1:3 Concerning his Son, who originated from the seed of David according to [175] the flesh.
And he says that he who has originated “from the seed of David according to the flesh” was declared to be the Son of God “in power according to the Spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead.” Now we too were declared to be sons—not “in power,” but by having a share of grace. We are considered worthy of our calling and gain that possession only by the will of God the Father.2 This would not be the case with Emmanuel, however. Far from it! Even though he originated “from the seed of David according to the flesh” and like one of us is considered to be son of God on account of his human nature, he is nevertheless the natural Son “in power” and in truth. Through him, we too are made sons. If indeed it is true to say this (since we are enriched by his Spirit through holy baptism), [176] then—then!—do we say without reproach, “Abba! Father!”3 Therefore, as images are related to the archetype, so also we who are sons by adoption are related to him who is attested to be from the Father by nature, “in power,” and truly.
1:20 His eternal power and divine nature.
How is his “eternal power” recognized through the creation? Creatures have a corruptible nature. Since they have been brought into being and called into existence in time, their creator will surely be incorruptible and eternal. That is why they will have no excuse on the day of judgment.
3:3-4 Will their unfaithfulness nullify the faithfulness of God?
Those who were foreknown and who received the law as a teacher and have the promises about Christ were more honored than the others. In fact, they have been separated from the others and called ahead of them. As the Savior said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”4 They have become the firstfruits of those who are saved through faith. Now if some of them have fallen away from the faith due to their own madness, he is saying, God would not on that account be less than truthful, would he? So the Father sent the Son from heaven, but not everyone believed in him. But just because some became insolent and faithless, will that make God untrue? “By no means! Although everyone is a liar, let God be proved true.” Instead of thinking and claiming that the truth is on our side, let us indict every person, as it were, with the charge of lying. The divine nature is completely free of turning and change,5 but human nature has been shaken to the core and everyone is, at least potentially, [177] a liar. Sometimes the sin of lying overcomes the human mind and human nature contracts this disease, as it were. It is not right, however, to think or say such a thing about almighty God. The charge, then, must be true that human nature, or more specifically the human mind, can succumb to lying. Even the blessed David says somewhere: “I said in my amazement, ‘Everyone is a liar!’”6 The same statement about God and us could be made in the case of all other attributes as well. For example, when it comes to righteousness, one could say (and not without reason), “Although everyone is unrighteous, let God be proved righteous.”
3:5-8 If our unrighteousness confirms the righteousness of God. . . .
The pretext for such a slanderous statement came about as follows. After the return from Babylon, the Israelites were commanded by Cyrus to rebuild the temple and to offer prayers and sacrifices, but they were lazy. They made excuses because of their poverty and the hardship of their captivity. Therefore, they were chastised with a punishment commensurate with the crime: famine and drought. But they were very upset by these calamities. They began to consider other races, who did not serve God, to be blessed because those races lived their lives in happiness. They even began to say that the other peoples were better off than they were. For example, the prophet Malachi said to them, “‘You have spoken harsh words against me,’ says the Lord. Yet you say, ‘How have we spoken against you?’ You have said, ‘It is vain to serve God. What do we profit by keeping his command or by walking as suppliants before the Lord Almighty? Now we count aliens happy, and those who practice lawlessness are fortified. They oppose God, yet they are delivered.’ Those who feared the Lord said these things [178] to each other, and the Lord paid attention and listened to them.”7 That is why, he says, some thought that the Jews were saying, “Let us do evil that good may result.” And indeed their condemnation is deserved, he says, whether it is the condemnation of those who allege these things about the Jews or those who actually dare to say, “Let us do evil that good may result.”
3:21-25 But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed.
I know that it is written concerning some that “both of them were righteous, walking blamelessly in the commandments and regulations of Christ.”8 Moreover, the blessed Paul said that he “was blameless as to the righteousness of the law.”9 Yet he who was blameless in these matters had not yet accomplished what would make him glorious and renowned. Indeed, the blessed Paul himself went on to say that he counted all things related to the law to be “loss” and he considered them the same as “rubbish.” Instead, he would seek the “surpassing value of knowing Christ.”10 Furthermore, the law condemns transgressors. Somewhere else he says, “If there is glory in the ministry of condemnation, how much more does the ministry of righteousness abound in glory!”11 Since the demands of the law are very great, even the most scrupulous keeper of the law must stumble at some points and become a transgressor of the law. Yes, the divinely inspired disciples have explicitly confessed that the law is truly burdensome. 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?”12 So when the Greeks were under sin because they did not know the Creator and the Jews were under sin because they were guilty of transgressing the law, everyone on earth needed Christ, who justifies. For we have been justified “not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his great [179] mercy.”13 After all, he was the same one who said long ago through the voice of the prophets, “I am he who blots out your transgressions, and I will not remember them.”14 And so justifying grace rushes to everyone alike (I mean Jews and Greeks) because “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The “glory of God” may reasonably be understood as neither knowing sin nor being of such a nature that you sin. The entire originate creation is surely inferior to the glories of the divine nature. Even some of the angels fell, after all. Yet God the Father was pleased “to gather up all things in Christ,”15 who justifies “freely by his grace.” God put him forward as a “propitiation by his blood, through faith.” Since he has offered his own blood in exchange for the life of all, he has saved the life of those under heaven, and he has rendered God the Father in heaven propitious and favorable toward us.
3:27 Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded.
Who on earth can boast, and what will they boast about, since all have become useless and have left the straight road and there is no one at all who does good? That is why he says that boasting is “excluded”; that is, it is cast off and taken away and has no place among us. And how is it excluded? We have become rich with the remission of our former sins since we are justified freely by the mercy and grace that are in Christ.
3:31 Do we then overthrow the law by faith?
The God of the universe said to the divinely inspired Moses, “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers; I will put my word in his mouth, and he will speak to them just as I command. Anyone who does not heed the words that [180] the prophet shall speak in my name, I will take vengeance16 on him.”17 So when we believe his word, how could we not also be upholding the law through faith? Now Emmanuel was designated a prophet because of his humanity since, like Moses, he is a mediator between God and human beings.18 Furthermore, the law was in shadows, but it labors to give birth to the form of the truth. The truth does not take away the types, but gives them more clarity.
4:2 For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.
I suppose it is inevitable, someone has remarked, that those who busy themselves with this statement about our forefather Abraham would say the following: One of the holy disciples said somewhere that apart from works, faith is dead.19 He then adds, “Do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith apart from works is dead? Was not our father Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar?”20 So do the Spirit-bearers contradict one another? What shall we say to this? When he had already reached old age, the God of the universe astonishingly promised him a son. God also said that the seed that would come from him would rival the countless multitude of stars. [181] Since Abraham honored the one who made the promise by ascribing to him the power to accomplish all things, thus bearing witness to God, Abraham was justified before God and received a reward commensurate with an attitude of such devotion to God: the dropping of the ancient charges.21 At the proper time, God made the prophecy concerning Isaac into a training exercise for the righteous man. And even there he was faithful and devoted to God since he placed nothing ahead of love for God. Rather, as the Savior’s disciple says, “Faith was active along with his works, and faith was confirmed by the works.”22 The marvelous Paul himself said somewhere concerning our forefather Abraham, “By faith he, when put to the test, offered up Isaac. He who had received the promise offered up his only begotten, of whom it was said, ‘It is through Isaac that your seed shall be named for you.’ He reasoned that God is able even to raise someone from the dead.”23 Therefore, though it may perhaps be said that he was justified by works because he offered up Isaac when he was tested, yet even this is a clear proof of the firmness of his faith.
5:11 But more than that, we even boast in God.
Our Lord Jesus Christ highlighted the truly remarkable love that God the Father showed us by citing the completion of his oikonomia in the flesh and his suffering of the cross, saying somewhere, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”24 After all, he actually gave his very own Son for us, and we have been redeemed and freed from death and sin. “The Word became flesh and lived in us”25 for no other reason than to endure death in the flesh and so to triumph over the rulers and authorities26 and to neutralize the one who “holds the power [182] of death, that is,” Satan,27 and to take away corruptibility and with it to remove sin, which tyrannizes us. In this way he also canceled that ancient curse, which human nature endured in Adam as the firstfruits of our race and our original root. When Adam transgressed the command, he gave offense to the Creator. That is how he became both cursed and subject to death. But the Lord of the universe had mercy on those who had utterly perished. The Son came down from heaven. He removed the charges, justifying the ungodly by faith. As God, he forged human nature to make it incorruptible and raised it to its original condition. Whatever is in Christ is a “new creation”28 because he has established himself as the new root and has become the second Adam. Now that does not mean he is the reason for God’s wrath, as Adam was, or the reason that those born of him turned away from above; rather, he is the benefactor and bestower of kinship with God through sanctification and incorruptibility and the righteousness that is by faith. The wise Paul explains this to us in the words of the passage at hand. “Just as through one man,” he says, “sin came into the world and death through sin, so also death spread to all people because all have sinned.”29 So death entered through sin, as I said, in the man who was formed first, in the source of our race. Then the entire race was subsequently plundered. And when the serpent, the inventor of sin, prevailed in Adam by the ways of wickedness, he gained access to the human mind. “For all have turned aside, together they have become worthless.”30 Indeed, when we turned away from the face of the all-holy God because the human mind diligently occupied itself with “evil from its youth,”31 we began to live a life even more devoid of reason,32 and “death prevailed and swallowed [us] up,”33 as the prophet says, and Hades “enlarged its appetite and opened its mouth without ceasing.”34 When we became imitators of the transgression in Adam, [183] in accordance with which “all sinned,”35 we were subject to the same penalty as he was. But the earth under heaven did not remain without aid. Sin was taken away. Satan fell. Death was brought to nothing.
5:13 Sin was indeed in the world before the law.
The law given through Moses accused the weakness of the fallen, as I said. It did not destroy sin. Rather, it worked wrath.36 After all, it was necessary that the transgressors undergo the punishments prescribed by the law. Indeed, where there is any kind of transgression, there is surely also sin. And if sin is the patron of death, we must surely say that death is strengthened right along with it, since death sprang from it. Likewise, when sin is abolished, death is surely torn down and destroyed, just like its mother. So “sin was in the world before the law.” But when the law was laid down, the accusation of transgression against the fallen was intensified. Now that the law is abrogated, however, the charge of transgression has ceased as well. And since sin has ceased, as I said, death has ceased along with it.
5:14 Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses . . .
But if this is so, someone might ask, How did death obtain control over the inhabitants of the earth even before the law? Even though some are not guilty of transgressing the law (since of course the law was not yet given), yet they too were subject to decay “in the likeness of the transgression of Adam.” I suppose it is as though he were to say this: Just like death attacked Adam, it attacked the entire race that came from him, as when a plant suffers damage to its root, the branches that spring from it inevitably wither. He is saying that Adam is actually a type of the one who is to come [184] (that is, Christ), even though he was already present back then accomplishing the mystery of his oikonomia in the flesh. Perhaps someone might reply, How then can he call him “the one who is to come”? After he introduces the first man to us and recalls the time of his transgression, he then refers to Christ as the last Adam who would come later. He was foreordained by the will and foreknowledge of God the Father to be the Savior and Redeemer. He then appeared in his own time, which the Lord chose. This is the end time and the sunset of the present age, as it were. After introducing the second in the pattern of the first, he all but interrogates the hearer, uttering the next sentence as a question with a question mark:37
5:15 But is not the trespass just like the free gift?
It is as though he were to say, We have been condemned to death by the transgression of Adam, since the entire nature of humanity experienced this in him. Indeed, he was the firstfruits of our race. In Christ, however, we blossomed once more into life. Adam was the type of the one who is to come (that is, Christ), and Christ brought us grace commensurate with the debilitation of those who came before. So, he says, did I miss the truth when I said this? Did I stray from what is fair to say? Is not the trespass just like the free gift? Death conquered through one man. Will life be too weak to conquer through one man even though it is surely true to say, “For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many”? After all, in his love for humanity the Creator will hardly allow death to conquer through the one man while life through the one man sits idle. No. Grace will trump wrath. [185]
5:16 And is not the free gift like the effect that came through the one man’s sin?
He elevates his subject matter, as it were, and his thoughts to what is especially fitting for God. If, he says, the condemnation of Adam that came from one man (or rather “through the one man”) spread to everyone in his likeness—since he was the root of our race, as I said, which suffered corruption—how could it not be both pleasing to God and credible to us that by one act of righteousness, the many are fittingly justified from many trespasses? Shouldn’t God choose to save rather than to destroy? Adam was condemned and the power of Moses’ curse prevailed, which subjected the inhabitants of the earth to decay. In the same way, now that Christ the second Adam has been justified, justification will surely come to us by that original road. Now when we say that Christ was justified, that does not mean that he was ever unrighteous, as if he reached righteousness by advancing toward the better. No, he was the first and only man on earth who “committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.”38
5:17 If, because of the one man’s trespass, death exercised dominion through that one man . . .
See once more how he considers justifying grace to be more formidable than the condemning curse. He is saying that no one could sensibly claim that death through the one man overpowers the inhabitants of the earth while life lacks that strength. After all, when people have grace through Christ and the free gift of righteousness that comes from the generosity from above, they will “much more surely” shake off the power of death and reign with Christ, who gives life to all. [186]
5:18-19 Therefore, just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all . . .
The divinely inspired Paul adds a kind of conclusion to the foregoing thoughts when he says, “Therefore, just as one man’s trespass,” and what follows. We have all been condemned in Adam, as I said before, and when the curse of death came about, the result spread to all as from an original root. But we have also been justified and have blossomed again into life when Christ was justified for us. Our forefather neglected the command he had been given. He offended God and suffered the consequences of divine wrath. Indeed, he fell into decay. That is when sin rushed into human nature. And that is how “the many were made sinners,” which refers to everyone on earth. Now someone might say: Yes, Adam fell. He disregarded the divine command, and he was condemned to decay and death. But how were “the many made sinners” because of him? Why does his fall affect us? Why have we been condemned with him when we were not even born yet? On the contrary, God says, “Fathers will not be put to death for their children,” nor children for their fathers,39 and, “It is the soul who sins that shall die.”40 What defense could we make for our position? It is indeed the soul who sins that shall die. Nevertheless, we have become sinners through Adam’s disobedience in the following way. He was created in incorruption and life. He lived a holy life in luxurious paradise. His mind completely and continually enjoyed the vision of God. His body was calm and untroubled, since all shameful pleasure was at rest. There was no tumult of alien impulses in him. When he fell under sin, however, and sank into decay, then pleasures and impurities rushed into the nature of the flesh, and a savage law sprang up in our members. [187] So our nature contracted sin “through the disobedience of the one man” (that is, Adam). That is how “the many were made sinners”—not because they transgressed along with Adam (since they did not yet exist), but because they were of his nature, which had fallen under the law of sin. Just as human nature was enfeebled with decay in Adam through his disobedience (and that is how the passions entered into it), so also it has been freed once again in Christ. He was obedient to God the Father and “committed no sin.”41
5:20 But the law came in, that the trespass may multiply.
I suppose someone may reasonably make the following argument, he says. Adam was the “type of the one who was to come.”42 Just as we were made sinners in him because of his transgression, so also we have been justified in Christ through his obedience. Therefore, justification in Christ had to dawn on the inhabitants of the earth even if no one seized it. What need or necessity was there, then, for the laws of Moses? Paul is all but rising up against such an objection when he adds, “But the law came in, that the trespass may multiply.” He says it “came in” meaning that it interposed itself between the condemnation in Adam and the justification in Christ. So what need should we understand there to be for the entrance of the law? You may hear him stating it explicitly: “that the trespass may multiply.” What are you saying, Paul? Was the law a patron of sin? Did trespass multiply through it? By no means. It was necessary to open up the way for mystagogy. David said, “They have all gone astray, they are all alike useless; there is no one who does good, no, not one.”43 All people on earth had corrupted their ways after the transgression of Adam.44 And they were punished like this: they all endured the flood as their common penalty—each in their own time throughout their regions and cities. Even though there was no law, [188] God guided human nature to the knowledge of the good by natural impulses.45 God had mercy on the miserable inhabitants of the earth and graciously planned to free them in Christ from the sin that ruled over them. He quite rightly thought it was necessary to start by showing the inhabitants of the earth that they were desperately ill so that the righteousness in Christ may be seen as having a most necessary entrance into the world. After all, we do not say that someone who is already righteous is justified, but only one who is guilty of sins. Otherwise, why did he have to show ahead of time that the inhabitants of the earth needed the grace that is in Christ? “Law came in, that the trespass may multiply,” that is, in order that the trespass might be utterly clear in those under the law, which is to say that no one is able to be justified because of the weakness of our nature, but all are subject, as it were, to the charge of transgression. So the law was established as a sort of cross-examination of the weakness of all to show that the human condition stands in need of one thing: Christ’s healing. That is why it says, “But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” Grace had to be shown to be that much better than the law, which condemns.
6:3-4 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus. . . .
Of course, we have been baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, but if one were to say that we have been baptized “into Christ Jesus,” that person would not be wrong. The Father is distinguished from the Son particularly by the names and hypostases and differences of prosopa, each with his own properties. And the Spirit is distinguished from both. The Father is the Father and not the Son. The Son, in turn, is from him by nature. He is not the Father. And the Holy Spirit is properly the Spirit. But since the Son is in the Father and the Father is in the Son and the Holy Spirit is in both because of the identity of essence, [189] anyone who names one makes reference to all of them. Therefore, someone who names Christ will not forget about the Father or the Spirit. When Jesus became human and endured death for the life of all, the blessed Paul could not help but spread abroad the most important point of the mystagogy before us. After all, he had to name the one who suffered. That is the sense in which he says, “All of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death.” When we offered an honest appeal to Christ from a good conscience,46 as it were, and by faith we accepted that he died for us and was buried and rose again, we had the forgiveness of sins through holy baptism. We also experienced the death of sin and we died, in a manner of speaking, with the one who died for us because our earthly members were put to death. Christ “died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.”47 Because of this, we ourselves undergo the same death as he did and we are for all practical purposes buried with him. We were buried with Christ in the sense that we bear his death in our own bodies. What then do we gain from this? He makes this clear when he says, “so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” We who were buried with him, as it were, must also be spiritually raised with him. And if being buried with Christ means dying to sin, it should surely be clear that being raised with him ought to be understood to be nothing else than living in righteousness.
Now when he maintains that Christ was raised “by the glory of the Father,” that does not mean Christ lacked strength. After all, he is the Lord of powers. No, it is customary for both Christ and his disciples to attribute acts that transcend human nature to the nature that is above all. Therefore, even if God the Father may be said to raise him, [190] we do not exclude the Son from any of the Father’s actions. After all, if “all things came into being through him,”48 how could anyone doubt that the Father worked the resurrection through the Son and through the Son’s holy body? In fact, the Son showed himself to be active in the resurrection when he said to the Jews, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”49 Notice how he is said to raise his own temple, even though God the Father is said to resurrect him. Since he himself is the life-giving Power of God the Father, he gave life to his own temple.
6:5 For if we have been planted with the likeness of his death . . .
The divinely inspired Paul says that those who are buried with Christ should expect to be raised with him as well. And the word “planted” seems to suggest that we have the same spiritual shape and form. Emmanuel gave his life for us and died according to the flesh. But how are we who are baptized buried with him? Do we re-experience the death of the flesh with him? No. How then are we “planted with the likeness of his death”? Come! Come! Let us explain it. Christ died according to the flesh in order to destroy the sin of the world. We too die, but not according to the flesh. How then? We die “to sin” as it is written50—that is, we render sin inactive and inoperative in ourselves by putting to death “whatever is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed.”51 So we are “planted” not only with Christ’s death according to the flesh [191] but also with “the likeness of his death.” This should be understood to refer to his death for sins, but not for his own—far from it! God is blameless and is far removed from even the ability to sin. Rather he died, as I said, for the sin of the world. “The death he died, he died to sin, once for all.”52 Therefore, “we have been planted with the likeness of his death.” We will surely also be planted with and have the same form of resurrection as his. We will live in Christ. Our flesh will return to life, and we will live in a different manner when we offer our soul to him and are transformed to holiness and glorious citizenship in the Holy Spirit.
6:6 We know that our old man . . .
We must now investigate these questions in detail: What is our “old man”? What is “the body of sin” that is done away with? How are we “crucified with Christ”? Now perhaps some will suppose that “body of sin” refers to the earthly flesh as if it were given to the human soul as a punishment for sin committed before bodies existed. Some people hold and express this view, you know. But we should reject this Greek opinion as untrue. The phrases “body of sin” and “our old man” refer to our earthly body, which is subject to the necessity of decay because of its oldness, so to speak, in Adam. In fact, we were condemned in him, the first man. And the love of pleasure debilitated us as well, since the flesh is naturally disposed to pleasure because of its natural impulses.53 How then has it been crucified with Christ? The Only Begotten became human and clothed himself in earthly flesh. This flesh had fallen into death, as I said, because of the oldness in Adam. It also gave birth in itself, as it were, to incitement toward sin from its natural impulses.54 [192] The law of sin is silent, however, in the holy and utterly pure flesh of Christ. We maintain that no alien human passions move around in him except those whose impulses are harmless. I am referring to hunger and thirst and weariness and as many of our experiences as the law of nature observes blamelessly. Yet even though the law of sin may not be stirred in Christ since it is lulled to sleep by the power and activity of the Word, who controls it, nevertheless, when we investigate the nature of the flesh in itself, we will find that it is no different from our own, even though it happens to be in Christ. We were crucified with him since his flesh was crucified, and it contains our entire nature in itself. Just as in Adam our entire nature certainly succumbed to the curse when he was cursed, so also we are said to be raised with Christ and seated with him in the heavenly places.55 Emmanuel is above us as God, but since he became like us, he has been raised and sits with God the Father as one of us. The “old man” has therefore been “crucified with him” since the power of that ancient curse was dissolved through the resurrection, and “the body of sin” has been done away with. Now “body of sin” surely does not refer to the flesh but to the natural ferocity of the impulses within the flesh that always drag the mind down to more shameful thoughts and throw it into the dirt and mud of earthly pleasures. How could anyone doubt that in Christ this too has been set right for human nature? Paul clearly states, “For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.”56 So do you see how the “body of sin” is done away with? The sting of sin has been condemned in the flesh. [193] It has been put to death first in Christ, and so grace has come from and through him to us.
7:1 Do you not know, brothers? For I am speaking to those who know the law.
He shows that seeking to be under the law is a completely untenable position. He exhorts and urges them instead to thirst for grace (that is, for righteousness in Christ) through faith with their whole mind. He just stated that the baptized have been buried with him so that they might die to sin and live to God in righteousness. He said, “Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.”57 Observe how he commands them to come out from the shadow of the law and to rush to be under the grace that is in Christ. But the Spirit Bearer was not unaware that some would surely say (or rather argue) that the fathers strayed from the straight road and from life. The law did not help them at all, and the glory of their way of life has vanished. So if seeking to be under the law is wrong, yet that was the ancients’ goal in life, how could it not be true to say that they strayed from what is right? So he who has Christ in himself enters the fray. He shrewdly pretends to want to talk with those who live under the law. He takes the conversation through various turns so that they realize that when the moment arrives that calls them to faith, they must have no desire to remain in the ancient customs. He says this: “Do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person while that person is still alive?” This general definition [194] applies to all laws and to people who live under those laws. For all who are subject to the rule of kings, the laws define what may and may not be done. They are in force for people as long as they are alive. But whenever those under the law depart from their bodily life, they strip off the authority of the law along with their life. After all, if they have stopped transgressing, then the law will surely do nothing to them. Therefore, it is true that “the law is binding on a person while that person is still alive.” Next we must say what the purpose of the statement is. It introduces two beneficial points. The first is that we who are buried with Christ through baptism, who have died to sin, are now beyond the authority of the law since we have been transformed to a different life. The other is that those who lived before the advent of Christ, who had not undergone death in Christ, were still alive to sin. So the law had power over them as living people, just like the husband of a wife. A woman who is “bound to her husband” is not unaccountable for intercourse with someone else as long as the one she lawfully lives with is still alive. But if her husband dies, he says, she will be exempt from penalty if she should decide to do this lawfully. In the same way, I think, those who do not yet possess the mortification of sin in Christ but are alive, as it were, to sin are reasonably under the law since “the law is binding on a person as long as that person is alive.” But those who are now under the grace of Christ have through that grace died to sin and have been put to death in the flesh (this is, in the passions of the flesh). Since the designation living in the world no longer applies to them, their life, which is beyond the reach of the law, would be rendered unimpeachable. As I said, they have been put to death “through the body of Christ”58 and they have died to the law, being justified through faith.
7:5 While we were in the flesh, our sinful passions by the law were at work in us . . .59
He calls the carnal mind “flesh.” As he also says [195] elsewhere, “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”60 Surely he does not entrust these things to anyone but those whom he is leading into the mysteries. So we must investigate carefully what he intends to communicate. When we used to live carnally, he says, and our earthly mind dominated us, the passions of the flesh were at work in us by the law “to bear fruit for death.” “What?” someone might ask. “The passions of the flesh were introduced through the law? In that case, how shall we rescue the law from accusation?” How then do we reply to this? The passions of the flesh are not stirred up in us by the law. Rather, they are born from natural pleasure, and they capture the weak mind. He makes this clear to us when he says, “What the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other.”61 Now here he omits the law and says that the flesh opposes the Spirit without putting anything in between them. Therefore, it is not by the law that the passions of the flesh are stirred up in us, but by nature. And, incredibly, the passions oppose the will of the law, as Paul himself says somewhere: “The mind of the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot.”62 Now if the mind of the flesh wars against the law, how is it not insane to think that the law stirs into action what is so opposed to it? So what is Paul saying? He is speaking to those who have been buried with Christ through baptism as having died to sin and having already attained the mortification of the passions. For them it would be proper to proceed without the law, at least in the sense that they have been freed from the passions that the law condemns. But since we still retain the mind of the flesh, those things that are identified and condemned as passions “by the law,” he says, “were at work in us.” We are accountable to the law so long as sin still lives in us. [196]
7:6 But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive.
We were accountable to the law, he says, because sin subjected us to it. But if we died “to that which held us captive”—that is, sin—then surely the law will be inactive right along with it. After all, the law was decreed by God because of sin in order to accuse transgressors. So those who have died to sin are outside the scope of the law. We have come to belong to another, and we will serve him “in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the letter.”
7:7 What then should we say? That the law is sin?
Notice how skillfully he crafts his words concerning the law. Earlier he said, “While we were in the flesh, our sinful passions by the law were at work in us.” But now that statement is freed from any suspicion. An impartial judge would have replied: Is the law then the author of sin? If it is true that the passions of the flesh are at work in us through the law, how could the law not be understood as the originator of sin? What do you say to that, O expounder of the mysteries? He is keen to answer. He denies that the law is the father of sin and instead lays the blame on human nature for being weak and for being convicted by the judgments of the law. He makes that point in this way: “What then should we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet, I would not have known sin except through the law.” Look at the sobriety! He did not say, “I would not have had sin except through the law,” but rather, “I would not have known sin.” The law, therefore, is not a pretext for sin, but a revealer of it. It lays sin bare for those who do not know it. It does this not so that they may commit sin once they learn it [197]—they were surely committing sin even before they knew it, as the psalm says, “No one is righteous, not even one”63—but so that once they realize what is wrong, they may progress to what is better. It seems to me that something similar came about for the ancients through the command of Moses. As an example, say that there is a broad road leading somewhere. Now toss a large boulder in the middle of it and dig pits in it too, if you will. Now, say there are some people walking on the road in the dark of night, constantly stumbling against what lay in the middle of the road and even accidently falling into the pits. Then in this state of affairs someone took a torch and set it on a tripod to illuminate the surroundings for the people there to prevent them from further stumbling and to deliver and free them from harm. Was the light then to blame since it revealed the danger? Wouldn’t we rather say that it brings them the greatest possible profit since it makes them safer? I think this is obvious to everyone. So when we sinners, who stumble into the greatest possible charges, learn our sin through the law, it would not be reasonable for us to think or say that the law is sin—far from it! Rather, the law is a revealer of sin, as I have explained.
7:7-8 I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness.
He also brings up the weakness of our nature. Though the law was given for our benefit, it had unintended consequences, just as the light of the sun has for those with diseased eyes. So when he says that the commandment somehow became an “opportunity” for covetousness, no one should think that he is blaming the law. No, [198] he is crying out against our weakness. Those who were being pushed toward evil by this weakness needed to be stopped by the law. You see, the human mind is sick with a love of vanity that always leads to covetousness. Now those who covet live as they wish without being troubled. But those who beat back their covetous desire experience a fierce onslaught of passions. No one covets what they already have. Rather, they covet what they are prevented from having. So since the law prevents us from having what is harmful, it becomes the occasion for the weak to covet that very thing all the more.
7:8-11 Apart from the law, sin is dead.
If the law that condemns the way of wickedness were to be without force, he says, then sin would be powerless. That is because sin is all but provoked into becoming strong through the law, while the sting of pleasure will be more sluggish when no one is commanding anything. It is all but blunted and put under a spell by broad permissiveness. Where there is no opposition at all, contentiousness surely remains idle. So sin is dead when the law does not issue commands. The expounder of the mysteries says that he once was alive “apart from the law,” but then, when “the commandment came,” he states that sin revived and he died.
He frames his discussion of these matters to be about his own situation, but I think he intends to communicate something like this: It is common knowledge that those who transgress in ignorance are subject to penalty, but those who transgress knowingly will receive a harsher punishment. The Savior confirms this when he says that the one who knew his master’s will and did not do it will be beaten with many blows, but the one who did not [199] know and did not do it will be beaten with few blows.64 And so, as everyone knows, it is better to transgress in ignorance than to transgress with knowledge of the law. If someone comes under the law after living life outside the law and then chooses to ignore its commands, that person is convicted of the charge of sin and falls under judgment. Then—then!—he will mourn his laziness and all but cry out against the severity of the law, saying, “I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died.” Now if sin is truly “dead apart from the law,” how can one credibly suppose that sin is somehow brought to life by the same law that unmasks it or that the law starts it breathing, as it were, even though sin was in us before (albeit formerly unrecognized)? We were not righteous, of course. But just as sin was dead because there happened to be no condemning law, so also we were alive because we had an excuse based on our ignorance. “For where there is no law, there is no transgression,”65 as he says. So when the commandment arrived, sin came back to life, as it were, and death was restored and therefore also punishment for those who fell into transgression out of weakness. And what is the result of this? What happens is contrary to our hope and expectation. The “commandment,” he says, which was given for life, “proved to be death.” It is like the light from the sun’s rays. That light injures anyone with an eye disease, even though light is intrinsically pleasant and highly desirable. The light itself is surely not to blame. Rather, the harm that it inflicts should be considered an indictment of the illness of those who suffered. In the same way, I think, he is saying that the commandment gives an opportunity for sin to deceive people and drag them down to death. Or perhaps someone might take it in a different sense and say [200] that the intense desire for pleasure always strives against the demands of the law. A wicked way of life resists goodness and generally drives it out. Sometimes it drags off the mind and casts it down into transgression, subjecting it to the penalties of the law. So the law is actually the occasion for the battle. In this sense, the wise Paul says that he was deceived by the commandment and put to death through it since it all but killed him by stirring up his desires into opposition to it in the way I just described.
7:12 So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good.
“The law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good.” That is because when anyone chooses to keep the law, it shows them to be holy and just and good so that they are unimpeachable by any charge of transgression. This, however, is unattainable. “For who can detect their errors?” as it is written.66
7:13 Did what is good, then, bring death to me?
The law is holy, and the commandment is holy and good. So how could he say, “And the very commandment that was given for life proved to be death to me”? Is it the case then, tell me, that what was good became the patron of destruction? “By no means!” he says. I lay no blame on the law for this. Rather, I rise, as it were, to accuse sin. It so subdues human nature and overpowers our mind that the very law that was given for our salvation [201] and life, the commandment that was truly holy and good, became the occasion for death for those who were subject to it. How did that happen? Well, if the penalty always catches up with the transgressors and we have reached such a state of weakness that we are always caught in transgression, then this is clearly how the saving law, which is holy and good, somehow seems to have turned into the cords of sin and a way to death for those under sin. He then immediately adds, “that through the commandment, sin might become sinful beyond measure.” When those who do not know their master’s will are caught in sin, it will certainly result in punishment. They did sin, after all, even though they were ignorant. Yet they have a certain defense, which I think is not implausible. They can reasonably bring up their ignorance as a defense. For those under the law, however, it would surely be futile to claim that they did not know their master’s will. So if someone is openly caught living a life of sin, the charge against them will not be one of ignorance but of madness and ultimately of irreverence toward the Most High. That is how he could say that sin became “sinful beyond measure.” After all, those who sin in ignorance are sinful, but they are not “sinful beyond measure,” nor are they called that.
7:14 For we know that the law is spiritual.
He says that the law is “spiritual” because it makes those who follow it spiritual. [202] Being spiritual means that one does not live according to the flesh but rather inclines away from it and toward the will to follow what the Spirit wants. The blessed David said, “The law of the Lord is blameless, converting souls. The testimony of the Lord is faithful, instructing infants. The fear of the Lord is pure, abiding forever.”67 So he says that the law is blameless because it makes people blameless, and the testimony is faithful because it renders them faithful, and the fear is pure because it purifies. You should conclude from this that the law is called spiritual in the same sense: because it makes those who follow it spiritual. Even though it is in the shadows, it still has the semblance of truth. What then is Paul saying? He insists that “the law is spiritual,” but he blames human nature for being utterly infected with sin. And he tries to convince us that precisely because the law is spiritual, it is a heavy burden for human nature. If the law is spiritual, he is saying, why, tell me, am I “of the flesh,” that is, ruled by the mind of the flesh? Do you see how he posits such a great conflict of wills within us? We should understand the will of the Spirit to be one thing and the will of the flesh another.68 They are opposed to each other and irreconcilable. They cannot agree. So if a person is “of the flesh,” and the law is “spiritual,” how could it even be bearable for those who are so sick with sin? It is quite reasonable that if he is “of the flesh,” we should consider him to be like a captive or a household slave.
7:15 I do not understand my own actions.
Some of the less educated will probably think that he means to support a Greek myth that they have learned to espouse (I know not how) as they were “deceiving others and being deceived.”69 [203] First they invent fate and fortune in line with their own ideas. Then they attribute power over our affairs to these nonexistent concepts. In so doing, they rob humanity of what is most characteristic of it: the destiny to live life freely and to have a voluntary inclination—not subject to fate—to whatever deeds we may choose. By necessity, as it were, they lead people astray with their definitions and decrees, and in the process they do immeasurable harm to people in this life. In their view if someone were to proceed to do something wrong, that person would not have the power, even if they wanted to, to escape the decree of fate. And no one could reasonably find fault with them even if they witnessed the transgression. After all, if someone were caught committing an act that was forced on them against their will, they would certainly be excused from blame and punishment. On the other hand, it would be entirely unreasonable to praise anyone for being good and decent. Why should they be praised if they were brought into that condition not willingly but by the decree of another, or rather by fortune imposing invincible necessity on them?
Therefore, it is completely tone deaf to claim that he who leads us into the noblest of teachings is drawing on obtuse Greek arguments, or to imagine that our steward of divine mysteries is following their foolishness when he happens to say, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” If anyone were at all to claim—much less choose to think—that he attributes authority over our affairs to fate and fortune, one could reasonably reply: If our actions are controlled by unyielding and indomitable necessity and we do not rule over them, but instead we yield control to others and are constrained by their will, how is it that Paul wrote, “Do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law rules over a person as long as that person [204] is alive?”70 The law, then, rules over the path of the living. It has no authority whatsoever over the dead. It was not meant for them. How could it be? No, it was meant for those who are still living their life in the body. It crowns the honorable with praises and condemns the impure. So how could the lawgiver be a holy judge if he punishes those who were forced to fall into sin against their will by fortune? Or rather, why did he decree the law at all? The law imposes a just penalty on those who have control over whatever they decide to do. This occurs in the case of those who, though they are able to devote their mind to honor through good works, instead treasure what is shameful and exchange the better for what is condemned by the law. However, for those who have the yoke of necessity on their necks and who are turned wherever their masters may decide, it seems to me that the divine law is superfluous. Indeed, he who knows all things surely would not have imposed the yoke of the law on us—the law that teaches us what pleases him and leads us to the better—if he knew that we would be caught in the snare of fate! Now let our opponents either say that God did not realize this, or (if they choose to think rightly) let them shudder to heap the charge of ignorance on his ineffable glory. They do say that God has given laws and they will even admit openly that he has decreed punishments for the transgressors. So I suppose he certainly knows that people live their lives with their own free will, and by their own free inclinations can direct themselves to wherever they wish, with no one to hinder them. That is why the divinely inspired Paul said that “the law rules over a person as long as that person is alive.”71 Now he does not say this on the assumption that the human mind is subject to the will of others. Rather, he is carefully [205] discussing the passions of the human nature. He is in effect digging up the infirmities of the mind, in a subtle way, and charging the body with an innate love of pleasure, as he masterfully dons the character of one who is still sick with love of the flesh. Although he has been crucified to the world and the world to him and he is truly admirable for that, nevertheless he thought it wise not to focus on his own gift but to address the important topic of the weakness of those who have not yet become like him. So when you hear him say, “I do not understand my own actions,” you should think of the worst sinners, who imagine that they truly live the best life of all and that nothing could match the delight and vanity of this world. They loathe virtuous behavior and pride themselves on running riot with their excessive pleasures. I think Paul is talking about them when he says somewhere, “Their minds are set on earthly things. Their god is their belly, and their glory is in their shame.”72 When they commit some evil deed that they are especially fond of, it would make sense for them to say, “I do not understand my own actions.” So let them hear, “Wake up, you drunkards, from your wine!”73 Just as winebibbers and drunkards are robbed of their mental faculties by the experience and do not know what they are doing when they are drinking, so also those whose minds are infected by fleshly lust and the most shameful pleasures do not know what they are doing at the time either. So Paul is explaining to us the disease of the human heart when he says, “I do not understand my own actions.” But there may be someone whose heart is quite tender, so to speak, because of the accusations of their conscience. They may regret the fact that they sin but are still overcome by sinful pleasure and proceed against their will, as it were, to the transgression. It would make sense for them to say, [206] “I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” How often do people admire self-control and indeed take care to protect it at first? But then they are conquered by the goads of filthy pleasure, and their mind squats down to what is inferior. They commit sin but afterward are filled with remorse. It would be fitting and altogether reasonable for these people, who were unwillingly afflicted by disease, to turn around and say, “But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.”74
7:16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good.
Once again he devotes careful attention to the nature of the body and examines the power of the maladies that naturally dwell therein. That is because the appetites, which lead to all manner of passion, and the sins of the hedonistic life have the flesh as their source. The Savior’s disciple confirms this point for us when he says, “Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you?”75
7:18 I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.
“I can will what is right,” he says, “but I cannot do it.” . . . As proof that the flesh is guilty of the dreadful birth of sin within, he skillfully concedes the presence of the good in us, though not the ability to bring it to fruition. Indeed, he is forced to turn away against his will into a state of mind he did not want. So [207] as far as his own resolve is concerned, he would not have sinned. And since he was subject to inescapable compulsion, it would be reasonable to place the blame not on him, but on the compulsion. Thus he says, “Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.”
Now someone might say: If some heathen barbarians lay waste to a city or countryside and then capture some of the inhabitants at the point of a spear and impose the yoke of slavery on them, the victims would yield to the laws of their conquerors just as they would be forced to yield to their chains. Would they then deserve blame or indictment because they do not rise above the compulsion or disregard the power of their tyrants and eagerly pursue what they themselves want? No, I do not think anyone could reasonably blame them for that. They cannot stop being slaves, after all, and they submit to their circumstances against their will, as I said. They are distraught because they have been deprived of their freedom. Indeed, they have been overcome by force by people more powerful than they. So they are not slaves by their own choice. But if this is a fair representation, then we should conclude that the human mind is exonerated from the charge against the infirmities of the flesh. However, it was the fault of his mind, he says, that he did what he did not want, since the mind itself holds the reins of his will. Therefore, we should conclude that the mind is superior to the power of sin and not ruled by it. But if the nature of the flesh is unbearable and impossible to oppose, rising up with untamable pleasure against the mind, and the law is a rather ineffective aid (for it does not have the power to kill sin), then one could not justly bring a charge against the mind for not doing the better but giving free reign to disgraceful acts, even if it should perhaps hold the reins of our will.
7:21 So I find the law to be with me when I want to do good, telling me that evil lies close at hand.
Now notice how wisely and skillfully he accepts the [208] law, not because it has the power to blunt the sting of sin, nor because it can kill sin in us, but simply because it supplies the mind with knowledge of one’s circumstances. If, as it seems to me, he is saying that “evil lies close at hand” because it dwells in the flesh but the law forbids it, then the law grants aid and serves as an advisor, though it is not a redeemer. It is surely necessary for those who are sick with sin not only to recognize that they ought to do better but also to have the power to accomplish what is good in the eyes of the law. Even in the case of those who want to distinguish themselves in combat, the mere knowledge of tactics by itself is not enough to accomplish this. But if they were to possess strength as well, then such people would achieve fame and notoriety, though just barely. Therefore, if the law teaches the art of the good but does not render any aid to those who are captured by sin to loosen sin’s grip, then the law is good because it is a teacher, but it would still be unreasonable to consider it equal to the grace of Christ. He is able both to teach us and to make us stronger than evil.
7:22 For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self.
As I have already said, the mind thirsts to be free and wants to be delivered from what is harmful. And so it crowns the law with the highest honors because it introduces a person to what is best. But the nature of the flesh drags it into alien pleasures as the law of sin wars against it and presses hard on it. He uses the term “law of sin” to refer to natural impulse76 and whatever else one might call the passions of fleshly desire, just as he of course uses the term “law of my mind” to describe his inclination and will toward the good.77 [209]
7:24-25 Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Up to this point, he is bemoaning the flesh and inveighing against it. Because of the sickness it contains, he even refers to the law of sin as the “body of death” that comes from the earth and is devoted to pleasure. He says that he is seeking someone who can free him from such evils so that he may at the right moment introduce to us the Redeemer, that is, Christ, to whom he also ascribes all grace. We have been redeemed by him not from the flesh, but from the death of the flesh. This happens not by us dying, but by us being freed from death in our members, that is, from the savage pleasure in our members. That is because Christ made us superior to pleasure and sin.
7:25–8:1 So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, those who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.
The apostle’s discourse has grown very long as he minutely investigates everything inside us along with the kinds of assaults that the human mind usually endures in its conflict with evil. He states that the mind is sometimes reluctant, as it were, to do good because it is tyrannized by the passions of the flesh. It wanders all about and is disgraced by its weakness. But it cannot cast off this involuntary sin, since pleasure mounts a fearsome attack. It is too weak to stand up against this pleasure, and it finds no help at all from the law to do so. Therefore, the divinely inspired Paul is telling the truth when he states that “with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.” I think that means the same thing as what he said before: “I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.”78 [210] Now in ancient times, as I have said, it was within our ability, as far as the mind and its will were concerned, to choose to serve the divine law. But the flesh interposed its own will, as it were, and forced the mind into sin. Therefore, there was “condemnation” for those who wanted to do good but were still unable to because they were tyrannized by the passions. But in Christ that which condemns—that is, the assault of the fleshly impulses—has come to an end.
8:2 For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus . . .
In order to provide a detailed explanation of the meaning of this passage, I need to make the following comments. Just as he calls the fleshly will the “law of sin and death” that carries us off to every kind of wickedness, so also he calls the spiritual will the “law of the spirit of life,” that is, the inclination of the mind toward the good. Indeed, “the one who sows to the flesh will reap corruption from the flesh, but the one who sows to the spirit will reap eternal life from the spirit.”79 Now the “law of the spirit of life”—that is, the will of the mind that carries us to life—was in us in ancient times, since in our mind we were slaves to God’s law.80 But our weaker part fell sick, as I said, and resisted the law. Our mind was overcome by the desires of the flesh and was condemned by the law. Yet when it had cast off its illness, it was strengthened by Christ. He sealed us in the Holy Spirit and clothed us with “power from on high.”81 By this we have been redeemed. We were no longer under the yoke of evil, but we were called, as I said, to the dignity of freedom. So “the law of the spirit of life,” that is, the will of the mind that inclines toward doing good and that carries us into life—when it was enriched by the grace of Christ and delivered from that ancient malady—[211] it disregarded the evil effects of sin, gained mastery over the law of the flesh, and “set me free,” he says. That law certainly did not grant freedom of itself. Rather, it became the agent of the freedom that comes to us through Christ. Just as those who are under the law of sin must be utterly entangled in the snare of death, so also those who have been released from sin and freed by Christ must also be released from death, be superior to decay, and live a life of sanctification.
8:3 The powerlessness of the law, weakened by the flesh.
The mystagogue is admirable and exceedingly detailed in his contemplation, but he also says that he is “untrained in speech.”82 For this reason we may say without any embarrassment that there is a little bit missing from the words he composes here. They do not quite give us a full explanation.83 He should have said that the powerlessness of the law, weakened by the flesh, “was destroyed,” perhaps, or “ceased.” Then he could have provided the explanation and joined it to the manner of destruction by adding, “God, by sending his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, destroyed sin in the flesh,” and so on.84 So since that is what these words mean, at least according to their inner intent, come let us examine how Christ heals and how “the powerlessness of the law” ceases, as well as what “the powerlessness of the law” refers to in the first place and what kind of law is meant. The Theologian85 goes into great detail in this passage. He accepts the law of God as profitable—I mean both the law of the letter and the law of the spirit, according to which we have a good will, even though we may not perhaps have the ability [212] to carry it out. He said, “I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.”86 That is because sin is violent, and the law of the flesh drags the mind down, even against its will, to the flesh’s level. In the phrase powerlessness of the law, I think it would be reasonable to take “law” in the same way, as referring to the law of the letter by Moses, as I just said, and also to the natural law in us, by which even the Gentiles by nature do the works of the law and are a law unto themselves, even though they do not have the written law.87 “For they show that the work of the law is written on their hearts,” as it is written.88 And now it is time to investigate what kind of “powerlessness” is in both. The law of the letter was a teacher of good conduct and an instructor of the best behavior, but it justified absolutely no one. The natural law in us, which he also calls the law “of the spirit,” inclined toward the good, but it is far less powerful than the law that summons us to the worse. So Christ brought to an end the “powerlessness,” that is, the weakness, both of the law of the letter and of the natural law. That is because when the flesh has been mortified in a sense, in that the pleasure inherent in us has been taken away, the law of the spirit or of the mind will not be weak at all. Come, let us discuss, as far as possible, how the sin in us has been mortified. The Word of God, with the approval of God the Father, came to be in the “likeness of sinful flesh” in order to “condemn sin in the flesh.” He became a human being and condescended to empty himself, and his body is the same form and nature as ours. How could anyone doubt that? The exception is that the bodies of all the others would be called “sinful flesh” because their infirmity naturally brings forth alien pleasures, but no one would say that the body of Christ is “sinful flesh.” By no means! Rather, it is the “likeness of sinful flesh”—that is, [213] it is like our bodies, but it is not sick with fleshly impurity. That divine temple89 was holy from the womb. Now when it comes to the definition and inner constitution of his nature, no one would shrink from saying that since his body was flesh, it would have contained in itself the natural impulses90 that are proper to the flesh. But since the Word who sanctifies all creation dwelt in it, the power of sin has been condemned so that the restoration may extend to us as well. That is because we participate in him both spiritually and corporeally. When Christ dwells in us through the Holy Spirit and through the Mystical Blessing,91 then the law of sin is completely condemned in us. Now “the powerlessness of the law, weakened by the flesh,” was truly ended by Christ when he condemned and abolished “sin in the flesh, so that the just requirements of the law might be fulfilled in us.” The just requirements of the law (that is, the force of the law’s decrees, which is that the will should focus on virtue) are fulfilled when the law in us is no longer weakened in any way, as I said, by the tyranny of natural pleasures. Therefore, “the just requirements of the law” are fulfilled in us when we “walk not according to the flesh,” but rather will to live spiritually.92
8:6-7 The mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the spirit is life and peace.
He calls the mind of the flesh “death,” and rightly so, while he calls the mind of the spirit “life and peace.” The love of the flesh is truly the patron of death, but choosing to live spiritually is the patron of eternal life and blessings from above. If “the mind of the flesh is hostile to God” since [214] it does not allow itself to submit to the divine laws, “indeed it cannot,” how will foul and impure pleasure “please God”? Surely the mind that is cleansed of filth and passions, as far as is possible for human nature, is the one that is reconciled with God.
8:8-9 And those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh; you are in the spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you.
When earthly pleasure gains mastery over the human mind, a person is in the flesh since they think about fleshly concerns. Such a person cannot please God. But when the mind is enriched by the grace of Christ and full of power from above and seething with the Spirit and striving for virtue, such a person is not “in the flesh” but “in the spirit” and easily accomplishes great things for God.
8:9 Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
Anyone who is in the spirit is also in righteousness and life since the body of sin has all but died and all alien pleasure has been extinguished. After all, it is impossible for righteousness and unrighteousness or for sanctification and impurity to exist in the same person at the same time. We take the phrase “the spirit is life” to refer to the human spirit that is given life by the grace of the Holy Spirit and enriched with righteousness by communion with the Holy Spirit. That is how we are “participants of the divine nature”93 since Christ dwells in us through the Holy Spirit.
8:11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you . . .
Our Lord Jesus Christ was raised from the dead by the [215] Father as life was brought about in his body through the Holy Spirit, who is his. After all, he shows that he himself brought his own temple back to life when he says to the Jews, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”94 Therefore, even though he is said to be raised by the Father, he is the one who does the raising through the Holy Spirit. All God-befitting actions are carried out by the Father through the Son in the Spirit. That is how Christ will raise our bodies from the dead as well.
8:14-15 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.
Those who live by the spirit are also the ones who are led by the Spirit because they have been sealed by the Holy Spirit. They have been delivered from the slavery of the law and the letter and transferred to freedom. The Spirit of adoption bears witness that they are children of God and they cry out in the same Spirit of adoption, “Abba! Father!”
8:17 If, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
The good is not accomplished without effort, but effort holds great hopes for the saints. That is because they are promised no earthly reward, but eternal glory and participation in realities beyond thought and understanding. Those who fix their gaze above earthly matters are worthy of the highest rewards. And those who have labored with courage and endurance will enjoy crowns of incomparable dignity. Our efforts toward virtue fall short in comparison with those honors. I am referring to the glory of the saints, since at that time “the righteous will shine like the sun,”95 and they will attain honor and glory and incorruptibility as their bodies are transfigured, just as Christ was transfigured on the mountain. [216]
8:19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.
Hope is the “eager longing.” It is the expectation and observation of the outcome of events. However, creation waits for the revealing of the children of God not in the sense that it knows what is going to happen. How could it? Rather, by the ineffable plan of God, who directs all things toward what is better, creation will arrive at this end. When the children of God, that is, those who achieve a God-pleasing life, are remolded, as it were, from dishonor to glory and from decay to incorruption, then creation itself will surely also be changed for the better. The divinely inspired Peter leaves us no doubt on this point when he says, “We look for new heavens and a new earth and his promises.”96
8:20-22 For the creation was subjected to futility.
Here he uses the word “futility” to refer to those who live in futility, that is, in a fleshly mind. It could quite rightly be said of them, “Humanity was like futility.”97 In fact, they even “resembled senseless beasts and became like them.”98 The life of such people truly is “futility.” And creation is subject to them, though certainly not by its own will. How can that be? How can we make this claim? After all, the tangible and visible creation knows nothing at all of our affairs since it is not rational. But if one were to grant creation some ability to understand, he is saying, it would not bear such disgraceful slavery, [217] nor would it be willing to be subjected to and to serve those who decree that it live its life without that which it ought to live for—namely, the good. But it is subject “in hope,” he says, referring to the saints and elect who will be saved at that time. God imposed this yoke and reserved creation, so to speak, for the “freedom” that is found in subjection to the saints and those who love him, so that creation may serve only his children and be subject to the needs of the elect. Creation is practically at wits’ end as it labors and is distressed. And if it had any ability to understand our affairs, it would probably wail (except that it yields to the divine will) as it somehow awaits “the revealing,” as it says, “of the children of God.”
8:23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption.
He takes what naturally occurs in us as proof of his statement. “We ourselves,” he says, “who have the firstfruits of the Spirit” are weighed down and “groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.” It is true that “a perishable body weighs down the soul, and this earthly tent burdens the thoughtful mind.”99 Once the Holy Spirit is within us and he transforms us to desire virtue, the love of the flesh is removed, as it were, along with the law that attacked our members and incited alien pleasures and set itself up as an implacable foe. This is how we understand the words “we groan for the redemption of our bodies, for adoption.” We do not thirst for the removal of our bodies, and we reject the idea that this is what redemption is. Rather, we look forward to there being [218] a “spiritual body,”100 that is, a mind that has completely put off what is carnal and earthly along with the sting of sin. We maintain that this is what the spiritual body is.
If the grace of adoption includes “the redemption of our bodies,” then certain people should stop criticizing the resurrection. They should not be so stupid as to say that the flesh is destroyed and completely disappears when it is laid into the ground and that it arises as something else: a sort of spiritual entity, ethereal and airy (since that is what they think “spiritual” means).
8:24 For in hope we were saved.
We believe that our bodies are going to be superior to death and decay. But this lies in store for us in hope. It is not yet present, but it will surely and definitively happen. We wait for it with patient endurance so that we may gain such a majestic gift.
8:26 Likewise, the spirit helps us in our weakness. . . . But that very spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.
With sighs too deep for words, the spirit—namely, our spirit—intercedes for us. Sometimes we sigh as we eagerly make our supplications before God. And even this we learn from the Holy Spirit since he is wise, just like the Son. Now since it says, “We do not know how to pray as we ought,” let us investigate that. Christ has already taught us how we ought to pray. He stated explicitly, [219] “Pray this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” and the rest.101 Now since we know how we ought to make our petitions, what could be the meaning, tell me, of the apostle’s words? What could Paul’s statement be aiming at? Well, we define prayer as making a request for good things, and above all for those things that promote the glory of God and that result in our good conduct and our living a life that is truly pleasing. “We ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.”102 This passage is what the words “we do not know how to pray as we ought” refer to. After all, if “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived what God has prepared for those who love him,”103 what shall we ask for when we approach him? How could we know that which we have not seen, or rather that which exceeds the mind and remains incomprehensible to human hearts? What kind of redemption of the body will take place? What will the renovation be like? How is the body transformed to incorruption and glory? Only the craftsman of these things could know. Furthermore, the Savior’s disciple somewhere said to certain people who did not know how to pray as they ought, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.”104 It would be quite proper and reasonable to say to people in that condition, “We do not know how to pray as we ought.” [220] “With sighs too deep for words” we pray in the spirit for things that we believe will happen in the future, but we do not at all know how.
8:28 We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to purpose.
“All things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to purpose.” But who are those called according to purpose? And what does “according to purpose” mean? Well, “according to purpose” means “according to will.” According to whose will are they called? Is it the will of the one who called them or the will of those who are called? Every desire that leads us to righteousness comes to us from God the Father. Christ said somewhere, “No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me.”105 Yet in this case, one would not fall short of a fitting statement if one were to say that people are called according to purpose—both the purpose of him who called them and their own purpose.
8:29 For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed . . .
Many people, he says, are called according to purpose. But not all are elect. The only ones who receive this honor are those whom he foreknew would be conformed “to the image of his Son.” And the blessed Paul himself clarifies what “the image of his Son” means when he says, “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.”106 Those who disregard carnal desires are the ones who imitate the image of Christ, that is, [221] life and conduct characterized by sanctification. Just as we say that the image of the man of dust, that is, Adam, is a life of disobedience and sin, so also we say that the image of the man of heaven, that is, Christ, is sanctification, righteousness, and obedience. So as many as he foreknew would ultimately be conformed to the life of Christ and would be imitators of him (as far as it is possible for human nature), these he also called.
8:30 And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.
As a consequence of their unbelief, some people are captured by ignorance and do not consider it unreasonable to say: If those whom he foreknew according to purpose and predestined are the ones who are called, then it is no surprise that we do not believe. After all, we were neither called nor foreknown. To them we reply: The one who held a wedding banquet for his son sent his servants to gather the invited107 guests, but they were not willing to come. After them, those who were invited according to his own purpose entered, and thus the wedding hall was filled with guests.108 Clearly, nothing prevented those who wanted to from coming. Foreknowledge does no harm to anyone, nor does it benefit anyone. This account teaches us that they were not foreknown who by their unbelief insulted the God who invited them. Others were invited and came to the wedding, yet they were not elect, nor justified, nor glorified. Why not? They were wearing clothes that were not appropriate for a wedding.109 Elsewhere we find that our Lord Jesus Christ himself has clearly stated, [222] “Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”110 See, here he was calling all people to himself. No one is without a share of the grace of being called. When he says “all,” he is excluding absolutely no one.
8:31-32 What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son . . .
All things work together for those who have chosen to do good, since God defends them. He who did not spare his natural Son so that he might save those who were in danger and free them from their danger, “will he not with him also give us everything else?”
8:33-34 Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn?
Swiftly and in good order, Paul refuses to allow the mind of those who are called to fall into helplessness. Rather, he teaches that they will be freed from the ancient sins and they will be justified as God wills it. All sin involves transgression of the divine law and condemns the frivolous offender, yet since the Lord of the law himself accepts the sinner, “who is to condemn?” [223]
9:1-5 I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience confirms it.
At the beginning, God chose Israel. More specifically, he called Israel the “firstborn.”111 But they grew proud and insolent and what is more, they killed the Lord. Thus they perished since they were rejected and cast out. They utterly fell away from their relationship with God, and they were ranked behind the Gentiles. They were clearly estranged from the hope of their fathers. Since the blessed Paul was appointed as a servant of the divine gospel, he proclaimed Jesus to the Gentiles, incessantly repeating that those descended from Israel have fallen away and maintaining that those who were once in darkness and worshiped demons are now called according to the purpose and foreknowledge of God. So that the simple may not think that he is pouncing on those of his own race and laughing at those who fell, he makes a much-needed defense against this idea by saying, “I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying,” and so on. Now one should be sorry for those who habitually practice such perversity that they fall away from love toward God and ultimately endure harsh penalties for that. It would not be unreasonable to shed a tear for them out of love for one another. But he has complete love for them. Indeed, wanting to be “accursed and cut off from Christ” for them is beyond the measure of love. No one in their right mind would choose to offend God for the salvation of others and to disregard their own life to obtain this benefit for others. [224]
What then is he saying when he offers his own life in exchange for the salvation of the Jews? His statement is hyperbolical and indicates perfect love. “For I could wish,” he says, “that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people.” It is as if he were to say: If Israel could be saved by my offending Christ, I myself would choose to do so. I who said to those justified by faith, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified,”112—I who proclaim to everyone, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?”—I myself would choose to endure such a terrible evil and to go to my destruction, one in the place of all. These are the words of someone trying to net the Jews for faith and throw off the oppression of their ignorance. Some of the Jews thought that the divinely inspired Paul suffered a stroke, as it were, when he opposed the laws of Moses. That is why he writes to the believers and says, “For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you.”113 Therefore, I, at least, would eagerly choose to be “accursed and cut off from Christ,” he says, in order to save my blood relatives. Then he adds another point as if to show that the reason for his grief for them is not unfitting, at least when it comes to its ability to create such a disposition in him. He does not want anyone to think he is saying something difficult or absurd when he offers his life in exchange for the life of others. So he says first, “They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises.” And “from them, according to the flesh, comes Christ himself.” Now if there were some in ancient times who did not recognize him who is truly God by nature, if the law of Moses had not served as an arbiter of their relationship with him, [225] if they had not sprung from the root of the holy fathers and been established as the heirs of their nobility, if they had not been the first to practice the worship of God and possess the rich hope of the promise, one could have grieved over them more moderately. But since their fathers and the rest veered off to an unexpected destination and they completely missed their hope, even though matters were proceeding under fair winds, as it were, isn’t the outcome for these poor people truly terrible?
9:6-9 It is not as though the word of God had failed.
This statement is precise. He is in no way saying that the word of God lied or that it could fall short of the truth. Everyone agrees that the God of the universe did promise to Abraham in ancient times that he would be the father of many.114 He also says, “I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven.”115 Accordingly, Abraham had to be made the father not only of the Israelites. One nation came from him, but there are multitudes throughout the world who are considered children of Abraham since they are born of the promise116 and they “follow the example of his faith before he was circumcised,” as it is written.117 As the blessed Paul himself says somewhere, “The promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham through the law but through the righteousness of faith. If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs,” he says, “faith is null and the promise is void.”118 So since the descendants of Abraham are reckoned to be in Isaac, according to the promise (since the words of the promise say, “About this time I will return, and Sarah shall have a son”119), it should be clear that the children of the flesh are not the ones who would always and everywhere be considered children of God. Rather the children of the promise (those who are children by faith) are the ones who would have [226] this glory for themselves.
9:10 Not only, but also Rebecca when she had conceived children by one husband, our father Isaac.
We must realize that the meaning of this statement is not at all complete. Rather, the statement is detached and is missing a brief introduction, which needs to be supplied so that the passage does not limp. What I mean is this. He just showed Isaac being given to Abraham by a promise so that it is certainly not the children of the flesh who should be considered Abraham’s descendants, but we should call him the father of his descendants by faith and by the promise. Then he refers to Rebecca and her circumstances and says, “Not only,” that is, My statement pertains not only to the birth of Isaac, “but also Rebecca, when she had conceived children by one husband, our father Isaac.” We also need to add something else, perhaps that this should be taken as evidence or assurance, or rather as a type or an image of the calling and grace of election and foreknowledge. If something like this were added, it would have seemed right to make this statement right after it. But if it is omitted, I do not know how he could go straight to the words and deeds pertaining to the birth of Isaac’s descendants.
9:14-24 What then are we to say? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means. . . . Until he called us not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles.
It is likely that some critics will think [227] Jacob and Esau received their lots by an arbitrary inclination of God’s will and that the one was loved by grace, as God willed it, and the other was hated. The apostle has to get rid of this idea as deadly, so he tries to argue the case for the decree from above, which seems to contradict his words like some kind of opponent. If, he says, even before the infants did anything and before they attempted any deeds, one was deemed worthy of love and the other was hated and enslaved to the younger, then perhaps God was unjust, he says. How is this not deranged? If Jacob were not a good man and Esau were not an evil one, perhaps one could reasonably make the case that God’s foreknowledge was in error and that his decrees about both of them were the result of a random choice and an unstable will. But since Esau was exceedingly foolish and Jacob was wise, God’s foreknowledge did absolutely no wrong when it bestowed ahead of time love on the good man and condemnation on the man who was not good. After all, it is not a terrible thing that God is long-suffering and that he holds off until the works are accomplished so that each of them may be revealed by his deeds. Since the mystery of the grace of election and of the gift of foreknowledge had to be prefigured in a type, God, who masterfully arranged these things for us, seized the moment, as it were. At the birth of the children, he showed that Isaac was the one and only son of Abraham, and so he would be the father of countless nations who would be called by the promise and in faith. Now if he happened to choose them on the basis of his knowledge, or rather if he chose those on whom it was fitting to show mercy, then he shows mercy [228] as God, as he somewhere said to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”120 Surely that fact is immune from all criticism, isn’t it? But I think the apostle distinctly foresees that some people would probably think that the will of God makes some good and others disobedient. So he needs to state their ignorant response: “So it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy.” If Esau was hated even before he did anything wrong and Jacob was honored even before he came into being and God has mercy on whom he has mercy, is it not a valid conclusion that all our actions depend on the will of God, since the one who strives or wills (that is, that one who intends to do good) accomplishes nothing?
Then he piles onto this the argument that can support this opinion: “For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, ‘I have raised you up for the very purpose of showing my power in you.’” After that, he adds a kind of conclusion to the whole argument: “So then he has mercy on whomever he chooses, and he hardens the heart of whomever he chooses. You will say to me then, ‘Why then does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?’” What kind of defense, then, does he have? This is quite obscure, and perhaps he even seems to come to the aid of their argument. Nevertheless, one may find sufficient proof for his defense in the fact that none of his statements exceed the bounds of what is fitting for God. God distributes to each person what is proper to that person.121 He has mercy and compassion on those for whom appropriate mercy would be fitting, and he imposes punishment on the sinner, but not with his wrath immediately following on the heels of the accusation. Rather, great patience intervenes so that some even think that God is neglecting the inhabitants of the earth. Then Paul replies and opposes those who make this argument, [229] and in so doing, he dissipates the force of the argument regarding the characters who were cited, I mean Esau and Pharaoh. He says, as if addressing each of the aforementioned men, “But who indeed are you, O man, to argue with God? Will what is molded say to the one who molds it, ‘Why have you made me like that?’” He shows with a clear example that it is very difficult to criticize God’s judgment. Those who choose to think reasonably would leave it to the all-knowing God to judge every matter in the way he himself knows best. They would not doubt in the least that whatever he wills to do is holy as he fashions the circumstances of each person by his authority, whatever those circumstances may be. Therefore, Paul vehemently accuses those who apply their mind to God’s will to determine whether it is good or not. They must rather imitate that which is molded by the hand of the potter, he says, and endure in silence whatever comes from God. “Will what is molded say to the one who molds it, ‘Why have you made me like that?’”
But perhaps some will also raise this objection: If God, like a potter, molds however he wants so that he makes “one vessel for honor and another for dishonor,” how could that fact not utterly persuade us to think that whatever exists anywhere and everywhere exists just as he made it? So one person is created “for honor”122 and has been allotted that kind of nature, but another has been created, or rather hardened, in order to proclaim God’s name “in all the earth.” What charge remains then against those who stumble? After all, they were created that way.
One may respond to this by saying that no one can claim that the meaning of this sentence indicates that there are differences of natures among ourselves. It does not say that some people are created savage or hardened or that they are created as vessels “of honor” and “of dishonor.” Nor does it ascribe such a nature to them [230] at all. Rather, it convinces us to think people are formed as the kind of pottery vessel that is “for honor” or “for dishonor.” We learn the point of the example from the words of the prophet. By reading the words of Jeremiah, one may learn in what sense some are molded, as by a potter, “for honor” and others “for dishonor” and for what kind of dishonor. It is written: “Arise and go down to the potter’s house, and there you will hear my words. So I went down to the potter’s house, and behold, he was making a vessel on the stones. And the vessel that he was making with his hands fell, so he made it into a different vessel, as it pleased him to make it. And the word of the Lord came to me,” it says, “saying, ‘Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? Behold, just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand. If I declare at one point concerning a nation or kingdom to destroy it, and that nation turns from all their wicked ways, then I will repent of the evils that I had planned to inflict upon them. And if I declare at one point concerning a nation or kingdom to rebuild it and plant it, and they do evil before me by not listening to my voice, then I will repent of the good that I had said I would do to them.’”123 Do you see how some are molded for honor and others for dishonor? They are not allotted a nature that is created that way, but they receive a fitting reward that is commensurate with their deeds. Therefore, if the Creator of the universe punishes the one who leaves the good paths for the disgraceful ones and crowns with honor the one who leaves disgraceful behavior for the better, how is it not true [231] to say that no one is evil by nature (or more specifically, no one is molded by him that way), but rather they became vessels of dishonor because even though they had decided to please God, they fell ill due to their voluntary inclination to evil?
But it says that he hardened Pharaoh’s heart. And furthermore, God said to him, “I have raised you up for the very purpose of showing my power in you.” So if he hardens some people and raises them up to be “vessels of wrath” and they are said to be “prepared for destruction,” “why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” How could someone hardened by him become good?
What then could I say in response to this? To know the truth, it is sufficient to maintain and think that God could never be the creator of anything bad. “Everything that he made is very good.”124 Now if they contend that the Egyptian is not human and has not received the same nature as we have, let them prove it and we will be silent. But if he is like us, either let them openly condemn God’s statement for failing to distinguish between what is good and what is not, or if they shrink back from this, then let them admit that what God brought into being was good. In this way they will reject their utterly rash opinion. The statement addressed to Pharaoh, “I have raised you up for this very purpose,” does not mean, “I have made or created you,” but rather, “I have called you to will to oppose me.” And this happened not at the beginning of his existence, but when Moses was sent to redeem Israel. The all-wise Paul explains clearly to us the reason why [232] when he says, “God desiring to show his wrath,” and so on. The whole earth went astray in ancient times. Some worshiped the creation, while others fabricated their own seeming worship. Only Abraham was called to the knowledge of God, and so his descendants grew up with the worship of God.
Now when they went down into Egypt, they spent a long time there. They slipped into error and worshiped the gods of that country. But God remembered his promises to their fathers, and Moses was chosen for a mission to free Israel from slavery. Yet it was necessary both for those whom Moses called to worship and for everyone on earth to learn that the God of the Hebrews has been revealed after a long time. Not only that, but they also needed spectacular miracles to establish them in faith toward him and in the conviction that he is not mute and impotent like the other gods, but rather he directs all things, and his wrath falls on those who resist his will. Yet it was also necessary that once God decided to do miracles, he be seen to arrive at them in an appropriate way. So Pharaoh was raised up in opposition to him according to God’s design and he was hardened against God’s power. But he was not punished unjustly since he was an unholy idolater who oppressed Israel with clay and brickmaking and rewarded them with punishment. Therefore, it was appropriate for God to make him a “vessel of wrath” and to prepare him for destruction—that is, he reached such a level of wicked behavior that he was finally a vessel of wrath and destruction. God used him as a demonstration of his power so that he may proclaim his name in all the earth and so that once Pharaoh had suffered, he may be seen to [233] have deserved it. He deserved to suffer on account of his prior sins even if he did not offend subsequently. Therefore, let us be done with all blaming and nonsense directed against God. After all, “desiring to show his wrath and make known his power, he endured with much patience the vessels of wrath that are made for destruction” in order to help the “vessels of mercy,” that is, those who receive mercy through faith, since we have been called “not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles.”
9:25 As indeed he says in Hosea.
But we who were worshipers of idols, who did not know him who is truly God by nature, were not his people. Yet we received mercy through faith and became his subjects. We have been called by grace, and we have been justified and sanctified through Christ.
9:27 Though the number of the children of Israel were like the sand of the sea.
So even though Israel were many, like the sand, “only the remnant will be saved.” The remnant are those who have been justified by faith in Christ. And this happens when God has mercy on them.
9:28 For he kept his word decisive and brief.
He saved them, it says, as he “kept his word decisive and brief.” That means that when he revealed the gospel proclamation to us, the message was noble, brief, and if I may put it this way, abridged. The Law and the Prophets used many cycles of words, and they barely managed to set before us in writing the meaning of what they had to say. [234] But the gospel proclamation is simple and its message is brief.
9:31 But Israel pursued the law of righteousness.
Now when he gives the reason that not all the Jews have been saved, he immediately weaves wonder into his discourse. O strange fact! he exclaims. The multitude in error, who have no intention whatsoever to do good, have been justified. But Israel, even though they are led to righteousness by the law of Moses, have missed their hope entirely and have been left without a share in this gift. So what is the reason for this? It is clear. They did not attain the salvation that is by faith. They did not attain the righteousness that is in Christ. Instead, they thought it was sufficient for them to boast in shadows.
9:33 A stumbling block.
Of course, we do not say that this was the reason Christ was placed in Israel. But since God foreknew what would happen, he needed to announce it ahead of time. An occasion for stumbling would be laid in the foundation of Zion, and some who lacked understanding would trip over it because of unbelief. It was beneficial for him to make this prediction, and he did so not that they might fall, but that by knowing ahead of time they might overcome the evil. Therefore, Christ was placed there as a precious stone. For those who stumble from unbelief, their loss is ruinous, but for those who have believed, their profit is life and righteousness.
10:2 I testify about them.
He testifies about their “zeal” for God, but he criticizes them for erring. They should have marveled at Christ for being God by nature because of what [235] he did. But they said, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, though only a human being, are making yourself God,”125 or other things like this. They did not know the righteousness of God, that is, Christ, or the righteousness that is through faith in him. They thought they were defending the law of Moses, but they remained in unbelief. They did not seek the Son who can make you free,126 who justifies the ungodly,127 who in his plan of salvation put an end to the arduous righteousness of the law to free them from being crushed and vexed.
10:4 Christ is the end of the law.
The law was introduced beforehand to guide the ancients to the mystery of Christ and to give them a glimpse of the truth in figures. So we declare Christ to be the fulfillment of the law and the prophets, and we are quite right to do so. Wouldn’t the truth reasonably be understood to be the fulfillment of every unclear figure? Indeed, how could anyone doubt it? Therefore, the passing from shadows to truth abrogates the laws of Moses, but it also clarifies their meaning.
When these matters ultimately reach the truth and types and figures are transformed into what is better, we do not say the law has been destroyed, but rather that it has been fulfilled at the right time, when the truth, that is, Christ, shone on us. After all, Christ is the end128 of the Law and the Prophets. He would not have lied when he said, “I have come not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.”129 Just as the introduction of many colors at the right moment does not in the least remove the outlines prefigured in a picture but brings them into sharper focus, so in the same way we say that the shadows of the law are not overturned but are rather fulfilled on the way to the truth. [236]
10:5 Moses writes concerning the righteousness that comes from the law . . .
“Moses writes concerning the righteousness that comes from the law,” he says, “that ‘the person who does these things will live by them.’”130 But there is absolutely no one who can keep it blamelessly. “For who can detect their errors?”131 Therefore, justifying grace is superior and frees us from the accusation of the law.
10:6 But the righteousness that comes from faith says . . .
He beneficially defines how our faith should be, if it is to be blameless before God and to believe that everything he does is exceedingly good. All doubt must be completely rejected along with the willful wavering of feeble hesitancy. Perhaps one of the greatest causes of stumbling is to be bent on busying ourselves with matters that are beyond all thought and that transcend our mind. After all, how could the ineffable works of God be clear to us? Indeed, what eye of the heart could ever be so strong that it could gaze on God? And more to the point, even if someone were to choose to speak about and relate matters that are far above us, how could that person understand them? Our Lord Jesus Christ once discoursed with Nicodemus about the spiritual rebirth and said to him, “Truly, truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again.”132 [He then adds the rest].133 But since he understood nothing at all, then—then!—Christ completely separated the coarseness of human thinking from the subtlety of his own thoughts and said, “If I have told you about earthly things [237] and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?”134 To this he added, “Truly, truly I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony.”135 Therefore, matters that are above us cannot be examined. If it is true that “what is at hand we find with labor,” as it is written,136 would we not have to think that in matters that transcend reason, faith is what we need the most, unaccompanied by investigation or the undertaking of vain inquiry? After all, it is clear that such matters are honored by prudence.
10:11-13 “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.”
Let Israel not think that salvation by faith is their own possession. “For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord,” he says, “shall be saved,” whether they are Jew or Greek, slave or free. God saves everyone without distinction since all are his. Thus we say that “all things are recapitulated in Christ.”137
11:1 Has God rejected his people? By no means!
Though Israel experienced a darkening, Paul wisely does not allow them to be hardened further by total rejection, but he artfully pursues them, as it were, with kind words. He just accused Israel of unbelief, but he does not strip them of the hope that comes from above, nor does he say that they are completely excluded from relationship with God. He clearly demonstrates this point by presenting himself as an “Israelite” and “a descendant of Abraham.”138 With consummate skill he still calls them God’s “people,” and to the question about rejection he replies, “By no means!” He says these things as if he were fawning on those who [238] chose unbelief and insinuating himself by flattery to redirect them to a godly and obedient disposition. Since it is clear that he himself has been called to apostleship and appointed as a priest of the mysteries of the Savior and as a herald and apostle to the Gentiles139 even though he is an Israelite, it is obvious that God has not rejected his people.
11:2-5 Do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah?
He introduces the story of Elijah as an extremely apt image of what happened to Israel. We can easily see by comparison with the events of that time how Israel was in a drunken brawl with itself. When Ahab of Samaria was king, Israel worshiped handmade idols, which is a foreign practice. There were sacrifices and sacred precincts everywhere. Those who were devoted to God lived in utter terror and underwent such unbearable persecution that the prophets hid in caves and in holes in the rocks.140 At that time even Elijah himself ran up into the remote wilderness and fell before God and said, “They have demolished your altars and killed your prophets; I alone am left, and they are seeking my life.” And he immediately heard this reply: “I have kept for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” Now at that time God was not the one impelling Israel to such terrible sins, but they fell because of their own insanity. In the same way, when God the Father was offering everyone salvation because of Christ, no one was coerced at all but they voluntarily fell into apostasy by rejecting the Redeemer. Therefore, [239] God has not rejected his people since he decided beforehand, as I said, that they would share in Christ’s salvation if they so chose.
11:6 But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works . . .
“But if it is by grace,” he says, “it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace would no longer be grace.” Wherever people think that they please God on the basis of works, there both the name and the reality of grace will be altogether empty and superfluous. “For to the one who works,” he says, “wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due.”141 Therefore, if grace is based on works, it is no longer grace.
11:7 What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking.
He said that “God has not rejected his people”142 since it was likely that some would arise who would allege just that and say, How has God not rejected his people, since Israel fell away, even if their fall was not complete but partial? After all, just a remnant has been saved,143 and that by election. He very wisely responds to this by saying, “What then?” That is to say, What shall I say in response to this? “Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened.” Israel was seeking the righteousness that comes from the law. So how could they have been justified, he says, since no one has kept the law? Therefore, Israel was seeking the righteousness that comes through a type, but they did not obtain it. But those who were elect and chosen from among the others because of their obedience obtained it. They have been justified through faith. But the rest have been hardened—that is, they are unyielding and unteachable. [240]
11:9 And David says, “Let their table become . . .”
“Let their table,” he says, “become a snare.” . . . For proof of what he said, he cites the writings of not one, but two prophets in combination “that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses.”144 “Their table,” that is, the inhospitality and cruelty that they showed to Christ at the time of his crucifixion, quite rightly became cursed. When he thirsted, they brought him vinegar mixed with gall.145 Therefore, their minds were darkened and they were bent down so that they could only see earthly things.
11:11 So I ask, have they stumbled so as to fall? By no means!
I admire you for your gentleness, divinely inspired Paul, as you skillfully craft your discussion of God’s plan. You stress that the reason the Gentiles were called was not so that Israel might completely fall away from their hope in God and stumble over Christ like some stone, but to make them jealous of those who were unexpectedly received so that they might choose to unlearn their shameful way of thinking and have a better mind than they did before and so receive the Redeemer. This argument may be proved by a brief example. Sometimes small and preadolescent children experience pain that is characteristic of those who are still children. They immediately flee from their father or mother and instantly release a flood of tears from their eyes, and this distresses their parents to no small degree because of the law of natural affection. But the parents skillfully stand aloof from this vain and childish pettiness. They simply grab whatever child is at hand and give him their honor, thus provoking the first child to jealousy and angering him, as it were, [241] to get him to return to his love for them. So when Paul refused to despair of Israel even though they offended, I think he was saying that something like this has happened.
11:12 Now if their stumbling means riches for the world.
Now if the world has been enriched by a relationship with God, he says, through Israel stumbling, and the Gentiles were accepted because Israel lacked a sound mind, what would Israel’s acceptance be but a veritable redemption from death and life from the dead?146
11:13-14 If I somehow make my own flesh . . .
He brings the faithful from the Jews and Gentiles into harmony and peace with each other so that they may not become conceited but give thanks to God for mercifully granting them the forgiveness of sins. He says that he glorifies his own ministry not out of a desire for vainglory, but in order, he says, to “make my own flesh jealous.” Here he refers to Israel as his own “flesh,” that is, his race according to the flesh. It is as if he were to say: I say that my apostleship is noble and worthy and extremely precious to God and is the most useful thing under the sun. But I do so not to crown my own head with empty honors out of some strange desire for praise, but in order to save my race according to the flesh by pricking them, as it were, with the goad of jealousy and rousing them to the necessary choice of being justified by the grace that comes through Christ. [242]
11:15 For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?
Since it is not possible to praise Israel for their faith or behavior, he proceeds to discuss the oikonomia, and he says that their unbelief provided the world with a relationship with God. He is trying to say that through the very things by which they have offended, they have perhaps become the benefactors of the world. And though Israel had fallen and was lying on the ground, as it were, he crowns them. He says that their acceptance is “life from the dead,” if it is true that their rejection is “the reconciliation of the world.”
11:22 If you remain.
The apostle skillfully constructs his statement. On the one hand, he restores Israel, who had missed the mark of what is fitting, and he urges them back to what is profitable and to seek out their root by faith in Christ. On the other hand, he says that the Gentiles have been honored by God, and he urges them to steadfastness in faith and godliness. So if you stay this way, you will remain a noble branch from a holy root. But if you disobey, you will be separated from the root.
11:25-26 Until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. . . . And so all Israel will be saved.
Now let’s take a look at this and examine it carefully. He said that “the full number of the Gentiles” will come in, and “all Israel will be saved.” But what if someone were to reply, And yet many of the Gentiles have died in unbelief, so how could the “full number of the Gentiles” have come in? [243] So “all Israel” will not be saved, if it is true that the Jews will receive the lawless son after neglecting love for Christ. That is what he himself said: “I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; if another comes in his own name, you will accept him.”147 And the most-wise Paul says, “Because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion, leading them to believe what is false.”148 What then shall we say to this? We say that since God has offered grace through faith ungrudgingly to everyone without exception, hasn’t “the full number of the Gentiles” come in, at least when it comes to the mind and intention of the one who called them? Now if some have voluntarily fallen away and failed to obtain the gift, we will not find the word of Scripture to be false on this point, will we? After all, it is within their power to share in the gifts once given, but instead they have voluntarily committed apostasy. Therefore, insofar as it concerns the kindness and love of the one who has called them, “the full number of the Gentiles” has come in and “all Israel” has been saved. But since they have become unbending, he says that a hardening has come on part of them.
11:26 As it is written, “Out of Zion will come the Deliverer.”
He adds a holy oracle to confirm the hope that even rejected Israel is going to be saved at that time. Indeed, Israel will be saved at that time. They will be called last, after the calling of the Gentiles.
11:28 They are enemies for your sake.
When it comes to the gospel proclamation, [244] they have become “enemies.” They have stumbled because of their godless behavior toward Christ. They who were held in high esteem as holy and devoted to God because of the nobility of their fathers could be regarded as “beloved” for their fathers’ sake. Yet they have become “enemies” in order to make them jealous of the unbelievers.149
11:30-32 Just as you were once disobedient to God.
He shows that the same charges apply to both the Jews and the Gentiles and that both have been healed by the same grace. Israel was called at the right time through Moses and rescued from hard labor. But the worshipers of demons, that is, the Gentiles who go by the name Egyptians, up to this point did not believe in God’s mercy toward the Israelites. That is because they gave no credence to the miracles performed by Moses, and they did not want to acknowledge the God of the Hebrews. Right after they sent the Jewish people into the desert to perform sacrifices, they started clinging to their ancient error. But now they have received mercy while Israel stumbled. Israel did not believe in God’s mercy toward the Gentiles so that they themselves might receive mercy at the proper time. Therefore, the charge against both of them, as I said, is equal. They both failed in the same way to have mercy and offer assistance. Then Paul says that all have been locked up by God in disobedience “so that he may be merciful to all.” Now we should certainly not think that the fact that some disobeyed is a result of God’s will so that once they had fallen into that state, they may be shown mercy. Rather, “he imprisoned them in disobedience” to show that they are guilty of the charge of disobedience and that they stand indicted, as it were, for their actions. They reached such a level of wicked behavior that they are practically devoid of mercy and pity. [245]
14:14 I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus . . .
“I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus,” he says, “that nothing is unclean in itself,” and the rest. The witness is compelling as he insists that he knows and is persuaded. Then he adds “in the Lord Jesus” to confirm the truth even more and to pursue the unhesitating persuasion of his hearers. He is surely thinking of what Christ says somewhere: “It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person,”150 and that all food goes into the stomach and is expelled into the sewer.151 And this is food’s nature and function. Therefore, as far as its nature is concerned, nothing that serves as nourishment is “unclean” or profane “for it is sanctified by God’s word and by prayer.”152 We also recall that when God brought everything into existence, it says that he saw that it was “very good”153 and he blessed it. Now since God praises his creation and indeed has even blessed it, who would dare to say that the creation is a patron of what is polluted and profane? Wouldn’t that person also be accusing the one who brought it into being? Therefore, no part of creation at all is “unclean” by nature. But if anyone thinks that something is unclean, that person has been polluted by it and has contracted the disease of impurity. All things are pure, but it is the lack of faith on the part of some that renders the unbeliever unclean, not the supposed unclean items themselves. Similarly, those with a mature mind know that God is one by nature and there is none beside him, and no idol really exists in the world and we give no weight to what is sacrificed to idols. After all, how could an idol that cannot know anything realize what is sacrificed to it? But for those who think there are many gods, anything sacrificed to idols will surely be significant. In the same way, for believers, what is made by God is not profane but pure, and nothing at all is unclean by nature. The use of foods has been left completely to our discretion. [246] But for those who have not yet reached this understanding, these things are not pure according to the right view (as they see it) but unclean, since their mind cripples them, as it were, on their way to the truth.
14:16 So do not let your good be spoken of as ill.
Do not let the glory of honorable people be torn down in front of the weak, nor let “your good”—that is, your admirable faith—“be spoken of as ill” before anyone. God-pleasing behavior does not come about through meat, but neither is a person godly and worthy of the kingdom of heaven if they eat uncritically whatever is put before them. No, the godly person condescends to the weakness of the weak brothers and refrains. And even though he criticized Peter for living in a Jewish way because of the men from James who came to Antioch,154 he did not criticize him for condescending to the weakness of the circumcision party and refraining from certain foods. Instead, he criticized him for using his own credibility to drag away many of the Gentiles into thinking that they had to live according to the law. This risked bringing Paul’s own proclamation to nothing. Paul was, after all, the teacher of the Gentiles.
14:20-22 Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for you to make others fall by what you eat.
It is indeed permissible both to “eat meat” and to “drink wine,” but permission in these matters does not completely exempt us from punishment. Now it is beneficial to refrain so that we may not fatten our flesh with luxury and exacerbate its inherent passions. So if we refrain from these things for our own sake, we will do so even more for the sake of our brother so that he may not stumble, according to the statement, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”155 [247]
15:7-12 Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.
We who are many are one body and members of one another, as it is written,156 since Christ knits us together into one by the bonds of his love. “He has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances.”157 Therefore, we should have the same attitude toward each other. “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”158 “Welcome one another, therefore,” he says, “just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” We should welcome one another by committing to having the same mind, bearing one another’s burdens,159 and keeping “the unity of spirit in the bond of peace.”160 That is how God welcomed us in Christ. Indeed, he is telling the truth when he says of God the Father that “he so loved the world that he gave his Son for us,”161 since he has given him in exchange for the life of us all. We have deliverance from death, and we have been redeemed from death and sin. Furthermore, he clarifies the scope of the oikonomia when he says that “Christ has become a servant of the circumcised on behalf of the truth,” and so on. God promised to the fathers of the Jews that he would bless their future seed and that they would be “as many as the stars of heaven.”162 That is why the Word, who was God, appeared in the flesh and became human—he who holds all creation together in existence and who, as God, grants well-being to the things that exist. He came into this world in the flesh not to be served, “but,” as he himself says, “to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for [248] many.”163 Indeed, he explicitly confesses that he came to fulfill the promise to Israel when he says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”164 Therefore, Paul is not lying when he says that Christ “became a servant of the circumcised in order that he might confirm the promises given to the patriarchs” and that he was appointed to this position by God the Father to obtain mercy for the Gentiles so that they too might glorify the Savior and Redeemer as the Creator and craftsman of all things. The ineffable grace of God must not—must not—seem ineffectual due to the great unbelief of the circumcised who godlessly committed an outrage against him and refused his redemption. That is what would happen if only a few Israelite believers were saved, and that just barely. For this reason God’s mercy is widened, as it were, to all people, so it is clear that the mystery of wisdom in Christ does not miss its goal of mercy. After all, the whole world under heaven has been saved in place of those who have fallen away, as God has mercy. And this mystery was announced beforehand by the words of the saints who foreknew in the Spirit what would happen—a fact he establishes by the clearest juxtaposition of prophetic testimony.