Commentary on Romans 7.2–7.3

Having set out this distinction of the name “spirit,” let us now see what is meant by what he said: “For you did not receive a spirit of servitude again in fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption of sons, in whom we cry: Abba, Father.” It is written … [the scan has lost text here] … “A son honors his father, and a servant his master; and if I am a Father, where is my honor? And if I am a Lord, where is my fear? says the Lord almighty.” And it is certain that one becomes a son of God through the Spirit of adoption, but a servant of God through the spirit of servitude. The beginning, then, of serving God, since “the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord,” is fulfilled through the spirit of fear, while someone is still called a little child. And for little children fear is a pedagogue. Hence the Apostle too says of such a little one: “As long as the heir is a little child, he differs nothing from a servant, though he is lord of all; but he is under tutors and stewards until the time set beforehand by the father; so we too, when we were little children, were serving under the elements of this world.” You see how Paul, according to the wisdom granted him by God, has here called the spirits which are given in fear the tutors and stewards of little children, who keep each one of us in fear while he is a little child according to the inner man, until he comes to that age at which he deserves to receive the Spirit of adoption of sons and is now a son and lord of all. “For all things,” he says, “are yours,” and with Christ God has given us all things.

This, then, is what Paul teaches: that after we have died with Christ and his Spirit has come to be in us, we have not received again a spirit of servitude in fear, that is, we have not been made again little children and beginners, but, as perfect, we have now once received the Spirit of adoption, in which Spirit we cry: Abba, Father. For no one calls on a father except a son. And as to his adding “Abba, Father,” … [the scan has lost text here] … The Spirit of adoption himself, then, through whom someone is adopted as a son, bears witness and confirms our spirit that we are sons of God, after we have come from the spirit of servitude into the Spirit of adoption, when there is now nothing of fear in us, that is, we do nothing for dread of punishment, but accomplish all things for love of the Father. And it is well said that the Spirit of God bears witness not to the soul but to the spirit, which is the better part in man.

And to distinguish those who are led by the spirit of servitude in fear from those led by the Spirit of sons, this too may be taken: that Abraham gave his inheritance to Isaac, but to the sons of the handmaids or concubines he is said to have given not an inheritance but gifts or presents. In this without doubt it is foreshadowed that not even those who still serve God in fear are wholly despised, but there are gifts for them, there are presents; but the inheritance, through which they are glorified together with Christ, belongs to those who deserve to receive the Spirit of adoption. After this the Apostle now joins a syllogism from what follows and says: If we have received the Spirit of adoption, then we are sons. And if we are sons, without doubt we are also heirs. For a servant looks for a wage, a son hopes for an inheritance. And again he adds another conclusion: “heirs indeed of God, but joint heirs with Christ.” One becomes an heir of God when he deserves to receive the things of God, that is, the glory of incorruption and immortality, the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden … [the scan has lost text here] … “will transform the body of our lowliness to be conformed to the body of his glory”; and also when he has deserved to attain what the Savior himself says: “Father, I will that where I am, these too may be with me.” There is besides that dignity of the joint heirs of Christ, that the Father has given all judgment to the Son. And … [the scan has lost text here] … suffers with Christ who says, “I have been crucified with Christ,” and, “I live, yet no longer I, but Christ lives in me”; and again who says: “If we have died with him, we shall also live with him; if we endure, we shall also reign with him”; or also who can say that “what was lacking of the sufferings of Christ I fill up in my body.” And as God highly exalted Christ, because he had humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, and gave him the name which is above every name, so too those who suffer with Christ and imitate the example of his sufferings God exalts with him in glory. For this is the way which Christ has opened to his joint heirs: that they should be exalted not from strength, nor from wisdom, but from humility, and should attain the glory of the eternal inheritance from patience in tribulations.

“For I consider that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come, which will be revealed in us. For the expectation of the creation awaits the revelation of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to vanity, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself too will be freed from the servitude of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the sons of God. For we know that the whole creation groans together and suffers pain together until now.” If someone considers that, in return for one’s becoming a son of that most high God, and an heir of his goodness and glory, and a joint heir of Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, even if he remains without complaint in the observance of all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord, and continues in them with watchful mind; even if he endures all the kinds of punishments that can be inflicted on human nature from within or from without; or even if someone endures those things which are recorded to have been written of Job, where not only the things outside him, in his possessions and his children, … [the scan has lost text here] … to the saints, and to those things which eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man, he can understand how Paul, considering these things more deeply, says: “For I consider that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come, which will be revealed in us.” For nothing can be found worthy, or comparable, to the glory to come. For how would you compare the mortal with the immortal, or the visible with the invisible, or the temporal with the eternal, or the perishable with the everlasting? Yet if in the present life certain seeds, as it were, of the future glory can be gathered, these seeds, I say, are gathered from tribulations and sufferings; as the same Apostle says elsewhere: “For our present momentary and light tribulation works for us beyond measure an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, while we look not at the things that are seen but at those that are not seen.” For he shows by this that he who looks at those things that are not seen, and are eternal, counts every tribulation, whatever has befallen him, however cruel, however long it seems, momentary and light; even if he is subjected to tortures, to goads and hooks, at the time when his body is afflicted with punishments, if he looks to the future glory which is to be revealed, and considers how after such tortures this body of his lowliness will be transformed so as to be made conformed to the body of the glory of the Son of God, he counts the present tribulation momentary and light, but reckons the weight of the future glory heavy, that is, great and eternal. And the more he sees the punishments of tribulations multiplied for him, the more he understands that the weight and greatness of glory is being heaped up for him.

And that a certain measure and greatness of glory is gathered from the quantity of tribulations I think David the prophet also judges, when he says: “According to the multitude of my sorrows in my heart, your consolations have gladdened my soul.” Hence I think that in the present life the consolation which is given to the righteous is given according to the measure of torments and wounds; but the glory to come, of which the Apostle says that … [the scan has lost text here] … we brought forward, certain seeds gathered from the momentary and light labor of our tribulations will prepare for us beyond measure an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure. And that in the present life too divine consolation is granted to the righteous according to the measure of their sufferings the same Apostle confirms, writing in the second letter to the Corinthians: “Because as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds.” And he did not say “abounds beyond measure,” or “beyond all measure,” but as great as the sufferings are, so great are the consolations. And as to his saying, “to the glory to come, which will be revealed in us,” I think we have already shown sufficiently above, concerning the difference of glories, which is the glory that has already been revealed and which is that which is to be revealed; and how what we now see we see through a mirror and in a riddle, but then, when the Son of Man comes in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels, we shall see face to face; as John also said: “For we shall see him as he is.” And that glory too may be seen as the one to be revealed, when the doctrine about each of the principles of the world, or of the things that are above the world, begins to be known, and the treasures of his wisdom and knowledge to be revealed.

After this he says: “For the expectation of the creation awaits the revelation of the sons of God.” The Apostle, wishing to show how great and of what kind is the glory which is to be revealed in him, or in those who have sweated out the contests of Christ wholly, says that the creation too, namely the rational creation, has a certain expectation and bears the hope of that wonder in which the glory of the sons of God is to be revealed; that is, when the things are revealed that have been prepared for those who will deserve to be sons of God, or certainly when, the veil by which they are covered having been taken away from them, they themselves are made manifest as sons of God. And what is the creation that awaits the revelation of the sons of God? This one, he says, which is now subjected to vanity; subjected, however, not willingly, nor of its own accord, but by the will of him who dispenses all things. For his sake, then, it was subjected; and subjected not on the condition that it should always remain subjected to vanity, but with a certain hope. And what this hope is he tells, saying: “because the creation itself too,” he says, “will be freed from the servitude of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the sons of God.” And Paul says that he and those like him know “that the whole creation groans together and suffers pain together until now,” or, as is found in other copies, “groans together and travails until now.” And to groan together and suffer pain together is to groan or suffer pain with another who suffers pain or groans; that is, when one has no cause of one’s own for groaning or pain, but groans for him who has cause for groaning or pain. And he says the creation does this because it is subjected to vanity and placed in the servitude of corruption. Let these things be explained as far as the order of the apostolic discourse itself goes.

Now, going over it again, let us discuss more closely what this vanity is to which the creation is said to be subjected, and what this corruption from whose servitude it hopes to be freed. It seems to me that these things are said of this material and corruptible substance of the body. For corruption rules over nothing except the body. For that inner man who has been created according to God and made in the image of God is incorruptible and invisible, and according to its own proper nature can even be called incorporeal. But the outer man is called both corporeal and corruptible; for which reason Paul too said: “For even if our outer man is being corrupted, yet the inner is being renewed.” And the renewal of the inner man, since it is rational and mind, consists in the knowledge of God and the capacity for the Holy Spirit. But so that we may commit to our papers something, briefly and concisely, about such deep matters, let us gather an image from the very substance of the inner man, that is, of the soul and mind, of how “the creation was subjected to vanity, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope”; and, if it seems good, let us set Paul himself in the middle, whose soul or mind, which is his inner man, certainly passes beyond and rises above all that is bodily, visible, subject to sense and sight, and is made capable of the divine nature itself. Yet this so great and excellent substance of his soul, which holds the reasons and understanding of heavenly and divine senses, was (for what causes, God will see) subjected to the servitude of a corruptible body, and bound to its vanity. For consider the necessities of the body: the appetite for food, the shame of digestion, the embarrassment of renewing posterity, how offspring is sown, how it is brought forth, how it is nourished; and see in these how great a vanity there is, how great a corruption, to which the creature, the soul, noble and rational though it be, was subjected unwillingly; subjected, however, in hope, namely hoping for the time when it will be freed, when the time of freedom of the sons of God has come. This, then, is what the Apostle himself was saying more openly of himself elsewhere too, that while we are in this tent we groan. This Wisdom too was saying through Solomon, that the corruptible body weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling presses down the mind that thinks many things. And the same Paul: “For while we are in the body we are away from the Lord,” and he desires rather to be away from the body and present with the Lord. He indicates this, and sets it out much more plainly, in that place too where he says: “I am hard pressed between the two, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for your sake.” In this he plainly shows that he did not willingly, as far as concerns the things of which he was conscious in his own soul, serve this corruption and vanity, but because of him who so willed these things, and for our sake, that we might be saved. He remains, then, in the flesh for our sake; but when the sons of God have been revealed, and gathered into one through the Church, which he has espoused to one husband, to present her as a chaste virgin to Christ, then he too will be freed from the servitude of corruption, as he himself says: “For I am already being offered, and the time of my release is at hand. I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; for the rest there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness.” This is to be freed from the servitude of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the sons of God.

But from these examples, if it seems good, climb to higher things too, and see how the ministries of the sun itself and of the moon and of the stars of heaven and of the whole world are subjected to vanity and serve corruption. For for the uses of men they nourish the crops, produce the fruits of trees and the grass of the fields; … [the scan has lost text here] … I am invited by the prophetic words to understand something of this kind of the archangels too. For what would you find of so great vanity and so great corruption as to wage wars in this world, to stir up battles of kings and nations against one another? See, then, that in these too the chief office of the archangelic work is held, as Daniel the prophet testifies when he says that an archangel spoke to him, who told him that he had fought against the prince of the Persians, “and no one,” he says, “was a help to me, except Michael your prince.” Through each of these, then, the rational creation is found to be subjected to vanity, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope. For the hope is that at some time there will be an end of these bodily and corruptible things. For this rational creation has this expectation, that the revelation of the sons of God may come about, for whose sake angels are sent into ministry, so that they too, together with those to whom they have ministered, may receive the inheritance of salvation; so that there may be one flock of earthly and heavenly beings and one shepherd, and God may be all in all.

And to confirm more plainly what he had said, he added: “For we know that the whole creation groans together and suffers pain together until now.” Above he had said, “For I consider that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come”; and while there he said he considered, here he says he knows that the whole creation groans together and suffers pain together, so that there may be nothing of doubt in this sense. For the creation, although it was subjected unwillingly, yet since it yields to the will of him who subjected it, shows also a certain affection, in love, toward those for whose sake it seems to be subjected, and grieves for their griefs and groans for their groans. But if, as is found in other copies, we read “groans together and travails,” we shall take “travails” in that sense in which the Apostle says he begot through the gospel those whom he brought forth to the light through faith in Christ; or as he said of others elsewhere: “My little children, for whom I am again in travail until Christ is formed in you.” The creation too, then, travails for those whom it begets to salvation. And if this too seems to readers to need inquiry, why above he named the creation three times and nowhere said “all creation,” but at the last says, “For we know that the whole creation groans together and suffers pain together,” it can be understood thus: that it is not indeed the whole creation that groans and suffers pain, that is, which lies subject to the necessity of a corruptible body; but it is the whole creation that suffers with those who suffer and groans with those who groan. And the whole higher creation watches our contests and struggles, and grieves when we are overcome, but rejoices when we overcome; and far more than to us it belongs to them to rejoice with those who rejoice and to weep with those who weep.