Conquered Out of the Law

So in his own work of summing up, he has gathered all things together in himself. He has made war on our enemy; he has crushed the one who at the beginning led us away captive in Adam; and he has trampled on his head. You can see this in Genesis, where God said to the serpent: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers. He will keep watch for your head, and you will keep watch for his heel.” From that time on, the one who was to be born of a woman — of the Virgin, that is — after the likeness of Adam, was announced as the one who keeps watch for the serpent’s head. This is the seed the apostle speaks of in the letter to the Galatians: “the law of works was laid down until the seed should come to whom the promise was made.” The same letter shows it in a still clearer light: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent out his Son, born of a woman.” [a]

For the enemy would not have been fairly beaten unless the one who conquered him had been a man born of a woman. It was by means of a woman that he first got the advantage over man, setting himself up as man’s opponent. And that is why the Lord calls himself the Son of Man: he takes up into himself that original man out of whom the woman was formed, so that, as our kind went down into death through a man who was beaten, we might climb back into life through a man who won — and as through a man death carried off the victor’s palm against us, so through a man we might carry off the palm against death.

Now the Lord would not have summed up in himself that ancient, original enmity against the serpent — fulfilling the Creator’s promise and carrying out his command — if he had come from some other Father. But he is one and the same God who formed us at the beginning and sent his Son at the end. So the Lord did carry out his command: born of a woman, he both destroyed our adversary and brought man to completion after the image and likeness of God. This is why he drew the means of confounding him from nowhere but the words of the law, and used his Father’s commandment as his help toward the ruin and the confusion of the apostate angel.

He fasted forty days, like Moses and Elijah, and afterwards he was hungry. This was first so that we might see that he was a real and solid man — going hungry when you fast is what belongs to a man — and second so that his opponent would have his opening to attack. For as at the beginning it was by means of food that the enemy persuaded a man who was not even hungry to break God’s commandments, so in the end he failed to persuade the one who was hungry to take food that did not come from God. When he tempted him he said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” But the Lord threw him back with the law’s own commandment: “It is written: Man does not live by bread alone.” About the words “If you are the Son of God” he made no remark at all; by acknowledging his human nature in this way he baffled his adversary, and used up the force of his first attack with his Father’s word. So the damage done to man in paradise, when the two of them ate, was undone by the going without food in this world.

But the enemy, beaten this way by the law, tried a second assault, this time quoting a commandment of the law himself. He brought him to the highest point of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written: God will give his angels orders about you, and they will carry you in their hands, in case you strike your foot against a stone.” He was hiding a lie under the cover of Scripture — which is what all the heretics do. That much was indeed written: “He has given his angels orders about him.” But “throw yourself down from here” no Scripture ever said about him; that piece of persuasion the devil produced out of himself. So the Lord refuted him out of the law again: “It is written again: You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.” By the word contained in the law he pointed out what a man’s duty is, that he should not put God to the test; and about himself, since he had appeared in human form, he declared that he would not put the Lord his God to the test. So the pride of reasoning that was in the serpent was brought to nothing by the humility found in the man; and now twice over the devil had been beaten out of Scripture, caught advising things contrary to God’s commandment and shown by his own thoughts to be the enemy of God.

Then, having been so plainly defeated, he gathered his forces, as it were, drawing up in order all the power for lying that was left to him, and in the third place “showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory,” saying, as Luke tells it, “All these I will give you — for they have been handed over to me, and I give them to whomever I want — if you will fall down and worship me.” Then the Lord exposed him for what he was: “Get away, Satan; for it is written: You shall worship the Lord your God, and him alone shall you serve.” He revealed him by that name, and at the same time showed who he himself was. For the Hebrew word “Satan” means an apostate. And so, beating him a third time, he drove him off for good as one conquered out of the law; and that breaking of God’s commandment which had happened in Adam was undone by the commandment of the law, which the Son of Man kept, never breaking the commandment of God.

Who, then, is this Lord God whom Christ bears witness to — the one no one may put to the test, the one everyone should worship and serve alone? Beyond any possible doubt it is the God who also gave the law. These things had been foretold in the law; and by the law’s own sentences the Lord showed that the law does declare the Word of God from the Father, and that God’s apostate angel is destroyed by the law’s voice, exposed in his true colors and beaten by the Son of Man keeping the commandment of God.

For as in the beginning he enticed man to break his Maker’s law and so got him into his power — and his power consists in law-breaking and apostasy, and it was with these that he bound man to himself — so, on the other side, it had to be through man himself that he was conquered and bound with the same chains he had used to bind man, in order that man, being set free, might return to his Lord, leaving to Satan the bonds he had himself been tied with, that is, sin. For when Satan is bound, man is set free; since “no one can go into a strong man’s house and carry off his goods unless he first ties up the strong man himself.”

So the Lord exposes him as speaking against the word of the God who made all things, and puts him down by means of the commandment. Now the law is the commandment of God. The Man proves him a runaway from the law and a breaker of it, and an apostate from God as well. After that the Word bound him securely as a runaway from himself, and carried off his goods — that is, the men he was holding in slavery and using unjustly for his own ends. And it is only just that the one who had unjustly led men into slavery should himself be led away captive, while man, who had been led captive in the past, was pulled out of the grip of the one who held him, according to the tender mercy of God the Father, who had pity on his own handiwork and gave it salvation, restoring it by means of the Word — that is, by Christ — so that men might learn by hard fact that they receive a life beyond decay not from themselves but as the free gift of God.

So the Lord plainly shows that the God set out by the law was the true Lord and the one God. The one the law proclaimed as God is the one Christ pointed to as the Father, and it is he alone whom the disciples of Christ are bound to serve. It was by the law’s own statements that he threw our adversary into utter confusion; and the law directs us to praise God the Creator and to serve him alone. [m]

Since that is so, we must not look for another Father besides him or above him, since there is one God “who counts the circumcision righteous by faith and the uncircumcision righteous through faith.” For if there were some other, perfect Father above him, Christ would never have overthrown Satan by means of his words and commandments. One ignorance cannot be done away with by another ignorance, any more than one defect by another defect. If, then, the law comes from ignorance and defect, how could the statements it contains bring the devil’s ignorance to nothing and conquer the strong man? A strong man can be conquered neither by someone weaker nor by an equal, but only by someone who has greater power. And the Word of God is above all — the one loudly proclaimed in the law: “Hear, Israel: the Lord your God is one God”; and, “You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart”; and, “Him you shall worship, and him alone you shall serve.” Then in the Gospel, casting down the apostasy by means of these very words, he both overcame the strong man by his Father’s voice and acknowledged the commandment of the law as expressing his own mind, when he says, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.” For he did not confound the adversary with anyone else’s saying, but with one belonging to his own Father — and so he overcame the strong man.

By his commandment he taught that we who have been set free should take, when we are hungry, the food that is given by God; and that when we are set in the highest position of every grace there is, we should never be lifted up with pride — not by trusting in works of righteousness, and not when we are decked out with outstanding gifts of service — and that we should not put God to the test, but should feel humility in everything and keep this saying ready to hand: “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.” The apostle taught the same thing when he said, “Do not set your mind on high things, but go along with the lowly.”

We should not be trapped by riches, or by the world’s glory, or by the fancy of the moment. We should know that we must “worship the Lord your God and serve him alone,” and pay no attention to the one who falsely promised what was not his to give when he said, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” For he admits himself that to worship him and to do his will is to fall from the glory of God. And what pleasant or good thing can a man who has fallen have any share in? What else can such a person hope for or expect but death? For death is the next-door neighbor of the man who has fallen.

It follows too that he will not give what he promised. How can he make grants to a man who has fallen? Besides, since God rules over men and over him as well, and without the will of our Father in heaven not even a sparrow falls to the ground, it follows that his declaration — “All these things have been handed over to me, and I give them to whomever I want” — comes from someone swollen with pride. The creation is not under his power, since he is himself only one thing among created things. Nor is it his to hand over the rule of men to men: all other things, and all human affairs, are arranged by the ordering of God the Father. Besides, the Lord declares that “the devil is a liar from the beginning, and the truth is not in him.” If he is a liar and the truth is not in him, then he certainly was not speaking the truth but a lie when he said, “For all these things have been handed over to me, and I give them to whomever I want.”

He had long been in the habit of lying against God for the purpose of leading men astray. At the beginning God had given man a variety of things for food while commanding him not to eat of one tree only, as Scripture tells us that God said to Adam: “From every tree that is in the garden you shall eat food; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, from this you shall not eat; for on the day you eat of it you shall die by death.” Then, lying against the Lord, he tempted man, as Scripture says that the serpent said to the woman: “Has God really said this — you shall not eat from every tree of the garden?” And when she had exposed the lie and simply repeated the commandment as God had given it — “From every tree of the garden we shall eat; but of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden God has said, You shall not eat of it, and you shall not touch it, or you will die” — then, having learned God’s commandment from the woman, he brought his cunning into play and at last deceived her with a lie: “You shall not die by death; for God knew that on the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.” [q]

So, in the first place, in the garden of God he disputed about God as though God were not there, for he did not know how great God is. Then, in the second place, after he had learned from the woman that God had said they would die if they tasted that tree, he opened his mouth and uttered the third lie: “You shall not die by death.” But the outcome proved that God was true and the serpent a liar, since death did come upon those who had eaten. Along with the fruit they came under the power of death as well, because they ate in disobedience; and disobedience toward God brings death with it. So, having become forfeit to death, from that moment they were handed over to it.

So then, on the day they ate, on that same day they died and became death’s debtors, since it was one day of the creation. For it is said, “Evening came, and morning came: one day.” And on that same day that they ate, on that day they also died. But if anyone wants to work out, according to the cycle and the running order of the days — the reckoning by which one day is called first, another second, another third — which of the seven days it was that Adam died on, he will find it by looking carefully at the Lord’s arrangement. For by summing up in himself the whole human race from the beginning to the end, he has summed up its death as well.

From this it is clear that the Lord suffered death, in obedience to his Father, upon the very day on which Adam died by disobeying God. And Adam died on the same day that he ate, for God said, “On the day you eat of it you shall die by death.” So the Lord, summing up this day in himself, went to his suffering on the day before the Sabbath — that is, the sixth day of the creation, the day on which man was made — and by his suffering granted him a second making, the making that comes out of death. And there are others again who put Adam’s death within the thousandth year; for since “a day of the Lord is like a thousand years,” he did not overstep the thousand years but died inside them, and so the sentence on his sin was carried out.

So take it whichever way you like. By disobedience, which is death; or by the fact that on account of it they were handed over to death and made its debtors; or by the fact that they died on one and the same day as they ate, since it is one day of the creation; or by the fact that, in this cycle of days, they died on the day they also ate — the day of preparation, which is called “the pure supper,” the sixth day of the week, the day the Lord also showed forth when he suffered on it; or by the fact that Adam did not overstep the thousand years but died within their limit. In every one of these senses it follows that God is true. For those who tasted the tree did die; and the serpent is proved a liar and a murderer, as the Lord said of him: “For he is a murderer from the beginning, and the truth is not in him.”