On Rebuke and Grace 1–7

Having read your letter, Valentinus, dearest brother, and you who serve God together with him, the letter that your Charity sent through brother Florus and those who came to us with him, I gave thanks to God that from your message brought back to us I learned of your peace in the Lord, your agreement in the truth, and your ardour in love. As for what the enemy contrived among you for the overthrow of some, God in his mercy, by his wonderful goodness turning even the enemy's snares to the advancement of his servants, made it serve rather this end: that none of you was torn down to something worse, while some were built up to something better. There is therefore no need to go over again everything that we sent you, sufficiently discussed in a full book; how you received it your reply shows. Yet do not on any account think that, read once, it could become sufficiently familiar to you. If, then, you want to have it most fruitful, do not be reluctant to make it very well known by rereading it, so that you may know most thoroughly by what and what kind of questions are solved and healed there, where not human but divine authority meets us, from which we must not withdraw if we want to arrive where we are heading. Now the Lord himself not only shows us what evil we should turn away from and what good we should do, which is all that the letter of the law can do; but he also helps us to turn away from evil and do good, which no one can do without the spirit of grace; and if this is lacking, the law is present only to make men guilty and to kill them. For this reason the Apostle says, “The letter kills, but the spirit gives life.” He, then, who uses the law lawfully learns in it evil and good, and, not trusting in his own strength, takes refuge in grace, by whose gift he may turn away from evil and do good. But who takes refuge in grace except when a man's steps are directed by the Lord, and he will will his way? And so even to desire the help of grace is the beginning of grace; of which that man says, “And I said, Now I have begun; this is the change of the right hand of the Most High.” We must confess, then, that we have free choice both for doing evil and for doing good; but in doing evil each one is free from righteousness and a slave of sin, while in good no one can be free unless he has been set free by him who said, “If the Son sets you free, then you will be free indeed.” Nor is it in such a way that, once someone has been set free from the dominion of sin, he no longer needs the help of his deliverer; but rather in such a way that, hearing from him, “Without me you can do nothing,” he too says to him, “Be my helper; do not forsake me.” I rejoice that I have found this faith, which is without doubt the true and prophetic and apostolic and catholic faith, in our brother Florus as well; hence it is rather those who did not understand him who are to be corrected, and I think that by God's favour they have already been corrected.

For the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord must be understood as that by which alone men are set free from evil, and without which they do no good whatever, whether in thinking, or in willing and loving, or in acting: not only so that, by its showing, they may know what is to be done, but also so that, by its gift, they may do with love what they know. This inspiration of a good will and work the Apostle asked for those to whom he said, “Now we pray to God that you do nothing evil, not that we may appear approved, but that you may do what is good.” Who would hear this and not awake and confess that it is from the Lord God that we turn away from evil and do good? For the Apostle does not say, “We admonish, we teach, we exhort, we rebuke,” but says, “We pray to God that you do nothing evil, but that you do what is good.” And yet he also spoke to them and did all the things I have mentioned: he admonished, taught, exhorted, rebuked; but he knew that all these things that he did openly, planting and watering, were of no avail unless he who gives the increase in secret heard him praying for them. For, as the same teacher of the Gentiles says, “Neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase.” Let them not deceive themselves, then, who say, “Why are we preached to and commanded to turn away from evil and do good, if we do not do this, but God works in us to will and to work it?” But let them rather understand, if they are sons of God, that they are led by the Spirit of God to do what is to be done; and when they have done it, let them give thanks to him by whom they are led. For they are led so that they may act, not so that they themselves do nothing; and they are shown what they ought to do so that, when they do it as it ought to be done, that is, with love and delight in righteousness, they may rejoice that they have received the sweetness which the Lord gave, so that their land might yield its fruit. But when they do not act, whether by not doing it at all or by not doing it out of love, let them pray that they may receive what they do not yet have. For what will they have that they will not receive? Or what do they have that they have not received?

“Then,” they say, “let those who are over us only command us what we ought to do, and pray for us that we may do it; but let them not rebuke and reprove us if we have not done it.” On the contrary, let all be done; for the teachers of the churches, the apostles, did all: they commanded what should be done, they rebuked if it was not done, and they prayed that it might be done. The Apostle commands, saying, “Let all that you do be done with love.” He rebukes, saying, “Already it is altogether a fault in you that you have lawsuits among yourselves. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? But you yourselves do wrong and defraud, and that your brothers. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not possess the kingdom of God?” Let us hear him praying as well: “And may the Lord,” he says, “make you increase and abound in love toward one another and toward all.” He commands that love be had; he rebukes because love is not had; he prays that love may abound. O man, in the command learn what you ought to have; in the rebuke learn that it is by your own fault that you do not have it; in the prayer learn from where you may receive what you wish to have.

“How,” he says, “is it by my fault that I do not have what I have not received from him, when, unless it is given by him, there is absolutely no other source from which so great a gift may be had?” Bear with me a little, my brothers, as I contend for the truth of heavenly and divine grace, not against you, whose heart is right with God, but against those who mind earthly things, or against human thoughts themselves. For this is what they say who in their evil works do not want to be rebuked by the preachers of this grace: “Command me what I am to do; and if I do it, give thanks to God for me, who gave me to do it; but if I do not do it, I am not the one to be rebuked, but he is to be prayed to, that he may give what he has not given, namely that faithful love of God and of neighbour by which his commandments are done. Pray for me, then, that I may receive it, and through it do from the heart and with a good will what he commands. I would rightly be rebuked if I did not have it through my own fault, that is, if I could give it to myself or take it myself and did not do so, or if when he gave it I refused to receive it. But since the will itself is prepared by the Lord, why do you rebuke me because you see that I am unwilling to do his commandments, and not rather ask him to work in me even to will?”

To this we answer: You who do not do the commandments of God already known to you, and do not want to be rebuked, you must be rebuked for this very reason, that you do not want to be rebuked. For you do not want your faults to be shown to you; you do not want them to be struck, and a useful pain to come to you, so that you may seek the physician; you do not want to be shown to yourself, so that when you see yourself deformed you may long for one to reform you and beseech him not to let you remain in that ugliness. For it is your fault that you are evil, and a greater fault not to want to be rebuked because you are evil; as though faults were to be praised, or treated with indifference, so as to be neither praised nor blamed; or as though the fear of the man rebuked, or his shame, or his pain did nothing, or did anything else, when it stings to his health, than to make him ask the good One, and to make good men worthy of praise out of the evil men who are rebuked. For he who does not want to be rebuked and says, “Pray for me instead,” must be rebuked for this very reason, that he too may do for himself what he wants done for him. For that pain by which he is displeased with himself, when he feels the sting of rebuke, rouses him to a stronger longing for prayer; so that, by God's mercy, helped by an increase of love, he may cease to do shameful and grievous things and do things worthy of praise and thanks. This is the usefulness of rebuke, which is applied for healing, now greater, now less, according to the variety of sins; and it is healing when the heavenly physician looks upon the man. For it profits nothing unless he makes each one repent of his sin. And who gives this but he who looked on the apostle Peter as he denied him and made him weep? Hence the apostle Paul too, after saying that those who think otherwise must be rebuked with gentleness, at once added, “if perhaps God may give them repentance to know the truth, and they may recover themselves from the snares of the devil.” But why do these who do not want to be rebuked say, “Only command me, and pray for me that I may do what you command”? Why do they not rather, according to their own perverse sense, reject these two as well and say, “I want you neither to command me nor to pray for me”? For what man is shown to have prayed for Peter, that God might give him the repentance with which he wept that he had denied the Lord? What man instructed Paul in the divine commandments that belong to the Christian faith? When, then, he was heard preaching the gospel and saying, “For I make known to you, brothers, the gospel that was preached by me, that it is not according to man; for I did not receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but through the revelation of Jesus Christ,” might it be answered him, “Why do you trouble us, that we should receive and learn from you what you did not receive or learn from man? He who gave it to you is able to give it to us as he gave it to you”? But if they do not dare to say this, but allow the gospel to be preached to them by a man, although it can be given to a man even not through a man, let them grant also that they ought to be rebuked by those set over them, by whom Christian grace is preached; although we do not deny that God can correct whom he wills even with no man rebuking, and bring him to the healing pain of repentance by the most hidden and most powerful power of his medicine. And just as we must not cease praying for those whom we want to be corrected, even though, with no man praying for Peter, the Lord looked on him and made him weep for his sin, so rebuke must not be neglected, although God makes whom he wills to be corrected even without being rebuked. But a man profits by rebuke when he has mercy and helps, who makes whom he wills profit even without rebuke. But why these are called in this way, those in another, and others in yet another, in diverse and countless ways, so that they may be reformed, far be it from us to say that the judgment must belong to the clay rather than to the potter.

“The Apostle,” they say, “says, ‘For who makes you to differ? And what do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you glory as if you had not received it?’ Why, then, are we rebuked, reproved, censured, accused? What do we do, who have not received?” Those who say this want to appear free of blame in not obeying God, because obedience itself is certainly his gift, and it must be present in one in whom there is love, which is without doubt from God, and the Father gives it to his children. “This,” they say, “we have not received; why, then, are we rebuked, as if we could give it to ourselves and by our own choice refuse to give it?” And they do not notice that, if they are not yet regenerated, the first reason why, when they are reproached for being disobedient to God, they ought to be displeased with themselves is that God made man upright at the beginning of the human creation, and there is no iniquity with God. And therefore the first depravity, by which God is not obeyed, is from man; because, falling by his own evil will from the uprightness in which God first made him, he became depraved. Or is this depravity in man not to be rebuked because it is not peculiar to the one who is rebuked but common to all? On the contrary, what belongs to all is rebuked in each one as well. For it is not on that account no one's, because no one is free from it. These original sins are indeed called others' sins, because individuals draw them from their parents; but not without reason are they also called ours, because in that one man, as the Apostle says, all sinned. Let the condemnable origin, then, be rebuked, so that from the pain of rebuke the will to be regenerated may arise; if, that is, the one rebuked is a son of the promise, so that while the noise of rebuke sounds and lashes outwardly, God may work in him inwardly, by a hidden inspiration, even to will. But if one already regenerated and justified falls back by his own will into an evil life, he certainly cannot say, “I have not received,” because by his own free choice to evil he has lost the grace of God that he received. And if, stung by rebuke, he groans to his health and returns to similar good works, or even better ones, then indeed the usefulness of rebuke appears most plainly. But whether rebuke through a man comes from love or not, that it profits the one rebuked comes about only through God. Can such a one, still unwilling to be rebuked, say, “What have I done, who have not received?”, when it is clear that he received, and lost by his own fault what he had received? “I can,” he says, “I certainly can, when you reproach me because I have fallen back by my own will from a good life into an evil one, still say, ‘What have I done, who have not received?’ For I received the faith that works through love, but I did not receive perseverance in it to the end. Will anyone dare to say that this perseverance is not the gift of God, and that so great a good is ours in such a way that whoever has it cannot be told by the Apostle, ‘For what do you have that you did not receive?’, because he has it in such a way that he did not receive it?” To this we cannot indeed deny that perseverance in good, advancing to the end, is also a great gift of God, and is from none but him of whom it is written, “Every best gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” But rebuke of one who has not persevered is not on that account to be neglected, “lest perhaps God give him repentance, and he recover himself from the snares of the devil.” For the Apostle joined this sentence to the usefulness of rebuke, saying, as I mentioned above, “rebuking with gentleness those who think otherwise, if perhaps God may give them repentance.” For if we say that perseverance so praiseworthy and so happy belongs to man in such a way that it is not his from God, we first make void what the Lord says to Peter, “I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail.” For what did he ask for him but perseverance to the end? If this were from man to man, it would not have to be asked of God. Then, when the Apostle says, “Now we pray to God that you do nothing evil,” he is without doubt praying to God for their perseverance. For he does no small evil who forsakes the good, and, not persevering in good, is inclined toward the evil from which he ought to turn away. In that place too where he says, “I thank my God in every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my request with joy, for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Christ Jesus,” what else does he promise them from God's mercy but perseverance in good to the end? And again where he says, “Epaphras greets you, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, always striving for you in his prayers, that you may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God,” what does “that you may stand” mean but “that you may persevere”? Hence it is said of the devil, “He did not stand in the truth”: because he was there, but did not remain. For these people were certainly already standing in the faith. Nor do we pray for anything else, when we pray that he who stands may stand, than that he may persevere. Again the apostle Jude, when he says, “Now to him who is able to keep you without stumbling and to set you before the presence of his glory without blemish in rejoicing,” does he not most plainly show that it is God's gift to persevere in good to the end? For what else does he give who keeps without stumbling, so as to set them before the presence of his glory without blemish in rejoicing, but good perseverance? What is it, too, that we read in the Acts of the Apostles: “And the Gentiles, hearing this, were glad and received the word of the Lord, and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed”? Who could be ordained to eternal life except by the gift of perseverance? Since “he who perseveres to the end will be saved.” With what salvation, if not eternal? And when in the Lord's Prayer we say to God the Father, “Hallowed be your name,” what else do we say but that his name may be hallowed in us? Since this has already been done through the washing of regeneration, why is it asked daily by the faithful, unless that we may persevere in what has been done in us? For blessed Cyprian too understands it so; for, expounding the same prayer, he says: “We say, ‘Hallowed be your name,’ not because we wish for God that he be hallowed by our prayers, but because we ask of God that his name be hallowed in us. Besides, by whom is God hallowed, who himself hallows? But because he himself said, ‘Be holy, for I too am holy,’ we ask and beseech this, that we who have been hallowed in baptism may persevere in what we have begun to be.” See, the most glorious martyr holds that in these words the faithful of Christ ask daily that they may persevere in what they have begun to be. And no one doubts that whoever prays to the Lord that he may persevere in good confesses that such perseverance is his gift.

Since this is so, we rebuke, and rebuke justly, those who, when they were living well, did not persevere in it. For they were changed by their own will from a good life to an evil one, and are therefore worthy of rebuke; and if rebuke does them no good, but they persevere in their ruined life until death, they are also worthy of divine condemnation for ever. Nor will they excuse themselves by saying, as they now say, “Why are we rebuked?”, so then, “Why are we condemned, since we did not receive the perseverance by which we would have remained in good, so as not to turn back from good to evil?” By no means will they free themselves from just condemnation by this excuse. For if, as the Truth says, no one is set free from the condemnation that came through Adam except through faith in Jesus Christ, and yet those will not free themselves from this condemnation who will be able to say that they did not hear the gospel of Christ, since faith comes from hearing, how much less will those free themselves who will say, “We did not receive perseverance”? For the excuse of those who say, “We did not receive the hearing,” seems more just than that of those who say, “We did not receive perseverance”; since it can be said, “Man, in what you had heard and held you would have persevered if you had willed,” whereas it can in no way be said, “What you had not heard you would have believed if you had willed.” And therefore those who have not heard the gospel; and those who, having heard it and been changed for the better, did not receive perseverance; and those who, having heard the gospel, refused to come to Christ, that is, to believe in him, since he himself said, “No one comes to me unless it has been given him by my Father”; and those who because of their infant age could not believe, but could be absolved from the original guilt only by the washing of regeneration, and, not having received it, died and perished: none of these is separated from that lump which it is clear is condemned, since all go from one into condemnation. But some are separated, not by their own merits, but by the grace of the Mediator, that is, justified freely in the blood of the second Adam. So when we hear, “For who makes you to differ? And what do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you glory as if you had not received it?”, we ought to understand that no one can be separated from that mass of perdition which came about through the first Adam except one who has this gift, whoever has it, which he received by the grace of the Saviour. This apostolic testimony is so great that blessed Cyprian, writing to Quirinus, placed it under the heading in which he says, “That we must glory in nothing, since nothing is ours.” Whoever, then, are separated from that original condemnation by this bounty of divine grace, there is no doubt that the hearing of the gospel is provided for them, and when they hear, they believe, and in the faith that works through love they persevere to the end; and if ever they go astray, they are corrected when rebuked; and some of them, even if they are not rebuked by men, return to the way they had left; and some, having received grace, at whatever age, are withdrawn from the dangers of this life by a swift death. For he works all these things in them who made them vessels of mercy, who also chose them in his Son before the foundation of the world by the election of grace. “But if by grace, then no longer of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace.” For they are not called in such a way as not to be chosen, in respect of which it is said, “For many are called, but few chosen”; but since they are called according to his purpose, they are certainly also chosen through the election, as it is said, of grace, not of their own preceding merits, because grace is all their merit. Of such the Apostle says: “We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose; for those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers; and those whom he predestined, he also called; and those whom he called, he also justified; and those whom he justified, he also glorified.” Of these none perishes, because all are chosen. And they are chosen because they were called according to his purpose; a purpose, however, not their own but God's, of which he says elsewhere, “so that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of him who calls, it was said, ‘The elder shall serve the younger’”; and elsewhere, “not according to our works,” he says, “but according to his own purpose and grace.” When, then, we hear, “And those whom he predestined, he also called,” we ought to recognize those called according to his purpose; since he began with this, saying, “all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose,” and then added, “for those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers”; and having said this first, he added, “And those whom he predestined, he also called.” He wants us, then, to understand those whom he called according to his purpose, so that it may not be thought that among them some are called and not chosen, because of that saying of the Lord, “Many are called, but few chosen.” For whoever are chosen are without doubt also called; but not whoever are called are consequently chosen. Those, then, are chosen, as has often been said, who are called according to his purpose, who are also predestined and foreknown. If any of these perishes, God is deceived; but none of them perishes, because God is not deceived. If any of these perishes, God is overcome by human fault; but none of them perishes, because God is overcome by nothing. They are chosen to reign with Christ; not in the way Judas was chosen, for the work for which he was fit. For he was chosen by him who knows how to use well even evil men, so that through his damnable work that venerable work for which he himself had come might be accomplished. So when we hear, “Did I not choose you twelve, and one of you is a devil?”, we ought to understand that they were chosen through mercy, he through judgment; they to obtain his kingdom, he to shed his blood. Rightly follows the voice concerning the kingdom of the elect: “If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how has he not with him also given us all things? Who will bring a charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies; who condemns? Christ who died, yes, rather who also rose again, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.” And as for what strong gift of perseverance to the end they have received, let them go on and say: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are put to death all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter.’ But in all these things we more than conquer through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angel, nor principality, nor things present, nor things to come, nor power, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” These are meant in the letter to Timothy where, after it was said that Hymenaeus and Philetus were overturning the faith of some, it was at once added, “But the firm foundation of God stands, having this seal: The Lord knew those who are his.” The faith of these, which works through love, either does not fail at all, or, if there are some whose faith fails, it is restored before this life ends, and, the iniquity that had intervened being blotted out, perseverance to the end is reckoned to them. But those who are not going to persevere, and will so fall away from the Christian faith and way of life that the end of this life finds them so, are without doubt not to be counted in the number of these even at the time when they live well and godly. For they are not separated from that mass of perdition by the foreknowledge and predestination of God, and therefore are not called according to his purpose, and so not chosen either; but they are among the called of whom it is said, “many are called,” not among those of whom it is said, “but few chosen.” And yet who would deny that they are elect, when they believe and are baptized and live according to God? Plainly they are called elect by those who do not know what they will be, but not by him who knows that they do not have the perseverance that leads the elect to the blessed life, and knows that they so stand that he has foreknown they will fall.