ACC ~ Matthew 16 v26

WHERE IS THE PROFIT?

ORIGEN: The first statement is ambiguous. At first it could be taken this way: Someone who loves being alive and thinks the present life is good manages his own life in order to live well according to the flesh, fearing death since by death he loses life. In this way, wanting to save his own life, he will lose it, having removed it beyond the boundaries of blessedness. Yet someone despising the present life because of my teaching and convinced of eternal life, even facing death for the sake of the truth may, because of piety, lose his own life in death. Yet the same one who lost his life because of me will instead save and keep it.

We could interpret the saying, however, in another way. If anyone knows what salvation is and wants to save his own life, after bidding farewell to his life, denying himself and taking up his cross and following me, he will, in terms of the world, have lost his life. But, having lost his life for me and my teaching, he will gain in the end this kind of loss, salvation. COMMENTARY ON MATTHEW 12.26. [1]

[1] GCS 40:127-28; ANF 9:464.

WHAT IS A LIFE WORTH?

ORIGEN: But what shall a person give in exchange for his life, would seem, if spoken in answer to a query, to indicate a person who trades his life; a person who, after sin, has given up his substance in order that his property might feed the poor. He would in that way receive salvation. Yet, in a positive light, I think this indicates that there is nothing in a person that he can give in trade for his life that will buy off death. God, however, has ransomed us all with the priceless blood of Jesus [1] so that “we are bought with a price,” [2] “having been purchased not with perishable things like silver and gold but with the priceless blood of the spotless, flawless Lamb,” [3] Christ. COMMENTARY ON MATTHEW 12.28. [4]

[1] 1 Pet 1:19. Origen turns the words of Jesus to a more specific and restricted meaning, applying them to the condition of the sinner who, enslaved by sin, cannot pay any price to free his soul. Jesus paid this price freely through his blood, since he was not subject to sin.

[2] 1 Cor 6:20.

[3] 1 Pet 1:18-19.

[4] GCS 40:131; ANF 9:465.

THE DISCIPLES’ HUMAN WEAKNESS

CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA: Since the disciples had not yet received power from on high, [1] it was perhaps not unnatural that they should fall occasionally into human weaknesses and, thinking something of this sort, say, “How shall someone deny himself? Or how can someone, by losing his own life, save it?” …

Therefore, to lead them away from reasonings of this sort and, so to speak, forge courage anew within them, communicating to them a longing for the glory to come, he says, “There are some standing here,” hinting at Peter and the sons of Zebedee; for these were taken up with him at the transfiguration, [2] which Christ calls “the kingdom,” as demonstrating the ineffability of [his] authority and the immutable nature of [his] kinship with the Father. And in this [saying] he also hints at the importance and the fearfulness of his second coming, showing this coming to be a prelude and, as it were, a confirmation of that. For he will come “in the glory of God, the Father,” not in the humble condition that is commensurate with us. FRAGMENT 195. [3]

[1] Lk 24:49.

[2] The transfiguration immediately follows the prediction of the future coming of the Son of man in his kingly dignity. Hence Origen means that this prediction has come true with the transfiguration itself.

[3] MKGK 216-17.