The life and work of St. Paul

412 THE LIFE AITD WOBE OF ST. PAUL.
afflicted lives' and from the deatk in which they end, and shall present us, with you,
to God's glory, by the increase of grace and more abundant increase of thanksgiving.
For this reason we do not play the coward, but even if our outward man is being
destroyed, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For the lightness of
our immediate affliction is working out for us, in increasing excess, an eternal weight
of glory, since our eyes are fixed not on the visible, but on the invisible for the
;
things visible are transient, but the things invisible are eternal. 2 The tents of cur
earthly bodies shall be done away, but thon we shall have an eternal building. "We
s
groan, we are burdened in this tent of i3osh, wo long to put on over it, aa a robe,
our house from heaven if, as I assume, we shall not indeed be found bodiless 4
that
the mortal mav be swallowed up by life.8 And God, who wrought us for this end,
Jias given us the earnest of His Spirit that it shall be so. Henco, since we walk by
faith, death itself has for us lost all terrors ; it will be but an admission into the
nearer presence of our Lord. To please Him is our sole ambition, because we shall
each 8tand before His tribtinal to receive the things dono by the body ;
to be paid
in kind for our good and evil, not by arbitrary infliction, but by natural result."
This is our awful belief, and we strive to make it yours. 7 To God our sincerity ia
manifest already, and we hope that it will bo to your consciences, since we tell you
all this not by way of commending ourselves, but that you may have something of
which to boast about us against thoso whose boasts are but of superficial things. They
call us mad, 8
well, if so, it is for God ; or if we be sober-minded, it is for you. 9 Our
one constraining motive is Christ's love. Since He died for all, all in His death died
to sin, and therefore the reason of His death was that we may not live to ourselves,
but to Him who died and rose again for us. From henceforth, then, we recognise
no relation to Him which is not purely spiritual. Your Jerusalem emissaries boast
that they knew the living Christ and in ; consequence maintain their superiority to
us. If we ever recognised any such claim if we ever relied on having seen the
living Christ we renounce all such views from this moment. 10 'He who is in Christ
is a new creation ; the old things are passed away ; lo ! all things have become new.'
It is the spiritual Christ, the glorified Christ whom God made to be sin for ua in
"God exhibits deati in the living, life In the dying" (AL'ordl
* Cf. Plat. Fhaedo, 79.
8 Wisd. ix. 15, " the earthly tabernacle (yeiSes tr/c^os) weigheth down the mind."
* T. 3. So I understand this difficult clause. It seems to imply some condition which is no<
thst of disembodied spirits, between the death of the mortal and the reception of the resurrection
body (cf. Hdt. v. 92 ; Thuo. iii. 58).
* Again, notice the strange confusion of metaphors. It is only the very greatest writers who can
ventnro to write thus ; only those whose thoughts are like a flame, that cracks the enclosing laic? of
language that it may emit more heat and light.
' It is not easy to see the exact correlation between the Judicial process of result according to
good and evil conduct even as regards saints and that free absolute justification by faith in Christ,
that complete forgiveness cf sins, and tearing up of the bond which ia against us, on which St. Paul
dwells in v. 19, 21 ; Rom. iii. 25 ; Col ii. 14. But faith Is as little troubled by unsojved antinomies
in the kingdom of grace as in that of nature (see infra, Excursus XXL, p. 732).
1 r. 11. So Chrysostom, &a, but it is one of tho many verses in this Epistle about which no
absolute certainty is attainable. Itmaymean "knowing that tho fear of God (timorem Domini, Vuljj.)
is the principle of my own life, I try to persuade you of this truth that it is so God knows ;
already.
* Cf. Acts xxvi. 24.
"
My revelations, ecstacies, glossolaly, are phases of intercourse of niy soul with God; my
practical sense and tact are for you."
10 2 Cor. v. 16, OTTO TOU vvv. In Gal 1. 15, 16, St. Paul hag said that "it pleased God to reveal His
Son in him," and in his view "the oi.iire, absolute importance of Christianity resided in the person
of Christ. God had disclosfl to him aa the S