ACC ~ Romans 6 v22

THE INJUNCTION AND REWARD WITHIN REACH. TERTULLIAN: Throughout this chapter, while withdrawing our members from unrighteousness and sin and applying them to righteousness and holiness, and transferring the same from the wages of death to the gift of eternal life, Paul undoubtedly promises to the flesh the reward of salvation. Now it would not have been consistent for a rule of holiness and righteousness to be especially enjoined for the flesh if the reward of such a discipline were not also within its reach; nor could even baptism be ordered for the flesh if by its regeneration a course were not inaugurated tending to its restitution. ON RESURRECTION OF THE FLESH 47.

NOW IN FULL SERVICE TO GOD. ORIGEN: Paul repeats what he has already said [in verse 18] but with an important difference. There he said that we have become slaves to obedience, which leads to righteousness, but here he says that we have become slaves to God. By saying this, Paul shows that after someone has been set free from sin he ought to serve righteousness and perform all the virtues in the first instance and then ascend by the way of spiritual progress to the point where he becomes a slave of God, even though to be a slave of righteousness is also to be a slave of God. For Christ is righteousness, and to serve Christ is to serve God. Nevertheless, there is a scale of spiritual perfection, and there are different levels of virtue. For this reason Christ is said to reign, because he is righteousness, until such time as the fullness of all virtue is complete in everyone. Then, when the measure of perfection is reached, it is said that he will give up the kingdom to God the Father, so that God may be all in all.COMMENTARY ON THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS.

PASSING FROM DEATH TO LIFE. AMBROSIASTER: If when we receive the forgiveness of sins we become imitators of good deeds, we shall acquire holiness and we shall obtain eternal life at the end, for we shall pass from death, which Paul said was the end, to life, which is without end. COMMENTARY ON PAUL’S EPISTLES.

HOLINESS NOW ASSURES ETERNAL LIFE. CHRYSOSTOM: Instead of the shame and death which you deserved before, you now have the hope of attaining holiness and eternal life. Note how Paul says that some things have already been given, while others are still hoped for, but that the former point to the latter. Thus if we can come to holiness now, we can be assured of obtaining eternal life in the future.HOMILIES ON ROMANS 12.

THE RETURN YOU GET IS SANCTIFICATION AND ITS END, ETERNAL LIFE. PELAGIUS: Doubtless there is no blessing in something for which one feels shame when repenting of it. Everyone who comes to know goodness is ashamed of his former actions, but anyone who is ashamed of righteousness is not aware of its fruit. Therefore, those who sin get nothing out of it in the present, and in the future they will reap eternal death. But those who serve God have the gift of the Holy Spirit in the present and eternal life in the future. Or perhaps it should be read like this: what have you got out of doing things which make you feel ashamed whenever you think of them? The return you have already received is that, having been sanctified by baptism, you are alive. PELAGIUS’S COMMENTARY ON ROMANS.

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