Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers Series 2 - The Still Small ...

“death reigned” 980 until the fulfilling of the law and the coming of Christ. And the firstborn
were preserved by God from being touched by the destroyer, to show that we who were
made alive in Christ no longer die in Adam. The sea and the cloud for the time being led
on through amazement to faith, but for the time to come they typically prefigured the grace
to be. “Who is wise and he shall understand these things?” 981 —how the sea is typically a
baptism bringing about the departure of Pharaoh, in like manner as this washing causes the
departure of the tyranny of the devil. The sea slew the enemy in itself: and in baptism too
dies our enmity towards God. From the sea the people came out unharmed: we too, as it
were, alive from the dead, step up from the water “saved” by the “grace” of Him who called
us. 982 And the cloud is a shadow of the gift of the Spirit, who cools the flame of our passions
by the “mortification” of our “members.” 983
32. What then? Because they were typically baptized unto Moses, is the grace of baptism
therefore small? Were it so, and if we were in each case to prejudice the dignity of our
privileges by comparing them with their types, not even one of these privileges could be
reckoned great; then not the love of God, who gave His only begotten Son for our sins,
would be great and extraordinary, because Abraham did not spare his own son; 984 then
even the passion of the Lord would not be glorious, because a sheep typified the offering
instead of Isaac; then the descent into hell was not fearful, because Jonah had previously
typified the death in three days and three nights. The same prejudicial comparison is made
also in the case of baptism by all who judge of the reality by the shadow, and, comparing
the typified with the type, attempt by means of Moses and the sea to disparage at once the
whole dispensation of the Gospel. What remission of sins, what renewal of life, is there in
the sea? What spiritual gift is there through Moses? What dying 985 of sins is there? Those
men did not die with Christ; wherefore they were not raised with Him. 986 They did not
“bear the image of the heavenly;” 987 they did “bear about in the body the dying of Jesus;” 988
they did not “put off the old man;” they did not “put on the new man which is renewed in
knowledge after the image of Him which created him.” 989 Why then do you compare
980 Rom. v. 17.
981 Hos. xiv. 9.
982 Eph. ii. 5.
983 Col. iii. 5.
984 cf. Rom. viii. 32.
985 νέκρωσις. A.V. in 2 Cor. iv. 10, “dying,” Rom. iv. 19, “deadness.”
986 cf. Rom. vi. 8.
987 1 Cor. xv. 49.
988 2 Cor. iv. 10.
989 Col. iii. 9, 10.
Objection that some were baptized unto Moses and believed in him, and an…
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