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| The Death of Christ Voluntary. How the Mediator of Life Subdued the Mediator of Death. How the Devil Leads His Own to Despise the Death of Christ.
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Chapter 13.—The
Death of Christ Voluntary. How the Mediator of Life Subdued the
Mediator of Death. How the Devil Leads His Own to Despise the Death
of Christ.
16. Wherefore, since the spirit is
to be preferred to the body, and the death of the spirit means that
God has left it, but the death of the body that the spirit has left
it; and since herein lies the punishment in the death of the body,
that the spirit leaves the body against its will, because it left
God willingly; so that, whereas the spirit left God because it
would, it leaves the body although it would not; nor leaves it when
it would, unless it has offered violence to itself, whereby the
body itself is slain: the spirit of the Mediator showed how it was
through no punishment of sin that He came to the death of the
flesh, because He did not leave it against His will, but because He
willed, when He willed, as He willed. For because He is so
commingled [with the flesh] by the Word of God as to be one, He
says: “I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take
it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay down my life that I
might take it again.”510
And, as the Gospel tells us, they
who were present were most astonished at this, that after that
[last] word, in which He set forth the figure of our sin, He
immediately gave up His spirit. For they who are hung on the cross
are commonly tortured by a prolonged death. Whence it was that the
legs of the thieves were broken, in order that they might die
directly, and be taken down from the cross before the Sabbath. And
that He was found to be dead already, caused wonder. And it was
this also, at which, as we read, Pilate marvelled, when the body of
the Lord was asked of him for burial.511
| 511 Bible:John.19.30-John.19.34">Mark xv.
37, 39, 43, 44, and John xix. 30–34 |
17. Because that deceiver
then,—who was a mediator to death for man, and feignedly puts
himself forward as to life, under the name of cleansing by
sacrilegious rites and sacrifices, by which the proud are led
away,—can neither share in our death, nor rise again from his
own: he has indeed been able to apply his single death to our
double one; but he certainly has not been able to apply a single
resurrection, which should be at once a mystery of our renewal, and
a type of that waking up which is to be in the end. He then who
being alive in the spirit raised again His own flesh that was dead,
the true Mediator of life, has cast out him, who is dead in the
spirit and the mediator of death, from the spirits of those who
believe in Himself, so that he should not reign within, but should
assault from without, and yet not prevail. And to him, too, He
offered Himself to be tempted, in order that He might be also a
mediator to overcome his temptations, not only by succor, but also
by example. But when the devil, from the first, although striving
through every entrance to creep into His inward parts, was thrust
out, having finished all his alluring temptation in the wilderness
after the baptism;512
because, being dead in the spirit,
he forced no entrance into Him who was alive in the spirit, he
betook himself, through eagerness for the death of man in any way
whatsoever, to effecting that death which he could, and was
permitted to effect it upon that mortal element which the living
Mediator had received from us. And where he could do anything,
there in every respect he was conquered; and wherein he received
outwardly the power of slaying the Lord in the flesh, therein his
inward power, by which he held ourselves, was slain. For it was
brought to pass that the bonds of many sins in many deaths were
loosed, through the one death of One which no sin had preceded.
Which death, though not due, the Lord therefore rendered for us,
that the death which was due might work us no hurt. For He was not
stripped of the flesh by obligation of any authority, but He
stripped Himself. For doubtless He who was able not to die, if He
would not, did die because He would: and so He made a show of
principalities and powers, openly triumphing over them in
Himself.513
For whereas
by His death the one and most real sacrifice was offered up for us,
whatever fault there was, whence principalities and powers held us
fast as of right to pay its penalty, He cleansed, abolished,
extinguished; and by His own resurrection He also called us whom He
predestinated to a new life; and whom He called, them He justified;
and whom He justified, them He glorified.514
And so the devil, in that very
death of the flesh, lost man, whom he was possessing as by an
absolute right, seduced as he was by his own consent, and over whom
he ruled, himself impeded by no corruption of flesh and blood,
through that frailty of man’s mortal body, whence he was both too
poor and too weak; he who was proud in proportion as he was, as it
were, both richer and stronger, ruling over him who was, as it
were, both clothed in rags and full of troubles. For whither he
drove the sinner to fall, himself not following, there by following
he compelled the Redeemer to descend. And so the Son of God deigned
to become our friend in the fellowship of death, to which because
he came not, the enemy thought himself to be better and greater
than ourselves. For our Redeemer says, “Greater love hath no man
than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”515
Wherefore
also the devil thought himself superior to the Lord Himself,
inasmuch as the Lord in His sufferings yielded to him; for of Him,
too, is understood what is read in the Psalm, “For Thou hast made
Him a little lower than the angels:”516
so that He, being Himself put to
death, although innocent, by the unjust one acting against us as it
were by just right, might by a most just right overcome him, and so
might lead captive the captivity wrought through sin,517
and free us
from a captivity that was just on account of sin, by blotting out
the handwriting, and redeeming us who were to be justified although
sinners, through His own righteous blood unrighteously poured
out.
18. Hence also the devil mocks
those who are his own until this very day, to whom he presents
himself as a false mediator, as though they would be cleansed or
rather entangled and drowned by his rites, in that he very
easily
persuades the proud to ridicule and despise the death of Christ,
from which the more he himself is estranged, the more is he
believed by them to be the holier and more divine. Yet those who
have remained with him are very few, since the nations acknowledge
and with pious humility imbibe the price paid for themselves, and
in trust upon it abandon their enemy, and gather together to their
Redeemer. For the devil does not know how the most excellent wisdom
of God makes use of both his snares and his fury to bring about the
salvation of His own faithful ones, beginning from the former end,
which is the beginning of the spiritual creature, even to the
latter end, which is the death of the body, and so “reaching from
the one end to the other, mightily and sweetly ordering all
things.”518
| 518 Wisdom 8.1" id="iv.i.vi.xiv-p13.1" parsed="|Wis|8|1|0|0" osisRef="Bible:Wis.8.1">Wisd. viii. 1 | For wisdom
“passeth and goeth through all things by reason of her pureness,
and no defiled thing can fall into her.”519
| 519 Wisdom 7.24,25" id="iv.i.vi.xiv-p14.1" parsed="|Wis|7|24|7|25" osisRef="Bible:Wis.7.24-Wis.7.25">Wisd. vii. 24, 25 | And since the devil has nothing to
do with the death of the flesh, whence comes his exceeding pride, a
death of another kind is prepared in the eternal fire of hell, by
which not only the spirits that have earthly, but also those who
have aerial bodies, can be tormented. But proud men, by whom Christ
is despised, because He died, wherein He bought us with so great a
price,520
both bring
back the former death, and also men, to that miserable condition of
nature, which is derived from the first sin, and will be cast down
into the latter death with the devil. And they on this account
preferred the devil to Christ, because the former cast them into
that former death, whither he himself fell not through the
difference of his nature, and whither on account of them Christ
descended through His great mercy: and yet they do not hesitate to
believe themselves better than the devils, and do not cease to
assail and denounce them with every sort of malediction, while they
know them at any rate to have nothing to do with the suffering of
this kind of death, on account of which they despise Christ.
Neither will they take into account that the case may possibly be,
that the Word of God, remaining in Himself, and in Himself in no
way changeable, may yet, through the taking upon Him of a lower
nature, be able to suffer somewhat of a lower kind, which the
unclean spirit cannot suffer, because he has not an earthly body.
And so, whereas they themselves are better than the devils, yet,
because they bear a body of flesh, they can so die, as the devils
certainly cannot die, who do not bear such a body. They presume
much on the deaths of their own sacrifices, which they do not
perceive that they sacrifice to deceitful and proud spirits; or if
they have come to perceive it, think their friendship to be of some
good to themselves, treacherous and envious although they are,
whose purpose is bent upon nothing else except to hinder our
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