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| That Jesus Christ, at the Same Time God and Man, is the True and Most Efficacious Mediator.
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Chapter XLIII.—That Jesus Christ,
at the Same Time God and Man, is the True and Most Efficacious
Mediator.
68. But the true Mediator, whom in Thy secret
mercy Thou hast pointed out to the humble, and didst send, that by
His example977
| 977 See notes 3, p. 71, and 9 and 11, p. 74, above. | also they
might learn the same humility—that “Mediator between God and
men, the man Christ Jesus,”978
appeared between mortal sinners and
the immortal Just One—mortal with men, just with God; that
because the reward of righteousness is life and peace, He might, by
righteousness conjoined with God, cancel the death of justified
sinners, which He willed to have in common with them.979
| 979 Not that our Lord is to be supposed, as some have
held, to have been under the law of death in Adam, because “in
Adam all die” (1 Cor. xv. 22; see the whole of c. 23, in
De Civ. Dei, xiii, and compare ix. sec. 34, note 3,
above); for he says in Serm. ccxxxii. 5: “As there was
nothing in us from which life could spring, so there was nothing in
Him from which death could come.” He laid down His life
(John
x. 18), and as being
partaker of the divine nature, could see no corruption
(Acts
ii. 27). This is the
explanation Augustin gives in his comment on
Ps. lxxxv. 5 (quoted in the next section)
of Christ’s being “free among the dead.” So also in his De
Trin. xiii. 18, he says he was thus free because “solus enim
a debito mortis liber est mortuus.” The true analogy between the
first and second Adam is surely then to be found in our Lord’s
being free from the law of death by reason of His divine nature,
and Adam before his transgression being able to avert death by
partaking of the Tree of Life. Christ was, it is true, a child of
Adam, but a child of Adam miraculously born. See note 3, p. 73,
above. | Hence He was
pointed out to holy men of old; to the intent that they, through
faith in His Passion to come,980
| 980 See De Trin. iv. 2; and Trench, Hulsean
Lectures (1845), latter part of lect. iv. | even as we through faith in that
which is past, might be saved. For as man He was Mediator; but as
the Word He was not between,981
| 981 Medius, alluding to mediator
immediately before. See his De Civ. Dei, ix. 15, and xi. 2,
for an enlargement of this distinction between Christ as man and
Christ as the Word. Compare also De Trin. i. 20 and xiii.
13; and Mansel, Bampton Lectures, lect. v. note 20. | because equal to God, and God with
God, and together with the Holy Spirit982
| 982 Some mss. omit Cum
spiritu sancto. | one God.
69. How hast Thou loved us,983
| 983 Christ did not, as in the words of a well-known
hymn, “change the wrath to love.” For, as Augustin remarks in a
very beautiful passage in Ev. Joh. Tract. cx. 6, God loved
us before the foundation of the world, and the reconcilement
wrought by Christ must not be “so understood as if the Son
reconciled us unto Him in this respect, that He now began to love
those whom He formerly hated, in the same way as enemy is
reconciled to enemy, so that thereafter they become friends, and
mutual love takes the place of their mutual hatred; but we were
reconciled unto Him who already loved us, but with whom we
were at enmity because of our sin. Whether I say the truth on this
let the apostle testify, when he says: ‘God commendeth His love
towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for
us’” (Rom. v. 8, 9). He similarly applies the
text last quoted in his De Trin. xiii. 15. See also
ibid. sec. 21, where he speaks of the wrath of God, and
ibid. iv. 2. Compare Archbishop Thomson, Bampton
Lectures, lect. vii., and note 95. | O good Father, who sparedst not
Thine only Son, but deliveredst Him up for us wicked ones!984
| 984 Rom. viii. 34, which is not “for us wicked
ones,” but “for us all,” as the Authorized Version has it;
and we must not narrow the words. Augustin, in Ev. Joh.
Tract. cx. 2, it will be remembered, when commenting on John xvii.
21, “that they all may
be one…that the world may believe Thou hast sent me,” limits
“the world” to the believing world, and continues
(ibid.sec. 4), “Ipsi sunt enim mundus, non permanens
inimicus, qualis est mundis damnationi prædestinatus.” On Christ
being a ransom for all, see Archbishop Thomson, Bampton
Lectures, lect. vii. part 5, and note 101. | How hast
Thou loved us, for whom He, who thought it no robbery to be equal
with Thee, “became obedient unto death, even the death of the
cross;”985
He alone
“free among the dead,”986
that had power to lay down His
life, and power to take it again;987
for us was He unto Thee both Victor
and Victim, and the Victor as being the Victim; for us was He unto
Thee both Priest and Sacrifice, and Priest as being the Sacrifice;
of slaves making us Thy sons, by being born of Thee, and serving
us. Rightly, then, is my hope strongly fixed on Him, that Thou wilt
heal all my diseases988
by Him who sitteth at Thy right
hand and maketh intercession for us;989
else should I utterly despair.990
| 990 See note 11, p. 140, above. | For numerous
and great are my infirmities, yea, numerous and great are they; but
Thy medicine is greater. We might think that Thy Word was removed
from union with man, and despair of ourselves had He not been
“made flesh and dwelt among us.”991
70. Terrified by my sins and the load of my
misery, I had resolved in my heart, and meditated flight into the
wilderness;992
but Thou
didst forbid me, and didst strengthen me, saying, therefore, Christ
“died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live
unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them.”993
Behold, O
Lord, I cast my care upon Thee,994
that I may live, and “behold
wondrous things out of Thy law.”995
Thou knowest my unskilfulness and
my infirmities; teach me, and heal me. Thine only Son—He “in
whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge”996
| 996 Col. ii. 3. Compare Dean Mansel,
Bampton Lectures, lect. v. and note 22. | —hath
redeemed me with His blood. Let not the proud speak evil of me,997
| 997 Ps. cxix. 122, Old Ver. He may
perhaps here allude to the spiritual pride of the Donatists, who,
holding rigid views as to purity of discipline, disparaged both his
life and doctrine, pointing to his Manichæanism and the sinfulness
of life before baptism. In his Answer to Petilian, iii. 11,
20, etc., and Serm. 3, sec. 19, on
Ps. xxxvi., he alludes at length to the
charges brought against him, referring then finally to his own
confessions in book iii. above. | because I
consider my ransom, and eat and drink, and distribute; and poor,
desire to be satisfied from Him, together with those who eat and
are satisfied, and they praise the Lord that seek him.998
| 998 Ps. xxii. 26. Augustin probably alludes
here to the Lord’s Supper, in accordance with the general
Patristic interpretation. |
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