Homily 14 — First Corinthians 4, verses 18 to 21

“For this reason I have sent Timothy to you, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, who will remind you of my ways which are in Christ Jesus.” [a]

Here too, I beg you, consider that noble soul, a soul more glowing and keener than fire. See how very much he longed to be with the Corinthians in person, sick as they were and broken into parties. He knew well how much his presence helped his disciples, and how much harm his absence did. The first he made plain in the letter to the Philippians, where he says (Philippians 2, verse 12), “Not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” The second he points to in this letter, where he says (verse 18), “Now some are puffed up, as though I were not coming to you; but I will come.”

He was eager, it seems, and longed to be there himself. But since that was not possible for a time, he corrects them with the promise that he will appear, and not only with that, but also by sending his disciple. “For this reason,” he says, “I have sent Timothy to you.” For what reason? “Because I care for you as my children, as the one who became your father.” And the message comes with a word commending the man: “who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord.” He said this both to show his love for him and to prepare them to look on him with respect. And he did not say simply “faithful,” but “in the Lord,” that is, in the things that belong to the Lord. If in worldly things it is high praise for a man to be faithful, how much more in spiritual things!

If Timothy was his “beloved child,” think how great Paul’s love was, that he chose to be parted from him for the Corinthians’ sake. And if he was “faithful” too, no fault will be found in the way he serves their affairs. [b]

“Who will remind you.” He did not say “who will teach you,” so that they would not take it badly, since they were used to learning from Paul himself. That is also why, toward the end of the letter, he says (First Corinthians 16, verses 10 and 11), “For he is doing the work of the Lord, as I am. So let no one despise him.” For there was no envy among the apostles; they had their eye on one thing only, the building up of the church. And if the one they sent was their inferior, they backed him up, as it were, with all their energy.

That is why he was not content to say, “He will remind you.” Meaning to cut out their envy more completely — for Timothy was young — with this in view, I say, he adds “my ways”: not “his,” but “mine.” That is, his methods, his dangers, his customs, his laws, his ordinances, his apostolic rules, and all the rest. For since he had said, “We are naked, and are beaten, and have no settled home,” “all these things,” he says, “he will remind you of” — and of the laws of Christ as well, which serve to destroy every heresy.

Then, carrying his argument higher, he adds, “which are in Christ,” ascribing everything to the Lord, as was his habit, and on that ground making what follows believable. That is why he goes on, “as I teach everywhere in every church.” That is: “I have told you nothing new. All the other churches know these ways of mine as well as you do.” And he calls them “ways in Christ” to show that there is nothing merely human in them, and that he does everything well with the help that comes from there.

Having said these things and soothed them in this way, and being just about to take up his charge against the unclean man, he again speaks words full of anger — not because he felt that way in himself, but in order to correct them. Passing over the sexually immoral man, he turns his words to the rest, as though that man did not deserve even a word from him — just as we do with our servants when they have given us serious offense. [c]

Next, after saying, “I am sending Timothy,” so that they would not take things too easily on that account, notice what he says.

Verse 18: “Now some are puffed up, as though I were not coming to you.”

Here he takes aim both at them and at certain others, bringing down their proud minds. For the love of being first is to blame when people take advantage of their teacher’s absence to do as they please. Notice how, when he speaks to the people at large, he does it by appealing to their sense of shame; but when he speaks to those who started the trouble, his manner is more forceful. So to the first he says, “We have become the scum of the world,” and to soothe them he says, “I do not write these things to shame you.” But to the others: “Now some are puffed up, as though I were not coming to you” — showing that their willfulness came from a childish turn of mind. For boys, too, grow more careless when their schoolmaster is away.

This, then, is one thing he points to here. The other is that his presence was enough to correct them. For as a lion’s presence makes every living creature shrink away, so did Paul’s presence to those who were corrupting the church. [e]

Verse 19: And so he goes on, “But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord wills.”

Now to say only this would have seemed a mere threat. But to promise to come himself, and to demand from them the proof that counts, the proof of actions — that was the course of a truly lofty spirit. So he added this too: “And I will find out, not the word of those who are puffed up, but the power.” For this willfulness of theirs came not from any excellence of their own but from their teacher’s absence, and that in itself was the sign of a mind that looked down on him.

And this is why, having said, “I have sent Timothy,” he did not add at once, “I will come,” but waited until he had brought his charge against them of being “puffed up.” Only after that does he say, “I will come.” Had he put it before the charge, it would have been more a defense of himself, as one who had not failed in his duty, than a threat; and even so the statement would not have been convincing. But as it is, by placing it after the accusation, he made himself someone they would both believe and fear.

Notice, too, how solid and secure he makes his ground. He does not say simply, “I will come,” but “if the Lord wills.” And he sets no fixed time. Since he might perhaps be slow in coming, he wanted that uncertainty to keep them anxiously on their guard. And so that they would not grow slack again on that account, he added, “shortly.”

“And I will find out, not the word of those who are puffed up, but the power.” He did not say, “I will find out, not the wisdom,” or “not the signs.” What, then? “Not the word” — and by the very term he uses he at once lowers the one and raises up the other. For the moment he is setting himself against the majority of them, who were standing by the sexually immoral man. If he were speaking of that man, he would not say “the power,” but “the deeds” — the corrupt deeds he had done.

“But why do you not look for ‘the word’?” “Not because I am short of words, but because everything we do is ‘in power.’” In war, success goes not to those who talk much but to those who get much done; so here too the victory belongs not to the speakers but to the doers. He says: “You are proud of this fine speaking. Well, if this were a contest and a time for orators, you might reasonably be carried away by it. But if it is a time for apostles who preach the truth and confirm it by signs, why are you puffed up over something unnecessary and empty, and completely useless for the purpose at hand? What could a display of words do toward raising the dead, or driving out evil spirits, or working any other such wonder? But these are what we need now, and by these our cause stands.”

That is why he also adds, verse 20: “For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.” [g]

He says: “By signs, not by fine speaking, we have won. And we give the greater proof that our teaching is divine and truly announces the kingdom of heaven — namely, our signs, which we work by the power of the Spirit. If those who are puffed up now want to be somebody great, then as soon as I come, let them show whether they have any such power. And let me not find them sheltering behind a parade of words; that kind of art means nothing to us.”

Verse 21: “What do you want? Shall I come to you with a rod, or in love and a spirit of gentleness?”

There is much terror in this saying, and much mildness too. To say, “I will find out,” was the language of someone still holding himself back. But to say, “What do you want? Must I come to you with a rod?” are the words of one who from now on takes his seat in the teacher’s chair, speaks to them from there, and takes on all his authority.

What does “with a rod” mean? With punishment, with vengeance. That is, “I will destroy, I will strike with blindness” — the kind of thing Peter did in the case of Sapphira, and Paul himself in the case of Elymas the sorcerer. For from here on he no longer speaks as one setting himself in close comparison with the other teachers, but with authority. And in the second letter too he seems to say the same, when he writes, “since you seek proof that Christ is speaking in me.” [h]

“Shall I come with a rod, or in love?” What, then? Was coming with a rod not an act of love? It was love, certainly. But because in his great love he shrinks from punishing, he puts it this way. Notice further: when he spoke about punishment, he did not say “in a spirit,” as with “a spirit of gentleness,” but simply “with a rod” — and yet of that too the Spirit was the author. For there is a spirit of gentleness, and there is a spirit of severity. He does not, however, choose to call it that, but names it from its milder side. For the same reason God too, although he takes vengeance, is often said to be “gracious and patient, rich in mercy and compassion”; but that he is quick to punish is said once, perhaps, or twice, and sparingly, and then for some pressing cause.

Consider, then, Paul’s wisdom. He holds the authority in his own hands, yet he leaves both the one course and the other in the power of others, saying, “What do you want?” — that is, “The matter is up to you.” [j]

For we too have both sides of the choice depending on us, both falling into hell and gaining the kingdom, since God has willed it so. “Look,” he says, “fire and water: stretch out your hand to whichever you wish” (Sirach 15, verse 16). And, “If you are willing and listen to me, you will eat the good things of the land (Isaiah 1, verse 19); but if you are not willing, the sword will devour you.”

But perhaps someone will say: “I am willing — and no one is so senseless as not to be willing — but willing is not enough for me.” No, it is enough, if you are willing as you should be and do the deeds of one who is willing. But as it is, you are not very willing.

Let us test this in other matters, if you like. Tell me: the man who wants to marry a wife — is he content with wishing? Not at all. He looks for women to press his suit, asks friends to be on the lookout with him, and gets money together. Again, the merchant is not content to sit at home and wish. First he hires a ship, then picks sailors and rowers, then borrows money at interest, and makes inquiries about markets and the price of goods. Is it not strange, then, for people to show themselves so much in earnest about earthly things, but when they are to venture out for heaven, to be content with wishing alone? Or rather, I should say, they are not even properly in earnest about the wishing. For the one who wills a thing as he ought also puts his hand to the means that lead to what he desires.

So when hunger forces you to take food, you do not wait for the dishes to come to you on their own; you leave nothing undone to gather food together. So too with thirst and cold and everything else of that kind: you are hardworking and well prepared to look after the body. Do the same for God’s kingdom too, and you will certainly gain it. For this is why God made you free to choose: so that you could not afterward accuse God, as though some necessity had bound you. And yet you grumble about the very things in which you have been honored.

In fact, I have often heard people say: “But why, then, did he make my goodness depend on me?” Well, how was he to bring you up to heaven, slumbering and sleeping, in love with every kind of wrongdoing, living in luxury and pampering yourself? Had he done it, you would not have kept away from vice. For if even now, with threats hanging over you, you do not turn aside from your wickedness, when would you have stopped growing more careless and far worse, if he had added no less than heaven as the goal of your race? [l]

Nor, again, will you be able to plead, “He showed me what was good, but he gave me no help.” For his promise of help to you is abundant too.

You say: “But virtue is burdensome and unpleasant, while vice has great pleasure mixed into it. The one is wide and broad, the other narrow and hard.”

Tell me, then: are they like this all the way through, or only at the beginning? For what you say here, you say on virtue’s side without meaning to — so powerful a thing is truth. Suppose there were two roads, one leading to a furnace and the other to a paradise, and the road to the furnace were broad and the road to paradise narrow. Which road would you choose? Though you may argue now just for the sake of arguing, things that everyone plainly admits you will not be able to deny, however shameless you are. That the road to choose is the one whose beginning is hard but not its end, I will try to show you from what is quite obvious. And first, if you like, let us take the trades. These have a beginning full of toil, but a profitable end.

You say: “But no one takes up a trade unless someone forces him to.” And you add: “As long as the boy is his own master, he would rather take his ease at first and suffer the harm in the end, however great it is, than live hard at the start and afterward reap the fruit of those labors.”

Well then, to make that choice comes from a mind left to itself like an orphan, and from childish idleness; the opposite choice comes from good sense and manliness. And so it is with us. If we were not children in mind, we would not be like the boy just described, orphaned as he is and thoughtless, but like the boy who has a father. So we must throw out our own childish mind and not find fault with the things themselves. We must set a charioteer over our conscience, who will not let us indulge our appetites, but will make us run and strive with all our might. For what is it but absurd to train our children from the start through hard work in pursuits whose beginnings are laborious but whose end is good and pleasant, while we ourselves in spiritual things take just the opposite course?

And yet even in those earthly things it is not at all certain that the end will be good and pleasant. Before now an early death, or poverty, or a false accusation, or a turn of fortune, or other such things — and there are many — have robbed people of all the fruit of their long toil. What is more, even those who succeed in such pursuits reap no great gain, for all those things come to an end with the present life. But here our race is not run for such fruitless and perishable things, nor do we have any fear about the end; our hope after we depart from here is greater and more secure. What pardon, then, can there be, what excuse, for those who will not strip for the hardships that must be endured for virtue’s sake?

And do they still ask, “Why is the way narrow?” Why, you do not think it right that anyone sexually immoral, or debauched, or drunk should come into the courts of earthly kings — and do you demand that people be let into heaven itself with loose living and luxury and drunkenness and greed and every kind of wrongdoing? How can these things be pardoned?

You reply: “No, I do not say that. But why does virtue not have a broad way?” Truly, if we are willing, its way is very easy. Tell me, which is easier: to dig through a wall and take other people’s goods and so be thrown into prison, or to be content with what you have and be free from all fear? But I have not said everything yet. Tell me, which is easier: to steal everyone’s goods and revel in a few of them for a short time, and then be tortured and flogged forever; or to live in righteous poverty for a short time, and then live in delights ever after? (For let us not ask yet which is more profitable, but for the present only which is easier.) Again, which is more pleasant: to see a good dream and be punished in reality, or to have an unpleasant dream and then really enjoy yourself? The second, of course. [n]

Tell me, then: in what sense do you call virtue harsh? I grant it is harsh, when measured against our carelessness. But that it is really easy and smooth, hear what Christ says (Matthew 11, verse 30): “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” If you do not feel the lightness, it is plainly for lack of courageous zeal. Where that is present, even heavy things are light; and by the same rule, where it is absent, even light things are heavy.

Tell me: what could be sweeter, or more easily had, than the feast of manna? Yet the Jews were discontented, though they were enjoying such delightful food. What is more bitter than hunger and all the other hardships Paul endured? Yet he leaped up, and rejoiced, and said (Colossians 1, verse 24), “Now I rejoice in my sufferings.” What, then, is the cause? The difference of mind. If you shape yours as it ought to be, you will see how easy virtue is.

You say: “What, then? Does she become that way only through the mind of those who pursue her?” She is that way not from their mind alone, but by her nature as well. I prove it this way. If the one had been painful all the way through, and the other just the opposite all the way through, then those who have fallen might have said, with some show of reason, that the second was easier than the first. But if the one begins in hardship and the other in pleasure, while their ends are just the reverse, and if both those ends are endless — in the one the pleasure, in the other the burden — tell me, which is easier to choose?

“Why, then, do many not choose what is easy?” Because some do not believe; and others, who do believe, have a corrupted judgment and would rather have pleasure for a season than what lasts forever. “Is this not easy, then?” No: this comes from a sick soul. People with a fever long for cold drinks, not because they have calculated that a moment’s luxury is more pleasant than being burned up from beginning to end, but because they cannot restrain their uncontrolled craving. So it is with these people. If someone brought them to their punishment at the very moment of their pleasure, they would certainly never have chosen it. So you see in what sense vice is not an easy thing.

But if you like, let us test this same point again with an example from the very matter at hand. Tell me, which is more pleasant and easier? (Only let us not take the desire of the many as our rule again; one ought to judge, not by the sick, but by the healthy. You might show me ten thousand people with fever, choosing unwholesome things and willing to suffer for it afterward, but I would not accept their choice.) Which, I repeat, brings more ease, tell me: to desire great wealth, or to be above that desire? For my part, I think the second. If you do not believe it, let the argument be brought to the facts themselves. [o]

Let us suppose, then, one man who desires much and another who desires nothing. Tell me, which is the better state, and which the more honorable? But let that pass, for this is agreed: the second is a finer character than the first. And that is not what we are asking at present, but which of them lives the easier and more pleasant life. Well then: the lover of money will not enjoy even what he has. What he loves he cannot bring himself to spend; he would gladly even cut himself to pieces, and part with his flesh rather than with his gold. But the one who despises wealth gains this meanwhile: he enjoys what he has quietly and in great security, and he values himself above it.

Which, then, is more pleasant — to enjoy what one has freely, or to live under a master, namely wealth, and not dare to touch a single thing, even of one’s own? It seems to me much the same as if two men had wives and loved them dearly, but were not on the same terms with them: the one allowed his wife’s company and intimacy, the other not even permitted to come near his.

There is another thing I want to mention that shows the pleasure of the one and the misery of the other. The man greedy for gain will never be stopped in that desire, not only because he cannot possibly get hold of everyone’s goods, but also because whatever he has laid hold of, he counts himself as having nothing. But the one who despises riches will count it all unnecessary, and will not have to punish his soul with endless desires. I say “punish,” for nothing fits the definition of punishment so completely as desire that is denied its satisfaction — a thing, too, that especially marks the greedy man’s perverse mind. [p]

Look at it this way. The man who craves riches and has increased his store is just the sort to feel as if he had nothing. I ask, then, what disease is more tangled than this? And the strange thing is not only this. Although he has them, he thinks he does not have the very things he is holding, and he bewails himself as though he did not have them. If he gets hold of everyone’s goods, his pain is only greater. If he gains a hundred talents, he is vexed that he has not received a thousand; if he receives a thousand, he is stung to the quick that it is not ten thousand; and if he receives ten thousand, he beats his breast in grief because it is not ten times as much.

For him, gaining more becomes so much more poverty, since the more he receives, the more he desires. So the more he receives, the poorer he becomes; for whoever desires more is more truly poor. When he has a hundred talents, then, is he not very poor? For he desires a thousand. When he has got a thousand, he becomes poorer still, for it is no longer a thousand, as before, but ten thousand that he says he needs. Now if you say that to wish and not obtain is pleasure, you seem to me to know very little about the nature of pleasure.

To show that this sort of thing is not pleasure but punishment, let us take another case and examine it. When we are thirsty, do we not find pleasure in drinking precisely because we quench our thirst? Is drinking not a pleasure because it frees us from a great torment — the desire to drink, I mean? Anyone, I suppose, can tell you so. But if we were always to stay in that state of desire, we would be as badly off, as far as punishment goes, as the rich man in the parable of Lazarus. His punishment was just this: he longed desperately for one little drop and did not get it. And this very thing, it seems to me, all greedy people suffer continually. They are like him when he begs for that drop and does not get it; for their soul is more on fire than his. [q]

Someone has put it well: all lovers of money have a kind of dropsy. Those with dropsy carry much water in their bodies and are all the more parched; so the greedy carry great wealth about with them and crave still more. The reason is that the one does not keep the water in the parts of the body where it belongs, and the other does not keep his desire within the limits of right thinking.

So let us flee this strange and empty disease. Let us flee the root of all evils; let us flee what is hell here and now — for the desire of these things is a hell. Just lay open the soul of each man, the one who despises wealth and the one who does not, and you will see that the second is like a madman who will neither hear nor see anything, while the first is like a harbor free of waves. He is everyone’s friend, as the other is everyone’s enemy. If someone takes anything of his, it does not trouble him; if, on the other hand, someone gives him something, it does not puff him up. There is a kind of freedom about him, with complete security. The one is forced to flatter and pretend before everyone; the other, before no one. [s]

If, then, to love money is to be poor, and fearful, and a pretender and a hypocrite, and full of fears and of great anguish, punishment and chastisement, while the one who despises wealth enjoys everything that is the opposite, is it not quite plain that virtue is the more pleasant? We might have gone through all the other vices as well, to show that there is no vice with pleasure in it, had we not already spoken at such length.

So, knowing these things, let us choose virtue, so that we may both enjoy the pleasure that is here and attain the blessings that are to come, through the grace and love for humankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, with whom be glory, power and honor to the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and always, and to everlasting ages. Amen.