Sin No More, Confessor

Cyprian to Rogatianus the elder, and to the other confessors, his brothers: greetings.

I wrote to you once already, my dearly loved and bravest brothers, in a letter that celebrated your faith and your courage in the gladdest words I could find. And now my one aim, before anything else, is to say again and again, with a glad heart, how great the honor of your name is. What better thing could I ask for in my prayers than to see the flock of Christ made bright by the honor of your confession? Every one of the brothers ought to be glad of it; but in that shared gladness the overseer’s share is the largest, because the glory of the church is the glory of its overseer. However much we grieve over the ones this hostile persecution has knocked down, in exactly that measure we rejoice over you, whom the devil has not been able to beat. [b]

Still, I urge you — by the faith we hold in common, by the plain and honest love I have for you — that now you have beaten your opponent in this first round, you hold on to your glory with courage that does not give out. We are still in the world. We are still standing on the field. We fight for our lives every day. So take care that a beginning like yours is followed by growth, and that what you have begun with so blessed a start is carried all the way through in you. [d]

It is a small thing to have reached something; it is more to be able to keep what you have reached. Faith itself, and the birth that saves, give life not by being received but by being kept. It is not the winning but the finishing that keeps a person for God. The Lord taught this when He said, “Look, you have been made well. Sin no more, or something worse may happen to you.” Think of Him saying the same thing to His confessor: “Look, you have become a confessor. Sin no more, or something worse may happen to you.” Solomon too, and Saul, and many others were able to keep the grace that had been given them for as long as they walked in the Lord’s ways. When they abandoned the Lord’s discipline, grace abandoned them.

We have to keep to the straight and narrow road of praise and glory. Quietness and humility and a calm, well-lived life suit every Christian, since the Lord says He looks at no one except the man who is humble and quiet and trembles at His words. It is all the more your duty as confessors to watch this and carry it out, since you have been made an example to the rest of the brothers, and your character ought to make everyone else want to live and behave as you do. [f]

The Jews became strangers to God, and it is because of them that “the name of God is spoken against among the nations.” On the other side, the people dear to God are the ones whose obedience to discipline makes God’s name spoken of with praise. That is how it is written, and the Lord Himself warns us in advance: “Let your light shine in front of people, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” And Paul the apostle says, “Shine like lights in the world.” Peter urges the same thing: “As strangers and temporary residents, keep away from the cravings of the flesh, which make war on the soul. Keep your way of life honorable among the nations, so that when they speak against you as wrongdoers, they may look at your good works and give glory to the Lord.” Most of you, I am glad to say, are careful about this. The honor of your confession itself has made you better men, and you guard its glory and keep it safe by living calm and upright lives.

But I am told that some men are a contagion among you, and are destroying the praise of a name that stands high, by the corrupt way they live. You are the ones who should rebuke them, hold them back and set them straight, since you love your own good name and are its guardians. Think what your name suffers when one man spends his days drunk and chasing pleasure, and another goes back to the country he was banished from, only to be arrested and die there — not now as a Christian, but as a criminal. [j]

I am told that some are swollen with pride and arrogant, though it is written, “Do not be proud, but be afraid. For if God did not spare the natural branches, take care that He does not fail to spare you either.” Our Lord “was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent in front of the man shearing it, He did not open His mouth.” “I am not rebellious,” He says, “I do not answer back. I gave my back to the men who beat me and my cheeks to their hands. I did not hide my face from the foulness of their spitting.” And does anyone now — anyone who lives by this One and in Him — dare to lift himself up and act haughty? Has he forgotten both what the Lord did and what He commanded us, whether Himself or through His apostles? If “the servant is not greater than his Lord,” then let the men who follow the Lord walk in His footsteps humbly, quietly, without noise. The lower a man goes, the higher he may be lifted. As the Lord says, “The one who is least among you all is the one who is great.”

And then there is this — I learned it with the sharpest pain and grief of mind, and you ought to find it appalling. There are men who take the temples of God, bodies made holy by their confession and lit up by it, and defile them with a shameful and degrading arrangement, sharing their beds indiscriminately with women. Even if their own conscience is not stained by it, there is serious guilt in this alone: that their offense becomes a pattern that ruins other people. [o]

There should be no quarreling and no rivalry among you either, since the Lord left us His peace, and it is written, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” “But if you bite and tear at one another, watch out that you are not eaten up by one another.” I beg you to keep away from insults and abuse as well, for “slanderers do not get the kingdom of God,” and the tongue that has confessed Christ should be kept sound and clean along with its honor. The man who says what is peaceable and good and just, as Christ commanded, confesses Christ every day. We renounced the world when we were baptized. But we truly renounced the world when, tested and approved by God, we left everything we had and followed the Lord, and now stand and live in His faith and His fear.

Let us make each other steady with encouragement on both sides, and let us go further and further forward in the Lord, so that when in His mercy He has brought about the peace He promises to give, we may come back to the church as new men, men all but changed, and be taken back — by our brothers and by the pagans alike — corrected in everything and made better than we were. Then the people who used to admire the glory of our courage may admire the discipline of our lives. I wish you always well, dearly loved brothers, and ask you to remember me. [t]