The God of the Living

They go further still, and dare to say this about Jerusalem and the Lord: if Jerusalem had really been “the city of the great King,” it would never have been left deserted. That is like saying that if straw were a creation of God it would never be parted from the wheat, or that the shoots of a vine, if God made them, would never be cut back and stripped of their clusters. But the shoots were not made in the first place for their own sake. They were made for the fruit that grows on them; and when that fruit has ripened and been taken away, the shoots are left behind, while any that do nothing toward bearing fruit are cut off altogether. [a]

It was the same with Jerusalem. She had carried in herself the yoke of slavery — the yoke under which man was brought low, man who in earlier times was not subject to God while death was reigning, and who, once brought low, became fit for freedom. Then the fruit of freedom came, and ripened, and was reaped and stored in the barn; and those in her who had the power to bear fruit were carried away from her and scattered over the whole world. Isaiah says as much: “The children of Jacob will take root, and Israel will blossom, and the whole world will be filled with his fruit.” So once the fruit had been sown throughout the world, she was rightly forsaken, and the things that had once borne fruit in abundance were taken away from her — for it was from these, as far as the flesh goes, that Christ and the apostles were able to bring fruit forth. But now these are of no further use for bearing fruit. Everything that has a beginning in time must of course have an end in time as well.

Now since the law began with Moses, it necessarily came to an end with John. Christ had come to fulfill it, and that is why “the law and the prophets were” among them “until John.” And so Jerusalem, which took its beginning from David and filled out its own allotted span, had to see the giving of the law come to an end when the new covenant was revealed. For God does everything by measure and in order; nothing is without measure with him, because nothing is out of order. Whoever it was who said that the Father, who cannot be measured, was himself brought within measure in the Son, spoke well — for the Son is the measure of the Father, since he also contains him. That the arrangement under which the Jews lived was only for a time, Isaiah says: “And the daughter of Zion will be left like a shelter in a vineyard, like a hut in a field of cucumbers.” And when will these things be left behind? Is it not when the fruit is taken away and only the leaves are left — leaves that by then have no power to produce fruit?

But why speak only of Jerusalem? The whole world in its present form must pass away too, when the time for its vanishing has come, so that the grain may be gathered into the barn while the chaff, left behind, is burned up. “For the day of the Lord is coming like a burning furnace, and all sinners will be stubble — those who do evil — and the day will burn them up.” And John the Baptist shows who this Lord is who brings such a day about, when he says of Christ: “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor, and he will gather his fruit into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with fire that is never put out.”

The one who makes the chaff and the one who makes the wheat are not two different beings. They are one and the same, and he is the one who judges them — that is, who separates them. Now the wheat and the chaff have no life and no reason; they were made what they are by nature. But man has reason, and in that he is like God. He was made free in his choosing, with power over himself, and so he is his own cause: sometimes he becomes wheat, sometimes chaff. That is why his condemnation is just. He was created a being with reason, and he lost true reason; and living without reason he set himself against the righteousness of God, handing himself over to every earthly spirit and serving every craving. As the prophet says: “Man, though he was held in honor, did not understand; he was made like the senseless animals, and became like them.”

God, then, is one and the same. He is the one who rolls up the sky like a scroll and renews the face of the earth; who made the things that belong to time for man’s sake, so that by ripening among them he might bear the fruit of immortality; and who out of his kindness also gives him the things that are eternal, “so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace.” He is the God announced by the law and the prophets, whom Christ acknowledged as his Father. He is the Maker, and he is the one who is God over all, as Isaiah says: “I am a witness, says the Lord God, and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe and understand that I am he. Before me there was no other God, and after me there will be none. I am God, and besides me there is no Savior. I have proclaimed, and I have saved.” And again: “I myself am the first God, and I am above the things to come.” He does not say these things in an ambiguous way, or out of arrogance, or as a boast. It was impossible to come to a knowledge of God without God, and so he teaches people, through his Word, to know God. To those, then, who do not know these things, and on that account imagine they have discovered another Father, it is right to say: “You are mistaken, because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.” [l]

For our Lord and Master, in the answer he gave the Sadducees — who say there is no resurrection, and who by saying it dishonor God and lower the standing of the law — pointed both to the resurrection and to God, when he said to them, “You are mistaken, because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.” “As for the resurrection of the dead,” he says, “have you not read what was spoken by God: I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?” And he added, “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.” By this reasoning he made it beyond question that the one who spoke to Moses out of the bush and declared himself to be the God of the fathers is the God of the living. For who is the God of the living but the one who is God, and above whom there is no other God?

This is the God whom Daniel the prophet proclaimed. When Cyrus king of the Persians said to him, “Why do you not worship Bel?” he answered, “Because I do not worship idols made by hands, but the living God, who founded heaven and earth and has authority over all flesh.” And again he said, “I will worship the Lord my God, because he is the living God.” So the one whom the prophets worshiped as the living God is the God of the living; and his Word is the one who spoke to Moses, who silenced the Sadducees, and who granted the gift of resurrection — showing both things at once to people who were blind: the resurrection, and God as he really is. For if he is not the God of the dead but of the living, and yet was called the God of the fathers who were sleeping, then beyond doubt they are alive to God and have not passed out of existence, since they are children of the resurrection. And our Lord is himself the resurrection, as he declares: “I am the resurrection and the life.” The fathers are his children, for the prophet says: “In place of your fathers, children have been born to you.” So Christ himself, together with the Father, is the God of the living — the one who spoke to Moses, and who was shown to the fathers.

Teaching this very thing, he said to the Jews: “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day; and he saw it and was glad.” What does that mean? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” In the first place he believed that God was the maker of heaven and earth, the only God; and in the second place, that he would make his offspring as many as the stars of heaven — which is what Paul means by “like lights in the world.” So he was right to leave his earthly kindred and follow the Word of God, living as a stranger in the company of the Word, so that afterward he might be at home with the Word.

The apostles too were right, being of Abraham’s line, to leave the boat and their father and follow the Word. And we are right, holding the same faith Abraham held and taking up the cross as Isaac took up the wood, to follow him. For in Abraham man had already learned this beforehand and had grown used to following the Word of God. Abraham, following his faith, obeyed the command of the Word of God and readily handed over his only son, the son he loved, as a sacrifice to God — so that God in turn might be pleased to offer up his own beloved and only Son as a sacrifice for our redemption, on behalf of all Abraham’s offspring.

So Abraham was a prophet, and he saw in the Spirit the day of the Lord’s coming, and the ordering of his suffering, through which both Abraham himself and all who follow the pattern of his faith and trust in God would be saved. That is why he rejoiced so greatly. The Lord, then, was not unknown to Abraham, whose day he longed to see; and neither was the Lord’s Father, for Abraham had learned from the Word of the Lord and had believed him, and that is why the Lord counted it to him as righteousness. For faith toward God is what counts a man righteous, and that is why he said, “I lift up my hand to the Most High God, who made heaven and earth.” All of this, however, those who hold twisted opinions try to overturn, on the strength of one passage which they certainly do not understand rightly.