Letters

³ This passing from death to life is meanwhile wrought in us by faith, which we have for the pardon of our sins and the hope of eternal life, when we love God and our neighbour; “for faith works by love,” and “the just shall live by his faith;” “and hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man sees, why does he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.” According to this faith and hope and love, by which we have begun to be “under grace,” we are already dead together with Christ, and buried together with Him by baptism into death; as the apostle has said, “Our old man is crucified with Him;” and we have risen with Him, for “He has raised us up together, and made us sit with Him in heavenly places.” Whence also he gives this exhortation: “If you then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sits on the right hand of God.

Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.” In the next words, “For you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God; when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall you also appear with Him in glory,” he plainly gives us to understand that our passing in this present time from death to life by faith is accomplished in the hope of that future final resurrection and glory, when “this corruptible,” that is, this flesh in which we now groan, “shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality.” For now, indeed, we have by faith “the first-fruits of the Spirit;” but still we “groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body: for we are saved by hope.”

While we are in this hope, “the body indeed is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness.” Now mark what follows: “But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwells in you.” The whole Church, therefore, while here in the conditions of pilgrimage and mortality, expects that to be accomplished in her at the end of the world which has been shown first in the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is “the first-begotten from the dead,” seeing that the body of which He is the Head is none other than the Church.