ACC ~ Romans 6 v21

THE MEANING OF DEATH. CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA: Death is the fellowship of the soul in a state of sin with the body, and life is separation from that sin. STROMATA 4.3.

THE END OF THOSE THINGS IS DEATH. ORI-GEN: Someone who turns his heart and mind to righteousness will undoubtedly blush and condemn himself when he thinks back on what he did before, when he was acting under the power of sin, for “the end of those things is death.” But what death, I ask? Certainly not the death that is common to us all. … Is it perhaps that which is called the death of sin, as when Scripture says: “The soul which sins will surely die.” Or should it rather be understood as referring to that death by which we die with Christ to sin and put an end to wickedness and crimes, so that it can be said, as it is here, that death is the end of them? Paul compares fruits with fruits and declares that the fruits of sin for which we are now ashamed because we have been set free from sin and become servants of God end in death, whereas the fruits of righteousness, which lead to sanctification, end in eternal life. COMMENTARY ON THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS.

THE DOUBLE MEANING OF DEATH. AMBROSIASTER: What are the fruits of sin? Learning from them what a good life is we are ashamed by the way we lived so wickedly before. And it is not only that the opinion of the pagans is wicked but also the heresy which is found most of all in Phrygia, to which only a morally corrupt person would belong, in which there is no sacrament and Christian piety has died out. Behold a freedom full of sins and bound by wickedness, whose deeds have only shame as their reward and whose end is death! Our departure is the end of this life and its deeds, and either death or life will succeed it. But here the word death has a double meaning, for it shifts from one kind of death to another. COMMENTARY ON PAUL’S EPISTLES.

RECOGNIZING YOUR PAST LIFE FOR WHAT IT WAS. CHRYSOSTOM: If even the recollection of your former slavery makes you ashamed, think how much more the reality of it would do so. You have gained in two ways—by being set free from your former shame and by having come to recognize your past life for what it was. HOMILIES ON ROMANS 12.

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