeness to God.

And he makes the proof of the matter plain by setting himself forward as an Israelite and of the seed of Abraham (Romans 11:1). Most aptly, too, he still calls them God’s people, and he adds “By no means” to the words about being rejected. This was the act of one who, as it were, gently wins over those who had chosen to disobey, coming round them with coaxing words and bringing them to a devout and teachable habit of mind. If, then, it is evident that he himself has been called to apostleship, and has been appointed a minister of the sacred mysteries of the Saviour, a herald and apostle to the nations (1 Timothy 2:7), although he is from Israel, it is plain that “God has not rejected his people” (Romans 11:2).

“Or do you not know what the Scripture says in the story of Elijah?” (Romans 11:2). Most fittingly he brings in the account of Elijah as a kind of picture of what had happened to Israel. For from the likeness of the events of that time one can easily see that Israel itself has acted outrageously, to its own harm. When Ahab reigned over Samaria, things carved by hand were worshipped by Israel beyond all bounds, and there were sacrifices and sacred precincts everywhere (1 Kings 16:29–33). Those who held fast to God were utterly afraid, and so hard to bear…

A Remnant Chosen by Grace§37

37…was the persecution they endured that prophets even hid in caves and in clefts of the rocks (1 Kings 18:4), at the time when Elijah himself fled into the deep wilderness and fell down before God, saying, “They have torn down your altars, they have killed your prophets, and I alone am left, and they seek my life” (Romans 11:3; 1 Kings 19:10). And at once he heard in answer to this, “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal” (Romans 11:4; 1 Kings 19:18).

But just as then it was not God who drove Israel into such dreadful impieties, but they slipped down of themselves, following their own folly, so now again, when God the Father set before all the salvation that comes through Christ and thrust no one away at all, they slipped of their own will into apostasy, having pushed aside the Redeemer. So God has not rejected his people (Romans 11:2); for, as I said, he set before them the chance to share in the salvation that comes through Christ, if only they would choose it.

“But if by grace, it is no longer from works,” and the rest (Romans 11:6). “But if by grace,” he says, “it is no longer from works; otherwise grace is no longer grace.” Where, he says, someone supposes that he wins approval from works, there the name and the reality of grace will surely be pointless and superfluous; for, he says, “to the one who works, the wage is not counted as grace but as what is owed” (Romans 4:4). So if grace comes from works, it is no longer grace.

“What then? Israel did not obtain what it seeks” (Romans 11:7). He had said, “God has not rejected his people” (Romans 11:2). But since some were likely to rise up against this, putting forward, no doubt, this objection and saying, “Yet how has God not rejected his people, if Israel has slipped away, even if not entirely and completely, yet at least in part? For a remnant has been saved, and that by election” (Romans 11:5), he meets them again, and very wisely, and says, “What then?”, that is, what do I say to this? “Israel did not obtain what it seeks, but the elect obtained it, and the rest were hardened” (Romans 11:7).

For Israel sought justification from the law; but how, he says, could it be justified, when the law had brought no one to perfection (Hebrews 7:19)? So Israel sought the justification that comes through the type, but did not obtain it; yet those who were picked out and set apart from the rest because of their readiness to obey did obtain it, for they have been justified through faith. But the rest have been hardened, that is, the stubborn and those who would not be corrected.

“And David says, ‘Let their table become a snare,’” and the rest (Romans 11:9; Psalm 69:22). “Let their table become a snare,” he says, and what follows. To prove what he has said he also brings in a prophetic text, and that of not one prophet but two, to confirm it, “so that every word may be established by the mouth of two or three witnesses” (Matthew 18:16; Deuteronomy 19:15). For their table has become accursed, and quite rightly: that is, the cruel welcome and the savagery that they showed toward Christ at the time of his crucifixion; for when he was thirsty, they brought him vinegar mixed with gall (Psalm 69:21; Matthew 27:34). For this reason they were also darkened in mind (Romans 11:10) and are bent down, picturing only the things on the earth.

“I say then, have they stumbled so as to fall? By no means” (Romans 11:11). I admire your gentleness, inspired Paul, for you handle words of wise tact with great skill…

Israel Provoked to Jealousy§38

38…insisting that the nations were not called for this reason, that Israel, having stumbled against Christ as against a stone (Romans 9:32–33), should fall away altogether from its hope in God, but rather so that, moved to jealousy by those who had been received beyond all expectation (Romans 11:11), they might choose to unlearn their baser ways, think better than before, and so receive the Redeemer.

A short example will make the point. Children who are small and not yet grown sometimes fall into the sulks that suit those who are still infants. Then they run a little way off from father or mother, pour tears from their eyes for no real cause, and grieve their parents not a little; for the law of natural affection brings them to this. And then the parents, skilfully drawing them away from their pettiness and childish folly, simply catch up any child who happens to be near and give it the marks of their own affection, so making their own child jealous and, as it were, provoking it to turn back and love them. Something of this kind, as I think, is what the inspired Paul said had been done, since he does not allow anyone to despair of Israel, though it has stumbled.

“Now if their trespass means riches for the world” (Romans 11:12). For if, he says, the world has been enriched with closeness to God because Israel stumbled, and the nations were received because Israel lacked a right mind, what then would their acceptance be, if not very nearly the undoing of death and life from the dead?

“If somehow I may make my flesh jealous” (Romans 11:14). So he draws the believers from the nations and from the Jews into one mind and peace, so that they may not be puffed up, but may offer their thanks to God, who freely granted the forgiveness of their trespasses and bore no grudge. He says that he glorifies his own ministry (Romans 11:13), not from a desire for empty glory, but, he says, “so that I may make my flesh jealous.” Here again he calls Israel his own flesh, that is, his kin according to the flesh. It is much as if he were to say: “I declare my apostleship to be glorious, worthy, and most dear to God, and most needful to all who live under the sun, not so that I might be seen crowning my own head with empty honours and outlandish boasting, but so that I might save my own kin according to the flesh.” He all but pricks them with jealousy as with a goad, and rouses them to resolve that they must be justified by the grace that comes through Christ.

“For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?” (Romans 11:15). Since, then, there was no way to praise Israel for its faith or its conduct, he turned to the reasoning of the economy, and says that their unbelief has become for the world the means of its closeness to God. He tries to say that by the very things in which they stumbled they have perhaps even become benefactors of the world; and so he crowns the Jews, as it were, though they have fallen and lie on the ground. For he says that their acceptance is life from the dead, if indeed it is true that their rejection has become the reconciliation of the world.

“If you continue” (Romans 11:22). So it was with skill that the argument…

The Fullness of the Nations and All Israel§39

39…was constructed by the apostle. For he sets Israel right, since it had fallen short of what was fitting, and he urges it toward what is to its profit, and to lay claim to its own root through faith in Christ. He also says that those from the nations have been honoured by God, and he urges them to stand firm in faith and godliness: for if you remain so, you remain a noble branch of the holy root; but if you disobey, you too will be outside the root (Romans 11:16–22).

“Until the fullness of the nations has come in; and so all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:25–26). Look again at this and consider it closely. He said that the fullness of the nations would come in and all Israel would be saved. But suppose someone chose to answer this: “Yet many of the nations have died in unbelief; how, then, has the fullness of the nations come in? Nor will all Israel be saved, if it is true that the Jews will receive the son of lawlessness (2 Thessalonians 2:3), having cast away their love for Christ. For He Himself said this: ‘I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me; if another comes in his own name, him you will receive’ (John 5:43). And the most wise Paul says: ‘Because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved, therefore God sends them a working of error, so that they believe the lie’ (2 Thessalonians 2:10–11).”

What, then, shall we say to this? We say that, since God has set the grace that comes through faith before all without stint and shuts out no one at all, how has the fullness of the nations not come in, as far as the mind and purpose of the One who called is concerned? For if some have slipped aside of their own will and missed the gift, we shall not on that account find the word of Scripture to be false. For though they were free to share in the gifts once given, why did they choose of their own will to fall away? So, as far as the gentleness and love for mankind of the One who called is concerned, the fullness of the nations has come in, and all Israel too has been saved. But since they have become unbending, for that reason he says that a hardening has come upon them in part (Romans 11:25).

“As it is written: ‘The Deliverer will come from Zion’” (Romans 11:26; Isaiah 59:20). He confirms the hope that even rejected Israel is to be saved in due time, by setting out a sacred oracle. For Israel will be saved in due time, called last, after the calling of those from the nations.

“Enemies for your sake” (Romans 11:28). As far as the preaching of the gospel is concerned, they have become enemies, for they stumbled through their impiety toward Christ. But because of the nobility of the fathers, who were honoured as holy and dear to God, they may be reckoned beloved for the fathers’ sake. Yet they have become enemies so that a cause of jealousy might be set before those who disbelieved.

“For just as you once disobeyed God,” and so on (Romans 11:30). He shows that the charges against both are equal, and that those from the nations and Israel alike have been healed by one grace. For Israel was called in its time through Moses and rescued from its misery in Egypt; but the worshippers of demons, that is, the nations,…

Mercy on All, and Foods Clean by Nature§40

40…whom we may understand as signified by the Egyptians, for a time disobeyed the mercy shown to those of Israel. For they did not believe the divine signs worked through Moses; they would not know the God of the Hebrews. The people of the Jews was sent out, though barely, to offer sacrifice in the wilderness, while the Egyptians held fast to their ancient error. But now they have received mercy, since Israel has stumbled; and Israel in turn has disobeyed the mercy shown to the nations, so that it too may receive mercy in due time (Romans 11:30–31).

So, as I said, the charges against both are equal, and both alike have needed the help of the One who shows compassion. And he says that all have been shut up in disobedience by God, so that He may have mercy on all (Romans 11:32). Yet we shall by no means reckon it the work of the divine will that some disobeyed, so that, having fallen into this, they might also be pitied. Rather, He shut them up in disobedience by showing them to be liable to the charges of disobedience, and convicted, as it were, by the facts themselves; so that they had come at last to such misfortune that they all but stood in need of pity and mercy.

“I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus,” and so on (Romans 14:14). “I know and am persuaded,” he says, “in the Lord Jesus that nothing is common of itself,” and the rest. The witness who firmly declares that he knows and is persuaded is trustworthy. He adds “in the Lord Jesus” so that the truth may be established still more firmly, and so that his hearers may follow in faith without any hesitation. No doubt he remembers that Christ said, “It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a man” (Matthew 15:11), and that all food passes into the stomach and is sent out into the drain (Matthew 15:17); this is its nature and its use. So, as far as their own nature goes, nothing that serves as food is common or profane, “for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer” (1 Timothy 4:5).

And we remember that when God had brought all things into being, He saw, it says, that they were “very good” (Genesis 1:31), and He blessed them (Genesis 1:22). Since God praised and indeed blessed His own creatures, who would dare to say that they cause defilement and profanation, and not thereby bring a charge against the very One who brought them into being? So nothing that has been made is common by nature at all. But if someone should think that anything is common, for that very reason he himself has been made common, and has caught the profanation, as it were, in his own judgment. For all things are clean (Romans 14:20); what makes the unbeliever common is his little faith about certain things, and not at all the things themselves that he has supposed to be common.

For just as, to those mature in mind, there is one God by nature and no other beside Him, and an idol is nothing in the world (1 Corinthians 8:4), and food offered to idols is counted as nothing (for how could one who does not know an idol know food offered to idols?), while to those who think there are many gods there will certainly be such a thing as food offered to idols (1 Corinthians 8:5–7), so, for those who have believed, the things that come from God are unprofaned and clean, and nothing at all is common by nature, and what is left wholly free is…

Stooping to the Weak§41

41…the use of foods. But for those who have not yet come to this judgment, these things are not yet clean, by what seems right to them; they are common, because their mind somehow limps on the way to the truth.

“So do not let your good be spoken of as evil” (Romans 14:16). Let not the brilliance of those who are well approved lift itself up over the weak, nor let your good, that is, what is admirable in your faith, be spoken ill of by anyone. For the achievements of a life pleasing to God would not come about through eating (Romans 14:17), nor would such a person be worthy of the kingdom of heaven, as one who reveres God, if he eats without distinction whatever is set before him; rather, the one who is worthy is he who stoops to the weakness of his weak brothers and abstains.

For even if Paul blamed Peter for living like a Jew because of those who had come to Antioch from James (Galatians 2:11–14), he did not blame him for stooping to the weakness of those of the circumcision and abstaining from foods. He blamed him because, by the weight of his own standing, he was drawing the many believers from the nations into thinking that they had to live according to the law, and Paul’s preaching was in danger of coming to nothing; for he was the teacher of the nations.

“All things indeed are clean, but it is wrong for the one who eats and gives offence” (Romans 14:20).

Abstaining for a Brother, and One Body§42

42For it is lawful to eat meat and to drink wine, but freedom in these things is not altogether without harm (Romans 14:21). Abstaining is also useful, so that we do not fatten the flesh with soft living and make the passions within it rage wild against ourselves. If, then, we abstain from these things for our own sake, much more for our brother’s, so that he may not stumble, because of the saying, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18).

“Therefore receive one another, as Christ also received you, for the glory of God” (Romans 15:7). We who are many are one body, and members of one another, as it is written (Romans 12:5), since Christ binds us together into unity with the bonds of love: “For He Himself is the one who made both one and broke down the dividing wall of partition, abolishing the law of commandments in ordinances” (Ephesians 2:14–15). So we must be of the same mind toward one another (Romans 12:16); and if one member suffers, all the members must suffer with it, and if one member is honoured, all the members must rejoice (1 Corinthians 12:26). That is why he says, “Receive one another, as Christ also received you, for the glory of God.” And we shall receive one another if we choose to be of the same mind, bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2), and keep “the unity of the…”

Christ the Servant of the Promise§43

43…“of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3). So too God has received us in Christ (Romans 15:7). For he spoke the truth who said that the world was so loved by God the Father that the Son Himself was given for us (John 3:16). For He was given as the price exchanged for the life of us all, and by death we have obtained reconciliation, and we have been redeemed from death and sin.

And Paul makes clear the aim of the economy when he says that Christ became a servant of the circumcision for the sake of the truth, and the rest (Romans 15:8). For since God had promised beforehand to the fathers of the Jews that He would bless the offspring that was to come from them, and that it would be “like the stars of heaven in number” (Genesis 22:17), for this reason the Word, being God, appeared in the flesh and became man. He is the very one who holds all creation together in being and, as God, grants well-being to all that exists. He came into this world with flesh, yet, as He Himself says, not to be served, “but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28).

Yet He plainly confessed that He had come to fulfil the promise to Israel, for He said, “I was sent only to the lost…” (Matthew 15:24)

Mercy Widened to the Nations§44

44…sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 15:24). So Paul does not speak falsely when he says that Christ became a servant from the circumcision to confirm the promises made to the fathers (Romans 15:8), and that besides this He was appointed by God the Father for mercy also to those from the nations, so that they too might glorify the Saviour and Redeemer as the Maker and Craftsman of all things (Romans 15:9).

For it was needful, truly needful, since the circumcision in its great disobedience insulted Him wickedly and would not accept the redemption He gave, that the unspeakable grace of God should not seem to have achieved nothing, when those from Israel who had believed and been saved were few, a bare handful. For this reason, as the calm that comes from above was spread wide, as it were, over all, the nations were received. And the mystery of the wisdom that is in Christ is seen not to have missed its aim, an aim set on kindness. For in place of those who had slipped, the whole world under heaven has been saved, because God had compassion.

And that the mystery had been proclaimed beforehand by the voice of holy men who foreknew in the Spirit what was to come, he establishes by setting out the prophecies most plainly (Romans 15:9–12).