Divine Sovereignty and the Law

For he was not sufficient to die for us, but he also acts as an ambassador for the Father on our behalf. And it is clear that he encounters these things just as he used to encounter humans according to the flesh; for he was saying of the Father, 'I want that where I am, they also may be' (cf. John 14:3); before this, the Savior encounters them. Nor does he encounter them as if teaching while ignoring the Father, nor as if not willing; for what the Father wills, the Son also wills. What then is the purpose of the ambassadorship and the encounter? The word cuts ahead of the impious doctrine of Sabellius, teaching how, even if the essence is one of the Trinity, it is not one hypostasis; for through the encounter, the one asking and the other being asked are shown. It is not strange that the Son should ask and the Father should grant, so that a fitting order may be preserved regarding both persons. Or was it not incongruous, knowing the will of the Father, for the Son of the Father to reach the gift and to give the grace by seizing it? In the same way, indeed all things were created through the Son, but by the will of the Father, so that the whole following and fitting order may be preserved regarding both persons. Therefore the word teaches us the unmixed order concerning the Father and the Son; and if one even considers Christ in the flesh as asking, the word will appear much more clearly to you.

Having clearly shown how God feels toward us and the love of his Son (cf. Romans 8:37), he teaches followingly, whom then it is necessary for the grateful to be toward the benefactor, so that even those who are most fearful may not be able to separate us from Christ. Some think there is a solution to this, especially Asterius the Cappadocian, thinking thus: 'You who argue against me, how do you argue? Not from the authority according to the will? Do you not respond to God, wanting to show that God does not compel and make men righteous? For authority remains with humans' (cf. Romans 9:20-21). But such a thought has no logic, for it leads to this: 'Does the creature say to the Creator: Why did you make me thus?' But this does not show that we are in authority, but rather the opposite. What then is the meaning? This is said from 'possession,' not a solution is set. And what is that from 'possession'? But most of all, who are you? For let us hold that we do not even have will, nor to be self-determining.

Did God not have authority as He wished? But a potter indeed fashions some for honor and others for dishonor, yet God does not have the authority that the potter has, so as to honor whom He wants and to punish whom He wills? Having said this out of surplus, he subsequently makes the solution.

He speaks of a demonstration of wrath (Rom 9:22), which He forgives to men through long-suffering, allowing them to do what they want; but he speaks of men as vessels of wrath prepared for destruction (Rom 9:22), who are under the limit of death. Some others indeed, regarding the 'but if God, desiring to show His wrath and the following,' answered, 'what do you know?'; they gave an answer that is thought to be deficient from the outside. And 'in much long-suffering' he brought forth the wrath instead of 'with much long-suffering.'

Christ is not as a part of the law, but as a beginning of another life (Rom 10:4). Therefore it is said that the end of the law, as having become the end of the law, is this: that He stopped it (Rom 10:4). So there are two ends of the law, because He used it and because He stopped it. And to everyone who believes, instead of not only to the Jew but also to the Greek, not because the end of the law is already for the Jew alone.

Having mentioned the cultivated and the wild (Rom 11:24), he showed that there is one nature for all, just as with the olive tree; not one choice, as with the wild and the cultivated; the wild one, having been uprooted, is ugly and useless to the master, but the cultivated one is fruit-bearing. And he calls the grafting 'being grafted in the faith of Abraham,' whom he names the root; and he says that the grafting provides life.

However, it is spoken deficiently, which is why it is also disconnected (Rom 11:28-29). Thus it is, so that from the comparison toward you, the Jews are convicted to be enemies of God (Rom 11:28-29), because you, the Gentiles, believed, but those who owed to believe above all things hardened their heart; and according to this very reason they are enemies of God, but beloved because of the fathers, for whose sake He will show philanthropy toward their descendants, and He will consider those believing and having shown a citizenship to be beloved, able to save.

The present state of the world is turned toward luxuries and pleasures (Rom 12:2), which anyone may refuse the pattern of, and will change himself into a transformed self and a foreign citizenship. As having become a new man from one to another.