Origen of Alexandria

It is obvious from this that the apostle is inviting everyone who has understood that he is justified by faith and not by works to that “peace which passes all understanding,” in which the height of perfection consists. But let us investigate further in order to see what the apostle means when he talks about peace, and especially about that peace which is through our Lord Jesus Christ. Peace reigns when nobody complains, nobody disagrees, nobody is hostile and nobody misbehaves. Therefore, we who once were enemies of God, following the devil, that great enemy and tyrant, now, if we have thrown down his weapons and in their place taken up the sign of Christ and the standard of his cross, have peace with God. But this is through our Lord Jesus Christ, who has reconciled us to God through the offering of his blood.Let us therefore have peace, so that the flesh will no longer war with the spirit, nor will the law of God be opposed by the law of our members. Let there not be in us “yes” and “no,” but let us all agree, let us all think alike, let there be no dissension either among ourselves or between us and others outside our ranks, and then we shall have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. But let it most definitely be known that anyone in whom the vice of wickedness is found can never have peace. For as long as he is thinking how he can hurt his neighbor, as long as he seeks after ways of causing harm, his mind will never be at peace.
But if you ask me how a righteous man can have peace when he is attacked by the devil, who maintains his wars of temptation, I would say that such a man has greater peace than anyone else.… For the apostle says that we have peace with God knowing full well that war against the devil is a guarantee of peace with God. We shall have even greater peace with God if we continue our active hostility toward the devil and fight against the vices of the flesh. For the apostle James says: “Resist the devil and he will flee from you; draw near to God and he will draw near to you.” You see that James too felt that he was getting closer to God by resisting the devil.

How we have access to grace through our Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior himself tells us “I am the door,” and “No one comes to the Father except by me.” … This door is the truth, and liars cannot enter in by the door of truth. Again, this door is righteousness, and the unrighteous cannot enter in by it. The Door himself says: “Learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart.” So neither the irascible nor the proud can enter in by the door of humility and gentleness. Therefore, if anyone wants to have access to the grace of God which according to the word of the apostle comes through our Lord Jesus Christ and in which Paul and those like him claim to stand, it is essential that he be cleansed of all the things which we have listed above. Otherwise those who do what is contrary to Christ will not be allowed to go in by that door, which will remain closed and keep out those who are incompatible with him.Why does Paul talk about the hope of glory and not just about the glory itself? After all, Moses saw the glory of God, and so did the people of Israel when God’s house was built. But this glory, which was visible, the apostle Paul dared to claim would pass away … whereas the hope here is of a glory which will never pass away. It is the glory mentioned in Hebrews in connection with Christ: “He reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature.”

Perhaps someone will object that the woman sinned before the man and even that the serpent sinned before her … and elsewhere the apostle says: “Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived.” … How is it then that sin seems to have come in through one man rather than through one woman?… Here the apostle sticks to the order of nature, and thus when he speaks about sin, because of which death has passed to all men, he attributes the line of human descent, which has succumbed to this death because of sin, not to the woman but to the man. For the descent is not reckoned from the woman but from the man, as the apostle says elsewhere: “For man was not made from woman but woman from man.”In this context the word world is to be understood either as the place in which people live or as the earthly and corporeal life in which death has its location. It is to this world, that is, to this earthly life, that the saints say that they are crucified and dead.
The death which entered through sin is without doubt that death of which the prophet speaks when he says: “The soul which sins shall surely die.” One might rightly say that our bodily death is a shadow of this death. For whenever a soul dies, the body is obliged to follow suit, like a shadow. Now if someone objects that the Savior did not sin, nor did his soul die because of sin, yet nevertheless his body suffered death, we would answer that the Savior, although he did not himself sin, nevertheless by the assumption of human flesh is said to have become sin. As a result, although he owed his death to nothing else, nor was he bound to anything outside himself, yet for our salvation he voluntarily took on this shadow as part of his incarnation. As he himself said: “I have power to lay my soul down, and I have power to take it again.” …
The apostle stated most categorically that the death of sin has passed to all men because all have sinned.… Therefore even if you say that Abel was righteous, still he cannot be excused, for all have sinned, including him.

It seems to me that Paul’s description of death and its power may be compared to the entry of a tyrant who wants to usurp the authority of the legitimate ruler and after seizing the entrance to the kingdom by the treachery of the gatekeeper then tries to get public opinion on his side. To a great extent he succeeds in this and can therefore claim that the kingdom belongs to him. It was during the rule of this tyrant that Moses, a leader chosen by the legitimate ruler, was sent to the occupied peoples in order to revoke the laws of the civil administration and teach them to follow the laws of the true king.… This leader did all he could to deliver at least some people from the control of sin and death, and in the end he managed to form a nation composed of those who chose to associate with him. At the command of the king, he instituted sacrifices which were to be offered with a certain solemnity, as was only fitting, and by which their sins would be forgiven. And so at last a part of the human race began to be set free from the rule of sin and death.…Many manuscripts read that death reigned over even those whose sin was not like that of Adam. If this reading is correct, then it may be said that it refers to that death which has kept souls in hell, and we would understand that even the saints have passed away because of this law of death, even though they were not subject to the law of sin. Therefore it may be said that Christ descended into hell not only in order to show that he could not be held by death but also that he might liberate those who found themselves there not because of the sin of transgression but merely because of their mortal condition.…
What did Paul mean when he said that Adam was a type of the one who was to come? Was he speaking of some future man who had not yet come when he was writing, or was he thinking about Christ, who would have been in the future from Adam’s point of view but was already in the past when Paul was writing? I do not know how Adam can be regarded as a type of Christ, unless it is by contrast.… I think it is better to say that Paul understood Adam as a type of Christ’s second coming. Thus just as death has taken control of this age because of the one Adam, and the entire human race has been subjected to mortality, so in the coming age life will reign through Christ, and the entire human race will be blessed with immortality.

In order for this point to be clearer, let us inquire as to what it means to live to sin and what it means to die to sin. Just as living for God means living according to God’s will, so living for sin means living according to sin’s will, as the apostle says [in verse 12] below. To live to sin therefore, means to obey the desires of sin.… To die to sin is the opposite of this; it means refusing to obey the desires of sin.… If someone dies to sin, it is through repentance that he dies.Note how carefully Paul has weighed his words when he says: “Can we still live in sin?” To go on in this way means to continue something without interruption. If someone does this it is clear that he has never been converted to Christ. But it sometimes happens not that someone continues in sin but that after having broken with it he goes back to his vomit and becomes most unfortunate, since after having rejected the rule of sin and death and accepted the rule of life and righteousness he returns to the control of sin and death. This is what the apostle calls the shipwreck of faith.
However, although someone may continue in sin, although he may persist in the rule and power of death, nevertheless I do not consider that this rule of death is eternal in the same way that the rule of life and of righteousness is eternal, particularly as I hear the apostle telling me that death is the last enemy which must be destroyed. For if the eternity of death were analogous to the eternity of life, then death would not be opposed to life but its equal. One eternal is not contrary to another eternal but identical with it. But it is certain that death is contrary to life, and therefore it is certain that if life is eternal, death cannot be eternal as well. For this reason, the resurrection of the dead is necessary. For when the death of the soul, which is the last enemy, is destroyed, then this common death which we have described as the shadow of that one will of necessity be abolished. Then there will be room for the resurrection of the dead, when the rule of death is destroyed along with death itself.