On the Passion, Twelfth Sermon

The glory of the Lord’s passion, dearly beloved, on which we promised to speak again today, is above all wonderful for its mystery of humility, which has both ransomed and taught us all, so that he who paid the price might also impart his righteousness to us. For the almighty power of the Son of God, by which he is equal to the Father in the same essence, could have rescued humankind from the devil’s rule by a mere act of its will. But it better suited the divine working to overcome the opposition of the enemy’s wickedness by means of what had been overcome, and to restore our nature’s freedom by the very nature through which bondage had come upon the whole race. But when the evangelist says, “The Word became flesh and dwelt in us,” and the apostle says, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself,” it was shown that the only Son of the Most High Father entered into such a union with human lowliness that, when he took the substance of our flesh and soul, he remained one and the same Son of God, raising up what was ours, not what was his own. For it was the weakness, not the power, that had to be strengthened, so that in the union of the creature with the Creator nothing divine should be lacking to what was taken up, and nothing human to the one who took it up. [a]

This plan of God’s mercy and justice, though in past ages it was in a measure wrapped in darkness, was still not so wholly hidden that the saints, who earned the highest praise from the beginning until the coming of the Lord, were kept from understanding it. For the salvation that was to come through Christ was promised both by the words of prophecy and by the meaning of events. And not only those who foretold this salvation attained it, but also all who believed their predictions. For the one faith justifies the saints of every age. All that we confess was done through Jesus Christ, the Mediator between God and man, and all that our fathers reverently accepted as yet to be done, belongs to one and the same hope of the faithful. And there is no distinction between Jew and Gentile, since, as the apostle says, “Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of God’s commands.” And if these are kept with wholeness of faith, they make Christians the true sons of Abraham, that is, perfect. For the same apostle says, “For as many of you as were baptized in Christ Jesus have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ. But if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to promise.” [b]

There is no doubt, therefore, dearly beloved, that human nature has been taken up by the Son of God into such a union that there is one and the same Christ, not only in that man who is the firstborn of all creation, but also in all his saints. And as the head cannot be separated from the members, so the members cannot be separated from the head. For although it is not in this life but in eternity that God is to be “all in all,” yet even now he is the inseparable dweller in his temple, which is the church, as he himself promised when he said, “Look, I am with you all the days until the end of the age.” And in agreement with this the apostle says, “He is the head of the body, the church, which is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that in all things he may have first place, because in him it was pleasing that all the fullness of the Godhead should dwell, and that through him all things should be reconciled in himself.” [c]

And what do these and many other passages suggest to our hearts but that we should in all things be renewed in the image of him who, remaining “in the form of God,” stooped to “take the form” of sinful flesh? For he took on himself all our weaknesses that come from sin, without sharing in sin. So he felt hunger and thirst, sleep and weariness, grief and weeping, and he suffered the fiercest pains up to the very extremity of death. For no one could be freed from the snares of death unless he, in whom alone all human nature was without guile, allowed himself to be killed by the hands of wicked men. And so our Savior, the Son of God, provided for all who believe in him both a mystery and an example, so that they might lay hold of the one by being born again and follow the other by imitation. For the blessed apostle Peter teaches this when he says, “Christ suffered for us, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. He did no sin, nor was guile found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but gave himself up to his unjust judge. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that, being dead to sins, we might live to righteousness.” [d]

So, dearly beloved, just as there is no believer to whom the gifts of grace are denied, so there is no one who is not a debtor in the matter of Christian discipline. For though the strictness of the symbolic law has been done away, the benefits of keeping it of our own free will have increased, as the evangelist John says: “For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” For everything that went before according to the law, whether the circumcision of the flesh, or the multitude of sacrificial victims, or the keeping of the Sabbath, bore witness to Christ and foretold the grace of Christ. And he is “the end of the law,” not by canceling its meanings but by fulfilling them. For although he is the Author of both the old and the new, he changed the symbolic rites attached to the promises, because he fulfilled the promises and ended the announcing by the coming of the one announced. But in the matter of moral commands, no decrees of the earlier covenant are rejected; rather, many of them are enlarged by the teaching of the Gospel, so that the things that give salvation are more perfect and clearer than those that promise a Savior. [g]

So all that the Son of God did and taught for the reconciliation of the world, we not only know as past history but feel in the power of its present effect. It is he who, born of the Virgin Mother by the Holy Spirit, makes his spotless church fruitful by the same blessed Spirit, so that through the birth of baptism a countless multitude of sons may be born to God, of whom it is said, “who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” It is he in whom the seed of Abraham is blessed through the adoption of the whole world, and the patriarch becomes the father of nations through the birth of the sons of promise, by faith, not by the flesh. It is he who, shutting out no nation, makes one flock of holy sheep from every nation under heaven, and daily fulfills what he promised when he said, “I have other sheep also, which are not of this fold; I must bring them too, and they will hear my voice, and there will be one flock and one shepherd.” For though he says to the blessed Peter first and above all, “Feed my sheep,” yet the one Lord directs the charge of all the shepherds. He feeds those who come to the rock in pastures so glad and well watered that countless sheep are nourished by the richness of his love and do not hesitate to die for the Shepherd’s sake, just as the good Shepherd himself was content to lay down his life for his sheep. It is he whose sufferings are shared, not only by the glorious courage of the martyrs, but also by the faith of all the newly born, in the very act of their new birth. For the renouncing of the devil and the believing in God, the passing from the old state into newness of life, the casting off of the earthly image and the putting on of the heavenly form: all this is a kind of dying and rising again. By it the one who is received by Christ and receives Christ is not the same after he comes to the font as he was before, for the body of the one born again becomes the flesh of the Crucified. [h]

This change, dearly beloved, is the handiwork of the Most High, who “works all things in all.” So by the good way of life seen in each of the faithful we know him to be the Author of all righteous works, and we give thanks to God’s mercy, who so adorns the whole body of the church with countless gifts of grace that through the many rays of the one Light the same brightness is spread everywhere, and whatever is well done by any Christian at all cannot but be part of the glory of Christ. This is that true Light which justifies and enlightens every man. This it is that rescues from the power of darkness and brings us over into the kingdom of the Son of God. This it is that by newness of life lifts up the desires of the mind and quenches the cravings of the flesh. This it is by which the Lord’s Passover is rightly kept “with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth,” by casting away “the old yeast of wickedness,” and by the new creature’s being given drink in abundance and fed with the Lord himself. For the sharing in the body and blood of Christ does nothing else than make us pass into what we then take, and carry him everywhere, in spirit and in body, in whom and with whom we died, were buried and rose again, as the apostle says: “For you are dead, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. For when Christ, your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” Who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns forever and ever. Amen. [k]