Jesus
Christ the Mediator
Thus it was that the human race was bound in a just doom and all men
were children of wrath. Of this wrath it is written: “For all our days are
wasted; we are ruined in thy wrath; our years seem like a spider’s web.” Likewise Job spoke of this wrath: “Man born of woman is of few days and full of
trouble.” And even the Lord Jesus said of it: “He that believes in the Son
has life everlasting, but he that believes not does not have life. Instead, the
wrath of God abides in him.” He does not say, “It will come,” but, “It now
abides.” Indeed every man is born into this state. Wherefore the apostle says,
“For we too were by nature children of wrath even as the others.” Since
men are in this state of wrath through original sin – a condition made still
graver and more pernicious as they compounded more and worse sins with it – a
Mediator was required; that is to say, a Reconciler who by offering a unique
sacrifice, of which all the sacrifices of the Law and the Prophets were
shadows, should allay that wrath. Thus the apostle says, “For if, when we were
enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, even more now being
reconciled by his blood we shall be saved from wrath through him.” However, when God is said to be wrathful, this does not signify any such
perturbation in him as there is in the soul of a wrathful man. His verdict,
which is always just, takes the name “wrath” as a term borrowed from the
language of human feelings. This, then, is the grace of God through Jesus Christ
our Lord – that we are reconciled to God through the Mediator and receive the
Holy Spirit so that we may be changed from enemies into sons, “for as many as
are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.”
It would take too long to say all that would be truly worthy of this
Mediator. Indeed, men cannot speak properly of such matters. For who can unfold
in cogent enough fashion this statement, that “the Word became flesh and dwelt
among us,” so that we should then believe in “the only Son of God the
Father Almighty, born of the Holy Spirit and Mary the Virgin.” Yet it is indeed
true that the Word was made flesh, the flesh being assumed by the Divinity, not
the Divinity being changed into flesh. Of course, by the term “flesh” we ought
here to understand “man,” an expression in which the part signifies the whole,
just as it is said, “Since by the works of the law no flesh shall be
justified,” which is to say, no man shall be justified. Yet certainly we
must say that in that assumption nothing was lacking that belongs to human
nature.
But it was a nature entirely free from the bonds of all sin. It was not
a nature born of both sexes with fleshly desires, with the burden of sin, the
guilt of which is washed away in regeneration. Instead, it was the kind of
nature that would be fittingly born of a virgin, conceived by His mother’s
faith and not her fleshly desires. Now if in his being born, her virginity had
been destroyed, he would not then have been born of a virgin. It would then be
false (which is unthinkable) for the whole Church to confess him “born of the
Virgin Mary.” This is the Church which, imitating his mother, daily gives birth
to his members yet remains virgin. Read, if you please, my letter on the
virginity of Saint Mary written to that illustrious man, Volusianus, whom I
name with honor and affection.
Christ Jesus, Son of God, is thus both God and man. He was God
before all ages; he is man in this age of ours. He is God because he is the
Word of God, for “the Word was God.” Yet he is man also, since in the
unity of his Person a rational soul and body is joined to the Word.
Accordingly, in so far as he is God, he and the Father are one. Yet in
so far as he is man, the Father is greater than he. Since he was God’s only Son
– not by grace but by nature – to the end that he might indeed be the fullness
of all grace, he was also made Son of Man – and yet he was in the one nature as
well as in the other, one Christ. “For being in the form of God, he judged it
not a violation to be what he was by nature, the equal of God. Yet he emptied
himself, taking on the form of a servant,” yet neither losing nor
diminishing the form of God. Thus he was made less and remained equal, and
both these in a unity as we said before. But he is one of these because he is
the Word; the other, because he was a man. As the Word, he is the equal of the
Father; as a man, he is less. He is the one Son of God, and at the same time
Son of Man; the one Son of Man, and at the same time God’s Son. These are not
two sons of God, one God and the other man, but one Son of God – God without
origin, man with a definite origin – our Lord Jesus Christ.
By Saint
Augustine, from Handbook of Faith, Hope and Love
Photo
taken from Wikimedia Commons
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for your interest in our blog! Your comment will be viewed shortly to be added to our blog. :)