The Grace He Gives Shows That He Is God

Although we began to speak of this divine grace of our Lord and Savior some time ago, I want to say something more on the same subject from the Holy Scriptures. We read in the Acts of the Apostles that the apostle James answered in this way those who thought that, when they received the good news, they still ought to bear the yoke of the old Law: “Why,” he said, “do you put God to the test by putting a yoke on the necks of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we are saved through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the same way as they are.” The apostle certainly speaks of the gift of this grace as given by Jesus Christ. Answer me now, if you please: do you think that this grace, which is given for the salvation of all people, is given by man or by God? If you say, “By man,” Paul, God’s own vessel, will cry out against you, saying: “The grace of God our Savior appeared.” He teaches that this grace comes from a divine gift, and not from human weakness. And even if the sacred testimony were not enough, the truth of the matter itself would bear witness. For fragile earthly things cannot possibly supply something of lasting and immortal value; nor can anyone give another what he himself lacks, or provide enough of something when he admits that he himself is suffering for want of it. [a]

You cannot, then, help admitting that grace comes from God. It is God, then, who has given it. But it has been given by our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore the Lord Jesus Christ is God. But if he is God, as he certainly is, then she who bore God is Theotokos, that is, the Mother of God. Unless perhaps you want to take refuge in so utterly absurd and blasphemous a contradiction as to deny that she from whom God was born is the Mother of God, while you cannot deny that the one who was born is God. But let us see what the Gospel of God thinks about this same grace of our Lord. “Grace and truth,” it says, “came through Jesus Christ.” If Christ is a mere man, how did these come through Christ? Where did the divine power in him come from if, as you say, there was only the nature of a man in him? Where does heavenly generosity come from, if his is earthly poverty? For no one can give what he does not already have. So since Christ gave divine grace, he already had what he gave. Nor can anyone hold together things so utterly different from each other as, at one and the same time, to suffer the wants of a poor man and also show the open-handedness of a rich one.

And so the apostle Paul, knowing that all the treasures of heavenly riches are found in Christ, rightly writes to the churches: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.” He had already taught often enough that God is the same as Christ, and that all the glory of the Deity lives in him, and that all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in him bodily. Yet here he is certainly right to pray for the grace of Christ alone, without adding the word God. For since he had often taught that the grace of God is the same as the grace of Christ, he now prays, most perfectly, only for the grace of Christ, because he knows that the whole grace of God is contained in the grace of Christ. So he says: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.” If Jesus Christ was a mere man, then in wishing that the grace of Christ might be given to the churches, he was wishing that the grace of a man might be given. By saying, “The grace of Christ be with you,” he meant: the grace of a man be with you, the grace of flesh be with you, the grace of bodily weakness, the grace of human frailty! Or why did he even mention the word grace at all, if what he wished for was the grace of a man? For there was no reason to wish for it if the thing wished for did not exist; nor ought he to have prayed that they might be given the grace of one who, according to you, did not really possess the grace he was wishing for. So you see that it is utterly absurd and ridiculous; or rather, not a thing to laugh at but to cry over. For what is a matter for laughter to some frivolous people becomes a matter for tears to devout and faithful souls. They shed tears of love over the folly of your unbelief, and weep devout tears at the folly of another’s ungodliness. Let us, then, recover ourselves for a while and catch our breath. For this idea is not only without wisdom but also without the Spirit, since it certainly lacks spiritual wisdom and has nothing to do with the Spirit of salvation.