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| What It is to Live According to Man, and What to Live According to God.
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Chapter 4.—What It is to Live
According to Man, and What to Live According to God.
When, therefore, man lives
according to man, not according to God, he is like the devil.
Because not even an angel might live according to an angel, but
only according to God, if he was to abide in the truth, and speak
God’s truth and not his own lie. And of man, too, the same
apostle says in another place, “If the truth of God hath more
abounded through my lie;”652
—“my lie,” he said, and
“God’s truth.” When, then, a man lives according to the
truth, he lives not according to himself, but according to God; for
He was God who said, “I am the truth.”653
When, therefore, man lives
according to himself,—that is, according to man, not according to
God,—assuredly he lives according to a lie; not that man himself
is a lie, for God is his author and creator, who is certainly not
the author and creator of a lie, but because man was made upright,
that he might not live according to himself, but according to Him
that made him,—in other words, that he might do His will and not
his own; and not to live as he was made to live, that is a lie.
For he certainly desires to be blessed even by not living so that
he may be blessed. And what is a lie if this desire be not?
Wherefore it is not without meaning said that all sin is a lie.
For no sin is committed save by that desire or will by which we
desire that it be well with us, and shrink from it being ill with
us. That, therefore, is a lie which we do in order that it may be
well with us, but which makes us more miserable than we were. And
why is this, but because the source of man’s happiness lies only
in God, whom he abandons when he sins, and not in himself, by
living according to whom he sins?
In enunciating this proposition of
ours, then, that because some live according to the flesh and
others according to the spirit, there have arisen two diverse and
conflicting cities, we might equally well have said, “because
some live according to man, others according to God.” For Paul
says very plainly to the Corinthians, “For whereas there is among
you envying and strife, are ye not carnal, and walk according to
man?”654
So that to
walk according to man and to be carnal are the
same; for by
flesh, that is, by a part of man, man is meant. For before
he said that those same persons were animal whom afterwards he
calls carnal, saying, “For what man knoweth the things of a man,
save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God
knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received not
the spirit of this world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we
might know the things which are freely given to us of God. Which
things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom
teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual
things with spiritual. But the animal man perceiveth not the
things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto
him.”655
It is to
men of this kind, then, that is, to animal men, he shortly after
says, “And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto
spiritual, but as unto carnal.”656
And this is to be interpreted by
the same usage, a part being taken for the whole. For both the
soul and the flesh, the component parts of man, can be used to
signify the whole man; and so the animal man and the carnal man are
not two different things, but one and the same thing, viz., man
living according to man. In the same way it is nothing else than
men that are meant either in the words, “By the deeds of the law
there shall no flesh be justified;”657
or in the words, “Seventy-five
souls went down into Egypt with Jacob.”658
In the one passage, “no
flesh” signifies “no man;” and in the other, by
“seventy-five souls” seventy-five men are meant. And the
expression, “not in words which man’s wisdom teacheth” might
equally be “not in words which fleshly wisdom teacheth;” and
the expression, “ye walk according to man,” might be
“according to the flesh.” And this is still more apparent in
the words which followed: “For while one saith, I am of Paul,
and another, I am of Apollos, are ye not men?” The same thing
which he had before expressed by “ye are animal,” “ye are
carnal, he now expresses by “ye are men;” that is, ye live
according to man, not according to God, for if you lived according
to Him, you should be gods.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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