Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
"If you wish to become perfect." So he was not yet perfect; for nothing is more perfect than the perfect. And divinely the phrase "if you wish" made plain the self-determining freedom of the soul he was addressing. For the choice lay with the man, as a free being, while the giving lay with God, as Lord. And he gives to those who wish and are earnest and ask, so that in this way salvation may become properly their own. For God does not compel — for compulsion is hateful to God — but to those who seek he supplies, and to those who ask he grants, and to those who knock he opens. If, then, you wish — if you truly wish and are not deceiving yourself — acquire the thing that is lacking. "One thing you lack" — the one thing, my own thing. The good. That which is already above the law. That which the law does not give. That which the law does not contain, which belongs properly to the living. Indeed, the man who had fulfilled all the requirements of the law "from his youth" and had boasted of his surpassing achievements was not able to add this one thing to the whole — the thing singled out by the Savior, that he might receive eternal life, which he longed for. Instead he went away grieved, vexed at the command of life, for the sake of which he had been pleading. For he did not truly want life, as he claimed, but wrapped himself only in the reputation of good intention. And though he was capable of busying himself about many things, this one thing — the work of life — he was unable, unwilling, and too weak to accomplish. It was something like what the Savior said to Martha, who was busied about many things and being pulled about and troubled with serving, when she found fault with her sister because, having left off her service, she sat at his feet keeping a disciple's leisure: "You are troubled about many things; but Mary has chosen the good part, and it shall not be taken away from her." So too he was bidding this man, having let go of his many concerns, to be devoted and to sit attentively upon the one thing, while the grace of the one who bestows eternal life is added to it.
← All of Clement of Alexandria: Exhortation, Instructor & Miscellanies