As to the wayfarer the return to his own is always sweet and dear, and the vestibules of his native home are gracious after a time, so to me, after intervals of discourse, the return to the sequence of the apostolic readings is the more pleasant. Since a religious necessity often compels us to depart from the proposed order of speaking and from the continuous course of discourse; for the order of doctrine must be so tempered that one thing be not hindered by another. Wherefore let us hear what the blessed Apostle has said today. What then does he say? 'Shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid' (Rom. 6). This question, brethren, convicts the ignorance of those who, held captive by the custom of the law, know not how to perceive the virtues of the benefit of grace;
and those whom the series of legal precepts betrayed as contumacious, the mere advantages of gifts and the pomp of festivals in vain observances made and rendered obstinate. And since time has excluded the law, what shall the worshipper of the law do, cast off by the law? O Jew, what have you that you have not lost? But if you have lost it, why do you glory as though you had not lost it? Where is the temple, where is the priest, where the sacrifice, where the incense, where your purifications, where the not-to-be-omitted devotion of your solemnities? But that you may be a Jew, deservedly are you circumcised, for you are cut off from all the good things aforesaid. For it is written: 'Cursed is everyone that continues not in all things which are written in the book of the law' (Deut. 27).
If he is cursed who offends in one point, how often shall he be cursed who is proved to have done nothing of all the things? 'Shall we sin,' he says, 'because we are not under the law, but under grace?' As if he said, brethren: Shall we sin because, now healed, we did not continue in the treatment? Shall we sin because, now cured, we abandoned the fire, the iron, the medicines? Unhappy is the sick man who after the cure does not wish to cure the torment. And what more, brethren? Never is he cured who seeks and awaits the will of the ailing one. For since from a cold humour a fire is ever kindled in the body, and excessive chill, while it vexes and shakes the members, produces and begets a sharper burning;
so the sick man, to increase the flame which ever seethes and pants in his veins, impatiently awaits cold water to be given him, not knowing that then heat is quenched by heat, and the burning is nourished by cold. The law, therefore, while it ever awaits and endures the will of man, and yet man, encumbered by the burden of sin, is not able to satisfy nor prevail to obey the legal commandments, does not absolve its worshipper from the bond of sin, but binds him with the crime of transgression. And therefore he added, saying: 'Know you not, that to whom you yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants you are whom you obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto life?' What is it, brethren, that when we were speaking of the law, he betrayed man to have been a servant of sin?
'Whether of sin,' he says, 'unto death, or of obedience unto life.' Because above he had said: 'Let not sin have dominion over you, for you are not under the law, but under grace.' Those, therefore, who are under the law are of sin, are pressed down and bowed under its rule, and the wretched cannot be freed from the most shameful servitude of sin, unless by grace setting them free. 'But thanks be to God,' he said, 'that you were the servants of sin.' Does he thus give thanks, as one who rejoices that man was a servant of sin? God forbid. He gives thanks, not because we were before servants of so cruel a master, but because we are no longer in subjection, as from what follows he manifests this same thing more expressly, saying: 'But you have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine into which you have been delivered:'
'and being made free from sin, you became the servants of justice.' We have obeyed, brethren, by the benefit of Him who calls, not by our own; for we were thus held captive by our own will. 'But you have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine.' Into what? Into that of the Gospel, of course, where by a new kind of liberty servitude is not abolished, but changed; because a devoted service is better than empty and presumptuous liberty. 'You became the servants of justice.' This servitude, brethren, does not bind, but absolves; does not burden, but honours; wipes away the stain of servitude, does not brand it on.
What here, I ask, is not divine, where servitude is driven out by servitude, where condition is put to flight by condition, where death dies by death, where perdition is healed by perdition — and, to say it properly and briefly, where the whole of adversity is laid low by the very sword-point of adversity itself? But as to what he said: 'I speak a human thing, because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as you have yielded your members to serve uncleanness, and iniquity unto iniquity; so now yield your members to serve justice unto sanctification.' He shows the greatness of His mercy, when he lowers the evangelical doctrine to examples so humble and almost shameful; that he may lay upon holiness only as much as upon uncleanness, as much upon justice as upon iniquity, and may command it to servitude.
Absurd, brethren, and unseemly the comparison seems, which wishes man to be subject to glory only as much as to shamefulness; but would that it were even only as much! And when does frail human nature serve God as much as the world, when as much heaven as earth, when as much virtue as vices? The whole wretched man is so given over to the flesh, so occupied with present things, that he leaves nothing in himself that may serve the future life, that may serve the divine goods. The enticement of the temporal the blessed Apostle in a single word aptly fitted to human consciences, aptly expressed, that human members may serve justice, chastity, and cleanness with as much will as they gave themselves over to shamefulness and vices with vehemence and madness.
Little, or perhaps nothing, does He exact, who desires to grant it once your ownership is overcome; and He takes away all excuse, who commands you to repay for the greatest things what is possible and customary to you. Give then, O man, to God as much as you have rendered to the flesh and to vices. And what is it, that you should owe yourself first to vices, and not to God — you whom God seeks out only for your love's sake? It follows: 'For when you were the servants of sin, you were free from justice; but now being made free from sin, you are made the servants of justice.' Before, servants of sin; now, servants of justice. Behold, through the Apostle, servitude succeeds to servitude; you who were contumacious, now show forth the time of your liberty;
sin before falsely called you free, whom it held, wretched one, a captive; now grace calls you a servant, whom, that it might make you truly free, it has adopted as a son of God Himself. Fulfilled therefore is Christ's saying, in which He says: 'He that will be master, let him be servant' (Matt. 20). Blessed is this servitude, which begets an everlasting dominion. For that other liberty brought upon us the fruit of punishment, and a confusion not to be borne, as he says: 'What fruit therefore had you then in those things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of them is death.' Behold in what manner the devil sets free, behold with what reward he honours that servitude;
so that death may at once both end life and begin punishment. But those who serve Christ, brethren, once that mock death is past, are carried over with their wages into the everlasting life of sanctity; for the end appointed by Christ admits no ending, since this ending does not slay the man but perfects him.