Sermons to the People 152.1–152.11

Your Charity should remember that I discussed with you a most difficult question from the Epistle of the apostle Paul (in the previous sermon), where he says: “For I do not do what I want; but what I hate, that I do.” Those of you who were present remember: be present now in mind too, so that you may build on what you heard. For the reading that was recited today follows on, and the reader began it here: “God sent his Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin, and by sin condemned sin in the flesh, so that the righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” But the words that were read then and not discussed are these, which follow: “So then I myself with my mind serve the law of God, but with my flesh the law of sin. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what was impossible for the Law, in that it was weak through the flesh.” And there follows what was read today: “God sent his Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin.” There is no difficulty in obscure meanings when the Spirit helps. So let him help us as you pray; for the very desire by which you want to understand is a prayer to God. So you must expect help from him. For we, like farmers in a field, work from outside. But if there were no one working within, the seed would not take root in the earth, no shoot would spring up in the field, the stem would not grow strong and become a tree; neither branches nor fruit nor leaves would come forth. Therefore the apostle himself said, distinguishing the work of the laborers and that of the Creator: “I planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the growth.” And he added: “So neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters; but God who gives the growth.” If God does not give growth within, this sound in your ears is empty. But if he gives it, what we plant and water is worth something, and our labor is not empty.

I have already told you that what the apostle says, “With my mind I serve the law of God, but with my flesh the law of sin,” must be understood so that you allow the flesh nothing more than desires, without which it cannot exist. But if you consent to evil desires and do not struggle against them, you will lament as one conquered; and it is to be hoped that you will lament, lest you lose even the sense of pain. So, as far as our wishes, our will, our prayer go, when we say, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” we certainly long for this: that not even these evil desires should arise from our flesh. But as long as we live here, we cannot bring it about. For this reason he says: “But to accomplish the good I do not find.” What do I find to do? Not to consent to evil desire. What do I not find to accomplish? Not having evil desire. So in this fight it remains that with your mind, not consenting to evil desires, you serve the law of God; but with your flesh, which desires though you do not consent, you serve the law of sin. The flesh does its desiring; you do your part too. Its desires are not suppressed, not extinguished by you; let it not extinguish yours: so that you may labor in the contest, not be dragged off conquered.

So the apostle goes on and says, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Even if one has desires of the flesh, to which they do not consent; even if the law in their members fights against the law of their mind and wants to take the mind captive: yet because through the grace of baptism and the washing of regeneration the very guilt with which you were born has been loosed, and whatever you previously consented to evil desire, whether by any outrage, any crime, any evil thought, any evil word, all has been blotted out in that font which you entered a slave and from which you came out free: because, then, these things are so, “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” There is none now; there was before. “From one, all to condemnation.” Generation had done this evil; but regeneration has done this good. “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.” That law is present in your members, but it does not make you guilty. You have been set free from it: fight as a free man; but see that you are not conquered and become a slave again. You labor in fighting, but you will rejoice in triumph.

But I have told you, and you must above all remember, not to think, because of this fight (without which no man can be, even one who lives righteously; indeed, the one who lives righteously is the one engaged in it; for he who does not live righteously does not fight but is dragged off), not to think, then, because of this, that there are as it were two natures from different principles, as the Manichees rave, as if the flesh were not from God. That is false: both are from God. But human nature deserved this conflict in itself by sin. So it is a sickness: it is healed, and it is no more. The discord now existing between spirit and flesh labors toward concord; the spirit labors in order that the flesh may agree with it. It is as if in one house husband and wife have a quarrel between them; the husband ought to labor to tame the wife. Tamed, let the wife be subject to the husband; subject, let her live in accord with her husband; let there be peace in the house.

But when he had said, “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death,” he set before us these laws to be understood. Look at them and distinguish them: this distinction is quite necessary for you. “The law,” he says, “of the Spirit of life”: see, one law; “has set you free from the law of sin and death”: see, another law. And there follows: “For what was impossible for the law, in that it was weak through the flesh”: see, a third law. Or perhaps this is one of the two? Let us inquire, and with the Lord’s help see. What did he say of that good law? “The law of the Spirit of life has set you free from the law of sin and death.” He does not say that this law was powerless to bring anything about: “The law of the Spirit of life,” he says, “has set you free from the law of sin and death.” That good law has set you free from this evil law. For what is the evil law? “I see another law in my members fighting against the law of my mind, and taking me captive in the law of sin which is in my members.” Why is this too called a law? Quite rightly. For it was done most lawfully that man, who would not obey his Lord, should not have his own flesh serve him. Above you is your Lord, below you your flesh. Serve the better, so that the lower may serve you. You despised the higher; you are tormented by the lower. This, then, is the law of sin; it is also the law of death. For through sin, death: “On the day you eat, you will surely die.” So this law of sin drags the spirit and strives to subdue it. But “I delight in the law of God according to the inner man.” And so the fight comes about, and in that very contest it is said, “With my mind I serve the law of God, but with my flesh the law of sin.” “The law of the Spirit of life has set you free from the law of sin and death.” How did the law of the Spirit of life itself set you free? First of all it gave pardon of sins. For it is the law of which it is said to God in the psalm: “And by your law have mercy on me.” The law of mercy, the law of faith, not of works. What, then, is the law of works? You have already heard of the good law of faith: “The law of the Spirit of life has set you free from the law of sin and death.” You have heard of the other law too, of sin and death. “For what was impossible for the law, in that it was weak through the flesh.” So this law named in third place as it were fails to fulfil something; but that law of the Spirit of life fulfilled it, because it set you free from the law of sin and death. So this law named in third place is the very Law that was given to the people through Moses on Mount Sinai; it is called the law of works. It knows how to threaten, not to help; it knows how to command, not to assist. It is the one that said, “You shall not desire.” Hence the apostle says, “I did not know desire, unless the Law had said, You shall not desire.” And what did it profit me that the Law said, “You shall not desire”? “Sin, taking occasion through the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me.” I was forbidden to desire; I did not fulfil the command, but was conquered. Before the law I was a sinner; having received the law I became a transgressor. “For sin, taking occasion through the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me.”

“So,” he says, “the law is holy.” So this law too is good (for the Manichees find fault with it too, as they do with the flesh). Of it the apostle says: “So the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. Did that which is good, then, become death to me? Far from it. But sin, so that it might appear sin, worked death for me through what is good.” These are the apostle’s words; see and attend. “So the law is holy.” What is so holy as “You shall not desire”? Transgression of the law would not be evil unless the law itself were good. For if it were not good, it would not be evil to transgress an evil thing. But since it is evil to transgress it, it is good. What is so good as “You shall not desire”? So the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. How he leaps up! How he presses it home! He cries out as if against slanderers. What do you say, Manichee? Is the law given through Moses evil? “It is evil,” they say. O monstrous! O effrontery! You have said once, “Evil”: hear the apostle saying, “The law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.” Will you be silent at last? “Did that which is good, then,” he says, “become death to me? Far from it. But sin, so that it might appear sin, worked death for me through what is good.” Here too, “through what is good”: he so accuses the guilty party as not to depart from praise of the Law. “Through what is good,” he says, “it worked death for me.” Through what good? The commandment. Through what good? The Law. How did it work death? “So that sin might appear; so that sin might become beyond measure, offending through the commandment.” That is why “beyond measure.” When it offended without the commandment, it was less; when it offends through the commandment, it exceeds measure. For when someone is not forbidden, he thinks he does well. Forbidden, he begins to want not to do it: he is conquered, dragged off, subdued: now it remains for him to call on grace, because he could not keep the law.

And so that law of which it was said, “For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free from the law of sin and death,” is the law of faith, the law of the Spirit, the law of grace, the law of mercy. But that law of sin and death is not the law of God, but of sin and death. And that other law, of which the apostle says, “The law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good,” is the law of God, but of deeds, the law of works: a law of works, which commands and does not help; a law which shows you sin and does not take it away. By one law sin is shown to you, by another it is taken away. There are two Testaments, the old and the new. Hear the apostle saying: “Tell me, you who want to be under the Law, have you not read the Law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and one by the free woman. But the one by the slave woman was born according to the flesh; the one by the free woman, through promise: these things are an allegory. For these are the two Testaments, one from Mount Sinai, bearing children into slavery,” which is Hagar, the slave woman of Sarah, who was given to Abraham and bore Ishmael, a slave. So the Old Testament belongs to Hagar, bearing into slavery. “But the Jerusalem above is free, which is our mother.” So the sons of grace are sons of the free woman; the sons of the letter are sons of the slave woman. Look for the sons of the slave woman: “The letter kills.” Look for the sons of the free woman: “But the Spirit gives life.” “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death,” from which the law of the letter could not set you free. “For what was impossible for the Law, in that it was weak through the flesh.” For your flesh rebelled, your flesh subdued you; it heard the Law, and it stirred up your desire all the more. So the law of the letter was weak through the flesh; and therefore it was impossible for the law of the letter to set free from the law of sin and death.

“God sent his Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin”: not in the flesh of sin. In flesh indeed, but not in the flesh of sin. The flesh of all other men, then, is flesh of sin; his alone is not flesh of sin, because his mother conceived him not by desire but by grace; yet it has the likeness of the flesh of sin, so that he could be nourished, and be hungry, and thirst, and sleep, and grow weary, and die. “God sent his Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin.”

By what sin? What sin? “By sin he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us.” Now let that righteousness of the law be fulfilled in us; now let that righteousness which is commanded be fulfilled in us through the Spirit who helps: that is, let the law of the letter be fulfilled in us through the Spirit of life, “who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” By what sin, then, did the Lord condemn sin, and what sin? I see, I certainly see what sin he condemned; I see it plainly: “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sin of the world.” What sin? All sin; all our sin he condemned. But by what sin? He himself had no sin: of him it was said, “Who committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth.” None at all, neither by inheriting nor by adding: he had no sin, neither of origin nor of his own iniquity. The virgin shows his origin; and his holy way of life shows clearly enough that he did nothing for which he deserved death. Therefore he says: “See, the prince of this world is coming” (meaning the devil), “and he will find nothing in me.” The prince of death will find no reason to kill me. Why, then, do you die? “But so that all may know that I do the will of my Father, let us go from here.” And he went to the suffering of death, a voluntary death, not of necessity but of free choice. “I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down, and I take it up again.” If you wonder at the power, understand the majesty. Christ speaks as God speaks.

By what sin, then, did he condemn sin? Some have understood it, and arrived at a sense that is not bad. Yet what the apostle said, as it seems to me, they could not at all track down. Still, what they said was not a bad thing: I tell you this first, and then what seems right to me, and what divine Scripture itself shows to be most true. When they were troubled (“By what sin did he condemn sin? Did he have sin?”), they said this: he condemned sin by sin, by sin not his own; yet by sin he condemned sin. If not by his own, then by whose? By the sin of Judas, by the sin of the Jews. For why did he shed his blood for the remission of sins? Because he was crucified by the Jews. Who handed him over? Judas. When the Jews killed him, Judas handed him over. Did they do well, or did they sin? They sinned. See by what sin he condemned sin. This was well said and truly said, since by the sin of the Jews too Christ condemned all sin, because as they persecuted him he shed his blood, by which he blotted out all sin. But see what the apostle says in another place: “We are ambassadors for Christ,” he says, “as though God were exhorting through us: we beseech you for Christ’s sake” (that is, as if Christ were beseeching you, we beseech you on his behalf) “be reconciled to God.” And there follows: “Him who knew no sin.” God, to whom we beseech you to be reconciled, “him who knew no sin,” that is, Christ God, that Christ who knew no sin, “he made sin for us, so that we might be the righteousness of God in him.” Can the sin of Judas, the sin of the Jews, the sin of any other man be understood here, when you hear, “Him who knew no sin he made sin for us”? Who made whom? God made Christ. God made Christ sin for us. He did not say, “He made him a sinner for us,” but, “He made him sin.” If it is wicked to say that Christ sinned, who could bear to say that Christ is sin? And yet we cannot contradict the apostle. We cannot say to him, “What is this you are saying?” For if we say this to the apostle, we say it to Christ himself. For he says in another place: “Do you want proof of Christ who speaks in me?”

What, then, is it? Let your Charity attend to a great and deep mystery. You will be happy if you love what you have understood, and come to what you love. Indeed, indeed, Christ our Lord, Jesus our Savior, our Redeemer, was made sin, so that we might be the righteousness of God in him. How? Hear the Law. Those who know it know what I am saying; and those who do not know it, let them read it or hear it. In the Law, the sacrifices offered for sins were also called sins. You have it: when a victim for sin was brought, the Law says, “Let the priests lay their hands on the sin,” that is, on the victim for sin. And what else is Christ but a sacrifice for sin? “As Christ too,” he says, “loved you, and gave himself up for you, an offering and sacrifice to God for a fragrant odor.” See by what sin he condemned sin: by the sacrifice which he became for sins, by this he condemned sin. This is the law of the Spirit of life, which has set you free from the law of sin and death. For that other law, the law of the letter, the law that commands, is indeed good, “the commandment holy and just and good”; but it was weak through the flesh, and what it commanded could not be fulfilled in us. So, as I had begun to say, one law shows you sin, another takes it away: let the law of the letter show sin; let the law of grace take sin away.