The blessed Apostle for the first and the last, that is, for Jews and Greeks, ever raises up unto salvation the one and only standard of faith, ever single; and whoever has not deserved to have and to hold it, shall not be able to possess the glory of the heavenly triumphs. It alone, brethren, is that which he directs against the faithless battle-line for those who fight; it points out the King, it joins allies together, and by the mere sight of itself terrifies the impious foe. For thus today he began: 'Now it was not written for Abraham's sake alone, that it was reputed to him unto righteousness; but also for our sake who believe in Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead' (Rom. 4).
You see, brethren, that while the former believe things to come, and the later believe things past, both by one road of faith arrive at salvation, while they profess that Christ shall come, and we that He has already come; while they marvel and believe that He shall descend even unto death after the manner of a man, we glory that He has died and risen again. And what more, brethren? Therefore this salvation was denied to the eyes both of those who went before and of those who follow, that it might be wholly in faith. But as to what he said: 'Who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead' — lest anyone should believe it was by another, He Himself is the maker and raiser again of His own body, who said: 'I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it up again' (John 10):
for neither could the resurrection be raised up by another, nor could life be quickened by another, nor could it deny to itself that which it was about to confer upon all. For neither does a fountain thirst, nor does bread hunger, nor does the sun need light, nor does rest itself grow weary. 'Who was delivered up,' he says, 'for our offences, and rose again for our justification.' Delivered up for our offences — not that the Life which could not die might be punished, but that only the offences which had exiled us from life might be blotted out. And He rose again for our justification. While the condemnation remains, the condemned cannot be justified;
us, therefore, whom the fault of the first parent had so condemned that death rightfully held us bound as its debtors, Christ, our heavenly and true Parent, having loosed the condemnation of death, through His own death justifies our resurrection, so that not the guilty one might perish, but the guilt; and that the punishment itself, that is, death, which had been commanded to strike the guilty, might deservedly fail and lose the insignia of its power. Why did cruel and impious death dare to touch the innocent, why the very Judge? And therefore he added: 'Being justified therefore by faith, let us have peace with God' (Rom. 5).
This is to say: let it cease, let it cease — the mother of dissensions, the enemy of quiet, the foe of peace, contention; let not the Jew be exalted through the Law, let not the Gentile grow proud through nature, let the philosopher subside from his foaming and empty opinions, let no one glory in merits, let no one glory in works; because the life which the first transgression had taken away, and which raging contention had removed far from us, the divine peace has restored and given back. 'Let us have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.' Let not the earth rebel against the heavens, let not the flesh rise up against the spirit; but let the humble be joined to the perpetual glory of the peace above. 'Through whom we have access, by faith, into this grace.' The guide of this life is faith, brethren.
'In which we stand and glory in the hope of the glory of the sons of God.' We stand assuredly by faith, not by the body; and we glory in hope, not in the thing already received. 'And not only so, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation works patience, and patience trial, and trial hope, and hope does not confound.' Behold by what ages the just man is strengthened into a perfect man: in tribulation, patience, trial, hope. Tribulation, brethren, shakes and disturbs, as it were, the first infancy of the just man; but when it finds him patient, it then trains him, growing up now into a youth of good disposition, unto greater things. Tribulation works patience. It is patience, brethren, which proves the young man of Christ to be fit for the virtues. But hope does not confound.
It is hope which perfects the man, and untiringly brings him forth unto the measure of the fullness of Christ. It belongs to perfect virtue to possess by the strength of hope what you do not hold in reality. 'Because the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who is given to us.' And that he might show the quality of the divine charity poured into us, he added: 'For why, when we were yet weak, according to the time did Christ die for the ungodly? For scarcely for a just man will one die; for perhaps for a good man someone would dare to die. But God commends His charity in us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.'
If Christ so loved the race of men that He gave His death for the ungodly and for sinners, what else do we believe He will bestow upon the just, than His life, His kingdom, His glory? From you He received the death which He would spend upon the ungodly upon the earth; He reserves for you that which in Himself and through Himself He always possesses, and possesses in heaven. Let us therefore say with the prophet: 'What shall I render to the Lord for all that He has rendered to me? I will take the cup of salvation' (Ps. 115). That is: I too will die for Him. And what likeness is there? He willingly for the ungodly and the sinner; I scarcely for the just and the good; I scarcely, because not so much the will as necessity leads me to death. Hear Him Himself saying to Peter.
'But when you grow old, another shall gird you and lead you where you would not.' In adversity, brethren, necessity cannot be compared with the will: to submit is a matter of necessity, but to will is a matter of virtue. To the willing, death itself is made subject, for death has always lorded it over the unwilling. And yet, brethren, since a man can render nothing comparable to divine charity, let him give what he can, for he is accepted according to what he has. Let him fail unto glory, let him die unto life, let him perish unto salvation. Let us glory, brethren, in the newness of this exchange of commerce; for death, which among men was the utter undoing of all piety, has through Christ been made a commendation of divine charity.
The present reading of the Apostle, brethren, when it says that through one man the whole world received sentence (Rom. 5), compels us not to make speeches but to weep with renewed and inmost grief. For if some outstanding prophet has often long lamented the calamity of a single people, of one city, or of one man alone, what mind would not be darkened with total blackness, what senses would not be confounded by utter dullness, what eyes would not be turned into founts and streams of tears, when the fall of one became the ruin of all, and the guilt of one flowed down to the punishment of all, and the vice of a parent prepared deadly destruction for the whole race, as the Apostle says: 'Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death' (ibid.). Wretched me!
He who was the cause of all good things became here the gateway of evils. 'Sin entered into this world' — into this world: do you marvel that he harmed his posterity, who by his own crime brought loss upon the world? But you ask, How did it enter? Through whom did it enter? How? Through fault. Through whom? Through man. And what is it? Is sin a nature or a substance? It is neither nature nor substance, but an accident; and it is an adverse power, which is seen in the deed, felt in the punishment: it assails the soul, wounds the very mind, violates and confounds nature. And what more, brethren? This is the sin of nature: what smoke is to the eyes, what fever is to the body, what bitter saltiness is to the sweetest springs.
By nature the eye is pure and clear, but by the smoke it is disturbed and darkened at once. And the body, with its members and senses, stands firm by that which was framed by God; but when the force of fevers begins to rage and lord it, the whole is made feeble: then the mouth is bitter, then the eyes are dimmed, then the footsteps totter, then the very air is hostile, then loved ones are burdensome, then even attentions seem hateful. And springs, as pleasant as they are through their sweetness and nature, become just as unpleasant when they take on some taint from without. But let us return to what we began. 'As by one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death.' Behold, brethren, the gateway.
Through man sin, and through sin we are seen to have entered into death. O sin, cruel beast, not content to rage against the race of men with a single head! We have seen it with a threefold mouth devouring the shoots of the whole human stock, so precious: with a threefold mouth, brethren — sin seizes, death devours, hell swallows down. And therefore, as we said, such a parent must plainly be bewailed by us with a fount of tears — he who left us heirs of such great miseries, who not only lost the goods bestowed on him, but left all his posterity thus liable to such savage creditors. O hard and cruel inheritance! O wretched us, whom it neither pleased to acquire it nor was permitted to renounce being heirs! Hear what follows: 'And so death passed upon all men.'
But lest perhaps it seem unjust that through one it came upon all, remember that all are through one; you loathe being condemned through him through whom you glory to have been brought forth into the light. But you say: If I owe to my origin that I was born, do I also owe to crime that nature makes me guilty before my own fault? To this question of yours the following word of the Apostle answers, saying: 'In whom all have sinned.' If in him all sinned, deservedly through him all incurred the penalty. 'As by one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death: and so it passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned.' Whether in the man, or in the sin —
through him and in him all have sinned. Sin, therefore, was not turned into nature; but while sin brings in death, it exacts the penalty due to itself through nature. God had so made nature that He might create men unto life; yet nature, while unwillingly it begets for death, thereby confesses itself liable to sin, whose penalty it serves in life. For who, brethren, could bear this — that nature should wish its own offspring to be extinguished, and should wish its own dear shoots to be slain? But while it groans and grieves together, it sighs for the liberty it has lost and longs to receive it back. But through whom it received it, John was the first to point out with clear sign, who, on seeing Christ, proclaims and cries out, saying: 'Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world' (John 1).
'The sin of the world' — this, brethren, is that which the Apostle testifies entered through one man. Rejoice therefore, brethren, because the sin which was pressing us down to hell with a heavy weight has been taken away by Christ, and is now plunged into the abyss; and us, whom the guilt of the first parent had consigned to death, the grace of the second and divine Parent has recalled from punishment to life. Man, therefore, could not be saved without Christ, since the sin of the whole world remained before His coming. But you embrace being justified through Christ, yet you refuse being condemned through Adam; you complain that another's penalty has harmed you, though you behold that another's righteousness has come to your aid. Is not the whole tree in the seed? The defect of the seed, then, is the defect of the whole tree.
If nature could have come to its own aid by itself, its Author would never have taken it up in Himself to repair it. Do you believe it was created unto life, you who still doubt whether it has been repaired through its Author? 'For until the law,' he says, 'sin was in the world.' When you hear 'until the law,' understand it to mean until the end of the law, that is, until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 'For sin,' he says, 'was not imputed when there was no law.' And when was there no law, since it began with man himself? If there had been no law, Adam surely would not have been a transgressor, as the same Apostle discloses when he says: 'But death reigned from Adam unto Moses.' Both had received a law: but Adam transgressed as soon as he received it;
Moses promulgated to transgressors the law he had received, as the Apostle says: 'The law was set down because of transgressions' (Gal. 3). Death, then, reigned through the law, because transgressors are more guilty than sinners; and it savagely devoured those who had fallen not only by a parent's fault, but now by their own crime. But 'death reigned,' he says, 'from Adam unto Moses, even over those who had not sinned after the likeness of the transgression of Adam.' For it devoured not only the great, but the little ones also; and it laid waste not only the guilty, but even the guiltless — guiltless, I say, from their own fault, not from that of their parent. And on this account the condition was the more to be lamented, because the infant was paying the penalty of that parent whose life he had scarcely tasted; and he was atoning for the sin of the world, though he had no knowledge of the world.
Let us acquiesce, therefore, brethren, that through one man and by the offence of one death reigned, if we all desire to be absolved through one and to exist through Christ; for whoever lives owes it to Christ, not to himself; and Adam will owe that he dies.