Fr. Josiah Trenham
“If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old things have passed away; behold new things have come.”[1] We come to the Holy Gospel at last and to the Christian way of life! The fullness of time has come and God has sent forth His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. How everything has changed! No aspect of human life remains as it was before Christ came. Everything has died with Him, and everything has been raised and transfigured in Him. All for us has been redeemed, transformed, deified, elevated, and, in a word, made Christian.
When Jesus came to earth He found us
with lame limbs, weak and failing, and He perfected our bodies and
restored them to a healthy condition, just as He corrected, molded,
improved, and fulfilled the Old Law. St. Ephrem the Syrian describes
some of the healing effects of the Incarnation on human nature in his Hymn 37 On Virginity,
“His body was newly mixed with
our bodies, and His pure blood has been poured out into our veins, and
His voice into our ears, and His brightness into our eyes. All of Him
has been mixed into all of us by His compassion, and since He loves his
church very much, he did not give her the manna of her rival. He had
living bread for her to eat. Wheat, the olive and grapes, created for
our use- the three of them serve You symbolically in three ways. With
three medicines You healed our disease. Humankind had become weak and
sorrowful and was failing. You strengthened her with Your blessed bread,
and You consoled her with Your sober wine, and You made her joyful with
Your holy chrism.”[2]
God has become man, the chasm bridged,
the mediation effected, righteousness perfected and modeled on the
earth, death slain, the devil defeated, sin atoned for, the curse
annulled, Hades destroyed, Christ resurrected, the God-man ascended,
Paradise opened, human flesh enthroned in heaven, the throne of David
occupied, the Kingdom established, the demons trampled, and man
dignified. God is with us! Understand all ye nations and submit
yourselves![3]
The Resurrection of Virginity and Marriage
The newness of Christian man expresses
itself clearly in his marriage and sexual life. With the redemption and
elevation of human nature has come the redemption and elevation of
everything associated with it, including marriage. With the resurrection
of Jesus Christ has come the resurrection of holy virginity, lost at
the Fall. All of the outrageous and unspeakably glorious Gospel
realities enumerated above have provoked an immense sea change in our
way of life.
From Earth to Heaven
In the Gospel, the focus is no longer on
the earth as it was in the Law, but on heaven. Until death had been
destroyed by Jesus, and His Kingdom established on the earth, the
promise of heavenly reward was an obscure dream and ineffective
as a motivating factor for the people of God, which is why in the Law
the Lord motivated His people by the promise of earthly
blessing and security. Read Deuteronomy chapters 27-29 or Leviticus
chapter 26. There you will find both the blessings and the curses of the
Old Covenant. Covenant-keepers reaped tremendous earthly rewards:
long-life, immunity from bodily diseases, seasonable weather, fruitful
harvests, urban security, civil peace, protection from wild animals,
fruitful child-bearing, and victory in war. You get the picture.
Covenant-breakers, on the other hand, reaped painful earthly curses:
sudden terror, consumption and fever, barren fields, empty harvests,
defeat in war, death of livestock and children, and all this as
“vengeance for the covenant.”[4] Do you see the emphases? Earthly things.
Jesus did not teach this way. Instead
of a constant appeal to earthly blessings and curses, He appealed to the
realities of heaven and hell, and to the highest motivation of all,
love. The Lord promised the Kingdom, and great rewards and “a good
defense” at His dread judgment seat. In fact, no one spoke more often
and in more ways of the reality of eternal rewards, of heaven and hell,
than the Lord of love Himself. Why would Jesus speak so much about hell? Because He does not want anyone to go there. He called upon His disciples to “seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness,”[5]
and not to worry about earthly things at all. By His example and
teaching He taught us to despise earthly rewards and punishments, as
grown-ups no longer value children’s toys. We are not to fear those who
can kill the body, but rather to fear Him who can destroy both the body
and the soul in hell.[6] Christians are to have their eyes keenly fixed upon the rewards of the Kingdom, and upon the terrors of hell-fire.
Unlike Jews, Christians were not
promised that their bodies, children, and livestock would be perfectly
healthy and fruitful. Christians have not spent their lives looking to
possess of an earthly promised land, or full barns, or prosperous
fields, or protection from disease, or fruitful physical reproduction,
though these things remain blessings from God. Christians are promised
and are to be ready at all times for just the opposite in this life. Our
lot is persecution, “All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will
be persecuted.”[7]
Our lot is suffering, “For to you it has been granted for Christ’s
sake, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake.”[8]
Our lot is holy martyrdom, “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him
deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wishes
to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake
and the Gospel’s shall save it.”[9]
We do not wear crosses around our necks for nothing! We are preparing
to die for Christ. No longer is death feared; rather it is now scorned
and despised, as has been demonstrated by the innumerable martyrs that
have adorned the Church with their blood for the last two thousand
years.
Martyrs, and faithful Christians who are
willing to be martyrs, show that they are not seeking earthly rewards,
but rewards as much better than those offered Old Testament believers as
heaven is better than earth. We have been blessed, according to the
Holy Apostle, with “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.”[10]
Because Jesus is in heaven, heaven is where our heart is, where our
mind is, and where our hope is. “Our citizenship is in heaven, from
which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.”[11]
We are not pining after children and earthly prosperity, but for
Paradise itself. We are not seeking the increase of money, but the
increase of the Holy Spirit.[12] We are not focused on visible and temporal things, but invisible and eternal things.[13] The hope of the people of God is no longer a long life on earth, but eternal life in the Kingdom of God.[14]
From Child to Adult
These new heavenly aspirations of Christians are firmly rooted and supported in a new Gospel ethic established by Jesus Himself. New Testament Law, the “Law of Christ,”[15] is a more demanding moral code than the Old Testament. Christ’s Law brings the Old Testament Law to fulfillment,[16] and applies it with a deeper, more internal and searching application for Christians.[17] Religious laws in the New Covenant are thus much stricter than are those in the Old Covenant.[18]
Unlike the epoch of the Old Covenant, we New Covenant believers have
climbed to a “loftier peak, we strip ourselves for a more rigorous
athletic contest. For what else is commanded of us but that we live like
those intellectual and incorporeal powers?”[19]
Now, in the age of the Church, we are in a race with the angelic
powers, and this has tremendous implications for marriage, virginity,
and sexuality.
From Jew to Christian
This new and higher goal of life in the Christian Church is propagated by Jesus because man is now new and higher himself.[20]
Not only has Jesus’ Incarnation, perfect earthly life, death,
plundering of Hades, Resurrection, Ascension, Session at God’s right
hand, and sending forth of the Holy Spirit upon all flesh on the Day of
Pentecost, fundamentally redeemed and elevated human nature, but the
grace of God which has been poured out upon mankind has greatly
increased. The divine assistance given to man in the New Covenant is
immense, for we have become partakers of the divine nature itself.[21]
We have been mystically united in an intimate communion with the Holy
Trinity. God in us, and we in God: this is the Christian life.[22]
This union of God and man is effected, maintained, and deepened by the
Holy Mysteries instituted by Christ Himself and administered in His
Body, the Church, by the stewards of these mysteries, the Holy Apostles
and their successors.[23] No longer are we living in the shadows and with the types
of the Holy Mysteries as the righteous of the Old Covenant were. They
had a type of baptism when they were baptized into Moses in the cloud
and the sea, but we have the real thing. They had a type of the
eucharist when they ate the manna in the wilderness and drank from the
rock, which followed them, but we have the real thing.[24]
These types, being merely shadows of and pointers to the glorious
Mysteries to come, did not bring radical regeneration to the people,
however. They still were ensnared by sexual immorality, for which the
Lord caused 23,000 of them to fall in a single day.[25]
“Our body, before Christ’s coming, was
an easy prey to the assaults of sin. For after death a great swarm of
passions entered also. And for this cause it was not lightsome for
running the race of virtue. For there was no Spirit present to assist,
nor any baptism to mortify. But as some horse that answereth not the
rein, it ran indeed, but made frequent slips, the Law meanwhile
announcing what was to be done and what not, yet not conveying into
those in the race anything over and above exhortation by means of
words.”[26]
Now the end of the ages has come upon
us. We have been baptized into Jesus Christ, and in this baptism have
been mystically united to Christ, have received complete remission of
sins, and have been born again of water and the Spirit. We have died to
the old man who was enslaved to lusts, and have been united to Jesus’
Resurrection in our baptisms so that we might walk in newness of life.[27] We have been sealed by God’s Holy Spirit of promise in chrismation, our own personal Pentecost.[28] By eating Jesus’ body and drinking Jesus’ blood in the holy eucharist, we abide in Him and have eternal life.[29]
Thus, man has been ennobled and received
more divine aid, yet at the same time the ethical bar has been greatly
elevated. This is how we are to understand His command that we surpass the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees. With the coming of more grace have also come more and greater trials.[30]
Christ has transformed human capacity, giving man wings without
changing fundamental human nature. It is like iron coming into contact
with fire: the iron becomes fire, but retains its own nature. With the
coming of the Holy Spirit, the flesh of man has become lighter, “wholly
spiritual,” “crucified in all parts,” and “flying with the same wings as
the soul.” This transformation has rendered self-denial possible and
turned hunger, stripes, and prisons into painless undertakings.[31]
Old Covenant ways of living, including the areas of marriage and
sexuality, are beneath New Covenant Man. St. John Chrysostom says,
“Since we have been vouchsafed a larger
and more perfect teaching, God having no longer spoken by the prophets,
but ‘having in these last days spoken to us by His Son,’ let us show
forth a conversation far higher than theirs, and suitable to the honor
bestowed on us. Strange would it be that He should have so far lowered
Himself, as to choose to speak to us no longer by His servants, but by
His own mouth, and yet we should show forth nothing more than those of
old. They had Moses for their teacher, we, Moses’ Lord. Let us then
exhibit a heavenly wisdom worthy of this honor, and let us have nothing
to do with the earth.”[32]
Let us have nothing to do with the
earth. We will see now how Christians expressed their new life in the
elevation of marriage, and the embrace of holy virginity.
[2] McVey (1989), p. 425.
[3]
These powerful words from Isaiah (LXX) 8:10b, 9a, and again 10b, are
chanted as a troparion during the Service of Great Compline. Cf. Essey
(1989) The Liturgikon, Engelwood, NJ: Antakya Press, pp. 76-77.
[4] Leviticus 26:25.
[5] St. Matthew 6:33.
[6] St. Matthew 10:28.
[7] 2 St. Timothy 3:12.
[8] Philippians 1:29.
[9] St. Mark 8:34-35.
[10] Ephesians 1:3.
[11] Philippians 3:20.
[12] St. Luke 11:13.
[13] 2 Corinthians 4:18.
[14] St. John 17:3.
[15] St. James 1:25.
[16] St. Matthew 5:17-20.
[17] St. John Chrysostom, Homily 16 on the Gospel of St. Matthew,
Vol. 10, pp. 103-115. This entire homily is devoted to explaining just
how Christ did not abolish the Law, but fulfilled it. At the same time
Chrysostom would agree with Tertullian who wrote, “The New Testament is
compendiously short, and freed from the minute and perplexing burdens of
the Law.” Against Marcion, ANF, Vol. 3, p. 349.
[18] St. John Chrysostom, Homily 19 on the Statues, NPNF,
Vol. 9, p. 469. As an example of this St. John writes, “If under the
law it is necessary for a thief to give four-fold, how much more under
grace?” Homily 52 on the Gospel of St. Matthew, NPNF, Vol. 10,
p. 326. And another example, “If, where the getting of wealth was
allowed, and the enjoyment of it, and the care of it, there was such
provision made for the [sic] succoring the poor, how much more
in that Dispensation, where we are commanded to surrender all we have?”
St. John Chrysostom, Homily 4 on Ephesians, NPNF, p. 69.
[19] St. John Chrysostom, Against those co-habiting with women; Shore (1983), p. 202.
[20] St. John Chrysostom, Homily XI in Romans, NPNF, Vol. 11, p. 411.
[21] 2 Peter 1:4.
[22] St. John 14:23.
[23] 1 Corinthians 4:1.
[24] 1 Corinthians 10:1-4.
[25] 1 Corinthians 10:8-9.
[26] Homily XI in Romans, NPNF, Vol. 11, p. 411.
[27] Romans 6:3-4.
[28] 2 Corinthians 1:21-22.
[29] St. John 6:50-58.
[30] St. John Chrysostom, Interpretation of the Prophecy of Isaiah, Prologue, p. 36.
[31] St. John Chrysostom, Homily 13 on Romans, NPNF, Vol. 11, p. 435.
[32] St. John Chryosostom, Homily 15 on the Gospel of St. John, NPNF, Vol.14, p. 53.
By Fr. Josiah Trenham
This article first appeared in The Word Magazine, 2011, Vol. 55, No. 5, pp. 5-8 and is posted here with permission.
V. Rev. Josiah Trenham, Ph.D. (Dunelm) is the Pastor at St. Andrew Orthodox Church, Riverside, California.
Source-Pemptousia.com
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