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| Chapter IX. That love not only makes sons out of servants, but also bestows the image and likeness of God.
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Chapter IX.
That love not only makes sons out of servants, but also
bestows the image and likeness of God.
And if to anyone relying
on the help of God and not on his own efforts, it has been vouchsafed
to acquire this state, from the condition of a servant, wherein is
fear, and from a mercenary greed of hope, whereby there is sought not
so much the good of the donor as the recompense of reward, he will
begin to pass on to the adoption of sons, where there is no longer
fear, nor greed, but that love which never faileth continually endures.
Of which fear and love the Lord in chiding some shows what is befitting
for each one: “A son knoweth his own father, and a servant
feareth his lord: And if I be a Father, where is My honour: and if I be
a Lord, where is my fear?”1703
For one who
is a servant must needs fear because “if knowing his lord’s
will he has done things worthy of stripes, he shall be beaten with many
stripes.”1704
Whoever then by
this love has attained the image and likeness of God, will now delight
in goodness for the pleasure of goodness itself, and having somehow a
like feeling of patience and gentleness will henceforth be angered by
no faults of sinners, but in his compassion and sympathy will rather
ask for pardon for their infirmities, and, remembering that for so long
he himself was tried by the stings of similar passions till by the
Lord’s mercy he was saved, will feel that, as he was saved from
carnal attacks not by the teaching of his own exertions but by
God’s protection, not anger but pity ought to be shown to those
who go astray; and with full peace of mind will he sing to God
the following verse:
“Thou hast broken my chains. I will offer to Thee the sacrifice
of praise;” and: “except the Lord had helped me, my soul
had almost dwelt in hell.”1705
And while he
continues in this humility of mind he will be able even to fulfil this
Evangelic command of perfection: “Love your enemies, do good to
them that hate you, and pray for them that persecute you and slander
you.”1706
And so it will be
vouchsafed to us to attain that reward which is subjoined, whereby we
shall not only bear the image and likeness of God, but shall even be
called sons: “that ye may be,” says He “sons of your
Father which is in heaven, Who maketh His sun to rise on the good and
evil, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust:”1707
and this feeling the blessed John knew
that he had attained when he said: “that we may have confidence
in the day of judgment, because as He is so are we also in this
world.”1708
For in what can
a weak and fragile human nature be like Him, except in always showing a
calm love in its heart towards the good and evil, the just and the
unjust, in imitation of God, and by doing good for the love of goodness
itself, arriving at that true adoption of the sons of God, of which
also the blessed Apostle speaks as follows: “Every one that is
born of God doeth not sin, for His seed is in him, and he cannot sin,
because he is born of God;” and again: “We know that every
one who is born of God sinneth not, but his birth of God preserves him,
and the wicked one toucheth him not?”1709
And this must be understood not of all kinds of sins, but only of
mortal sins: and if any one will not extricate and cleanse himself from
these, for him the aforesaid Apostle tells us in another place that we
ought not even to pray, saying: “If a man knows his brother to be
sinning a sin not unto death, let him ask, and He will give him life
for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not
say that he should ask for it.”1710
But of those which he says are not unto death, from which even those
who serve Christ faithfully cannot, with whatever care they keep
themselves, be free, of these he says: “If we say that we have no
sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us;” and again:
“If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His
word is not in us.”1711
For it is an
impossibility for any one of the saints not to fall into those trivial
faults which are committed by word, and thought, and ignorance, and
forgetfulness, and necessity, and will, and surprise: which though
quite different from that sin which is said to be unto death, still
cannot be free from fault and blame.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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