Month: August 2023

Christ And The Law — When Christ says to him, “If you would enter life, keep the commandments, the man expects Him to add immediately, “my commandments.”

“Which ones?” he asks. He was quite deceived in his expectation. For Christ did not answer him as he expected but simply pointed him to the law.

This is not because the law is perfection, for “no one is justified by the law,” as it is written, but because the life lived according to the law is a kind of introduction to the eternal life, briefly acquainting trainees to the things above. “For the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ.”

Christ is the perfection. For the beginning of good is to act justly, He says. Just action then is shown by the law, but goodness is shown by Christ. The law taught us to repay those who wish to harm us in “eye for eye, tooth for tooth.”

But Christ taught us to let go such balanced vengeance with a view to the greater good, teaching that “if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; and if anyone would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well.”

Saint Cyril of Alexandria

Courtesy of Holy Myrrh-Bearers Church of Swarthmore.