An Imitator of God

If you too long for this faith, and receive first of all the knowledge of the Father … [a]

For God loved human beings. It was for their sake that he made the world; to them he put in subjection everything on the earth; to them he gave reason, and to them understanding; to them alone he granted the right to look up toward himself; them he formed after his own image; to them he sent his only Son; to them he promised a kingdom in heaven, and he will give it to those who have loved him.

And once you have come to know him, what joy do you think you will be filled with? Or how will you love the one who first loved you like that? And loving him, you will be an imitator of his kindness. Do not be surprised that a man can become an imitator of God. He can — if God is willing.

For happiness does not lie in lording it over your neighbors, or in wanting more than the weak have, or in being rich and using force on people who have less. No one can imitate God by such things. They lie outside his greatness altogether. But whoever takes up his neighbor’s burden; whoever, in whatever he is the stronger, is willing to do good to the one who has less; whoever takes what he has received from God and supplies it to those in need, and so becomes a god to those who receive it — that man is an imitator of God.

Then, while you are still on earth, you will see that God carries on his life in heaven. Then you will begin to speak the mysteries of God. Then you will both love and admire the people who are punished because they will not deny God. Then you will condemn the world’s fraud and its deceit — when you come to know what it is truly to live in heaven, when you look down on what is thought to be death here, when you fear what is really death, which is kept in store for those who will be condemned to the eternal fire, the fire that will punish to the end those handed over to it. Then you will admire the people who endure the fire that lasts only a moment for the sake of righteousness, and you will call them happy, once you have come to know that other fire.

I am not talking about strange things, and I am not chasing after anything unreasonable. I was a disciple of apostles, and I am becoming a teacher of the nations. What was handed down to me I serve out, as it deserves, to those who are becoming disciples of the truth. [h]

For who, once he has been rightly taught and has become dear to the Word, does not want to learn exactly the things the Word plainly showed to his disciples? The Word appeared and made them clear to them, speaking openly. Unbelievers did not understand him, but he explained them to his disciples, and they, counted faithful by him, came to know the mysteries of the Father. That is why he sent the Word: so that he might appear to the world. The people dishonored him; the apostles preached him; the nations believed in him.

If you do not grieve that grace, you will come to know what the Word speaks — through whomever he chooses, and whenever he wishes. For whatever we were moved to say out in full with toil, at the will of the Word who commands us, we share with you out of love for what has been revealed to us.

When you have read these things and listened to them carefully, you will know what God gives to those who love him rightly — you who have become a garden of delight, raising up inside yourselves a tree in full leaf and heavy with every kind of fruit, decked out with fruits of every sort. [n]

For in this place the tree of knowledge and the tree of life have been planted. But it is not the tree of knowledge that kills; disobedience kills. And what is written is not without meaning: that from the beginning God planted a tree of knowledge and a tree of life in the middle of the garden, showing life by way of knowledge. Those at the beginning did not use it cleanly, and by the serpent’s deceit they were stripped naked. For there is no life without knowledge, and no safe knowledge without true life. That is why the two are planted next to each other.

The apostle saw the force of this. Finding fault with the knowledge that is practiced toward life without the truth of a command, he says: “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” For anyone who thinks he knows something without true knowledge — knowledge his own life bears witness to — knows nothing. He is led astray by the serpent, because he did not love life. But the one who knows with fear, and searches for life, plants in hope and expects fruit.

Let knowledge be your heart, and let your life be the true Word, given room inside you. Carry that tree and pick its fruit, and you will always gather in what God longs for — things the serpent does not touch, things deceit never rubs against. Eve is not seduced; she is trusted as a virgin.