109. It was necessary, then, that spiritual
things should be made known as in a mirror and in a riddle; “For
now we see by means of a mirror, but then face to face.” 1 Cor. xiii. 12. Now we war after the flesh, then in
the Spirit we shall see the divine mysteries. Let, then, the
character of the true law be expressed in our manner of life, who walk
in the image of God, for the shadow of the Law has now passed
away. The carnal Jews had the shadow, the likeness is ours, the
reality theirs who shall rise again. For we
know that according to the Law there are these
three, the shadow, the image or likeness, and the reality; the shadow
in the Law, the image in the Gospel, the truth in the judgment.
But all is Christ’s, and all is in Christ, Whom now we cannot see
according to the reality, but we see Him, as it were, in a kind of
likeness of future things, of which we have seen the shadow in the
Law. So, then, Christ is not the shadow but the likeness of God,
not an empty likeness but the reality. And so the Law was by
Moses, for the shadow was through man, the likeness was through the
Law, the reality through Jesus. For reality cannot proceed from
any other source than from reality.