ACC ~ 2 Corinthians 5 v16b

IMITATING THE BEHAVIOR OF HEAVEN. SEVERIAN OF GABALA: When Christ was a man, he lived in a human way, fulfilling the law. But when he died and rose again, immortal, he abolished the things of the law and took on the ways of heaven. Therefore those who have been baptized must also put the ways of the world to death and imitate the pure behavior of heaven. PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH.

REGARDING HIM THUS NO LONGER. THEODORET OF CYR: There was a time when Christ had a body which was capable of suffering, but after his suffering and death it became incorruptible and immortal. COMMENTARY ON THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS 317.

THE BODY OF LIFE. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA: After the resurrection it was the same body which had suffered except it no longer had the human infirmities in it. For we assert that it was no longer receptive of hunger, or of weariness or of anything else of such a kind but was thereafter incorruptible, and not only this but also life-giving. For it is the body of life, that is, the body of the Only Begotten, for it has been made resplendent with the glory most proper to his divinity and is known to be the body of God. Therefore, even if some might say that it is divine, just as, of course, it is the human body of a man, he would not err from proper reasoning. Whence I think that the very wise Paul said, “And even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him so no longer.” For being God’s own body, as I said, it transcends all human bodies. LETTER 45.12.

THE GREAT ADVOCATE. GREGORY OF NAZIANZUS: Even at this moment he is, as man, interceding for my salvation, until he makes me divine by the power of his incarnate humanity. “As man,” I say, because he still has with him the body he assumed, though he is no longer “regarded as flesh”—meaning the bodily experiences, which, sin aside, are ours and his. This is the “Advocate” we have in Jesus—not a slave who falls prostrate before the Father on our behalf. Get rid of what is really a slavish suspicion, unworthy of the Spirit. It is not in God to make that demand nor in the Son to submit to it; the thought is unjust to God. No, it is by what he suffered as man that he persuades us, as Word and Encourager, to endure. That, for me, is the beginning of his “advocacy.” THEOLOGICAL ORATION 30.

CONTINUITY AND GLORIOUS DIFFERENCE. JEROME: Just as before the Lord suffered his passion, when he was transformed and glorified on the mountain, he certainly had the same body that he had had down below, although of a different glory. So also after the resurrection, his body was of the same nature as it had been before the passion but of a higher state of glory and in more majestic appearance, in fulfillment of the words of Paul: “So that henceforth we know no one according to the flesh. And even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him so no longer.” HOMILY 61 ON PSALMS.

2 Cor