Exhortation to the Greeks 9.84

… and greed.” With such a witness convicting the folly of human beings and calling on God, what else remains for the unbelieving but judgment and condemnation? But the Lord does not grow weary of exhorting, frightening, urging, rousing, admonishing; he wakes them from sleep and raises up those who have gone astray from their darkness. “Awake,” he says, “you who sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ the Lord will shine on you,” the sun of the resurrection, begotten “before the morning star,” who has given life by his own rays. Let no one, then, despise the Word, lest he unwittingly despise himself. For the Scripture says somewhere: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as in the provocation, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers tested me by trial.” If you wish to learn what the trial is, the Holy Spirit will explain it to you: “And they saw my works,” he says, “for forty years. Therefore I was angry with this generation and said: They always go astray in their heart; they did not know my ways; as I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest.” See the threat! See the exhortation! See the honor! Why then do we still turn grace into wrath, instead of receiving the Word with open ears and welcoming God as a guest in pure souls? For great is the grace of his promise, if today we hear his voice; and this “today” is extended day by day, as long as it is called “today.” Until the consummation, both the “today” and the learning remain; and then the true “today,” the unending day of God, stretches out through the ages.