|
When, therefore, man lives according to man, not according to God,
he is like the devil. Because not even an angel might live according
to an angel, but only according to God, if he was to abide in the
truth, and speak God's truth and not his own lie. And of man,
too, the same apostle says in another place, "If the truth of God
hath more abounded through my lie;" my lie," he said, and "God's
truth." When, then, a man lives according to the truth, he lives
not according to himself, but according to God; for He was God who
said, "I am the truth." When, therefore, man lives according to
himself, that is, according to man, not according to God, assuredly
he lives according to a lie; not that man himself is a lie, for God
is his author and creator, who is certainly not the author and creator
of a lie, but because man was made upright, that he might not live
according to himself, but according to Him that made him, in other
words, that he might do His will and not his own; and not to live as
he was made to live, that is a lie. For he certainly desires to be
blessed even by not living so that he may be blessed. And what is a
lie if this desire be not? Wherefore it is not without meaning said
that all sin is a lie. For no sin is committed save by that desire or
will by which we desire that it be well with us, and shrink from it
being ill with us. That, therefore, is a lie which we do in order
that it may be well with us, but which makes us more miserable than we
were. And why is this, but because the source of man's happiness
lies only in God, whom he abandons when he sins, and not in himself,
by living according to whom he sins?
In enunciating this proposition of ours, then, that because some live
according to the flesh and others according to the spirit, there have
arisen two diverse and conflicting cities, we might equally well have
said, "because some live according to man, others according to
God." For Paul says very plainly to the Corinthians, "For
whereas there is among you envying and strife, are ye not carnal, and
walk according to man?" So that to walk according to man and to be
carnal are the same; for by flesh, that is, by a part of man, man is
meant. For before he said that those same persons were animal whom
afterwards he calls carnal, saying, "For what man knoweth the things
of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things
of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received
not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit which is of God; that
we might, know the things which are freely given to us of God. Which
things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth,
but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with
spiritual. But the animal man perceiveth not the things of the Spirit
of God; for they are foolishness unto him." It is to men of this
kind, then, that is, to animal men, he shortly after says, "And
I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto
carnal." And this is to be interpreted by the same usage, a part
being taken for the whole. For both the soul and the flesh, the
component parts of man, can be used to signify the whole man; and so
the animal man and the carnal man are not two different things, but one
and the same thing, viz., man living according to man. In the same
way it is nothing else than men that are meant either in the words,
"By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified;" or in
the words, "Seventy-five souls went down into Egypt with Jacob."
In the one passage, "no flesh" signifies "no man;" and in the
other, by "seventy-five souls" seventy-five men are meant. And
the expression, "not in words which man's wisdom teacheth" might
equally be "not in words which fleshly wisdom teacheth;" and the
expression, "ye walk according to man," might be "according to the
flesh." And this is still more apparent in the words which followed:
"For while one saith, I am of Paul, and another, I am of
Apollos, are ye not men?" The same thing which he had before
expressed by "ye are animal," "ye are carnal, he now expresses by
"ye are men;" that is, ye live according to man, not according to
God, for if you lived according to Him, you should be gods.
|
|