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| Immense is This Reward. How Shall We Obtain It? PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter
XXXV.—Immense is This Reward. How Shall We Obtain
It?
How blessed and wonderful, beloved, are the gifts of
God! Life in immortality, splendour in righteousness, truth in
perfect confidence,4177 faith in assurance,
self-control in holiness! And all these fall under the cognizance
of our understandings [now]; what then shall those things be which are
prepared for such as wait for Him? The Creator and Father of all
worlds,4178 the Most
Holy,4179
4179 I. ὁ δημιοῦργος
τῶν αἰώνων
καὶ ποτὴρ
πανάγιος (the Creator
Eternal and Father All-Holy.) | alone knows their amount and their
beauty. Let us therefore earnestly strive to be found in the
number of those that wait for Him, in order that we may share in His
promised gifts. But how, beloved, shall this be done? If
our understanding be fixed by faith towards God; if we earnestly seek
the things4180
4180 I. τὰ ἀγαθά (good
things) added. | which are pleasing
and acceptable to Him; if we do the things which are in harmony with
His blameless will; and if we follow the way of truth, casting away
from us all unrighteousness and iniquity,4181
along with all covetousness,4182 strife, evil
practices, deceit, whispering, and evil-speaking, all hatred of God,
pride and haughtiness, vain glory and ambition.4183
4183 The reading is
doubtful: some have ἀφιλοξενίαν,
“want of a hospitable spirit.” | For they that do such things are
hateful to God; and not only they that do them, but also those that
take pleasure in them that do them.4184 For the
Scripture saith, “But to the sinner God said, Wherefore dost thou
declare my statutes, and take my covenant into thy mouth, seeing thou
hatest instruction, and castest my words behind thee? When thou
sawest a thief, thou consentedst with4185
4185 Literally,
“didst run with.” |
him, and didst make thy portion with adulterers. Thy mouth has
abounded with wickedness, and thy
tongue contrived4186
4186 Literally, “did
weave.” | deceit. Thou
sittest, and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest4187
4187 Or, “layest a
snare for.” | thine own mother’s son. These
things thou hast done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest, wicked one,
that I should be like to thyself. But I will reprove thee, and
set thyself before thee. Consider now these things, ye that
forget God, lest He tear you in pieces, like a lion, and there be none
to deliver.4188
4188 I. omit
“σὺ δὲ
ἐμίσησας...ὁ
ῥυόμενος Ps. l. 17–22, and connects by ἐν τῶ
τέλει (in the end). | The sacrifice
of praise will glorify me, and a way is there by which I will show him
the salvation of God.”4189
4189 Ps. l. 16–23. The render will observe how the
Septuagint followed by Clement differs from the Hebrew. | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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