Imitating God in Doing Good

The one who truly knows is the man formed after the image and likeness of God, the man who imitates God as far as a man can and falls short in nothing that helps toward that likeness, so far as likeness is possible. He practices self-restraint and endurance, he lives righteously, he rules his passions, he gives away what he has as far as he is able, and he does good both in word and in deed. “He is the greatest in the kingdom,” it is said, “who does and teaches” — imitating God by conferring benefits of the same kind. For God’s gifts are given for the common good. “Whoever attempts anything with a high hand provokes God,” it is said. Arrogance is a disease of the soul, and God commands us to repent of it as of every other sin: to set our lives right, bringing them out of their disorder into a change for the better, in these three things — mouth, heart, and hands. These are the signs. The hands stand for action, the heart for the will, the mouth for speech. So this saying about those who repent is beautifully spoken: “You have chosen God today to be your God, and God has chosen you today to be his people.” The man who hurries to serve the One who is, coming as a suppliant, God adopts as his own. Though he is only one man, he is honored equally with the whole people; for as a part of the people he completes it, restored from what he was, and the whole takes its name from a part. [a]

Nobility of birth shows what it is worth only in the choosing and the practice of what is best. What good did Adam’s kind of nobility do him? No mortal man was his father; he was himself the father of everyone born since. Yet he chose what was low without hesitating, following his wife, and passed over what was true and good. That is why he exchanged his deathless life for a mortal one — though not for ever. Noah, whose beginning was not the same as Adam’s, was saved by God’s care; for he took himself in hand and set himself apart for God. Abraham had children by three wives — not to indulge pleasure, but, as I take it, in the hope of multiplying the race at the start — and only one man succeeded him, the heir of his father’s blessings, while the rest were separated from the family. And of the twins born from that heir, the younger, who won his father’s favor and received his prayers, became heir in turn, and the elder served him. For the greatest benefit a bad man can have is not to be his own master.

This arrangement was prophetic, a pattern of what was coming. And Scripture plainly shows that all things belong to the wise man when it says, “Because God has had mercy on me, I have all things.” It teaches us to desire one thing, the thing through which all things come, and that what is promised is assigned to those who are worthy. So the good man who has become heir of the kingdom is registered as well, through the wisdom that comes from God, as a fellow citizen with the righteous men of long ago — men who lived by law both under the law and before the law, and whose deeds have become laws to us. And again, to teach that the wise man is a king, Scripture brings in people of another nation who say to him, “You are a king from God among us.” Those who were governed obeyed the good man of their own free will, out of admiration for his goodness.

Plato the philosopher, defining the goal of happiness, says that it is likeness to God as far as that is possible. Perhaps he was agreeing with the command of the law — for great natures free of the passions do somehow hit the mark about the truth, as Philo the Pythagorean says when he tells the story of Moses — or perhaps he had been taught by certain sayings current in his day, thirsty for teaching as he always was. For the law says, “Walk after the Lord your God, and keep my commands.” The law calls becoming like God “following”; and a following carried out with all one’s power does make a man like him. “Be merciful and compassionate,” says the Lord, “as your heavenly Father is compassionate.” It was from this that the Stoics too laid down that the goal is to live in agreement with nature — neatly changing the name of God into nature, since nature reaches to plants as well, and to seeds and trees and stones. So it is plainly said, “Bad men do not understand the law, but those who love the law build a wall around themselves.” And, “The wisdom of the clever knows its own ways, but the folly of fools goes astray.” “For whom will I look on, but the one who is gentle and quiet and trembles at my words?” — so the prophecy says.

We are taught that there are three kinds of friendship. The first and best comes from virtue, for love founded on reason stands firm. The second, the middle one, works by return of favor: it is sociable, generous, and useful for daily life, since friendship that grows out of a favor done is mutual. The third and last, we hold, rests on familiarity; others say it is that shifting, changeable kind which rests on pleasure. And Hippodamus the Pythagorean seems to me to describe the friendships best of all: “The friendship founded on knowledge of the gods, the friendship founded on the gifts of men, and the friendship founded on the pleasures of animals.” There is the friendship of a lover of wisdom, then, and the friendship of a man, and the friendship of an animal.

For the image of God is in truth the man who does good — and in doing good he gets good, as a ship’s pilot at once saves and is saved. That is why, when a man’s request is granted, he does not say to the giver, “You have given well,” but “You have received well.” So the giver is the one who receives, and the receiver is the one who gives. “But the righteous man pities and shows mercy.” “The gentle will be the inhabitants of the earth, and the innocent will be left in it; but those who break the law will be rooted out of it.” And Homer seems to me to have spoken prophetically about the faithful when he said, “Give to your friend.” An enemy, too, must be helped, so that he will not stay an enemy; for by help goodwill is packed together and hostility dissolved. “If the readiness is there, a gift is acceptable according to what a man has, not according to what he does not have; for it is not that others should have relief and you hardship, but that there should be equality at the present time” — and the rest of it. “He scattered abroad, he gave to the poor; his righteousness endures for ever,” Scripture says. For being conformed to the image and the likeness is not said of the body — it would be wrong for what is mortal to be made like what is immortal — but of the mind and the reason, on which the Lord fittingly stamps the seal of likeness, both in doing good and in exercising rule. Governments are steered not by qualities of the body but by the judgments of the mind. It is by the counsels of holy men that states are well managed, and households too.