Homilies on 1 Timothy 2.1–2.2

“But the aim of the charge is love from a pure heart and a good conscience …, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what …”

Nothing so ruins the human race as to despise friendship and not to cultivate it with great zeal; and, conversely, nothing so sets it right as to pursue it with all one’s strength. Christ makes this plain when he says, “If two agree about anything, whatever they ask they will receive,” and again, “When lawlessness is multiplied, love will grow cold.” This gave birth to all the heresies. Because people did not love their brothers, they envied those who were held in honor; from envy they came to love power; and from love of power they gave birth to heresies. That is why Paul, after saying “that you may charge certain persons not to teach otherwise,” also sets out the way in which this can be done. What is it? Love. Just as when he says, “Christ is the end of the law,” that is, its fulfilment, and the one depends on the other, so this charge depends on love. The end of medical treatment is health; so where there is health there is no need of much apparatus, and where there is love there is no need of much charging.

What kind of love does he mean? Sincere love: not the love that goes no further than words, but the love that comes from the disposition, from the mind, and from sharing another’s pain. “From a pure heart,” he says, speaking either of an upright way of life or of genuine friendship. For an impure life too produces schisms: “For everyone who does evil hates the light.” There is friendship among the wicked too: robbers love robbers, and murderers murderers. But this does not come from a good conscience but from a bad one, not from a pure heart but from an impure one, not from sincere faith but from faith fabricated and feigned. For faith shows what is true, and from sincere faith love is born: one who truly believes in God can never bear to let love go.

[“From which some have swerved.”] For skill is needed to throw straight and not off the mark; one must be guided by the Spirit, for many things turn one aside from the straight path, and one must look toward one thing. “Desiring,” he says, “to be teachers of the law.” Do you see yet another cause, the love of power? That is why Christ too said, “But you are to call no one Rabbi”; and again the apostle: “For they themselves do not keep the law, so that they may boast in your flesh.” They covet the rank, he says; that is why they do not look to the truth. “Without understanding,” he says, “either what they say or the things about which they make confident assertions.” Here he discredits them as not knowing the purpose of the law, nor the time up to which it was to be in force.

How then, if it comes from ignorance, can you call it a sin? Because they fell into this not only through wishing to be teachers of the law but also through not holding fast to love; and besides, the ignorance itself was born of these things. For when the soul gives itself up to worldly affairs and falls away from love, it falls into contentiousness, and the eye of the mind is blinded. One who is held fast by desire for these temporary things, drunk with passion, could not be an impartial judge of the truth. “They do not know,” he says, “about what things they make confident assertions.” For it is likely that they spoke about the law and said much about purifications and the other bodily rites. Paul then leaves aside the refutation of these, as nothing but a shadow and outline of spiritual things, and does what was gentler. What is that? He praises the law, here calling the Ten Commandments “the law”; and by means of this he cast out those others too. For if even these commandments punish transgressors and become of no use to us, much more those.

“Now we know,” he says, “that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, knowing this, that the law is not laid down for the righteous.” It is good, he says, and not good. What then, someone asks: if one does not use it lawfully, is it not good? Even so it is good. But what he means is this: when one fulfils it in deeds. For “if one uses it lawfully” means that here. But when people expound it in words and transgress it in deeds, that is to use it unlawfully; such a man too uses it, but not to his own benefit. There is also something else to say. What? That if you use the law lawfully, it sends you on to Christ. For since its aim is to make a person righteous, and it cannot do so, it sends him on to the one who can. There is also another way of using the law lawfully: when you keep it out of great abundance. What does “out of abundance” mean? Just as, he says, the bridle is used in an orderly way not by the horse that leaps about or the one that bites it, but by the one that simply wears it for appearance’s sake, so too one uses the law lawfully who is self-controlled not because of the compulsion of what is written. Who will use it lawfully? One who knows that he does not need it. For the man who has reached such a height of virtue that he performs it not out of fear of the law but for virtue’s sake uses it lawfully and safely: if one so uses it, not fearing it, but keeping before his eyes the condemnation rather than the punishment laid up there. Besides, he here calls “righteous” the one who has achieved virtue. So that man uses the law well who does not deign to be schooled by it.

Just as the dots marked on letters are set for children, while one who supplies what they indicate not from them but from other knowledge would be practiced in a greater skill and uses the letters better, so the man who is above the law is not schooled by the law. For one who fulfils it not from fear but from desire for virtue achieves it most fully. One who fears punishment and one who aims at honor do not fulfil the law in the same way; nor do one who is under the law and one who is above the law. For to live above the law is to use it lawfully. That man uses the law well and keeps it who achieves more than the law, who does not deign to have it as his tutor. For the law is, for the most part, a prohibition of evils; and this does not make one righteous, but the doing of good things as well. So all who keep from evils as slaves do not fulfil its purpose; for it is laid down for this, to punish transgression. So they too use it, but by fearing punishment. “Do you wish,” he says, “not to fear the authority? Do what is good”—as one might say: it proclaims punishments only to the wicked; but to one who has done things worthy of crowns, of what use is the law? It is like the physician, who is of use to one who has a wound, not to one who is healthy and in good condition.

“But for the lawless,” he says. He calls the Jews so, and the same people also “disobedient.” “The law,” he says, “brings wrath.” That is with regard to those who do evil. And what with regard to one worthy of honor? “Through the law,” he says, “comes knowledge of sin.” And what with regard to the righteous? “For the righteous,” he says, “the law is not laid down.” Why? Because he is beyond punishment, and because he does not wait to learn from it what must be done, having within him the grace of the Spirit prompting him. For the law was given so that people might be restrained by fear and threat. There is no need, then, of a bridle for the obedient horse, nor of a tutor for one who does not need a tutor.

“But for the lawless,” he says, “and disobedient, for sinners, the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers.” He did not stop there, nor at sins in general, but went through the sins by kind, so as to make them ashamed of being under the law’s supervision. Then, having listed them by kind, he also referred to the rest by passing over them, though what had been said was enough to draw them away. About whom, then, does he say these things? About the Jews: for these struck their fathers and mothers, and were themselves profane and unholy; he hints at them in saying “the ungodly and sinners.” And since they were such, the law was given of necessity. For tell me, did they not constantly worship idols? Did they not stone Moses? Were their hands not full of the murder of their own kin? Do not the prophets charge them with these things over and over? But to those who practice the heavenly philosophy these things are superfluous. [“… liars,] perjurers, and whatever else is opposed to sound teaching.” Well did he say “to sound teaching”: all those were the passions of a corrupt soul.

“According to the gospel of the glory of the blessed God, with which I have been entrusted.” So even now there is need of the law to confirm the gospel; but for those who obey there is no need. And he calls it the gospel of glory for no other reason than for those who were ashamed of the persecutions and of Christ’s passion. For these reasons, among others, he said “gospel of glory,” showing that Christ’s passion is glory; or he is also hinting at what is to come. For even if the present is full of shame and reproaches, what is to come is not so; and the gospel concerns things to come, not things present. How then does the angel say, “Behold, I bring you good news, that a Savior has been born to you”? Because, once born, he was going to bring this about; he did not work the signs as soon as he was born. “According to the gospel,” he says, “of the glory of the blessed God.” “Of the glory”: either he means the worship of God, or that if the present things are all filled with his glory, much more the things to come, “when his enemies,” he says, “are put under his feet,” when nothing is opposed, when the righteous see all those blessed things which “eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have they entered into the heart of man.” “For I desire,” he says, “that where I am, these also may be, that they may behold my glory, which you have given me.”

Let us learn, then, who these are, and let us count them blessed for how great a glory they will share, how great a light. The glory here is worthless and unstable; even if it lasts, it lasts until death, and then is utterly extinguished: “For his glory,” it says, “will not go down after him.” And for many it has not lasted even here to the end. But of that glory one cannot suspect anything of the kind; quite the opposite: it remains and will never have an end. Such are the things of God: lasting, and beyond all change and all end. For the glory then comes not from outward things but from within. I mean: it does not come from costly garments, from a crowd of attendants, from carriages; without these the man himself is clothed with glory. Now, if these are absent, he will be stripped of glory; there it is not so. In the baths we see honored and dishonored men naked alike, and the base too. Many men in the marketplace have often been in danger when their servants left them on some errand. But there a man has his glory with him everywhere. Just as the angels, wherever they appear, have their glory in themselves, so too the saints; or rather, just as the sun needs no garment, needs nothing else, but as soon as it appears it shines out its own glory, so will it be then.

Let us, then, pursue that glory, than which nothing is more venerable, and leave this one, than which nothing is more worthless. “Do not boast,” it says, “in the putting on of garments.” This was said of old to the childish. For the dancer, the harlot, and the stage player are clothed more beautifully and more expensively than you. And apart from this, you boast in a thing which [moths can destroy]. Do you see how insecure a thing is the glory of the present life? You boast in a thing which worms … [produce], from which these threads are made. Acquire, if you wish, the garment woven from above, the wonderful and splendid covering, the clothing truly shot with gold. That gold is not from mines dug by the hands of condemned men; it is born of virtue. Let us clothe ourselves in that robe which is made not by poor men and slaves but by the Master himself. But will you say that this garment is sprinkled with gold? And what is that to you? Everyone admires the one who made it, not the one who wears it; the wonder truly belongs to him. With plain garments we do not admire the wooden frame on which the garment is stretched at the fuller’s, but the workman, although the wood carries them and is bound up in them. Just as those are not bound on for any need of the frame, so neither are these women, but for the garment’s need, so that it may be shaken out, they say, so that it may not be eaten by moths. How then is it not the height of folly to show such zeal over a nothing, to contrive everything, to betray one’s own salvation, to despise hell, to insult God, and to overlook Christ hungering?

What might one say of the costly spices, the dry perfumes, the liquid ones, the ointments, the incenses, all of which mean great and senseless expense? Why do you perfume, woman, a body full of uncleanness within? Why spend on what stinks, doing just as if someone poured ointment on mud or drenched a brick in balsam? There is, if you wish, an ointment, there is a spice, with which you can anoint the soul, not from Arabia, nor Ethiopia, nor Persia, but brought from heaven itself, sold not for gold but for a good will and sincere faith. Buy this ointment, whose scent can fill the world. Of this the apostles breathed: “For we are a fragrance,” he says, “to some unto death, to others unto life.” What does this mean? That swine too are said to be choked by fragrance. Not only the apostles’ bodies but their garments too breathed of the spiritual ointment. Paul’s garments smelled so sweet that they drove out demons. What leaf, what cassia, what myrrh is not surpassed in sweetness and usefulness by this fragrance? If it drove away demons, what would it not do? Let us prepare this ointment; and the grace of the Spirit prepares it through almsgiving. We shall breathe of it when we depart there too, and turn the saints toward us. Just as here those steeped in perfumes turn all eyes toward them (whether the one who breathes of it goes to the bath, or to church, or to any other crowded place, everyone hangs upon him and everyone turns toward him), so too in that world with the souls that breathe of the spiritual fragrance. And here too demons and all vices do not dare to approach or endure it; they are choked. Let us then put on that spice. This perfume wraps us in a reputation for softness; that one in a reputation for true manliness and wonder, and it gives us great boldness. This spice the earth does not yield; virtue gives it birth. It does not wither but blooms. It makes those who have it honorable. With this we are anointed when we are baptized; then we breathe sweetly. To breathe of it thereafter as well depends on our own diligence. That is why of old too the priests were anointed with ointment, giving a symbol of virtue: the priest must breathe a good fragrance.

But nothing is more foul-smelling than sin. See how the prophet describes its nature: “My wounds stank and festered.” Truly sin is worse and fouler than rottenness. For what, tell me, is fouler than sexual immorality? [Consider] what the sin is after it has been done, and then you will see its foulness, then the defilement rubbed into you, then the curse, then the abomination. Every sin is like this: before it is done it has some pleasure, but once it is completed the sweetness stops and fades, and grief and dejection come in. Righteousness is the opposite: at the beginning it has its labors, but at the end pleasure and rest. In the one case the pleasure does not even become pleasure, because of the expectation of shame and punishment; in the other the labor does not become labor, because of the hope of rewards. And drunkenness, tell me? Does it not have its pleasure only in the drinking? Or rather, not even in the drinking. For when a man falls into insensibility and sees none of those present, but is in a worse state than madmen, what pleasure is there any longer? Or rather, there is no pleasure even in sexual immorality itself. For when the soul, gripped by passion, is robbed of its judgment, what pleasure is this? If it is, then the itch too is a pleasure. I would call that true pleasure when the soul is not in passion, strained and torn apart by the body. For what pleasure is this: to grind the teeth, to roll the eyes, to be tickled and heated beyond what is fitting? So far is it from being pleasure that we hasten to be rid of it quickly, and when we are rid of it we are in pain. If it is pleasure, do not get rid of it; stay in the pleasure. Do you see that it is only the name of pleasure? Ours are not such: they are truly sweet, having their pleasure not with a burning, but leaving the soul free, gladdening and expanding it. Such was Paul’s pleasure when he said, “In this I rejoice, yes, and I will rejoice,” and “Rejoice in the Lord always.” For that other has shame and condemnation; it is done in secret and is full of countless disgusts; but this is free of all these. Let us, then, pursue it, that we may obtain the good things to come, by the grace and love for humankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, with whom to the Father, together with the Holy Spirit, be glory, power, honor, now and always, and to the ages of ages. Amen.