What hope then can be ours? You shudder perhaps at the word, but I would that you
shuddered at the fact! What? How shall it appear that we do not love God even as our friends,
you say? I will endeavor to show you—and would that my words were groundless, and to
no purpose! but I am afraid they are borne out by facts. For consider: friends, that are truly
friends, will often suffer loss for those they love. But for Christ, no one will suffer loss, or
even be content with his present state. For a friend we can readily submit to insults, and
undertake quarrels; but for Christ, no one can endure enmity: and the saying is, “Be loved
for nothing—but be not hated for nothing.”
None of us would fail to relieve a friend who was hungering, but when Christ comes to
us from day to day, and asks no great matter, but only bread, we do not even regard him,
yea though we are nauseously over full, and swollen with gluttony: though our breath betrays
the wine of yesterday, and we live in luxury, and waste our substance on harlots and parasites
and flatterers, and even on monsters, idiots, and dwarfs; for men convert the natural defects
of such into matter for amusement. Again, friends, that are truly such, we do not envy, nor
are mortified at their success, yet we feel this toward (the minister of)1126 Christ, and our
friendship for men is seen to be more powerful than the fear of God, for the envious and
the insincere plainly respect men more than God. And how is this? God sees the heart, yet
man does not forbear to practice deceit in His sight; yet if the same man were detected in
deceit by men, he thinks himself undone, and blushes for shame. And why speak of this? If
a friend be in distress, we visit him, and should fear to be condemned, if we deferred it for
a little time. But we do not visit Christ, though He die again and again in prison; nay, if we
have friends among the faithful, we visit them, not because they are Christians, but because
they are our friends. Thus we do nothing from the fear or the love of God, but some things
from friendship, some from custom. When we see a friend depart on travel, we weep and
are troubled, and if we see his death, we bewail him, though we know that we shall not be
long separated, that he will be restored to us at the Resurrection. But though Christ departs
from us, or rather we reject Him daily, we do not grieve, nor think it strange, to injure, to
offend, to provoke Him by doing what is displeasing to Him; and the fearful thing is not
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that we do not treat Him as a friend; for I will show that we even treat Him as an enemy.
How, do you ask? because “the carnal mind is enmity against God,” as Paul has said, and
this we always carry about us. And we persecute Christ, when He advances toward us, and
comes to our very doors.1127 For wicked actions in effect do this, and every day we subject
him to insults by our covetousness and our rapacity. And does any one by preaching His
word, and benefiting His Church, obtain a good reputation? Then he is the object of envy,
because he does the work of God. And we think that we envy him, but our envy passes on
1126 See on Rom. Hom.
1127 This idea is beautifully illustrated by the Christuskopf of Overbeck.
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1 Timothy 1:12-14