Homilies on Second Corinthians

^3. “Wherefore we henceforth know no man after the flesh.”

For if all died and all rose again; and in such sort died as the tyranny of sin condemned them; but rose again “through the laver of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost;” he says with reason, “we know none” of the faithful “after the flesh.” For what if even they be in the flesh? Yet is that fleshly life destroyed, and we are born again by the Spirit, and have learned another deportment and rule and life and condition, that, namely, in the heavens. And again of this itself he shows Christ to be the Author. Wherefore also he added,

“Even though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know Him so no more.”

What then? Tell me. Did He put away the flesh, and is He now not with that body? Away with the thought, for He is even now clothed in flesh; for this Jesus Who is taken up from you into Heaven shall so come. So? How? In flesh, with His body. How then does he say, “Even though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth no more?” For in us indeed “after the flesh” is being in sins, and “not after the flesh” not being in sins; but in Christ, “after the flesh” is His being subject to the affections of nature, such as to thirst, to hunger, to weariness, to sleep. For “He did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth.” Wherefore He also said, “Which of you convicts Me of sin?” and again, “The prince of this world comes, and he has nothing in Me.” And “not after the flesh” is being thenceforward freed even from these things, not the being without flesh. For with this also He comes to judge the world, His being impassible and pure. Whereunto we also shall advance when “our body” has been “fashioned like His glorious body.”