{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-3477","native_reference":{"book_number":580,"chapter_from":3,"chapter_to":3,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":9,"verse_to":9},"public_import_allowed":false,"record_kind":"verse-keyed-module-record","review_required":["English edition and exact text","author/work attribution","dating","verse mapping and citation kind","reuse and attribution","split author quotations and deduplicate"],"review_status":"unreviewed","source_html":"<p><b>Ambrose of Milan</b>: But since the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are of one Nature, the Father certainly will not be in subjection to Himself. And therefore the Son will not be in subjection in that in which He is one with the Father; lest it should seem that through the unity of the Godhead the Father also is in subjection to the Son. Therefore, as upon that cross it was not the fulness of the Godhead, but our weakness that was brought into subjection, so also will the Son hereafter become subject to the Father in the participation of our nature, in order that when the lusts of the flesh are brought into subjection the heart may have no care for riches, or ambition, or pleasures; but that God may be all to us, if we live after His image and likeness, as far as we can attain to it, through all. The benefit has passed, then, from the individual to the community; for in His flesh He has tamed the nature of all human flesh. Thus, according to the Apostle: \"As we have borne the image of the earthly, so also shall we bear the image of the heavenly.\" This thing certainly cannot come to pass except in the inner man. Therefore, \"laying aside all these,\" that is those things which we read of: \"anger, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication;\" as he also says below: \"Let us, having put off the old man with his deeds, put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created Him.\"<br/><i>— Exposition of the Christian Faith, Book 5, Chapter 13.174-175</i></p><p><b>Augustine of Hippo</b>: Elsewhere, too, he has even more plainly called it an image, while enforcing the same thing in other words. \"Do you,\" he says, \"putting off the old man with his deeds, put on the new man, which is renewed in the knowledge of God after the image of Him that created him.\" Where the one passage reads, \"Put ye on the new man, which is created after God,\" the other has, \"Put ye on the new man, which is renewed after the image of Him that created him.\" In the one place he says, \"After God;\" in the other, \"After the image of Him that created him.\" But instead of saying, as in the former passages \"In righteousness and true holiness,\" he has put in the latter, \"In the knowledge of God.\" This renewal, then, and forming again of the mind, is wrought either after God, or after the image of God. But it is said to be after God, in order that it may not be supposed to be after another creature; and to be after the image of God, in order that this renewing may be understood to take place in that wherein is the image of God, i.e. in the mind.<br/><i>— On the Trinity, Book 14</i></p><p><b>Basil of Caesarea</b>: Seek nothing with exterior gold and bodily adornment; but consider the garment as one worthy to adorn him who is according to the image of his Creator, as the apostle says: \"Stripping off the old man, and putting on the new, one that is being renewed unto perfect knowledge 'according to the image of his Creator.'\" And he who has put on \"the heart of mercy, kindness, humility, patience and meekness\" is clothed within and has adorned the inner man.</p><p><b>Gregory of Nyssa</b>: For we say that those things are alive which spring up and grow, and no one would deny that all things that participate in life and natural motion are animate, yet at the same time one cannot say that such life partakes of a perfect soul,—for though a certain animate operation exists in plants, it does not attain to the motions of sense; and on the other hand, though a certain further animate power exists in the brutes, neither does this attain perfection, since it does not contain in itself the grace of reason and intelligence. And even so we say that the true and perfect soul is the human soul, recognized by every operation; and anything else that shares in life we call animate by a sort of customary misuse of language, because in these cases the soul does not exist in a perfect condition, but only certain parts of the operation of the soul, which in man also (according to Moses' mystical account of man's origin) we learn to have accrued when he made himself like this sensuous world. Thus Paul, advising those who were able to hear him to lay hold on perfection, indicates also the mode in which they may attain that object, telling them that they must \"put off the old man,\" and put on the man \"which is renewed after the image of Him that created him.\" Now may we all return to that Divine grace in which God at the first created man, when He said, \"Let us make man in our image and likeness\"; to Whom be glory and might for ever and ever. Amen.<br/><i>— On the Making of Man</i></p><p><b>Irenaeus</b>: For it is not one thing which dies and another which is quickened, as neither is it one thing Which is lost and another which is found, but the Lord came seeking for that same sheep which had been lost. What was it, then, which was dead? Undoubtedly it was the substance of the flesh; the same, too, which had lost the breath of life, and had become breathless and dead. This same, therefore, was what the Lord came to quicken, that as in Adam we do all die, as being of an animal nature, in Christ we may all live, as being spiritual, not laying aside God's handiwork, but the lusts of the flesh, and receiving the Holy Spirit; as the apostle says in the Epistle to the Colossians: \"Mortify, therefore, your members which are upon the earth.\" And what these are he himself explains: \"Fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence; and covetousness, which is idolatry.\" The laying aside of these is what the apostle preaches; and he declares that those who do such things, as being merely flesh and blood, cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven. For their soul, tending towards what is worse, and descending to earthly lusts, has become a partaker in the same designation which belongs to these [lusts, viz., \"earthly\"], which, when the apostle commands us to lay aside, he says in the same Epistle, \"Cast ye off the old man with his deeds.\" But when he said this, he does not remove away the ancient formation [of man]; for in that case it would be incumbent on us to rid ourselves of its company by committing suicide.</p><p>But the apostle himself also, being one who had been formed in a womb, and had issued thence, wrote to us, and confessed in his Epistle to the Philippians that \"to live in the flesh was the fruit of [his] work;\" thus expressing himself. Now the final result of the work of the Spirit is the salvation of the flesh. For what other visible fruit is there of the invisible Spirit, than the rendering of the flesh mature and capable of incorruption? If then [he says], \"To live in the flesh, this is the result of labour to me,\" he did not surely contemn the substance of flesh in that passage where he said, \"Put ye off the old man with his works;\" but he points out that we should lay aside our former conversation, that which waxes old and becomes corrupt; and for this reason he goes on to say, \"And put ye on the new man, that which is renewed in knowledge, after the image of Him who created him.\" In this, therefore, that he says, \"which is renewed in knowledge,\" he demonstrates that he, the selfsame man who was in ignorance in times past, that is, in ignorance of God, is renewed by that knowledge which has respect to Him. For the knowledge of God renews man. And when he says, \"after the image of the Creator,\" he sets forth the recapitulation of the same man, who was at the beginning made after the likeness of God.<br/><i>— Against Heresies Book V</i></p><p><b>John Chrysostom</b>: \"Seeing that ye have put off the old man with his doings, and have put on the new man, which is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of Him that created him.\"</p><p>It is worth enquiring here, what can be the reason why he calls the corrupt life, \"members,\" and \"man,\" and \"body,\" and again the virtuous life, the same. And if \"the man\" means \"sins,\" how is it that he saith, \"with his doings\"? For once he said, \"the old man,\" showing that this is not man, but the other. The moral choice doth rather determine one than the substance, and is rather \"man\" than the other. For his substance casteth him not into hell, nor leadeth him into the kingdom, but men the themselves: and we neither love nor hate any one so far as he is man, but so far as he is such or such a man. If then the substance be the body, and in either sort cannot be accountable, how doth he say that it is evil? But what is that he saith, \"with his doings\"? He means the choice, with the acts. And he calleth him \"old,\" on purpose to show his deformity, and hideousness, and imbecility; and \"new,\" as if to say, Do not expect that it will be with this one even as with the other, but the reverse: for ever as he farther advances, he hasteneth not on to old age, but to a youthfulness greater than the preceding. For when he hath received a fuller knowledge, he is both counted worthy of greater things, and is in more perfect maturity, in higher vigor; and this, not from youthfulness alone, but from that \"likeness\" also, \"after\" which he is. Lo! the best life is styled a creation, after the image of Christ: for this is the meaning of, \"after the image of Him that created him,\" for Christ too came not finally to old age, but was so beautiful as it is not even possible to tell.<br/><i>— Homily on Colossians 8</i></p><p><b>John Chrysostom</b>: One royal form it hath, that, namely, of Christ. They whom he has in view, appear to me rather to be of the Gentiles. For like as earth, being but sand, even though one part be greater, another less, losing its own previous form, doth afterwards become gold; and like as wool, of whatever kind it be, receiveth another aspect, and hides its former one: so truly is it also with the faithful.<br/><i>— Homily on Colossians 8</i></p><p><b>Origen of Alexandria</b>: That which is created after the image of God is understood as immaterial and surpassing every corporeal substance not only by Moses, but also by the Apostle, as is clear from the following words: \"...having put on the new man, who is renewed unto knowledge after the image of Him who created him.\" Therefore in each of us there are two men.<br/><i>— DIALOGUE WITH HERACLIDES</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"ba85c72770ecef21b66062a49bf90c2b5609c51ec4baef8bb4397842dbfcf2f2","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":3477,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"3d1fba8d5bb279b8e9557785cee67f080f417b0ded2781e09d9316fc74f4b7ae","translator":null,"work":null}