The Deposit of the Spirit

Christ rose in the substance of flesh, and showed his disciples the mark of the nails and the opening in his side — and these are the tokens of the flesh that rose from the dead. In the same way, it says, God “will also raise us up by his own power.” And to the Romans Paul says, “But if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, then he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies.” [a]

What, then, are mortal bodies? Can they be souls? No — souls are bodiless when you set them beside mortal bodies, for God “breathed into the face of the man the breath of life, and the man became a living soul.” Now the breath of life is a bodiless thing, and they certainly cannot claim that the breath of life itself is mortal. That is why David says, “My soul too will live to him,” as though its substance were immortal. Nor, on the other hand, can they say that the spirit is the mortal body. What is left, then, that we can call “the mortal body,” unless it is the thing that was molded — that is, the flesh, which is also what God is said to bring to life? For this is what dies and comes apart, not the soul or the spirit. To die is to lose the power of life, to be left from then on without breath, without animation and without motion, and to dissolve into the parts out of which its substance first began. But this does not happen to the soul, for the soul is the breath of life; nor to the spirit, since the spirit is simple and not put together out of parts, so that it cannot come apart, and is itself the life of those who receive it.

We have to conclude, then, that death is spoken of with reference to the flesh — the flesh which, once the soul has left it, is without breath and without animation, and is broken down little by little into the earth it was taken from. This is what is mortal. And this is what Paul means when he says, “He will also give life to your mortal bodies.” It is about this that he says in the first letter to the Corinthians: “So it is with the resurrection of the dead: it is sown in decay, it rises beyond decay.” For he declares, “What you sow cannot be brought to life unless it first dies.”

But what is it that is sown in the earth like a grain of wheat and rots away, if not the bodies laid in the ground — the same ground that seed is cast into? That is why he said, “It is sown in dishonor, it rises in glory.” What is more lowly than dead flesh? And on the other hand, what is more glorious than that same flesh when it rises and shares in a life beyond decay? “It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power” — in its own weakness, certainly, because being earth it goes back to earth, but raised by the power of God, who raises it from the dead. “It is sown a body belonging to the soul; it rises a body belonging to the Spirit.” He has taught beyond any doubt that he was not using this language about the soul or about the spirit, but about bodies that have become corpses. For these are bodies belonging to the soul — bodies, that is, that share in that life; and when they lose it, they go down to death. Then, rising by the Spirit’s work, they become bodies belonging to the Spirit, so that by the Spirit they hold a life that never ends.

“For now,” he says, “we know in part and we prophesy in part, but then face to face.” This is what Peter also said: “Him you love, though you have not seen him; in him you now believe, though you do not see him; and believing, you will rejoice with joy beyond words.” For our face will see the face of the Lord and will rejoice with joy beyond words — that is, when it looks upon its own Delight.

But even now we receive a certain portion of his Spirit, which works toward our completion and prepares us for a life beyond decay, as we grow accustomed little by little to receiving God and carrying him. This is what the apostle calls “a deposit” — that is, a part of the honor God has promised us — where he says in the letter to the Ephesians: “In whom you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the good news of your salvation, and had believed in him, were sealed with the Holy Spirit of the promise, who is the deposit of our inheritance.” This deposit, then, living in us, makes us spiritual even now, and what is mortal is swallowed up by immortality. “For you,” he says, “are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God lives in you.” This does not happen by throwing the flesh away, but by our being given a share in the Spirit. The people he was writing to were not without flesh; they were people who had received the Spirit of God, “by whom we cry, Abba, Father.” [j]

If, then, here and now, holding the deposit, we cry “Abba, Father,” what will it be when we rise again and see him face to face — when every limb bursts into one unbroken song of triumph, giving glory to the one who raised them from the dead and gave them the gift of everlasting life? For if the deposit, gathering a man into itself, already makes him cry “Abba, Father,” what will the Spirit’s grace in full do, when God gives it to men? It will make us like him, and accomplish the will of the Father; for it will make man after the image and likeness of God.

So the people who hold the deposit of the Spirit, who are not enslaved to the cravings of the flesh but are under the Spirit, and who in everything conduct themselves reasonably, are the ones the apostle rightly calls “spiritual,” because the Spirit of God lives in them. Now, spiritual men will not be bodiless spirits. It is our own substance — the union of flesh and spirit — receiving the Spirit of God, that makes up the spiritual man. But those who reject the Spirit’s counsel, who are slaves of the cravings of the flesh, who live against reason and plunge headlong into their own desires with no restraint and no longing for the Spirit of God, live the life of pigs and dogs. These, I say, are the people the apostle very properly calls “fleshly,” because they have no thought for anything but the things of the flesh. For the same reason the prophets compare them to animals without reason, because their conduct is without reason: “They have become like horses maddened for the mares, each one neighing after his neighbor’s wife.” And again: “Man, when he was held in honor, was made like the cattle.” This means that it is his own fault that he is made like cattle, by matching their life without reason. And we ourselves, as the custom is, call men of this stamp cattle and brute beasts.

Now the law set all this out beforehand in figures, sketching man by means of the animals. Whichever of them, Scripture says, has a divided hoof and chews the cud, it declares clean; but whichever lacks one or the other of these, it sets aside by itself as unclean. Who, then, are the clean? Those who make their way steadily by faith toward the Father and the Son — that is what the steadiness of the divided hoof stands for — and who meditate day and night on the words of God, so as to be adorned with good works: that is what the chewing of the cud means. The unclean are those that neither divide the hoof nor chew the cud: people who have neither faith in God nor any meditation on his words. Such is the abomination of the Gentiles.

As for the animals that do chew the cud but do not have the divided hoof, and are themselves unclean, we have in them a picture of the Jews, who certainly have the words of God in their mouth but do not fix their footing firmly in the Father and in the Son. That is why they are an unsteady generation. Animals whose hoof is all in one piece slip easily; those whose hoof is divided are surer-footed, the cleft halves following each other as they go, the one half holding up the other. In the same way, the animals that have the divided hoof but do not chew the cud are unclean too — and this plainly points to all the heretics, and to those who do not meditate on the words of God and are not adorned with works of righteousness. It is to them that the Lord says, “Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do the things I tell you?” Men of this stamp do say that they believe in the Father and the Son, but they never meditate as they should on the things of God, and they are not adorned with works of righteousness. As I said before, they have taken up the lives of pigs and dogs, giving themselves over to filth, to gluttony, and to recklessness of every kind. So the apostle was right to call all such people “fleshly” and “of the soul” — people who, through their own unbelief and self-indulgence, do not receive the Spirit of God, and who in one way or another throw the life-giving Word out of themselves and walk stupidly after their own cravings. The prophets spoke of them as pack animals and wild beasts; custom has looked at them as cattle and creatures without reason; and the law has pronounced them unclean.

Among the other truths the apostle proclaimed there is also this one: “that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” This is the passage all the heretics bring forward to prop up their folly, trying to annoy us and to show that what God made with his own hands is not saved. They fail to take one fact into account: that there are three things out of which, as I have shown, the complete man is made up — flesh, soul and spirit. One of these preserves and shapes the man: that is the spirit. Another is what is united and shaped: that is the flesh. Then there is the one between the two: that is the soul, which sometimes follows the spirit and is lifted up by it, and sometimes takes the side of the flesh and falls into the cravings of the flesh. All those, however many they are, who do not have what saves and shapes them into life are flesh and blood and nothing more, and will be called so; for these are the people who do not have the Spirit of God in themselves. That is why the Lord speaks of men of this stamp as “dead”: “Let the dead bury their dead,” he says, because they do not have the Spirit that makes a man alive. [q]

On the other side, all who fear God and trust in the coming of his Son, and who by faith settle the Spirit of God in their hearts — men like this will rightly be called “pure” and “spiritual” and “those who live to God,” because they have the Spirit of the Father, who cleanses a man and raises him up to the life of God. For as the Lord bore witness that “the flesh is weak,” so he also said that “the spirit is willing” — since the spirit is able to carry out what it prompts. If, then, someone mixes the Spirit’s readiness into the weakness of the flesh, as a kind of goad, it necessarily follows that what is strong will win out over what is weak, so that the weakness of the flesh is swallowed up by the strength of the Spirit; and the man in whom this happens cannot then be fleshly, but spiritual, because of his fellowship with the Spirit. This is how the martyrs bear their witness and think nothing of death — not according to the weakness of the flesh, but because of the readiness of the Spirit. For when the weakness of the flesh is swallowed up, it shows the Spirit to be powerful; and again, when the Spirit swallows up that weakness, it takes possession of the flesh as its own inheritance, and out of the two a living man is made — living, because he shares in the Spirit; man, because of the substance of flesh.

So the flesh, when it has none of the Spirit of God, is dead. It has no life and cannot possess the kingdom of God: it is blood without reason, like water poured out on the ground. That is why he says, “As is the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust.” But where the Spirit of the Father is, there is a living man — blood with reason in it, kept by God so that its shedding will be avenged; flesh held by the Spirit, forgetful of what belongs to itself, taking on the quality of the Spirit and made to match the Word of God. That is why the apostle declares, “As we have borne the image of the man who is of the earth, we shall also bear the image of the one who is from heaven.” What, then, is the earthly? What was molded. And what is the heavenly? The Spirit. So, he says, when we had none of the Spirit from heaven, we walked in former times in the old ways of the flesh and did not obey God; now, then, having received the Spirit, let us walk in newness of life and obey God. And since without the Spirit of God we cannot be saved, the apostle urges us to keep the Spirit of God by faith and a pure way of life, so that we do not lose the kingdom of heaven by ceasing to share in the Spirit of God. And so he cries out that flesh by itself, and blood, cannot possess the kingdom of God.

But if we must speak strictly, we would say that the flesh does not inherit; it is inherited. The Lord says as much: “Blessed are the meek, for they will possess the earth as their inheritance” — as if in the kingdom to come the earth, out of which the substance of our flesh exists, is to be possessed as an inheritance. This is why he wants the temple — that is, the flesh — to be clean, so that the Spirit of God may take delight in it, as a bridegroom with a bride. And as the bride cannot be said to wed, but to be wedded, when the bridegroom comes and takes her, so the flesh cannot by itself possess the kingdom of God as an inheritance; but it can be taken as an inheritance into the kingdom of God. For a living person inherits the goods of a dead one, and it is one thing to inherit and another to be inherited. The one who inherits rules the things inherited, has power over them, and arranges them as he pleases; the things inherited are in a state of subjection, are put in order, and are ruled by the man who has obtained the inheritance. What is it, then, that lives? The Spirit of God, plainly. And what are the goods of the dead man? The various parts of the man, surely, which rot in the earth. But these are inherited by the Spirit when they are carried over into the kingdom of heaven.

This too is why Christ died: so that the covenant of the good news might be revealed and made known to the whole world, and might first set his slaves free, and then, as I have already shown, make them heirs of his property, when the Spirit takes possession of them as its inheritance. For the one who lives inherits, and the flesh is inherited. To keep us from losing life by losing the Spirit that possesses us, the apostle, urging us to fellowship with the Spirit, said with good reason, in the words already quoted, “that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” It is as if he were saying: Do not be deceived. Unless the Word of God lives with you and the Spirit of the Father is in you, and if you live frivolously and carelessly as though you were only this — mere flesh and blood — you cannot inherit the kingdom of God.