TRV
Origen of Alexandria
Ante-Nicene · to AD 325
2,651 passages across 61 books of the Bible · Who was this?
On Romans
20 of 296-
Romans 6:21
Someone who turns his heart and mind to righteousness will undoubtedly blush and condemn himself when he thinks back on what he did before, when he was acting under the power of sin, for “the end of those things is death.” But what death, I ask? Certainly not the death that is common to us all.… Is it perhaps that which is called the death of sin, as when Scripture says: “The soul which sins will surely die.” Or should it rather be understood as referring to that death by which we die with Christ to sin and put an end to wickedness and crimes, so that it can be said, as it is here, that death is the end of them? Paul compares fruits with fruits and declares that the fruits of sin for which we are now ashamed because we have been set free from sin and become servants of God end in death, whereas the fruits of righteousness, which lead to sanctification, end in eternal life.
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Romans 6:22
Paul repeats what he has already said [in verse 18] but with an important difference. There he said that we have become slaves to obedience, which leads to righteousness, but here he says that we have become slaves to God. By saying this, Paul shows that after someone has been set free from sin he ought to serve righteousness and perform all the virtues in the first instance and then ascend by the way of spiritual progress to the point where he becomes a slave of God, even though to be a slave of righteousness is also to be a slave of God. For Christ is righteousness, and to serve Christ is to serve God. Nevertheless, there is a scale of spiritual perfection, and there are different levels of virtue. For this reason Christ is said to reign, because he is righteousness, until such time as the fullness of all virtue is complete in everyone. Then, when the measure of perfection is reached, it is said that he will give up the kingdom to God the Father, so that God may be all in all.
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Romans 6:23
Paul employs a military metaphor to good effect by saying that death is the wage due to those who fight under King Sin. But God does not give his soldiers a wage, as if they have something owing to them. Rather, he gives them the gift of grace, which is eternal life in Christ.The death being referred to here is not the death which separates the body from the soul but the death by which because of sin the soul is separated from God.
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Romans 7:1
This is similar to what Paul says later on [in verse 14]: “We know that the law is spiritual.” It was not only Paul who knew that the law was spiritual but these people too, who had been taught by it and who were spiritual themselves.… Before the coming of Christ there were many Jews who grew in spiritual knowledge and saw God’s glory, e.g., Isaiah, of whom John testifies when he says: “Isaiah said this because he saw his glory and spoke of him.”
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Romans 7:2
The law of the letter must die so that, free at last, the soul may marry the spirit and receive the marriage of the New Testament.
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Romans 7:3
Did not the law itself contain a foreshadowing of something like this when it commanded that a widow who was childless (for her husband had been impotent) should marry his brother? For the law of the Spirit is the brother of the law of the letter, and the woman will be better able to bear fruit from him.
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Romans 7:4
When we were in the flesh and living according to it, we were unable to serve the newness of the Spirit on account of those sins which the law itself, which was in our members, nourished in order that they might bear fruit to death.… But when Christ died for us and we died to sin along with him, we were set free by him from the law of sin in which we were held, and now we can serve the law of God in newness of Spirit and not in the dead form of the law.
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Romans 7:6
Some people have wrongly interpreted “the new life of the Spirit” as if it meant that the Spirit himself was new and did not previously exist or teach the prophets of old. Such people do not realize how greatly they are blaspheming! For the same Spirit is in the law as in the gospel. He dwells eternally with the Father and the Son and is eternal just as they are. It is not that he is new but that he makes believers new when he leads them out of their former sins to a new life and a new obedience to the religion of Christ, turning carnal people into spiritual ones.
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Romans 7:7
What Paul is really saying here is this: “Understand what law this is which I am talking about, which if it did not exist, no one would recognize sin.” Was it by the law of Moses that Adam recognized his sin and hid himself from the face of God? Was it by the law of Moses that Cain recognized his sin … or Pharaoh?… This is the law of which we have often spoken, which is written in men’s hearts not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, and which teaches everyone what he should and should not do. This is the law by which a man recognizes his sin. Here Paul says openly that the natural law was unknown to us until we were old enough to know the difference between good and evil and to hear our conscience tell us what it was.It is not that we did not have sin in us before this, but we did not know what it was. But when natural law and reason implanted itself in us as we were growing up, it began to teach us what was good and forbid us to do what was bad. Thus when it said: “You shall not covet,” we learned what we did not previously know, viz., that covetousness is wrong.
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Romans 7:8
I do not know why it is, but things which are forbidden are desired all the more. Thus it happened that although the commandment is holy and just and good, since because it forbids evil it must be good, yet in forbidding covetousness it provoked and inflamed it all the more, with the result that something good wrought death in me.
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Romans 7:12
If the law is found to be good, undoubtedly we shall believe that he who gave it is a good God. If, however, it is just rather than good, we shall think of God as a just lawgiver. But Paul the apostle says in no roundabout terms: “The commandment is holy and just and good.” It is plain from this that Paul has not learned the doctrines of those [Gnostics] who separate the just from the good. Rather, he had been instructed by that God and illuminated by the Spirit of that God, who is holy and good and just at the same time.
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Romans 7:14
Someone who is carnal and sold under sin does not know that the law is spiritual, so how can Paul say this of himself? In fact, when he says that he is carnal and sold under sin he is playing the part of a teacher of the church by taking on the role of the weak, as he said elsewhere: “I became weak to the weak, so that I might win the weak.”We are taught by the Psalms that it was the custom in Holy Scripture for holy men to take on the role of sinners and for teachers to assume the weaknesses of their pupils: “I am utterly bowed down and prostrate; all the day I go about mourning. For my loins are filled with burning, and there is no soundness in my flesh. I am utterly spent and crushed; I groan because of the tumult of my heart.”
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Romans 7:15
Paul does not say that the weak man does not know what he is doing but rather that he does not understand why he is doing it.Here Paul shows that even the man who is carnal and sold under sin may try, by the instinct of natural law as it were, to resist evil, but he is overcome by sin and is subdued unwillingly. This often happens, for example, when someone decides not to react to provocation, but in the end his anger gets the better of him and he gives in to it against his will. In other words, he gets angry when he does not want to get angry.… Someone who is not yet spiritual will be defeated in instances like these, even against his own will, because that will is not yet strong or resilient enough to retain control of him even to the point of death in his struggle for truth.
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Romans 7:17
The law of nature is introduced as being in agreement with the law of God … For if we assent to the law of God according to our will, the evil which we do is no longer ours; rather, it is sin which is at work within us, i.e., the law and will of the flesh, which makes us captive to the law of sin which is in our members.The kind of person Paul is talking about here is not one in whom Christ does not dwell and who is a stranger to good works but rather someone who has started on the path of wanting to do what is right but has not yet been able to achieve his desires. This kind of weakness exists in those who have accepted the first stages of conversion, but although they want to do everything which is good this desire has not yet prevailed. For instance, someone might decide in himself that it is wrong to get angry and determine not to do it, but since by long custom and daily habit the vice of anger has controlled him, it resists his will and breaks out in the usual way.
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Romans 7:25
Perhaps someone will say that here the apostle Paul abandons the role of the weak man, which he assumed in the preceding [verses], and talks directly about himself. For he says that he serves the law of God with his mind but the law of sin with his flesh, as if to imply that the power of sin is so great that even an apostle cannot escape it. Moreover, he also said elsewhere: “I pommel my body and subdue it, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.” But someone who takes this interpretation seems to me to be inflicting every soul with despair, because then there would be nobody who did not sin in the flesh. In other words, everyone would be serving the law of sin in the flesh. Rather, it seems to me that here Paul maintains the role he has adopted and plays the part of the weak man, whom we have already described.It appears that in this passage Paul is teaching us that the mortification of the flesh, of which he has already spoken, is not something which happens overnight but rather is a gradual process, because the force of habit is such and the attraction of s…
Perhaps someone will say that here the apostle Paul abandons the role of the weak man, which he assumed in the preceding [verses], and talks directly about himself. For he says that he serves the law of God with his mind but the law of sin with his flesh, as if to imply that the power of sin is so great that even an apostle cannot escape it. Moreover, he also said elsewhere: “I pommel my body and subdue it, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.” But someone who takes this interpretation seems to me to be inflicting every soul with despair, because then there would be nobody who did not sin in the flesh. In other words, everyone would be serving the law of sin in the flesh. Rather, it seems to me that here Paul maintains the role he has adopted and plays the part of the weak man, whom we have already described.It appears that in this passage Paul is teaching us that the mortification of the flesh, of which he has already spoken, is not something which happens overnight but rather is a gradual process, because the force of habit is such and the attraction of sin is so great that, even though our mind may want to do what is right and has decided to serve the law of God, yet the lusts of the flesh continue to urge him to serve sin and obey its laws instead. -
Romans 8:1
After having taught what conflict there is in those who are caught in the struggle between a mind which lives according to the law of God and the desires of the flesh which lead them into sin, Paul now goes on to talk not about those who are partly in the flesh and partly in the Spirit but about those who are wholly in Christ. He declares that there is nothing in them worthy of condemnation.
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Romans 8:2
The law of the Spirit of life is the same thing as the law of God.… For to serve the law of God and to be under the law of the Spirit is to serve Christ. To serve Christ is to serve wisdom, which is to serve righteousness, which is to serve truth and all related virtues.
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Romans 8:3
In my opinion, Paul here as in many other passages divides the law of Moses into two parts, one of which is carnal and the other spiritual. Moreover, he calls the literal observance of the law its carnal meaning.… This observance is both impossible and inadequate. For what is more impossible than observance of the sabbath according to the letter of the law? For it is commanded that no one should go outside his house, nor move away from his place, nor carry any burden. When the Jews, who observed the letter of the law, realized that these things were impossible, they glossed the law in silly and ridiculous ways.… And what can I say about the system of sacrifices, which is now totally impossible to observe since there is no temple, no altar and no place to perform the sacrifices? In these instances I would say that the law is not just impossible or inadequate; it is dead!Paul shows that Jesus had the likeness of sinful flesh but not that he had sinful flesh in the same way we do. For we are all human beings who have been born from the seed of a man who has slept with a woman, and we ca…
In my opinion, Paul here as in many other passages divides the law of Moses into two parts, one of which is carnal and the other spiritual. Moreover, he calls the literal observance of the law its carnal meaning.… This observance is both impossible and inadequate. For what is more impossible than observance of the sabbath according to the letter of the law? For it is commanded that no one should go outside his house, nor move away from his place, nor carry any burden. When the Jews, who observed the letter of the law, realized that these things were impossible, they glossed the law in silly and ridiculous ways.… And what can I say about the system of sacrifices, which is now totally impossible to observe since there is no temple, no altar and no place to perform the sacrifices? In these instances I would say that the law is not just impossible or inadequate; it is dead!Paul shows that Jesus had the likeness of sinful flesh but not that he had sinful flesh in the same way we do. For we are all human beings who have been born from the seed of a man who has slept with a woman, and we can only say, along with David, that: “In sin my mother conceived me.” But the one who was born without contact with a male but only because the Holy Spirit came upon a virgin and covering her with the power of the Most High gave birth to a spotless body which had the same nature as ours but without the corruption of sin which is passed on by the act of conception. -
Romans 8:5
Those who live according to the flesh are the Jews, whom Paul says are Israel according to the flesh. They know what belongs to the law of the flesh because they interpret the law according to the flesh. Those who live according to the Spirit are the people whom Paul calls Jews in spirit, not in the letter.
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Romans 8:6
Whoever interprets the law according to the flesh, i.e., according to the letter, does not come to Christ, who is life.