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| But why did He not withdraw His body from the Jews, and so guard its immortality? (1) It became Him not to inflict death on Himself, and yet not to shun it. (2) He came to receive death as the due of others, therefore it should come to Him from without. (3) His death must be certain, to guarantee the truth of His Resurrection. Also, He could not die from infirmity, lest He should be mocked in His healing of others.
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§22. But
why did He not withdraw His body from the Jews, and so guard its
immortality? (1) It became Him not to inflict death on Himself, and yet
not to shun it. (2) He came to receive death as the due of others,
therefore it should come to Him from without. (3) His death must be
certain, to guarantee the truth of His Resurrection. Also, He could not
die from infirmity, lest He should be mocked in His healing of
others.
But it were better, one might say, to have hidden
from the designs of the Jews, that He might guard His body altogether
from death. Now let such an one be told that this too was unbefitting
the Lord. For as it was not fitting for the Word of God, being the
Life, to inflict death Himself on His own body, so neither was it
suitable to fly from death offered by others, but rather to follow it
up unto destruction, for which reason He naturally neither laid aside
His body of His own accord, nor, again, fled from the Jews when they
took counsel against Him. 2. But this did not shew weakness on the
Word’s part, but, on the contrary, shewed Him to be Saviour and
Life; in that He both awaited death to destroy it, and hasted to
accomplish the death offered Him for the salvation of all. 3. And
besides, the Saviour came to accomplish not His own death, but the
death of men; whence He did not lay aside His body by a death of His
own260
—for He was Life and had none—but
received that death which came from men, in order perfectly to do away
with this when it met Him in His own body. 4. Again, from the following
also one might see the reasonableness of the Lord’s body meeting
this end. The Lord was especially concerned for the resurrection of the
body which He was set to accomplish. For what He was to do was to
manifest it as a monument of victory over death, and to assure all of
His having effected the blotting out of corruption, and of the
incorruption of their bodies from thenceforward; as a gage of which and
a proof of the resurrection in store for all, He has preserved His own
body incorrupt. 5. If, then, once more, His body had fallen sick, and
the word had been sundered from it in the sight of all, it would have
been unbecoming that He who healed the diseases of others should suffer
His own instrument to waste in sickness. For how could His driving out
the diseases of others have been believed261
in if
His own temple fell sick in Him262
| 262 i.e. when sustained by its union with Him. | ? For either He had
been mocked as unable to drive away diseases, or if He could, but did
not, He would be thought insensible toward others also.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
