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ℹ️ The Chinese and English alongside are this site's own translation, made directly from the original text on this page (not the CUV or the WEB, which follow the Masoretic Text and a different textual tradition).
'For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one of the bondwoman and one of the free. But he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and he who was of the free, by promise. Which things are an allegory; for these are the two testaments, the one indeed from Mount Sinai, giving birth into bondage, which is Hagar—for Sinai is a mountain in Arabia, which is joined to that which now is Jerusalem; for she is in bondage with her children—but that Jerusalem which is above is free, which is our mother.' What clearer, what more certain, what more removed from all obscurity and ambiguity? And a little after: 'But we, brethren,' he says, 'are children of promise after Isaac.' Likewise a little after:
'But we, brethren, are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free; with which freedom Christ has set us free.' Let us choose therefore whether we call the ancient righteous children of the bondwoman or of the free. But God forbid that we call them children of the bondwoman; therefore if of the free, they pertain to the New Testament in the Holy Spirit, whom the Apostle sets, as the giver of life, in opposition to the letter that kills. For in what way do those not pertain to the grace of the New Testament, out of whose sayings and books we refute and convict those most senseless and most ungrateful enemies of that same grace? But someone will say:
'How is it called old, which was made through Moses after four hundred and thirty years, and called new, which was made so many years earlier, in the covenant with Abraham?' Let the man who is moved by this question not for the sake of contention but from earnest study understand, first, that if it is called old on account of the earlier time, and new on account of the later, it is their revelations that are considered in these names, not their institutions.
For through Moses the old testament was revealed, through whom the law was given, holy and just and good, whereby there came about not the abolition but the recognition of sin, by which the proud were convicted—those who, unwilling to establish their own righteousness as though not needing divine help, were made guilty and would take refuge, from the letter, in the spirit of grace, to be justified not by their own righteousness but by God's, that is, by the righteousness which came to them from God. For, as the same Apostle says, through the law comes the knowledge of sin. But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested, borne witness to by the law and the prophets. For the law, by the very fact that in it no one is justified, bears witness to the righteousness of God;
for that in the law no one is justified before God is manifest, because the just shall live by faith. Thus therefore, since the law does not justify the ungodly man convicted of transgression, it sends him to God who justifies, and so bears witness to the righteousness of God; but the prophets bear witness to the righteousness of God by foretelling Christ, who has become for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, that, as it is written, he who glories, let him glory in the Lord. Now this law was hidden from the beginning, when nature itself convicted unrighteous men who did to others what they would not have done to themselves. But the revelation of the new testament was made in Christ, when he was manifested in the flesh;
in whom the righteousness of God appeared, that is, the righteousness which comes to men from God. For thus he says: but now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested. Behold the reason why it is called the old testament, because it was revealed in the earlier time, and this the new, because in the later. Then, because the old testament pertains to the old man, from whom man must necessarily begin, and the new to the new man, into whom man ought to pass out of his oldness, therefore in the former there are earthly promises, in the latter heavenly promises, because this too pertained to the mercy of God, lest anyone should suppose that even earthly felicity of whatever sort could be conferred on anyone save by the Lord, the creator of the universe.
But if God is worshipped for the sake of that earthly felicity, it is a servile worship pertaining to the sons of the bondwoman; but if for the sake of God himself, that in eternal life God may be all in all, it is a liberal service pertaining to the sons of the freewoman, who is our eternal mother in heaven. She formerly appeared as it were barren, when she did not have her illustrious sons, but now we see what was prophesied concerning her: Rejoice, O barren, you who do not bear; break forth and cry aloud, you who do not travail; for many are the children of the desolate, more than of her who has a husband—that is, 'more than of that Jerusalem which is, as it were, wedded by the bond of the law and is in bondage with her children.'
In the time of the old testament, therefore, we affirm that the Holy Spirit was, in those who even then were sons of the promise after the manner of Isaac, not only a helper—which is all these men think sufficient for their doctrine—but also a bestower of virtue, which these men deny, attributing it rather to free will, in contradiction of those fathers who knew how to cry to the Lord with true piety: I will love you, O Lord, my strength!
They say further that 'all the apostles or prophets are defined by us as not fully holy, but that we say they were less evil in comparison with worse men, and that this is the righteousness to which God bears witness—so that, just as the prophet says Sodom was justified in comparison with the Jews, so we too, in comparison with criminals, say that the saints exercised some virtue.' Far be it that we should say such things; but either they cannot understand, or will not attend, or, from a zeal for slander, feign not to know what we say. Let them therefore hear, either they themselves, or rather those simple and unlearned people whom they contrive to deceive.
Our faith, that is, the catholic faith, distinguishes the just from the unjust not by the law of works but by the very law of faith, because the just shall live by faith.
By this distinction it comes about that a man leading a life without murder, without theft, without false witness, without desire for anything belonging to another, rendering due honour to his parents, chaste even to continence from all intercourse whatsoever, even conjugal, most liberal in almsgiving, most patient of injuries, one who not only does not take away what is another's but does not even demand back his own when taken, or who, having even sold all his goods and distributed them to the poor, possesses nothing of his own as private—such a man, nevertheless, with all these seemingly praiseworthy ways of his, if he does not hold the right and catholic faith in God, departs from this life to be condemned.
But another man—one who indeed has good works from a right faith which works through love, yet not in such a way as that well-mannered man; he supports his own incontinence by the honourableness of marriage, both rendering and requiring the carnal debt of wedlock, and lies with his wife not for the sake of procreation alone but even for pleasure, which the Apostle concedes to the married by way of indulgence; he does not receive injuries so patiently, but is carried along angry in the desire of avenging, though so that he can say:
'as we also forgive our debtors,' when asked he pardons; he possesses family property, from which indeed he gives alms, yet not so bountifully as that other man; he does not take away what is another's, but he does reclaim his own, though by ecclesiastical, not secular, judgment—such a one, then, who in his manners seems inferior to that first man, on account of the right faith which is his in God, by which he lives and according to which in all his failings he accuses himself and in all his good works praises God, ascribing to himself the disgrace and to God the glory, receiving from God himself both the pardon of his sins and the love of well-doing—this man, I say, departs from this life to be set free and received into the fellowship of those who shall reign with Christ. And why, unless on account of faith?
which faith, although without works it saves no one—for it is itself not a reprobate faith, but one which works through love—yet through it even sins are loosed, because the just shall live by faith; but without it even works that seem good are turned into sins, for everything that is not of faith is sin. And it comes about, on account of this greatest difference, that although no one doubts that persevering virginal integrity is superior to conjugal chastity, nevertheless even a woman twice married, if catholic, is preferred to a heretical woman who professes virginity—and preferred not in such a way that the former should be better in the kingdom of God, but so that the latter should not be there at all.
For that man too, whom we described as of, so to speak, better manners, if right faith be present in him, surpasses that other one, yet both will be there; but if faith be lacking to him, he is so surpassed by the other that he himself will not be there.
Since, then, all the just, both the men of old and the apostles, lived by the right faith which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, and had manners so holy together with faith that, although in this life they could not be of such perfect virtue as it will be after this life, nevertheless whatever of sin crept in from human weakness was at once wiped away by the piety of that same faith—how can it be that in comparison with the wicked, whom God will condemn, they should be said to have been just, when by their pious faith they are so far removed to the contrary from those ungodly ones that the Apostle cries out:
'What part has a believer with an unbeliever?' But of course the new Pelagian heretics, those pious lovers and praisers of the saints, seem to themselves to be so, if they do not dare to say that those saints were of imperfect virtue, whereas the vessel of election confesses this—he who, considering where he still was and that the body which is corrupted weighs down the soul, says: not that I have already attained, or am already perfect, brethren; I do not count myself to have laid hold. And yet a little later, this same man who had denied that he was perfect says: let us therefore, as many as are perfect, be thus minded—to show that there is a certain perfection according to the measure of this life, and that this too is reckoned to that perfection, if a man knows himself to be not yet perfect.
For what was more excellent among the people of old than the holy priests? And yet God commanded them first of all to offer sacrifice for their own sins. And what is holier among the new people than the apostles? And yet the Lord commanded them to say in prayer: forgive us our debts. Of all the pious, then, groaning under this burden of corruptible flesh and in the weakness of this life, there is one hope: that we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins. This advocate they do not have who are, from the just—even if this alone were the difference—removed to the contrary and far apart.
Far be it that we should say of this righteous advocate, as they slanderously allege, that he 'lied out of the necessity of the flesh'; but we say that he, in the likeness of sinful flesh, condemned sin because of sin. Perhaps these men, not understanding this and blinded by the desire of slandering, being ignorant of how variously the name of sin is wont to be placed in the holy Scriptures, boast that we affirm sin in Christ. We say therefore that Christ both had no sin in soul nor in flesh, and that by taking on flesh in the likeness of sinful flesh he condemned sin because of sin. This, being said somewhat obscurely by the Apostle, is resolved in two ways:
either because the likenesses of things are wont to be named by the names of those things to which they are like, so that the Apostle is understood to have meant to call the very likeness of sinful flesh 'sin'; or because sacrifices for sins were called sins in the law, all of which were figures of the flesh of Christ, which is the true and only sacrifice for sins—not only for those which are all washed away in baptism, but also for those which afterward creep in from the weakness of this life. On account of which the whole Church daily cries to God in prayer: forgive us our debts; and they are forgiven us through that unique sacrifice for sins which the Apostle, speaking according to the law, did not hesitate to call sin.
Whence there is also that other saying of his, far more evident and not made uncertain by any crossroads of anyone's ambiguity: we beseech you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. 'Him who knew no sin he made to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.' For as to what I mentioned above, that he condemned sin because of sin—since it was not said 'because of his own sin'—someone might so understand it as to say that he condemned sin because of the sin of the Jews, because it was because of the sin of those who crucified him that it came about that he should pour out his blood for the remission of sins;
but this, where it is said that God made Christ himself, who knew no sin, to be sin, does not seem to me to be more fittingly understood than that Christ was made a sacrifice for sins and on this account was called sin. But who could endure their casting up against us that 'we say such advances are to be after the resurrection, that there men will begin to fulfil the commandments of God which here they were unwilling to fulfil'—since we say that there will be there no sin at all, nor any conflict with any desire of sin—as though they themselves would dare to deny this?
That wisdom too and the knowledge of God will then be perfected in us, and in the Lord there will be so great an exultation that it will be full and true security—who will deny this, unless he be so averse from the truth that on this very account he cannot attain to it? But these things will not be among the precepts, but in the reward of the precepts concerning the things that are to be observed here. Contempt of these precepts, indeed, does not lead one thither to the reward; but here the grace of God grants the zeal for keeping the precepts. And if even in these precepts something is less well kept, he pardons it—on account of which we say in prayer both: your will be done, and: forgive us our debts. Here, then, is the precept, that we sin not; there the reward, not to be able to sin;
here the precept is that we obey not the desires of sin, there the reward that we have no desires of sin; here the precept is: understand therefore, you who are foolish among the people, and you fools, be at last wise; there the reward is full wisdom and perfect knowledge—for now we see through a glass, in a riddle, says the Apostle, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I am known—; here the precept is: exult in God our helper, and: exult, you just, in the Lord; there the reward is to exult with perfect and ineffable joy. Finally, in a precept it is placed: blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness; but in the reward: for they shall be filled.
With what, I ask, shall they be filled, if not with that which they hunger and thirst for? Who, then, is so averse not only from the divine but even from human feeling as to say that there can be in a man as great a righteousness while it is hungered and thirsted for, as there will be when he shall be filled from it? But when we hunger and thirst for righteousness, if the faith of Christ is awake in us, what are we to be believed to hunger and thirst for but Christ? who has become for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, that, as it is written, he who glories, let him glory in the Lord. And because now we believe in him without seeing him, therefore we thirst and hunger for righteousness. For as long as we are in the body, we are absent from the Lord;
for we walk by faith, not by sight; and when we shall have seen him, coming at length to sight, we shall exult with unspeakable joy, and then we shall be filled with righteousness, because now with pious longing we say to him: I shall be satisfied when your glory shall be manifested. But how—I will not say impudent, but insane—is the pride of one who, being not yet equal to the angels of God, thinks himself already able to have a righteousness equal to the angels of God, and does not consider so great and holy a man who was assuredly hungering and thirsting for that very perfection of righteousness, when, by the greatness of the revelations, he was unwilling to be exalted; nor yet, that he might not be exalted, was he committed to his own choice and will, but received a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to buffet him.
On account of which he three times besought the Lord that it might depart from him, and the Lord said to him: my grace is sufficient for you; for strength is made perfect in weakness. What strength, if not that to which it pertains not to be exalted? And who doubts that this pertains to righteousness? With the perfection of this righteousness, then, are the angels of God endowed, who always see the face of the Father, and through this the face of the whole Trinity, because through the Son they see in the Holy Spirit. Nothing is more sublime than this revelation; and yet no one of the angels rejoicing in that contemplation has need of a messenger of Satan by whom he should be buffeted, lest so great a greatness of revelation exalt him.
This perfection of virtue the apostle Paul certainly did not yet have; he was not yet equal to the angels of God, but there was in him the weakness of self-exaltation, which had to be checked even by a messenger of Satan, lest he should be exalted by the greatness of the revelations. And so, although self-exaltation first cast down Satan himself, nevertheless that supreme physician, who knows how to use even evils well, applied from the messenger of Satan against the vice of self-exaltation a wholesome, though troublesome, medicine—just as an antidote is wont to be made even from serpents against the venoms of serpents. What then is: my grace is sufficient for you, if not: lest by failing you should sink beneath the buffeting of the messenger of Satan? And what is:
strength is made perfect in weakness, if not that in this place of weakness the perfection of virtue can be so far attained that, by the very presence of weakness, self-exaltation is repressed? Which weakness will assuredly be healed by future immortality. For how can it be called full health, where even against the buffeting of a messenger of Satan medicine is still necessary? From this it has come about that the virtue which is now in a just man is named perfect only so far, that to its perfection there pertains even the true recognition of its own imperfection and the humble confession of it. For then, according to this weakness and after its own measure, this small righteousness is perfect, when it understands even what is still lacking to it.
And therefore the Apostle calls himself both imperfect and perfect: imperfect, namely, by considering how much is still lacking to him for righteousness, whose fullness he still hungers and thirsts for; but perfect, because he is not ashamed to confess his own imperfection and advances well that he may arrive—just as we can call a traveller perfect whose approach is well advanced, although his intention is not fulfilled unless arrival be achieved. On this account, when he had said: according to the righteousness which is in the law, having been blameless, he immediately added: what things were gain to me, these I counted loss for Christ.
'Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord; for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ and be found in him, not having my own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.'
Behold, the Apostle says—not falsely at all—that according to the righteousness which is of the law he had been blameless, and yet he casts away these things which were gain to him for Christ's sake, and counts them loss, detriment, and dung—not only these but all the rest which he mentioned above—for the sake of the knowledge, not any sort of knowledge but, as he himself says, the excellent knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord, which beyond doubt he still had in faith, not yet in sight. For then will the knowledge of Christ be excellent, when he shall have been so revealed that what is believed may be seen. Whence in another place he says thus: for you are dead, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, your life, shall appear, then shall you also appear with him in glory.
Hence the Lord himself says: he who loves me shall be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will manifest myself to him. Hence John the evangelist says: beloved, we are now the sons of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be. We know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. Then will the knowledge of Christ be excellent; for now indeed it is hidden in faith, but not yet does it appear as excellent in sight. Blessed Paul therefore casts away those past things of his own righteousness as detriments and dung, that he may win Christ and be found in him, not having his own righteousness which is of the law. Why 'his own,' if it is of the law? For that law is not other than God's.
Who has said this except Marcion and Manichaeus and other similar plagues? Since, then, that law is God's, he says that his own is the righteousness which is of the law; which righteousness of his own he was unwilling to have, but cast it off as dung. Why so, unless because this is what we also demonstrated above, that they are under the law who, being ignorant of the righteousness of God and wishing to establish their own, are not subject to the righteousness of God? For they think that by the strength of their own free will they fulfil the commanding law, and, entangled in this pride, they do not turn to the assisting grace. Thus the letter kills them—either by making them openly guilty of not doing what it prescribes, or by their thinking they do it, when they do not do it with the spiritual love which is of God.
Thus they remain either openly unrighteous or deceptively righteous—in open unrighteousness evidently dashed down, in deceptive righteousness foolishly puffed up. And through this, in a wonderful manner indeed, yet a true one, the righteousness of the law is not fulfilled by the righteousness which is in the law or of the law, but by that which is in the spirit of grace. For the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in those, as it is written, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit. But according to the righteousness which is in the law, the Apostle says that he had been blameless in the flesh, not in the spirit; and the righteousness which is of the law he says was his own, not God's.
It is to be understood, therefore, that the righteousness of the law is not fulfilled according to the righteousness which is in the law or of the law, that is, according to the righteousness of man, but according to the righteousness which is in the spirit of grace; therefore according to the righteousness of God, that is, the righteousness which comes to man from God. This can be said more plainly and briefly thus: the righteousness of the law is not fulfilled when the law commands and man does it as if by his own strength, but when the Spirit helps and the will of man—not free, but freed by the grace of God—does it. The righteousness of the law, then, is to command what pleases God, to forbid what displeases; but in the law righteousness is to serve the letter and to seek no help of God outside it for living rightly. For when he had said:
not having my own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, he added: which is of God. This, then, is the righteousness of God, which the proud, being ignorant of it, wish to establish as their own. For it is not called the righteousness of God because God is righteous by it, but because it comes to man from God. Now according to this righteousness of God, that is, which is from God to us, faith now works through love. And this it works, in that man may come to him in whom he now, without seeing, believes. And when he shall have seen him, then what was in faith through a glass in a riddle will now be in sight, face to face; then will love itself also be perfected.
For it is said with too much folly that God is loved as much before he is seen as he will be loved when he shall be seen. Moreover, if in this life, with no pious person doubting, the more we love God the more surely are we the more righteous, who can doubt that pious and true righteousness is then perfected, when the love of God shall have been perfected? Then, therefore, the law will be fulfilled so that nothing at all is lacking—the fullness of which law, according to the Apostle, is love. And through this, when he had said: not having my own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, which is of God the righteousness in faith, he then subjoined: to the knowing of him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings.
All these things were not yet full and perfect in the Apostle, but, as one placed on the way, he was running toward their fullness and perfection. For how had he already perfectly known Christ, who says in another place: now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I am known? And how had he already perfectly known the power of his resurrection, for whom it remained to know it more fully by experiencing it at the time of the resurrection of the flesh? And how had he already perfectly known the fellowship of his sufferings, not yet having experienced for him the suffering of death? Finally he adds and says: if by any means I might attain to the resurrection of the dead; and then he says: not that I have already attained, or am already perfect.
What, then, does he confess himself not yet to have received, and in what does he confess himself not yet to be perfect, except in that righteousness which is of God, which, desiring it, he was unwilling to have his own, which is of the law? For it was of this that he was speaking, and this was the reason why he said these things, resisting the enemies of the grace of God, for the bestowing of which Christ was crucified; of whose kind these men also are. For from the point where he undertook to say these things, he began thus: beware of the dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision. For we are the circumcision who serve God in spirit—or, as some codices have it, who serve the Spirit of God—and glory in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh.
Hence it is manifest that he is acting against the Jews, who, carnally observing the law and wishing to establish their own righteousness, were being killed by the letter, not made alive by the spirit, and were glorying in themselves, whereas the apostles and all the sons of the promise were glorying in Christ. Then he subjoined: although I might have confidence even in the flesh. If any other man thinks he has confidence in the flesh, I more; and enumerating all the things which have glory according to the flesh, he brought it to a conclusion where he says: according to the righteousness which is in the law, having been blameless. And when he had said that these things had been altogether loss and detriment and dung to him, that he might win Christ, he added the point in question: