Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter XLIII
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter
XLIII.
Some new thing, then, has come to pass since the
time that Jesus suffered,—that, I mean, which has happened to the
city, to the whole nation, and in the sudden and general rise of a
Christian community. And that, too, is a new thing, that those
who were strangers to the covenants of God, with no part in His
promises, and far from the truth, have by a divine power been enabled
to embrace the truth. These things were not the work of an
impostor, but were the work of God, who sent His Word, Jesus Christ, to
make known His purposes.4934
| 4934 ἀγγελμάτων.
Spencer reads ἀγαλμάτων in
this and the following sentences. | The
sufferings and death which Jesus endured with such fortitude and
meekness, show the cruelty and injustice of those who inflicted them,
but they did not destroy the announcement of the purposes of God;
indeed, if we may so say, they served rather to make them known.
For Jesus Himself taught us this when He said, “Except a grain of
wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth by itself alone:
but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”4935
Jesus, then, who is this grain of
wheat, died, and brought forth much fruit. And the Father is ever
looking forward for the results of the death of the grain of wheat,
both those which are arising now, and those which shall arise
hereafter. The Father of Jesus is therefore a tender and loving
Father, though “He spared not His own Son, but delivered Him
up” as His lamb “for us all,”4936
that so “the Lamb of God,” by dying for all men, might
“take away the sin of the world.” It was not by
compulsion, therefore, but willingly, that He bore the reproaches of
those who reviled Him. Then Celsus, returning to those who apply
abusive language to images, says: “Of those whom you load
with insults, you may in like manner say that they voluntarily submit
to such treatment, and therefore they bear insults with patience; for
it is best to deal equally with both sides. Yet these severely
punish the scorner, so that he must either flee and hide himself, or be
taken and perish.” It is not, then, because Christians cast
insults upon demons that they incur their revenge, but because they
drive them away out of the images, and from the bodies and souls of
men. And here, although Celsus perceives it not, he has on this
subject spoken something like the truth; for it is true that the souls
of those who condemn Christians, and betray them, and rejoice in
persecuting them, are filled with wicked demons.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
