Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
And I could bring before you countless Scriptures, of which not even “one small stroke of a letter shall vanish unaccomplished”; for it was the Holy Spirit, speaking through the Lord's own mouth, who uttered these things. “Do not, then,” it says, “my son, despise the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are rebuked by him.” O the surpassing love of humankind! Not as a teacher to pupils, nor as a master to servants, nor treating men as though he were a god, but “gently, as a father would,” he admonishes his sons. And then, while Moses confesses that he was “afraid and trembling” on hearing about the Word, do you, who listen to the divine Word itself, feel no fear? No dread? Do you not at once revere and hasten to learn it thoroughly — that is, hasten toward salvation, fearing the wrath, loving the grace, emulating the hope, so that you may escape the judgment? Come, come, O my young ones; for “unless you become again as little children and are born anew,” as the Scripture says, you will not receive back the Father who truly is, “nor will you ever enter the kingdom of heaven.” For how is a stranger permitted to enter? But when, I think, he becomes a registered citizen and gets back the Father, then he will be “among those of the Father's household,” then he will be deemed worthy to inherit, then he will share the paternal kingdom with the true-born son, the “beloved”; for this is the firstborn church, made up of a host of good children; these are those “firstborn whose names stand written in the heavens,” who keep festival together with so many “myriads of angels”; and we are the firstborn children, the nurslings of God, the true friends of the “Firstborn,” the first of all people to have come to know God, the first to be torn away from sins, the first to be separated from the devil. But now some are so much the more godless as God is the more loving of humankind; for he wishes us to become sons instead of slaves, while some have disdained even to become sons. O the great madness — you are ashamed of the Lord! He promises freedom, and you flee into slavery. He grants salvation, and you are borne down toward death. He bestows eternal life, and you wait upon punishment; and you look ahead to “the flame the Lord has readied for the devil and his messengers.” On this account the blessed apostle affirms, “I bear witness in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the nations walk, in the emptiness of their reasoning, darkened as they are in understanding and cut off from the life of God, on account of the unknowing that dwells in them, on account of their hardened hearts; who, having become callous, have given themselves over to licentiousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.” When such a witness convicts the folly of humankind and calls upon God, what else remains for the unbelieving but judgment and condemnation? Yet the Lord does not grow weary of exhorting, of striking fear, of urging forward, of rousing, of admonishing; indeed he wakens from sleep and raises up out of their darkness those who have gone astray: “Awake,” he says, “you who sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ the Lord will shine upon you” — the sun of the resurrection, who is begotten “before the morning star,” who has granted life by his own rays. So let no one belittle the Word, or he will, without realizing it, belittle himself. For Scripture says somewhere: “Today, should you hear his voice, do not steel your hearts, as happened in the rebellion, on the day of trial in the desert, where your ancestors put me to the test and tried me.” And should you wish to grasp what that trial was, the Holy Spirit will lay it out for you: “And they saw my works,” it says, “for forty years; therefore I was displeased with that generation, and said, They always go astray in heart; and they did not know my ways; so, in my anger, I vowed that never would they come into my rest.” See the threat; see the exhortation; see the honor. Why, then, do we still turn grace into wrath, and, instead of receiving the Word with open ears, entertain God as a guest within pure souls? For vast is the favor of what he has promised, if this day we listen to his voice; and this “today” keeps expanding day after day, for as long as it is still named “today.” Until the consummation, both the “today” and the learning continue; and then the truly real “today,” God's unfailing day, is extended coextensive with the ages. So let us, without end, heed the voice of the Word of God; for this “today” stands as a picture of the age that never ends, and the day is a symbol of the light, and the Word is light for humankind, through whom we are illumined to see God. Reasonably, then, for those who believe and obey, grace will overflow all the more; but toward those who resist, whose hearts stray off course, and who have failed to recognize the ways of the Lord — the very ways John was ordered to straighten and make ready — God feels displeasure and directs his warning; and truly the ancient, wandering Hebrews saw that warning fulfilled in a veiled fashion; for it is said that they never came into that rest, on account of disbelief, until finally, under the guidance of Moses's successor, they discovered through bitter experience that rescue could come no way but through trusting as Jesus trusted. But the Lord, being a lover of humankind, calls all people “to the full knowledge of the truth,” he who sends the Paraclete. What, then, is this full knowledge? Reverence toward God; for “reverence toward God is profitable for all things,” as Paul says, “holding the promise both of the present life and of the one still to arrive.” At what price, O men, would you have agreed to buy everlasting salvation, if it were for sale? Not even if one measured out the whole Pactolus, that legendary stream of gold, would he count a wage equal to the worth of salvation. Do not, then, grow weary; it is possible for you, if you will, to purchase the priceless salvation with a treasure of your own, with love and faith in life, which is a reward worth reckoning. This price God gladly accepts. “For we have set our hope on the living God, who is the savior of all people, especially of those who believe.” But others, rooted fast to the world, like a kind of seaweed clinging to rocks in the sea, have no regard for immortality — like the old man of Ithaca, who longed not for the truth and the fatherland in heaven, nor indeed for the light that truly is, but for the smoke of his own hearth. But reverence toward God, which makes a man like to God so far as is possible, inscribes as its fitting teacher God himself, the only one able to fashion, in a manner worthy of it, a man in the likeness of God. Knowing this teaching to be truly divine, the apostle says, “But you, O Timothy, have known from infancy the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise unto salvation through faith in Christ.” Truly sacred are the writings that make sacred and make divine, and it is these very same writings — the compositions made up of sacred letters and syllables — that the same apostle, consistently, calls “God-breathed,” “useful for teaching, for rebuke, for setting right, for schooling in what is just, so that the one who belongs to God may stand fully formed, fitted out for every good deed.” No one could be so struck with wonder at the exhortations of the other holy men as at those of the Lord himself, the lover of humankind; for he has no other work than this alone — that man be saved. At any rate he cries aloud, hastening us to salvation: “The kingdom of heaven has drawn near”; he turns men who come near to him toward fear. Likewise the Lord's apostle also, urging on the Macedonians, turns into the mouthpiece of the divine voice, saying, “The Lord is near; take care that we be not found empty.” But you are so fearless — or rather, so faithless — that you obey neither the Lord himself nor Paul, and that though he was bound for the sake of Christ. “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” Faith will usher you in, practice will instruct you, and Scripture will bring you up as a child, saying, “Come, children, listen to me; I will show you what it means to fear the Lord.” Then, addressing those who believe already, it adds briefly, “Who is the man who desires life, who loves to see good days?” We are they, we shall say, the worshippers of the Good, the emulators of good things. Listen, then, “you who stand far off”; listen, “you who stand close by”; the Word has never been concealed from a single soul; it is a light held in common, shining out over every person; no one is a Cimmerian where the Word is concerned. Let us hasten to salvation, to the new birth; let us, many though we are, press on to be drawn together into a single love, matching the oneness of that unique being; let us, doing good in due measure, pursue unity, seeking out the good Monad. And this union that comes from the many, having received a divine harmony out of a multitude of voices and out of scattering, becomes a single symphony, following the one leader of the choir and teacher, the Word, and resting upon the truth itself, saying “Abba, Father”; this true voice God welcomes from his children, and reaps it as the first of their fruits.
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