Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Now that these things have already been dealt with, it would follow next that we sketch out for ourselves the true life of our Educator, Jesus, and show how he educates the man who is in Christ. His characteristic manner is neither excessively fearsome nor altogether slack through mere kindliness. He gives commandments and at the same time shapes them in such a way that we are able to carry them out. And it seems to me that this same one both shaped man from clay, gave him new birth through water, caused his growth through the Spirit, and instructed him through the word, leading him toward adoption as a son and toward salvation by holy commandments, so that, having reshaped the earth-born man by advancement into a holy and heavenly man, he might most fully accomplish that divine utterance: "Let us make man according to our image and likeness." And indeed Christ has become this in full, which God spoke, while the other man is understood as bearing only the image. But we, O children of a good Father, nurslings of a good Educator, let us fulfill the Father's will, let us listen to the Word, and let us truly copy in ourselves the saving life of our Savior; from here already meditating on the heavenly citizenship by which we are deified, let us anoint ourselves with the ever-blooming and unfading fragrance of gladness, having as our clear model of incorruptibility the Lord's manner of life, and pursuing the footsteps of God—him alone it befits to consider and to care how and in what way the life of men might become healthier. But he also prepares us, for the sufficiency of life and its freedom from excess, and further for a lightly-girded and readily loosed traveler's readiness unto the eternity of well-being, teaching each of us to be his own storehouse. "Do not be anxious," he says, "about tomorrow," meaning that the one enrolled to Christ ought to take up a life that is self-sufficient, self-serving, and moreover lived a day at a time. For we are not being educated for war, but for peace. War indeed requires much preparation, and luxury needs abundance; but peace and love, simple and unbusied sisters, need neither weapons nor extravagant provision—their nourishment is the Word, the Word who has been allotted the office of guiding and instructing, from whom we thoroughly learn frugality and freedom from pride, and altogether love of freedom and love of humanity and love of the beautiful—in a word, being made like to God through kinship of virtue. But labor on and do not grow weary; for you will become such as you do not hope and could not even imagine. And just as there is one training proper to philosophers, another to orators, and another to wrestlers, so too there is a noble disposition, fitted to a purpose that loves the beautiful, arising from the education of Christ; and women trained in its practice are distinguished, in their dignified way of walking and reclining and eating and sleeping and lying down and diet and the rest of their conduct—for such training in the Word is not overstrained, but well-tuned. It is for this reason that the Word has also been called Savior, he who has discovered for men these rational remedies for right perception and salvation, watching for the opportune moment, exposing the harm, explaining the causes of the passions, cutting out the roots of irrational desires, commanding what must be abstained from, and offering to the sick all the antidotes of salvation; for this is the greatest and most kingly work of God, to save mankind. Now the sick are not annoyed with a physician who gives them no advice toward health; but toward the divine Educator, who neither keeps silent nor passes over in negligence the acts of disobedience that lead to destruction, but rather exposes them and checks the impulses that strain toward them and thoroughly teaches the counsels befitting right conduct—how should we not acknowledge the greatest gratitude? The greatest gratitude, then, must be acknowledged to him. For the rational creature—I mean man—do we say he needs anything other than to behold the divine? And I say that human nature must also behold and live as truth guides it, admiring beyond measure both the Educator himself and his commandments, seeing how fitting and harmonious they are to one another; according to which image we too must fit ourselves to the Educator, making our word harmonious with our deeds, and so in reality live.
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