EXPLANATION OF THE MORAL LAW (THE TEN COMMANDMENTS)
57. THE COMMANDMENT TO LOVE OUR ENEMY IS A GENUINE COMMANDMENT
And what, I ask you, do these statements mean, which they, have dared to mock with their absurd glosses? “Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; pray for those who persecute you; bless those who curse you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.”
[<400544>Matthew 5:44-45, conflated with <420627>Luke 6:27-28.] Who will not here conclude conclude with Chrysostom that the obligatory character of these utterances reveals them clearly to be not exhortations but
imperatives? f311 What is left for us when we are erased from the number of the sons of God? Yet in their view monks alone will be the sons of the Heavenly Father; they alone will dare call upon God the Father. In the meantime what will become of the church? According to this same reasoning, it will be relegated to the heathen and publicans. For Christ says: “If you are kind to your friends, what favor do you expect? Do not even the heathen and publicans do the same?” [<400546>
Matthew 5:46-47, conflated with <420632>Luke 6:32 and <401817>Matthew 18:17.] We shall indeed be fortunate if the mere name of Christians be left to us, though the inheritance of the Heavenly Kingdom be taken away from us! Augustine’s argument is no less convincing: “When the Lord forbids us to commit adultery, he prohibits us from touching the wife of an enemy just as much as that of a friend. When he forbids theft, he allows us to steal nothing at all, whether from a friend or from an enemy.” f312 Paul relates these two commandments — “Do not steal” and “Do not commit adultery” — to the rule of love. In fact, he teaches that they are included in the commandment
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself” [<451309>
Romans 13:9].
Therefore, either Paul must have been a false interpreter of the law, or it necessarily follows from the commandment that we are to love our
enemies just as our friends. For this reason, those who so wantonly shake off the common yoke of the sons of God truly betray themselves as sons of Satan. Now, you may doubt whether they spread this dogma abroad more out of stupidity or out of shamelessness. Every one of the church fathers declares as a fact that these are actual commandments. Even in Gregory’s time it was not doubted, as he stoutly affirms. That these are commandments he considers indisputable. f313 And how stupidly they argue! This would, they say, be a burden too heavy for Christians! As if we could think of anything more difficult than to love God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our strength! Compared with this law,
everything ought to be considered easy — whether the requirement to love our enemy or to banish all desire for revenge from our hearts. All these are indeed hard and difficult for our feebleness, even to the least detail of the law [cf. <400528>
Matthew 5:28; Luke 26:17]. It is the Lord in whom we act virtuously. “Let him give what he commands, and command what he will.”
f314 To be Christians under the law of grace does not mean to wander unbridled outside the law, but to be engrafted in Christ, by whose grace we are free of the curse of the law, and by whose Spirit we have the law engraved upon our hearts [<243133>
Jeremiah 31:33]. This grace Paul called
“law,” not in the strict sense but alluding to the law of God, with which he was contrasting it [<450802>
Romans 8:2]. Under the term “law” these men are philosophizing about nothing. 58. Distinction of mortal and venial sins invalid!
What they call “venial sin” is something of the same sort: either secret ungodliness, which violates the First Table, or direct transgression of the last commandment. Here is their definition: venial sin is desire without deliberate assent, which does not long remain in the heart. f315 But I say: it cannot even steal into the heart except for lack of those things which are required in the law. We are forbidden “to have other gods.” When the mind, laid low by the crafty devices of unbelief, looks around elsewhere;
when it is assailed by a sudden desire to transfer its blessedness to another place — where do these fleeting impulses come from but from some empty place in the soul, ready to receive such temptations? And not to prolong the argument farther, we have been commanded to “love God with all our heart, with all our mind, and with all our soul.” Unless, then, all the powers of the soul are intent on loving God, we have already abandoned obedience to the law. For the enemies who rise up in our conscience against his Kingdom and hinder his decrees prove that God’s throne is not firmly established therein. It has been demonstrated that the last
commandment properly applies to this. f316 Has some desire pricked our heart? We are already guilty of covetousness and consequently are
transgressors of the law. For the Lord forbids us not only to resolve upon and to plot something that involves another’s loss, but even to be kindled and burn with covetousness. But God’s curse ever presses upon the transgression of the law. There is no reason, then, for us to exempt any covetings, however light, from the judgment of death. Augustine says: In weighing sins “let us not bring forward false balances to weigh what we please and as we please, according to our own opinion, saying, ‘This is heavy’; ‘This is light.’ But let us bring forward the divine balance of the Holy Scriptures, as from the Lord’s treasury, and in that balance let us weigh what is heavier. No — not weigh; rather, let us recognize what the
Lord has already weighed.” f317 What does Scripture have to say on this matter? Surely when Paul calls death “the wages of sin” [<450623>
Romans 6:23], he shows that this loathsome distinction was unknown to him. Since we are unduly inclined to hypocrisy, this palliative ought by no means to be added to soothe our sluggish consciences.