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| Christ the First Way to God.
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Chapter 34.—Christ the First Way
to God.
38. And mark that even when He
who is Himself the Truth and the Word, by whom all things were
made, had been made flesh that He might dwell among us, the apostle
yet says: “Yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh,
yet now henceforth know we Him no more.”1749
For Christ, desiring not only to
give the possession to those who had completed the journey, but
also to be Himself the way to those who were just setting out,
determined to take a fleshly body. Whence also that expression,
“The Lord created1750
me in the beginning of His
way,”1751
that is,
that those who wished to come might begin their journey in Him.
The apostle, therefore, although still on the way, and following
after God who called him to the reward of His heavenly calling, yet
forgetting those things which were behind, and pressing on towards
those things which were before,1752
had already passed over the
beginning of the way, and had now no further need of it; yet by
this way all must commence their journey who desire to attain to
the truth, and to rest in eternal life. For He says: “I am
the way, and the truth, and the life;”1753
that is, by me men come, to me
they come, in me they rest. For when we come to Him, we come to
the Father also, because through an equal an equal is known; and
the Holy Spirit binds, and as it were seals us, so that we are able
to rest permanently in the supreme and unchangeable Good. And
hence we may learn how essential it is that nothing should detain
us on the way, when not even our Lord Himself, so far as He has
condescended to be our way, is willing to detain us, but wishes us
rather to press on; and, instead of weakly clinging to temporal
things, even though these have been put on and worn by Him for our
salvation, to pass over them quickly, and to struggle to attain
unto Himself, who has freed our nature from the bondage of temporal
things, and has set it down at the right hand of His
Father.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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