Theonas Answers the Objection

Your idea does not amount to much. For you yourselves have now begun to maintain that this cannot possibly fit the person of those who are sinners through and through, but properly applies to those who are trying to keep themselves clear of sins of the flesh. And since you have already separated these people from the number of sinners, it follows that you must shortly admit them into the ranks of the faithful and holy. For what kinds of sin do you say such people can commit, from which, if they are caught up in them after the grace of baptism, they can be freed by the daily grace of Christ? Or of what body of death are we to think the apostle said, “Who will deliver me from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord”? Is it not clear, as the truth forces you yourselves to admit, that this is said not of those members of deadly crimes by which the wages of eternal death are earned, that is, murder, sexual immorality, adultery, drunkenness, thefts, and robberies, but of that body mentioned before, which the daily grace of Christ helps? [a]

For whoever falls into that death after baptism and the knowledge of God must know this. Either he will have to be cleansed, not by the daily grace of Christ, that is, the easy forgiveness that our Lord usually grants to our errors whenever he is prayed to, but by a lifelong affliction of repentance and sorrow that pays the penalty; or else he will afterward be given over to the punishment of eternal fire for them. As the same apostle declares: “Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor men who lie with men, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor robbers will possess the kingdom of God.” Or what is that law warring in our members, which resists the law of our mind, and which, when it has led us captive, though resisting, to the law of sin and death, and has made us serve it with the flesh, still lets us serve the law of God with the mind? For I do not suppose that this law of sin means crimes, or can be taken of the offenses mentioned above. A man guilty of those does not serve the law of God with the mind, for he must first have departed from that law in heart before he is guilty of any of them with the flesh. For what is it to serve the law of sin, but to do what sin commands?

What sort of sin, then, is it to which such great holiness and perfection feels itself captive, and yet does not doubt that it will be freed from it by the grace of Christ, saying, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord”? What law, I ask, will you say is planted in our members, which, drawing us away from the law of God and leading us captive to the law of sin, could make us wretched rather than guilty? Such a law does not hand us over to eternal punishment; instead we still sigh, as it were, for the unbroken joys of happiness, and, looking for a helper to restore us to them, cry out with the apostle: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?” For what is it to be led captive to the law of sin but to go on doing and committing sin? Or what other chief good can be named which the saints cannot fulfill, except the one beside which, as we said above, everything else is not good?

We know, indeed, that many things in this world are good, and chiefly modesty, self-control, sobriety, humility, justice, mercy, temperance, and devotion. But all of these fall short of that chief good, and they can be practiced, I will not say by apostles, but even by ordinary people. And those who do not practice them are either punished with eternal punishment or are set free, as was said above, by great labors of repentance, and not by the daily grace of Christ. It remains, then, for us to admit that this saying of the apostle rightly applies only to the persons of the saints. Day after day they fall under this law we have described, a law of sin, not of crimes. They are secure of their salvation and are not thrown headlong into wicked deeds; but, as has often been said, they are drawn away from the contemplation of God to the misery of bodily thoughts, and are often robbed of the blessing of that true happiness. For if they felt that by this law of their members they were bound daily to crimes, they would lament the loss not of happiness but of innocence. And the apostle Paul would not say, “Wretched man that I am,” but “Impure man,” or “Wicked man that I am.” He would wish to be rid not of the body of this death, that is, this mortal state, but of the crimes and misdeeds of this flesh. But because, by reason of his state of human frailty, he felt that he was captive, that is, led away to the fleshly cares and anxieties which the law of sin and death brings about, he groans over this law of sin under which he had fallen against his will, and at once runs to Christ, and is saved by the present redemption of his grace. So whatever anxiety that law of sin, which by nature produces the thorns and thistles of mortal thoughts and cares, has caused to spring up in the soil of the apostle’s heart, the law of grace at once plucks out. “For the law,” he says, “of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death.”