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| Consistency of the Apostle in His Other Epistles.
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Chapter
XVII.—Consistency of the Apostle in His Other
Epistles.
Challenge me to front the apostolic line of
battle; look at his Epistles: they all keep guard in defence of
modesty, of chastity, of sanctity; they all aim their missiles against
the interests of luxury, and lasciviousness, and lust. What, in
short, does he write to the Thessalonians withal? “For our
consolation887
(originated) not of
seduction, nor of impurity:” and, “This is the will
of God, your sanctification, that ye abstain from fornication; that
each one know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour,
not in the lust of concupiscence, as (do) the nations which are
ignorant of God.”888
What do the
Galatians read? “Manifest are the works of the
flesh.” What are these? Among the first he has set
“fornication, impurity, lasciviousness:”
“(concerning) which I foretell you, as I have foretold, that
whoever do such acts are not to attain by inheritance the kingdom of
God.”889
The Romans,
moreover,—what learning is more impressed upon them than that
there must be no dereliction of the Lord after believing?
“What, then, say we? Do we persevere in sin, in order that
grace may superabound? Far be it. We, who are dead to sin, how
shall we live in it still? Are ye ignorant that we who have been
baptized in Christ have been baptized into His death? Buried with
Him, then, we have been, through the baptism into the death, in order
that, as Christ hath risen again from the dead, so we too may walk in
newness of life. For if we have been buried together in the
likeness of His death, why, we shall be (in that) of (His) resurrection
too; knowing this, that our old man hath been crucified together with
Him. But if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall live,
too, with Him; knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead,
no more dieth, (that) death no more hath domination over Him. For
in that He died to sin, He died once for all; but in that He
liveth, to God He liveth. Thus, too, repute ye yourselves dead
indeed to sin, but living to God through Christ Jesus.”890
Therefore, Christ being once for all
dead, none who, subsequently to Christ, has died, can live again to
sin, and especially to so heinous a sin. Else, if fornication and
adultery may by possibility be anew admissible, Christ withal will be
able anew to die. Moreover, the apostle is urgent in prohibiting
“sin from reigning in our mortal body,”891
whose “infirmity of the flesh” he knew. “For as
ye have tendered your members to servile impurity and iniquity, so too
now tender them servants to righteousness unto holiness.”
For even if he has affirmed that “good dwelleth not in his
flesh,”892
yet (he means)
according to “the law of the letter,”893
| 893 This exact expression
does not occur; but comp. 2
Cor. iii. 6. |
in which he “was:” but according to “the law of
the Spirit,”894
to which he annexes
us, he frees us from the “infirmity of the flesh.”
“For the law,” he says, “of the Spirit of life hath
manumitted thee from the law of sin and of death.”895
| 895 Rom. viii. 2, omitting ἐν
Χριστῷ
᾽Ιησοῦ, and substituting (unless
it be a misprint) “te” for μέ. | For albeit he may appear to be partly
disputing from the standpoint of Judaism, yet it is to us that he is
directing the integrity and plenitude of the rules of
discipline,—(us), for whose sake soever, labouring (as we were)
in the law, “God hath sent, through flesh, His own Son, in
similitude of flesh of sin; and, because of sin, hath condemned sin in
the flesh; in order that the righteousness of the law,” he says,
“might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to flesh, but
according to (the) Spirit. For they who walk according to flesh
are sensible as to those things which are the flesh’s, and they
who (walk) according to (the) Spirit those which (are) the
Spirit’s.”896
Moreover, he
has affirmed the “sense of the flesh” to be
“death;”897
hence too,
“enmity,” and enmity toward God;898
and that “they who are in the flesh,” that is, in the
sense of the flesh, “cannot please God:”899
and, “If ye live according to
flesh,” he says, “it will come to pass that ye
die.”900
But what do we
understand “the sense of the flesh” and “the life of
the flesh” (to mean), except whatever “it shames (one) to
pronounce?”901
for the other (works)
of the flesh even an apostle would have named.902
Similarly, too, (when writing) to the Ephesians, while recalling past
(deeds), he warns (them) concerning the future: “In which
we too had our conversation, doing the concupiscences and pleasures of
the flesh.”903
Branding, in
fine, such as had denied themselves—Christians, to wit—on
the score of having “delivered themselves up to the working of
every impurity,”904
“But ye,”
he says, “not so have learnt Christ.” And again he
says thus: “Let him who was wont to steal, steal no
more.”905
But, similarly,
let him who was wont to commit adultery hitherto, not commit adultery;
and he who was wont to fornicate hitherto, not fornicate: for he
would have added these (admonitions) too, had he been in the habit of
extending pardon to such, or at all willed it to be extended—(he)
who, not willing pollution to be contracted even by a word, says,
“Let no base speech proceed out of your mouth.”906
Again: “But let fornication
and every impurity not be even named among you, as becometh
saints,”907
—so far is it
from being excused,—“knowing this, that every fornicator or
impure (person) hath not God’s kingdom. Let none seduce you
with empty words: on this account cometh the wrath of God upon
the sons of unbelief.”908
Who
“seduces with empty words” but he who states in a public
harangue that adultery is remissible? not seeing into the fact that its
very foundations have been dug out by the apostle, when he puts
restraints upon drunkennesses and revellings, as withal here:
“And be not inebriated with wine, in which is
voluptuousness.”909
He
demonstrates, too, to the Colossians what “members” they
are to “mortify” upon earth: “fornication,
impurity, lust, evil concupiscence,” and “base
talk.”910
Yield up, by
this time, to so many and such sentences, the one (passage) to which
you cling. Paucity is cast into the shade by multitude, doubt by
certainty, obscurity by plainness. Even if, for certain, the
apostle had granted pardon of fornication to that Corinthian, it
would be another instance of his once for all contravening his own
practice to meet the requirement of the time. He circumcised
Timotheus alone, and yet did away with circumcision.911
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