Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
In this chapter, as is his custom, the Apostle, after the doctrines, passes to morals conformed to those doctrines, and exhorts the faithful to be zealous in preserving and increasing the justice they have received through Christ.
First, then, he teaches us that in baptism we were buried with Christ, planted together with Him, and have died together with Him to sin, that henceforth we may walk in newness of life — just as Christ, having died once, rose to new life, no more to die — that we also may at last rise with Him to glory.
Secondly, in verse 12, he teaches that sin ought not to reign in Christians, so that they obey its lusts, since by the grace of Christ they have been freed from sin and made servants of justice; and therefore it is fitting that they offer their members in the service of justice unto life, which formerly they had offered to uncleanness unto death. For, as he says in the last verse: "The wages of sin is death; but the grace of God, life everlasting."
Vulgate Text: Romans 6:1-23
1. What shall we say, then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? 2. God forbid. For we that are dead to sin, how shall we live any longer therein? 3. Know you not that all we who are baptized in Christ Jesus, are baptized in His death? 4. For we are buried together with Him by baptism into death; that as Christ is risen from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life. 5. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection. 6. Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin may be destroyed, and that we may serve sin no longer. 7. For he that is dead is justified from sin. 8. Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall live also together with Christ. 9. Knowing that Christ rising again from the dead, dieth now no more; death shall no more have dominion over Him. 10. For in that He died to sin, He died once: but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God. 11. So do you also reckon that you are dead to sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus our Lord. 12. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, so as to obey the lusts thereof. 13. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of iniquity unto sin: but present yourselves to God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of justice unto God. 14. For sin shall not have dominion over you; for you are not under the law, but under grace. 15. What then? Shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid. 16. Know you not, that to whom you yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants you are whom you obey, whether it be of sin unto death, or of obedience unto justice? 17. But thanks be to God, that you were the servants of sin, but have obeyed from the heart unto that form of doctrine, into which you have been delivered. 18. Being then freed from sin, you have been made servants of justice. 19. I speak a human thing, because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as you have yielded your members to serve uncleanness and iniquity unto iniquity, so now yield your members to serve justice unto sanctification. 20. For when you were the servants of sin, you were free from justice. 21. What fruit therefore had you then in those things, of which you are now ashamed? For the end of them is death. 22. But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, you have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end life everlasting. 23. For the wages of sin is death. But the grace of God, life everlasting, in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Verse 1: What Shall We Say, Then? Shall We Continue in Sin, That Grace May Abound?
1. WHAT SHALL WE SAY, THEN? SHALL WE CONTINUE IN SIN, THAT GRACE MAY ABOUND? — It is a prolepsis, by which the Apostle meets a certain objection of some. For someone will say: "If, O Paul, what you said at the end of the previous chapter is true — 'Where sin abounded, grace did more abound' — then sins ought to be heaped upon sins, that God's grace may abound all the more." Paul answers: God forbid; so the Fathers. Hence it is clear that "sin" is here taken properly, although some take it metonymically for the tinder (fomes) of sin.
2. FOR WE THAT ARE DEAD TO SIN, HOW SHALL WE LIVE ANY LONGER THEREIN? — Note: The word "peccato" can be taken here in two ways: first, as an ablative — so that "mortui peccato" means the same as "dead through sin," as the Apostle speaks in Ephesians 2:5; secondly, that "peccato" be a dative, and then "to die to sin" is the same as to renounce sin, to disown sin. St. Chrysostom takes it here in both ways, and so gives a twofold exposition. First: "we who have died to sin," that is, who have lost the spiritual life through sin. Or secondly: those who, sin having been destroyed, no longer obey it, but have already renounced and disowned it. But this second sense is the better and more genuine; for it stands in direct antithesis to what the Apostle adds, "how shall we live any longer therein?"
Note: To live to justice or to sin is to perform the operations of life concerning justice or sin — that is, to do and exercise the vital works of sin, namely when rational man, by will, love, desire, joy, obeys, is delighted by, follows, and enjoys the concupiscences and appetites which are contrary to God's law, indulging not the divine but his own will. So on the contrary, a man is said to be dead to sin when he does not perform these works of life, these loves, but cuts himself off from them and renounces them. For death is total abandonment, separation, and severance. As therefore Religious must be dead to the world, that they neither delight in nor mingle themselves with worldly affairs, so all Christians ought to be dead to sin. See what was said on Galatians 6:14.
Note: In this chapter the Apostle considers sin and the fomes of sin as a kind of lord, or king then reigning in man — when he obeys its depraved movements and desires; for he persists in the prosopopoeia of which I spoke in the preceding chapter, verse 20.
Verse 3: All We Who Are Baptized in Christ Jesus, Are Baptized in His Death
3. ALL WE WHO ARE BAPTIZED IN CHRIST JESUS, ARE BAPTIZED IN HIS DEATH. — "Baptized in Christ" — that is, baptized in the power, name, and merits not of John but of Christ; so Origen and Anselm. Secondly, Pererius: "in Christ," he says, means "through Christ." But the Greek has εἰς Χριστόν, "into Christ," and so Tertullian reads in his book On the Resurrection of the Flesh — as Paul to say: through baptism you have been engrafted into Christ as branches into a new tree, and have been made part of His Body, namely the mystical Body which is the Church.
From this passage and similar ones some have thought that baptism is valid if anyone baptizes with this form: "I baptize you in the name of Christ," omitting the names of the Father and of the Holy Spirit. So hold the Master (in Sentences IV, dist. 3); Adrian (ibid., Quaest. 1, art. 2); Cajetan (III part., Quaest. 66, art. 6). The same view seems to have been held — as a private doctor — by Nicholas I, Pontiff, in his reply to the Bulgarian consultations. For he says: "Those indeed who, in the name of the Trinity, or only in the name of Christ — as is read in the Acts of the Apostles — have been baptized, are not to be rebaptized." The same is taught by St. Ambrose (lib. I On the Holy Spirit, ch. III) and by Bede on Acts 10.
Secondly, St. Thomas (Summa III, q. 66, art. 6) holds that the Apostles, by God's dispensation, baptized in the name of Christ, to make His name illustrious; but that now this is not lawful, nor is baptism valid, unless it be conferred by naming the three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity. But other Fathers and Doctors generally hold that baptism is not valid — and never was valid — unless the individual Persons of the Most Holy Trinity be named. Suarez cites them (III part., q. 66, art. 6). Indeed Pope Pelagius defined this very thing in chapter Si revera, on Consecration, dist. 4, where he says that one who has been baptized in the name of the Lord — that is, of Christ — must be rebaptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Pope Zacharias asserts the same in the same distinction, ch. In Synodo Anglorum. So, when Paul says we are baptized into Christ, and Luke in the Acts "in the name of Jesus," understand "in Christ" thus: first, in the authority, power, and merits of Christ; secondly, in the baptism instituted by Christ, which is conferred in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; thirdly, in the name of Christ, but not alone; fourthly, it is probable that the Apostles added in baptism these words "Jesus Christ," saying: I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of His Son Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit. For this contributed greatly to making known this new name of Christ among the Jews and Gentiles, especially since in this way Christ was set together with the Father and the Holy Spirit as Author of sanctification.
Thus St. Basil, lib. De Spiritu Sancto, cap. XII, openly asserts that in the form of baptism none of the three Persons may be omitted; and therefore when Paul says we are baptized into Christ, or into the Holy Spirit, the other Persons also are to be understood. "Indeed," he says, "the very name of Christ is a profession of the whole Godhead: for it declares at once both God (the Father) who anointed, and the Son who was anointed, and the Holy Spirit who is the unction — as we have learned from Peter in the Acts: 'Jesus of Nazareth, whom God anointed with the Holy Spirit'; likewise in Isaiah 61: 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me'; and the Psalmist, Psalm 44: 'Therefore God, Thy God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows.'"
INTO HIS DEATH. — In Greek εἰς τὸν θάνατον, "into death" — that is, we have been baptized into the likeness and representation of the death of Christ. For those who are baptized and immersed in the waters allegorically represent Christ dead and buried, and signify by a tropological likeness that just as Christ died to temporal life, so they die to sin (says St. Chrysostom) through baptism, by which sins are submerged and buried — dying, I say, to sin both by the power and efficacy of baptism (as St. Augustine teaches, Enchiridion 51, where from this he proves that infants have original sin, since indeed they are baptized), and by the holy resolve of new life which the baptized soul conceives (so Tertullian, On Penance).
Here the Apostle proves that we have died to sin and ought not to live to it, because through baptism we have been engrafted into Christ, in order that we may live the life of Christ and the Christian life — for this stands diametrically opposed to sin.
4. WE ARE BURIED TOGETHER WITH HIM BY BAPTISM INTO DEATH. — The Apostle proves that we are dead to sin from the mystical burial of baptism; whence he says, "we are buried together," as if to say: We, as those dead to sin, have been buried in baptism, just as Christ, being bodily dead, was delivered to burial — for no one is buried unless dead. The rite of baptism, then, namely the triple immersion, allegorically represents the three days of Christ's burial and tropologically represents the burial and death of sin. For this reason and likeness, solemn baptism is customarily celebrated on the day of Christ's burial, namely Holy Saturday. See Damascene, On the Faith, IV, ch. 10.
Note here the unlikeness between Christ's burial and baptism. Christ first died and then was buried; but this baptismal burial, since it is a Sacrament, effects the death of sin in us; and so it is prior to and earlier than the death of sin — not in time but in nature, as Pererius and Toletus rightly observe. This is what Paul means when he says "we are buried together unto death" — as if to say: with Christ in baptism we are, as it were, buried, in order that we may die to sin; for this baptismal burial brings about and induces this death of sin.
Hence morally the Fathers admonish us always to keep before our eyes the profession we made in baptism, saying: "I renounce Satan," and consequently sin. "You have entered," says St. Ambrose (On the Mysteries, ch. 2), "the sanctuary of regeneration; recall what you were asked, recognize what you answered. You renounced the devil and his works, the world and its luxury and pleasures: your voice is held — not in the tomb of the dead, but in the book of the living. You spoke in the presence of the angels: there is no deceiving, there is no denying." And St. Augustine (Book IV, On the Creed to Catechumens, ch. 1, tom. IX): "The enemy," he says, "has been driven out of your hearts; him you professed to renounce, and in that profession you said — not to men, but to God and His angels who were recording it — 'I renounce.' Renounce not only in words, but in your conduct; not only with the sound of the tongue, but with the act of life; not only with sounding lips, but also with deeds that declare it. Know that you have taken on combat with a crafty, ancient, and inveterate enemy; let him not find his works in you after the renunciation, let him not draw you back into his servitude — for he will be unmasked and detected, O Christian, when you do one thing and profess another, faithful in name yet showing another in deed, not keeping the faith of your promise: now entering the church to pour out prayers, a little later shouting impudently at the spectacles with the actors. What hast thou to do with the pomps of the devil, which thou hast renounced?" Hence too the priest gives the baptized a white garment, as a token of purity and innocence, saying: "Receive the white garment, holy and immaculate, which thou shalt bear without stain before the tribunal of Christ, that thou mayest have life eternal." Of which Lactantius sings in his Paschal Carmen:
A white-clad host comes forth from the snowy waves,
And in the new river purges its old vice.
The shining souls a white robe also marks,
And from a snow-white flock the Shepherd has His joys.
Wherefore Muritta the Deacon, in Victor of Utica (book III on the Vandal Persecutions), pathetically addresses the apostate Elpidophorus — executioner of his own people as well as of the orthodox — unfolding and shaking out those linens with which he had once received Elpidophorus from the sacred font: "These," he says, "are the linens, Elpidophorus, minister of error, which shall accuse thee when the Majesty of the Judge shall come — preserved by my diligence for the testimony of thy perdition, for thy being plunged into the abyss of the sulphurous pit. These girded thee immaculate as thou didst rise from the font. These shall pursue thee all the more sharply when thou shalt begin to possess flaming gehenna, because thou hast clothed thyself with a curse as with a garment, rending and casting off the sacrament of true baptism and faith. What wilt thou do, wretched one, when the servants of the Father of the household shall begin to gather the invited to the royal supper? Then at length called, the King in terrible indignation shall see thee stripped of the wedding robe, and shall say to thee: 'Friend, how camest thou in hither, not having on a wedding garment? I do not see what I conferred, I do not recognize what I gave. Thou hast lost the chlamys of warfare which I wove for ten months in the loom of virginal members, and the bands of the cross, which, stretching them out, I cleansed with water and adorned with the purple of My blood — these My eyes do not behold; the character of the Trinity I do not see; such a one cannot be present at My banquets: bind him hand and foot,' etc."
THAT AS CHRIST IS RISEN FROM THE DEAD BY THE GLORY OF THE FATHER, SO WE ALSO MAY WALK IN NEWNESS OF LIFE. — "By the glory of the Father" — that is, through divine power; or, as Theodoret and Theophylact say, through His own divinity; for the glory, or glorious divinity, of the Father and of the Son is one and the same. Secondly, and more aptly, Cajetan — that the comparison between Christ and us may be more complete — explains thus: "by the glory of the Father," that is, through the glorious and immortal life which Christ in rising received from the Father — as if to say: Christ rose to this end, that He might lead a glorious life befitting His divinity, such as becomes the Son of God. Hence it is fitting that we also, rising in baptism, should lead a new life worthy of the sons of God, and that continuously and steadfastly by going forward and progressing in it; for this is what the verb "let us walk" signifies.
It could thirdly be that the Greek διά be rendered "on account of," or, as the Syriac translates, "unto the glory of the Father." For the Father has been greatly glorified in the resuscitation and resurrection of Christ. Brilliantly St. Augustine in the Enchiridion, ch. 53: "Whatever," he says, "was done on the cross of Christ, in the burial, in the resurrection on the third day, in the ascension into heaven and in His sitting at the right hand of the Father — was so done that by these things, not only mystically spoken but also performed, the Christian life lived here might be configured. For, on account of His cross, it is said: They who belong to Jesus Christ have crucified their flesh with its vices and concupiscences; on account of His burial: We are buried with Christ through baptism into death; on account of the resurrection: That as Christ rose from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life; on account of the ascension and sitting at the right hand of the Father: If you be risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God; mind the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth."
Verse 5: For If We Have Been Planted Together in the Likeness of His Death
5. FOR IF WE HAVE BEEN PLANTED TOGETHER IN THE LIKENESS OF HIS DEATH, WE SHALL BE ALSO IN THE LIKENESS OF HIS RESURRECTION. — Here the Apostle stirs us up to newness of life through the hope of resurrection. Note: for "complantati," the Greek is σύμφυτοι, which is not a participle but a noun, as if to say "jointly planted." The sense is: if we have been engrafted into Christ as branches are grafted into a tree, in order to draw juice and sap from it, then from Christ's death — the likeness of which we bore in baptism — as from a root, we draw a similar death of sin: namely that, through Christ's death in which we were baptized, we may be dead to our sins. If, I say, we are so engrafted into Christ, we shall also be sharers of Christ's resurrection. Therefore the dative "similitudini" stands, by Hebraism, for "into the likeness" — that is, into conformity to Christ's death. It could however, with the Syriac, be taken as "by the likeness," or "in the likeness," namely in baptism, which is the likeness and representation of Christ's death and burial.
But the antithesis that follows demands the first sense; for in like manner the Apostle tacitly adds that one day we shall be planted together with and grafted into Christ "similitudini," that is, into the likeness of His resurrection — namely that from Christ as it were rising again, we may draw and share a similar resurrection. Paul keeps to the metaphor of the plant. For thus Scripture calls Christ a shoot and the vine, us the branches; Christ is said to grow in us, and we are said to grow up in Christ and be fruitful trees, which the ministers of Christ are said to plant and water. So he says: As the branch grafted in a tree, when the tree as it were dies through winter, dies along with it, and again, when the tree, as it were, rises in spring, the branch likewise rises with it — so he who is co-planted with Christ dies together with Him to sin in the winter of this life and passion, and at length, in that universal spring of the resurrection, when new heaven and new earth shall sprout forth again, shall rise with Christ to glory. Thus Origen. Hence too Tertullian (On the Resurrection of the Flesh, ch. 47) reads: "For if we have been sown together in the likeness of the death of Christ, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection," and explains it thus: "through a likeness (through representation) we die in baptism, but through reality we shall rise in the flesh, just as Christ also did."
The sense therefore, as Paul to say: As we have become sharers in this life of Christ's death and passion, so likewise we shall be sharers of Christ's resurrection in the life to come; for to this also we are engrafted, inasmuch as we have borne, equally with Christ's death, its likeness in baptism. For just as by the immersion done in baptism we are configured to Christ dead and buried, so in turn by the emergence from the waters of baptism we are configured to Christ rising. But if we are to be sharers of Christ's resurrection — and ought to become so — then likewise we must walk in newness of life, which Christ's resurrection signifies and which our resurrection requires and presupposes.
Beautifully Nazianzen, Oration 1 on Pascha: "Yesterday," he says, "I was led to the cross with Christ; today I am glorified together with Him; yesterday I was dying with Him; today I am vivified together; yesterday I was buried together, today I rise together," etc. And Tertullian (On the Soldier's Crown, ch. 14): "Christ," he says, "tasted honeycombs after gall, nor was the King of glory greeted as such by the heavenly powers before He was proscribed as King of the Jews on the cross: lessened first by the Father a little below the angels, He was thus crowned with glory and honor." So we too, if we taste gall here, afterward shall taste honeycombs with Christ.
Toletus and Adam explain these things otherwise: namely, that to be planted together with the resurrection of Christ is the same as to walk in newness of life, as preceded — as Paul to say: If, as certain shoots, we have been engrafted into Christ through baptism, so as to bear in us the likeness of His death by dying to sins, then by this very thing we shall also be planted together with — or grafted, or implanted into — the likeness of His resurrection; which likeness consists in newness of life: namely that just as Christ rose to a new and blessed life, so we too may rise to newness of life and live and walk in it. But if the Apostle had meant this, he would rather have said, "we are also of the resurrection"; whereas now he says not "we are" but "we shall be." Hence more genuinely and properly it seems to look to the future resurrection.
Note the force of the preposition συν ("with") in the Greek words of the Apostle: σύμφυτοι, συνταφῆναι, συσταυρωθῆναι, συζῆν, συμπάσχειν, συμμορφοῦσθαι, συμβασιλεύειν, συνδοξάζεσθαι — that is: planted together, buried together, crucified together, living together, suffering together, conformed together, reigning together, glorified together with Christ. For συν signifies, first, the likeness of our condition with Christ. Secondly, it signifies that the cause of all these things in us is this: that we are united with Christ as branches to a tree, so that we draw all these as the sap of Christ's tree from Christ and from Christ's cross and passion. Thirdly, σύν signifies the effect and fruit which Christ requires of us, namely that we strive to accomplish these things with Christ in ourselves, and assiduously to imitate and pursue Christ in them, that we may be glorified together with Him.
Verse 6: Knowing This, That Our Old Man Is Crucified with Him
6. KNOWING THIS, THAT OUR OLD MAN IS CRUCIFIED WITH HIM. — Refer "knowing this" to all that precedes, but especially to "we are dead," and to "we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, that we may walk in newness of life"; as if to say: We ought to be dead to sin and to walk in newness of life, knowing this — that is, since we know (for by Hebraism the participle is put for the verb) that our old man has been crucified.
Note: "the old man," says St. Thomas, is, first, the stain left from the act of sin; secondly, the very habit of sinning; thirdly, concupiscence; fourthly and more clearly Toletus: "the old man," he says, is called he who, being born of the old Adam, has drawn from him sin and concupiscences and follows them — namely, an old life, old morals, an old way of living, after the fashion of the old Adam, in lusts and sins; as I shall say more at length in chapter 7. Here, then, this man — already called the old man — has been crucified with Christ: first, by representation, for in baptism we represent the cross of Christ, and that we have been crucified with Christ and have crucified our vices; secondly, by efficiency, namely because, by the power of Christ dead on the cross, which is applied to us by baptism, our sins have been blotted out. For the cross of our sins is death and destruction.
THAT THE BODY OF SIN MAY BE DESTROYED. — First, Origen, Chrysostom, Ambrose, Anselm, and Toletus: "the body of sin," they say, is the whole mass of sins, which is as it were one body of the old man, whose members are lust, avarice, fornication — to be mortified by every Christian, as the Apostle says in Coloss. 3:5. This mass of sins the Apostle calls "the body of sin," so as to persist in the metaphor of the cross, of which he said "Our old man is crucified": for it is not accidents, nor spirits, but the bodies of men that are wont to be crucified.
Note here that sins are not covered by imputative justice, but truly die and are blotted out in baptism through infused grace and justice — as Calvin, forgetful of himself, is here forced to confess.
Secondly, the same Origen explains: that the body of sin — that is, the body conceived in sin, nourished and accustomed to sin — may be destroyed not in substance but in quality, that is, may be enervated; for this is what the Greek καταργηθῇ means. Hence Tertullian (On the Resurrection of the Flesh, ch. 47) likewise reads and explains: "That the body of transgression may be emptied, through the amendment of life, not through the destruction of substance." Thirdly, Theodoret reads it thus, that our body may be emptied of sin, that is, that it may be vacant of sins; but the first sense is more conformable to the mind and phrasing of the Apostle.
Verse 7: For He Who Is Dead Is Justified from Sin
7. FOR HE WHO IS DEAD IS JUSTIFIED FROM SIN. — He gives the reason why we should no longer serve sin: Because, he says, he who has been conformed to Christ crucified, and to the death of Christ dying on the cross, has died to sin or to the old life — this man is "justified," that is, wholly absolved from sin, so that he ought to have no commerce with it: just as a dead man is absolved from the affairs of this life, so that he ought not, and cannot, mix himself in them.
Secondly, St. Basil, in his book On Baptism: "He who has died," he says, "is justified, that is, has been purged from sin through the righteousness given and infused by God."
Thirdly, more specifically and profoundly, according to the first sense, St. Chrysostom and Theodoret thus explain it, as though Paul were alluding to a slave who, while he lives, is bound to servitude, but in death is released and freed from it: for this metaphor of the slave the Apostle presses in v. 16 and following — as if to say: Just as a dead slave, justified by death, that is, absolved and freed from the right and dominion of his master, so that the master has no lordly right or authority over him: in like manner we too, being justified from the servitude of sin, that is, freed and absolved by the very fact that we have died to it through baptism, ought no longer to give ourselves to sin or serve it.
Verse 8: If We Are Dead with Christ, We Believe That We Shall Also Live Together with Christ
8. IF WE ARE DEAD WITH CHRIST, WE BELIEVE THAT WE SHALL ALSO LIVE TOGETHER WITH CHRIST. — "We shall live together," namely in the future, blessed and eternal life. So Origen, Chrysostom, Theodoret and Anselm. Secondly, Toletus: "'We believe,'" he says, "that is, we trust, that together with Christ we shall live in the new life of grace, that is, we shall continue to live."
But the prior sense is plainer: for the Apostle, in the manner of a preacher, repeatedly sets before Christians the reward of eternal life, that He may attract and rouse us to a good and holy life; and so from the anagoge of baptism he leaps to tropology — namely from the resurrection he leaps to the mortification of vices and newness of life; and presently from that he returns to the resurrection, and does this a second and a third time, but each time with different words. For this anagoge or resurrection of baptism he set forth in verse 5, and the same in this verse 8, and again in verses 9 and 11, inculcating it in other words. Again, he set the tropology of newness of life before in verse 4, and again subjoined it in verses 6, 7, 9, 11 and following.
The same is to be done by every preacher, namely that he should mix rewards with virtues, and at one moment set before his hearers heaven and heavenly crowns, at another the flight from vices and Christian morals by which heavenly crowns are acquired.
Verse 9: Knowing That Christ Rising from the Dead Dies No More
9. KNOWING THAT CHRIST RISING (Greek ἐγερθείς, that is, having been raised, or who has risen, for it is past tense) FROM THE DEAD DIES NO MORE, DEATH SHALL NO LONGER HAVE DOMINION OVER HIM. — These things depend on what precedes, as if to say: If we have died to sin, we believe that we shall also live together with Christ, namely in a blessed and immortal life. For we know that Christ, after He rose from the dead, now lives such a life and will die no more — indeed, cannot die. Therefore since our blessed life after the resurrection will be similar and conformable to the life of Christ, it follows that we too will then no longer die — indeed, cannot die. From which discourse the Apostle leaves Christians tacitly to gather that, since they are already dead to sin and transferred into newness of life, and so are here beginning the blessed life and tending toward glorious immortality, they ought constantly to persist in this way and holy life, so as not to fall back into the death of sin, but to represent and inaugurate holy and happy immortality by constancy in a pious and Christian life. Origen infers from the Apostle's saying "Death shall no longer have dominion over Him" that therefore death before — namely on the cross — had dominion over Christ. Origen further understands by death the devil; but it is clear from what precedes that death is here taken properly. Death, therefore, is here introduced as a kind of lord and king, which had had dominion over Christ and all men, but by Christ has been despoiled of this dominion of his.
Verse 10: For in That He Died to Sin, He Died Once
10. FOR IN THAT HE DIED TO SIN, HE DIED ONCE. — St. Hilary, in book IX On the Trinity, thinks the "that" (quod) is relative, and so renders and reads it: "what has died, has died once to sin; what however lives, lives to God," as if to say: The body of Christ died once on account of sin, but His divinity lives and lived and will always live. Faber Stapulensis contends that it must be so rendered, and reproaches our Interpreter for translating "dead" (masculine) instead of "that which has died" (neuter). But Erasmus and others everywhere defend our Interpreter, and indeed Beza too. For the Greek ὅ, that is "what," is taken for ὅν, or κατά must certainly be supplied, as if κατὰ ὅ, that is, in that He died, or as far as the death of Christ is concerned, He Himself died once to sin: for it is more fittingly said that Christ dies and lives, than that the body of Christ does so — lest, namely, He should seem with Nestorius to separate in Christ the body and the man from the deity.
HE DIED ONCE TO SIN. — Hilary, in book IX On the Trinity, and Oecumenius say: "To sin," that is, in the body — namely, bodily — Christ died once. For the body is called "sin" by metonymy, because it is the subject of sin. In a similar sense it is called "the flesh of sin," though in Christ there was only the likeness of the flesh of sin: or, as Pererius explains, "Christ died to sin," that is, to the passible and mortal life, such as is in this body subject to sins.
Secondly, St. Ambrose, in sermon 18 on Psalm 118, verse 7: Christ, he says, died "to sin," that is, to the sinner — namely, on account of sinners.
Thirdly, and best, St. Chrysostom and Theodoret: Christ died "to sin," that is, on account of sin, in order to mortify and abolish sin in us; for the lamed of the dative has this force among the Hebrews. Christ therefore is said to have died to sin in one way, we in another; Christ effectively, we subjectively; Christ has died once (ἀπαξ), but we are νεκροί by way of name, as though we ought always to be and remain dead to sin.
BUT IN THAT HE LIVES, HE LIVES UNTO GOD. — "He lives unto God," that is, by divinity and soul. So Oecumenius. Secondly, St. Chrysostom and Toletus: "He lives unto God," that is, through the power of God.
Thirdly and best: Christ, now after the resurrection, "lives unto God," that is, with God, and lives a life like unto God — heavenly, divine, blessed, immortal. Again, "He lives unto God," that is, unto the glory of God, that He may perpetually praise and celebrate God: for as He died on account of sin, so He lives on account of God and the glory of God.
Verse 11: So Also Reckon Yourselves to Be Dead to Sin, but Living unto God
11. SO ALSO RECKON YOURSELVES INDEED TO BE DEAD TO SIN, BUT LIVING UNTO GOD. — Who is dead to sin is beautifully and minutely explained by St. Prosper, in the book On the Contemplative Life, ch. XXI: "What is it," he says, "to die to sin, unless to live wholly not for damnable works, to desire nothing carnally, to seek nothing ambitiously? So that, just as he who is dead in the flesh now disparages no one, turns from no one, despises no one, corrupts no one's chastity by crafty circumvention, is violent to no one, slanders or oppresses no one, does not envy the good, does not insult the afflicted, does not serve the luxury of the flesh, is not given to drunkenness — kindling more and more in himself by drinking the thirst for drink — does not burn with the torches of hatred, does not pursue unjust gains, does not flatter the powerful or wealthy, is not snatched away by the restless curiosity of man, is not stretched by the care of domestic anxiety, does not delight in the obsequious salutations of those who meet him, nor is wearied by the injuries of the proud; whom pride does not inflate, whom windy ambition does not cast headlong, whom vainglory does not basely boast, whom the desire of glorious opinion does not inflame, whom the distention of another's deed does not ensnare, whom love of base things does not invite to the company of the base, whom the rage of insane fury does not stir up, whom the pursuit of sumptuous delights does not slay, whom the ardor of spirited contention does not exhaust." Then in another scheme he pursues the same point through the epithets proper to each vice, saying: "Whom audacity does not make shameless, injustice unjust, harshness fierce, inconstancy fickle, contumacy stubborn, madness insane, gluttony delicate, disobedience rebellious, boasting vain, perfidy unfaithful, easiness light, cruelty savage, base voracity a glutton, mobility impatient, instability mobile, spiritual infirmity wandering, animosity wrathful, perversity suspicious, vanity wordy, malignity injurious: who is wholly removed from worldly enticements, removed from impurities and enmities, removed from the snares of others, removed from rapines whether hidden or open, removed from lies and perjuries, finally removed from every kind of crime and wickedness by which those living carnally offend God: just as, I say, the dead in the flesh can neither do nor suffer what I have said, so also those who live unto God, crucifying their flesh with its vices and concupiscences, do not at all live in such and such vices."
BUT LIVING UNTO GOD, — that, namely, by the Spirit of God, or by a spiritual and divine life — namely the life of grace — not serving sin but God, you may live, that is, that you may preserve this life of grace received in baptism; for "living" here signifies an act not begun but continued, according to canon 32. Hence he says "reckon," that is, consider, think, weigh, resolve, conclude, and altogether determine, that you ought henceforth always to live, and to will to live, unto God.
IN CHRIST, — that is, through Christ; or, as Toletus says, in the likeness of Christ, because He so lives that He dies no more, as if to say: In like manner, neither must you die any more through sin. Often the Hebrews take ב, that is "in," for the ב of likeness, so that "in Christ" is the same as "after the manner of Christ."
Verse 12: Let Not Sin Therefore Reign in Your Mortal Body
12. LET NOT SIN THEREFORE REIGN IN YOUR MORTAL BODY, SO THAT YOU OBEY ITS CONCUPISCENCES. — Understand "sin" in the proper sense. For so the Apostle took "sin" in verses 1, 2, 6, 7, 10, and 11.
St. Chrysostom and Theodoret note that it is not said: Let not sin tyrannize over you as it were against your will: for sin cannot reign in us unless we will it and willingly accept it, and consequently it cannot command and tyrannize over us against our will.
Others, not improbably, take "sin" here metonymically, as the same as the tinder of sin and concupiscence. Hence St. Augustine on Psalm 35 and Gregory in book XIV of the Moralia, ch. IX, note that the Apostle does not say: Let it not be, let it not dwell — for that is impossible — but, Let not sin reign in you, that is, that you should subject yourselves to it, and obey its desires and concupiscences, as follows.
Wrongly, therefore, does Beza thus explain "let not sin reign," as if the Apostle were saying: Let the spirit struggle against sin and concupiscence, yet not conquer it. But this is wrong, as I said; for if in this struggle the spirit does not conquer the flesh and concupiscence, then concupiscence itself conquers and reigns. Beza is plainly mistaken, and does not see that it is one thing for sin to exist, another to conquer sin and concupiscence. There is indeed in man flesh and concupiscence, and in this life it cannot wholly be extirpated, but nevertheless in the just man it is conquered and suppressed by the dominant reason and spirit.
Note the word "mortal," when the Apostle says: "in your mortal body" — he gives a goad to the fight and to resisting concupiscences, because these are fleeting and fading, and will perish together with this mortal body. Hence St. Chrysostom here notes that in this life and body the time both of sin and of struggle against sin is brief, while the time of victory and glory is eternal and immense: "Why then, O man, do you here seek long, why solid joys? Brief and perishing is whatever you see here." The Apostle therefore says: "Through Christ, His grace reigns as a king in the minds of the faithful: therefore in them let not sin reign."
Gravely and eloquently St. Leo, sermon 1 On Lent: "If," he says, "the mind, subject to its ruler and delighted with the gifts from above, has trampled the incitements of earthly pleasure, and has not allowed sin to reign in its mortal body, reason will hold the most orderly principate, and no illusion of spiritual wickednesses will shake its fortifications: because then is the true peace of man, and true freedom, when both the flesh is governed by the mind as judge, and the mind is governed by God as ruler."
Verse 13: Neither Yield Your Members as Weapons of Iniquity unto Sin
13. NEITHER YIELD YOUR MEMBERS AS WEAPONS OF INIQUITY UNTO SIN. — "Weapons," that is, instruments serving sin: for so the Hebrews call כלי חמס kele chamas, vessels — that is, weapons of iniquity — as Simeon and Levi are called in Genesis 49:5.
Note that in the soul there are two contrary kingdoms — of sin and of justice. Sin, for the extension of its kingdom, uses our members as weapons, when it abuses the hand for blows, the tongue for slanders, the eyes for curiosity. The opposite happens in the kingdom of justice, when it uses the hand for almsgiving, the tongue for praising God, the eyes for study. For this reason the Apostle calls our members weapons both of sin and of justice.
BUT PRESENT YOURSELVES TO GOD, AS THOSE LIVING FROM THE DEAD. — As if to say: Rather, live in such a way that you show yourselves to have been raised from the death of sin to the life of grace. For Paul seems to look back to verse 11.
Secondly and more fully, as if to say: Serve God, as those ought to do who, once dead to sin in baptism, now live unto justice and God in the new Christian life, to which they have risen with Christ and after the manner of Christ. That this is the sense is clear from what precedes.
Thirdly, some explain it thus, as if to say: So serve God exactly, with fear and fervor, as if you had been recalled from natural death to life. Consider how piously and holily those have lived, and served God, who, snatched in death to the tribunal of God, beheld His rigor, as well as the pains of hell and the glory of the saints, and were afterwards restored to life. Consider how great a penance St. Diethelm performed, whom the Venerable Bede narrates in book V of the History of the Angles, ch. XII, who, when asked the cause of such austerity, would answer nothing but: I have seen more austere things, I have seen colder things. Bede has similar things in his On St. Fursey, book III, ch. XIX. Consider what tortures the wonderful St. Christina freely underwent, returning from death to life, who threw herself into burning furnaces, into the most freezing pools, into the wheels of mills that she might be rolled and torn in them — and this in order to free souls from Purgatory (whose horrendous pains she had seen in her rapture), as Cardinal James of Vitry relates in her Life. You therefore imitate these, and behold with the eyes of faith and mind the horror of death, the terror of judgment, the bitterness of hell, the immensity of eternity, and so live as if you had beheld these things with your eyes, as they did, and had returned from death to life: for those things await you with most certain certainty, as certain faith teaches you. This sense is pious, but rather accommodated than genuine, as is clear from what has been said.
Verse 14: For Sin Shall Not Have Dominion over You
14. FOR SIN SHALL NOT HAVE DOMINION OVER YOU, — that is, cannot have dominion; "shall have dominion" is taken by Hebraism δυναμικῶς, that is, in the potential mode. Paul meets this objection: How can we serve justice, not sin, since we are weak to resist sin and its temptations; and hitherto the whole world, and we ourselves, have served sin? The Apostle answers: Although sin in the world, in the time of Adam and in the time of the Mosaic Law, has had dominion, yet to you, O Christians, who through baptism have died to sin and have been strengthened by the grace of Christ, sin cannot have dominion: understand, of itself and by its own right, as it had dominion before Christ — unless, namely, you yourselves spontaneously cast off the grace of Christ and surrender yourselves to sin. Hence the Apostle, explaining and assigning the cause, adds:
FOR YOU ARE NOT UNDER THE LAW, BUT UNDER GRACE. — As if to say: Sin cannot have dominion over those who are under grace, unless they freely subject themselves to sin; but over those who are under the law, not under grace, sin has dominion, as it were by hereditary right prescribed from Adam down till now. Although, therefore, sin attacks the faithful who are under grace, and stirs up war against them, yet it cannot have dominion over them by its own will and authority — rather it can easily be conquered and tamed by them through the grace of the Holy Spirit. Excellently St. Leo, sermon 7 On the Fast of the Tenth Month: "The adversary," he says, "rages, and turns bloody enmities into quiet snares, that those whom he could not conquer with hunger and cold, with flames and the sword, he might wear out with idleness, ensnare with desires, inflate with ambition, corrupt with pleasure. But against these evils, and all others to be destroyed, the Christian battle line has powerful fortifications and victorious arms — God, namely, equipping His soldiers, that by the spirit of truth meekness may extinguish anger, generosity avarice, kindness envy. For when the right hand of the Most High changes the hearts of many, age returns into newness, and from servants of iniquity ministers of justice come forth. Continence has subdued lust, humility has driven away arrogance; and those who had been defiled by impurity have shone with chastity."
Secondly, Maldonatus in his manuscript Notes thus explains: "You are not under the law," that is, you have not received the spirit of bondage, as he says in chapter VIII, but the spirit of the adoption of the sons of God. Therefore you ought not to permit anything else to have dominion over you. And so follows: "What then? Shall we sin?"
Verse 15: What Then? Shall We Sin, Because We Are Not under the Law, but under Grace?
15. WHAT THEN? SHALL WE SIN, BECAUSE WE ARE NOT UNDER THE LAW, BUT UNDER GRACE? — He meets a new objection. For someone will object: You have said, O Paul, that we are not under the law but under grace, and so sin cannot have dominion over us; therefore we can with license and impunity overstep the law and sin, and indulge our concupiscences and sins, because we are free, and whatever we do, sin cannot have dominion over us; but rather we shall have dominion over sin and the concupiscences, if we summon or repel them at our pleasure. This indeed is the argument even of the libertines of today. Paul answers: "God forbid," because although we are under grace, not under law, yet it is not lawful to despise or transgress the law; but rather we must fulfill the law through grace. Again, although sin cannot have dominion over us of itself and by its own right, yet it can have dominion over us, and in fact will have, if we spontaneously addict ourselves to it and subject ourselves as it were as slaves to its dominion. And this is what the Apostle adds, saying:
Verse 16: Do You Not Know That to Whom You Yield Yourselves Servants to Obey, His Servants You Are
16. DO YOU NOT KNOW THAT TO WHOM YOU YIELD YOURSELVES SERVANTS TO OBEY, HIS SERVANTS YOU ARE WHOM YOU OBEY, WHETHER OF SIN (which leads) UNTO DEATH, OR OF OBEDIENCE (which leads) UNTO JUSTICE? — The Apostle here sets forth two kings, and sets them in opposition to one another: the former king is sin, or disobedience to the divine law — its servants are all sinners who obey it, whose wage and end is death; the latter king is obedience to God and the divine law, namely the Gospel — its servants are all the faithful, who obey the Gospel; their wage, fruit, and end is justice and eternal life. This is, as it were, the major premise of the Apostle, under which he tacitly leaves the following minor to be subsumed and this conclusion to be inferred: But, O faithful Christians, in baptism you renounced sin, and devoted yourselves as servants to Christ and to the faith, to obey the Gospel; therefore you are not servants of sin, nor must you serve sin, but Christ and obedience, that is, the faith and the Gospel. Note: The law of Christ is called the law of obedience, because it teaches men to obey God, and (which the Apostle here properly regards) the faith, Christ, the Gospel, Prelates, Princes, and makes them subjects to itself — flexible and obedient — as experience proves, and as even the modern pagan princes themselves in Japan and India confess.
Verse 17: But Thanks Be to God, That You Were Servants of Sin, but Have Obeyed from the Heart
17. BUT THANKS BE TO GOD, THAT YOU WERE (have ceased to be) SERVANTS OF SIN, BUT HAVE OBEYED FROM THE HEART THAT FORM OF DOCTRINE INTO WHICH YOU HAVE BEEN DELIVERED. — In Greek εἰς ὃν παρεδόθητε τύπον διδαχῆς. As if to say: You have obeyed the Evangelical doctrine, into which you have been sent as into a type by God and the Apostles, that you may press yourselves to it and conform to it as to a form and type. For just as a sheet impressed by the types of printers expresses in itself the letters of the types and the doctrine contained in the letters, so likewise you, by your obedience to the Evangelical doctrine — pressing and conforming yourselves to it as to the form, type, and norm of right living — express and represent it in your life and morals.
Verse 18: And Being Made Free from Sin, You Have Become the Servants of Justice
18. AND BEING MADE FREE FROM SIN, YOU HAVE BECOME THE SERVANTS OF JUSTICE. — This sentence depends on the preceding, namely, "but thanks (I give) to God, that you were servants of sin," and continues and completes it.
Verse 19: I Speak a Human Thing, Because of the Infirmity of Your Flesh
19. I SPEAK A HUMAN THING, BECAUSE OF THE INFIRMITY OF YOUR FLESH: FOR AS (as if to say, for it is human that as) YOU HAVE YIELDED YOUR MEMBERS TO SERVE UNCLEANNESS AND INIQUITY UNTO INIQUITY, SO NOW YIELD YOUR MEMBERS TO SERVE JUSTICE, UNTO SANCTIFICATION. — Tertullian, in the book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, ch. XLVII, reads: "As you have yielded your members as servants to uncleanness and iniquity, so now also yield your members as servants to justice unto sanctification."
The sense is: I, O Roman Christians, demand from you a human thing — that is, an equitable, moderate, and easy thing (a similar phrase is in 2 Sam. 7:14 and 1 Cor. 10:13) — that, namely, you should pursue justice "unto sanctification" with as much and as great effort, that is, that you may daily be sanctified more and more, as you formerly pursued "iniquity unto iniquity," so namely that from one iniquity you rushed into another and became ever more wicked. As if to say: I could demand greater things from you, O faithful, with Baruch ch. 4 verse 28, where he says thus: "As your mind was, that you should err from God, ten times as much shall you again, returning, seek Him"; but I, out of humanity, demand not so much, not more, but an equal effort.
Beautifully does St. Anselm explain this from St. Augustine: "Just as," he says, "no fear compelled you to sin, but the very lust and pleasure of sin persuaded; so to living justly let not the fear of punishment urge you, but let the delight and love of justice lead you. As therefore that man is most wicked whom not even temporal punishments deter from the impure works of base pleasure; so most just is he who, not even by fear of temporal punishments, is recalled from the holy works of most luminous charity."
And Origen: "By these words," he says, "the Apostle stirs shame in his hearers, that they may pay at least this obedience to justice, which previously they paid to iniquity, as if he should say: Your feet ran formerly to shed blood; now let them run to deliver it. Your hands were stretched out formerly to seize the goods of others; now let them be stretched out to bestow your own. Your eyes formerly looked round at another's possession to covet; now let them look round upon the poor to have mercy, and let the ministry of each single member, which it furnished to vices, fit it to virtues, and the act which it furnished to uncleanness, now turn to chastity and holiness."
Others with the Syriac thus explain: "I speak a human thing," that is, I speak after the manner of men, that I may condescend to your understanding, by using the names of servitude and freedom in spiritual matters.
Others would have these to be the words of one as it were softening the way and asking pardon, because he was about to speak of dishonorable matters; but the first sense already given is the genuine one.
Verse 20: For When You Were the Servants of Sin, You Were Free from Justice
20. FOR WHEN YOU WERE THE SERVANTS OF SIN, YOU WERE FREE FROM JUSTICE. — "From justice," that is, from justice and her most beautiful state, as if to say: When you were serving sin, you were without justice: for you withdrew yourselves from the dominion of justice, and, as if loosed from all law, you rushed into sins. So Anselm, whom see. For the Apostle gives here the cause why they served iniquity unto iniquity under sin, and why they were poured out into every wickedness — namely because they were wholly without justice, and so, as it were loosed from every bridle, they ran to all forbidden pleasures. Again, this sentence is opposed to that one in verse 18, "Being freed from sin, you have become the servants of justice."
Beza objects: These sinners are slaves of sin and bondservants of it, therefore they have no free will: "I marvel," he says, "with what front the Sophists dare defend their free will — free indeed from justice, but a slave to sin." Foolishly, as though that will were called free which serves sin.
I answer with St. Bernard, in his book On Grace and Free Will: There is a threefold liberty — of nature, of grace, and of glory. The first is opposed to natural necessity, and makes free will; the third is opposed to death and the miseries of this life, and makes the blessed; the second is opposed to sin, and makes the just and holy. Of this — not of the first or the third — the Apostle is here treating. For he alludes to the Hebrew slaves serving seven years, Exodus 21:2. For sinners, of their own will and by voluntary obedience, addict themselves to sin as to a master, as the Apostle here teaches: just as, vice versa, the same of their own accord addict themselves to justice as to a mistress, when, aided by the grace of God, they freely transfer themselves to the kingdom of justice.
This freedom of justice, as Anselm says, is and is called freedom, because of the justice of the right deed, and because it works liberally; yet the same is also servitude, because of obedience to the precept. Thus good slaves freely and willingly serve their masters: and so all, both the good and the bad, in their servitude preserve free will: why then should men not preserve the same, whether they serve justice or sin? Morally: Sinners are slaves of their own desires. See the things said on Exodus chapter 23, last verse. Truly many, in order to serve luxury, gain, and gluttony, are strong to suffer all things: after conversion to virtue, they complain that strength fails them.
Verse 22: You Have Your Fruit unto Sanctification, but the End, Life Everlasting
22. YOU HAVE YOUR FRUIT UNTO SANCTIFICATION, — continuous namely, that you may go from holiness to sanctification, that day by day you may be more and more sanctified. It is a Hebraism. "Unto sanctification," that is, sanctification itself, and its continuation and increase, you have as the fruit of justice, because justice produces and brings forth this fruit, so that he who has it lives purely and holily, does holy and glorious works, and by continuous works of virtues sanctifies himself more, by which he merits and at length attains, as it were the end and reward, eternal life.
Verse 23: For the Wages of Sin Is Death; but the Grace of God, Life Everlasting in Christ Jesus Our Lord
23. FOR THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH. BUT THE GRACE OF GOD, ETERNAL LIFE IN CHRIST, — that is, through Christ. "Wages," in Greek ὀψώνιον, which signifies that which is eaten with bread, or as it were the relish — the price which is given in the evening: which fitly answers to that which preceded, "The end indeed, eternal life."
Secondly, ὀψώνιον, says Nazianzen in oration 23, which is inscribed on his sermons to Julian the tax-exactor, signifies τὸ βασιλικὸν συντρέφιον, καὶ τὰς ὑπαρχούσας ἐκ νόμου τοῖς ἀξιώμασι δωρεὰς, that is, the royal provision, and the gifts which by law were granted to dignitaries; and, as Theophylact says, ὀψώνιον signifies the rations given by the emperor to soldiers. So here sin gives to those who serve it, as their rations — namely a base wage — death. Hence everywhere all here render ὀψώνιον as "wages" — or, as the Syriac, תאגורתא tegureta, that is "recompense" — far better than Erasmus, who renders it auctoramentum.
GRACE (that is, the free gift of God, is) ETERNAL LIFE. — Tertullian, in his book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, ch. XLVII, reads: "the donative of God is eternal life." A donative is a gift bestowed by the emperor upon a soldier.
Note: The Apostle here describes a twofold kingdom — of God and of sin: in each, our members are weapons; the soldiers and servants of the one are just men, of the other unjust; the wage of this is death, of that eternal life. Hence, secondly, a fitting antithesis to what preceded: "the wages of sin is death" demanded that he should say in like manner: "but the wage of justice is eternal life" — just as elsewhere he calls the same the crown of justice; yet he preferred to say: "the grace of God is eternal life," because this epistle continually inculcates against Jews and Gentiles relying on the works of the law or of nature the necessity of the grace of Christ; and because here the rationale of sin and of justice is dissimilar: for to sin not freely, but as a wage altogether owed, are rendered death and damnation; not so to the merits of justice is rendered eternal life. For these merits flow from grace, as from a seed and root: grace, I say, conferred on the unworthy — wherefore they too can be called, and in fact are, grace. So St. Augustine, epistle 105. Hence the same St. Augustine calls the first grace "grace"; but eternal life he calls "grace for grace": and "when God crowns our merits, what else does He crown than His own gifts?" so says Pope Celestine to the Bishops of Gaul, ch. XII, from St. Augustine, and the Council of Trent, session VI, ch. XVI.
Secondly, eternal life is called grace, because although eternal life is owed to works done from grace, yet, if our labor is regarded nakedly, they are not — it is itself grace, because the sufferings of this time are not worthy compared to the glory to come: so Theodoret. Grace therefore is eternal life, because it is obtained by trifling works, labors, and sufferings. Just as, if a king should adopt a poor man as his son, on this condition that he should obey him, he would be said to adopt him from grace.
Thirdly, eternal life is called grace, because by His free ordination God has decreed and promised eternal life to the works of the just, without which promise this life would not be owed to them. Add that the Apostle did not wish to call eternal life a wage, because in Greek it is ὀψώνιον — namely a base ration-wage; but this does not befit the most excellent reward of justice, which is eternal life.
The sense, therefore, of the Apostle is this: Just as sin leads man to death, as it were to its own end and wage; so grace, which frees us from sin and makes us servants of God in justice and holiness, leads us to eternal life, as it were to its end, term, and crown: for this is what he said a little before, and what here the Apostle urges: "You have," he says, "your fruit unto sanctification, but the end, eternal life." Grace therefore is eternal life — not in itself and formally, but finally, because it has eternal life as its end and crown. It is a metonymy.
Hence, against Eunomius, the Beghards and Beguines, it is clear that men, by the light of nature alone and by the powers of nature alone, cannot see God and be made blessed; otherwise eternal life would not be grace.
Note: The reward of the Blessed is not called delights, not riches, not honors, but "eternal life." First, because this is directly opposed to the wage and punishment of Adam and of sinners, which is eternal death; secondly, because this life includes every good as it were as its root: for life in torments is not called life, but rather death; therefore this life is vital and perfect, both as animal, as human, as angelic, and as divine. There the memory lives, by the recollection of all things past. There the intellect lives, by the knowledge and vision of God. There the will lives, by the fruition of every good. In like manner there live the concupiscible and irascible appetites, and all the senses, and they enjoy their own delights. This life therefore includes all delights, riches, honors, and the pleasures of all lives, senses, and powers.
Secondly, this life is not of a thousand years, nor of a thousand million years, but is eternal. For it must be eternal in order to be blessed. Hear St. Augustine, in book LXXXIII Questions, Question XXXV: "What," he says, "is it to live blessedly, except to have something eternal by knowledge? For that alone is rightly trusted of which it is true that it cannot be taken from the lover, etc. For of all things the most excellent is that which is eternal. And therefore we cannot have it, except by that part by which we are more excellent — that is, by the mind." And presently: "And since that which is loved must of necessity affect the lover from itself, it comes about that what is loved when it is eternal, affects the soul with eternity. Wherefore that life alone is blessed which is eternal. But what is eternal, and what affects the soul with eternity, unless God?" Whence Christ says, John 17: "This is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." What is eternity? It is a duration always present, one perpetual today, which does not pass into past or future. What is eternity? It is the age of ages, says St. Dionysius, ch. X On the Divine Names, which does not perish, but always remains the same. What is eternity? It is a circle whose center is always, whose circumference is never, because it can never, at no time, be closed or terminated. What is eternity? It is stable immutability and immortality. How long will eternity last? Always; after a thousand years, after a hundred thousand years, after a thousand million years, not yet the end, not yet the middle, not yet the beginning of eternity; but its measure is always: as long as "always" shall last, so long shall eternity last. As long as heaven shall be heaven, as long as earth shall be earth, as long as God shall be God, who commands time to proceed from eternity and, remaining stable, gives all things to be moved, so long shall eternity last, so long shall the blessed be blessed, so long shall the damned be damned: as it was in the beginning, and now, and ever, and unto ages of ages. What is eternity? It is a stable and immovable axis about which the wheel of the world, of time, and of all ages turns.
"The whole and perfect possession of unending life all at once," says Boethius, Book V On Consolation, prose 6: "O dear truth, true eternity, eternal happiness, my God!" says St. Augustine. O eternity, eternity! how long are you, eternity! how rarely you dwell in the minds of men! If we often thought of this, how light and momentary would seem whatever is of our tribulation, how nothing would be difficult, how eager we would be for every good, how well would we weigh this moment, on which our eternity depends! Rightly the Royal Prophet says: "I have thought upon the days of old, and I have had in mind the eternal years." For "what torments is hard if eternal: the eternity which makes blessed is happy. They depend on death: death depends on life: life depends on a moment; choose. To have lived once, to have died once, is eternal."
St. Augustine beautifully describes this eternal life and its goods and happiness in Book XXII On the City of God, ch. XXX: "How great," he says, "will be the happiness there, where no evil shall be, no good shall be hidden, where time shall be free for the praises of God, who will be all in all! Blessed are they who dwell in Your house, O Lord, they shall praise You forever and ever. All the members and inward parts of the incorruptible body shall advance in the praises of God. True glory shall be there, where no one shall be praised by error of the praiser, nor by flattery. There shall be true honor, which shall be denied to none who is worthy, conferred on none who is unworthy; nor shall any unworthy person seek it, where none shall be permitted to be unless he be worthy." Then he describes the essential reward of the Blessed: "The reward of virtue shall be He Himself who gave the virtue, and who promised Himself, than whom nothing better or greater can be. For what else is that which He said through the prophet: I shall be their God, and they themselves shall be My people; I shall be whatever is honestly desired by all: life, salvation, food, abundance, glory, honor, peace, and all good things? For thus also is that rightly understood: God will be all in all; He Himself shall be the end of our desires." And below: "As far as concerns rational knowledge, the soul will be mindful of its past evils; but as far as concerns experiential feeling, it will be entirely unmindful: for they will be free of past evils, so that these are utterly erased from their senses. There will be fulfilled: Be still and see that I am God. There, resting on the Sabbath of repose, we shall see, because the Lord is sweet, because He Himself is God, with whom we shall be filled, when He Himself shall be all in all."
Hear also the author of the book On the Spirit and the Soul, vol. III of the works of St. Augustine, ch. LX, addressing this life: "In you there is no corruption, nor defect, nor old age, nor wrath; but perennial peace, solemn glory, everlasting gladness, continual solemnity. Truly so great joy and exultation, the flower and glory of youth, and of perfect salvation. In you there is no yesterday, nor day-before, but it is the same today. In you is salvation, in you is life, in you is infinite peace, in you is God all things. Glorious things are said of you, City of God; for the dwelling of all who rejoice is in you. In you is no fear, no sadness: every desire passes into joy, since whatever is wished is at hand, and whatever is desired abounds." And below: "But they themselves who shall have been redeemed by the Lord, how devoutly will they confess and say: How good is Israel's God! for His mercy endures forever. Indeed, everlasting gladness shall be in them, and the exaltations of God in their throat unto eternity, and unto the age of the age, in perpetual eternities. Blessed are all who dwell in Your house, O Lord, they shall praise You forever and ever. They shall be inebriated from the abundance of Your house, and You shall give them to drink from the torrent of Your delight. For with You is the fountain of life, and in Your light we shall see light: when we shall see You in Yourself, and us in You, and You in us, with continual vision and perpetual happiness."