{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-5500","native_reference":{"book_number":550,"chapter_from":4,"chapter_to":4,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":28,"verse_to":28},"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>Irenaeus</b>: For not alone upon Abraham's account did He say these things, but also that He might point out how all who have known God from the beginning, and have foretold the advent of Christ, have received the revelation from the Son Himself; who also in the last times was made visible and passable, and spake with the human race, that He might from the stones raise up children unto Abraham, and fulfil the promise which God had given him, and that He might make his seed as the stars of heaven, as John the Baptist says: \"For God is able from these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.\" Now, this Jesus did by drawing us off from the religion of stones, and bringing us over from hard and fruitless cogitations, and establishing in us a faith like to Abraham. As Paul does also testify, saying that we are children of Abraham because of the similarity of our faith, and the promise of inheritance.<br/><i>— Against Heresies Book IV</i></p><p><b>Irenaeus</b>: If, then, God promised him the inheritance of the land, yet he did not receive it during all the time of his sojourn there, it must be, that together with his seed, that is, those who fear God and believe in Him, he shall receive it at the resurrection of the just. For his seed is the Church, which receives the adoption to God through the Lord, as John the Baptist said: \"For God is able from the stones to raise up children to Abraham.\" Thus also the apostle says in the Epistle to the Galatians: \"But ye, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of the promise.\" And again, in the same Epistle, he plainly declares that they who have believed in Christ do receive Christ, the promise to Abraham thus saying, \"The promises were spoken to Abraham, and to his seed. Now He does not say, And of seeds, as if [He spake] of many, but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.\" And again, confirming his former words, he says, \"Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Know ye therefore, that they which are of faith are the children of Abraham. But the Scripture, fore-seeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, declared to Abraham beforehand, That in thee shall all nations be blessed. So then they which are of faith shall be blessed with faithful Abraham.\" Thus, then, they who are of faith shall be blessed with faithful Abraham, and these are the children of Abraham. Now God made promise of the earth to Abraham and his seed; yet neither Abraham nor his seed, that is, those who are justified by faith, do now receive any inheritance in it; but they shall receive it at the resurrection of the just. For God is true and faithful; and on this account He said, \"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.\"<br/><i>— Against Heresies Book V</i></p><p><b>Jerome</b>: One might ask how he speaks of the Galatians, whom he had called fools. He accused them of starting in the Spirit and finishing in the flesh. When the apostle called them \"sons of promise\" in the way that Isaac was, he meant that he did not completely despair of their salvation and judged that they would return again to the Spirit, in which they had begun, and become sons of the free woman.<br/><i>— EPISTLE TO THE Galatians 2.4.28</i></p><p><b>Jerome</b>: (Verse 28.) But we, brethren, are children of promise according to Isaac. It is of no difficulty of understanding that the Apostle and those like him are said to be children of promise according to Isaac. But because Origen, explaining this passage, thus presents the example of the Apostle: But you, brethren, are children of promise according to Isaac, it is asked how he now calls the Galatians, whom he had called foolish and said had begun in the Spirit, to finish in the flesh, children of promise according to Isaac? Therefore, we say that the Apostle calls them children of the promise according to Isaac, because he does not completely despair of their salvation, and he believes that they will return to the spirit with which they had started, and become children of freedom. Even though they were born according to the flesh, they are children of the slave woman.<br/><i>— Commentary on Galatians</i></p><p><b>John Chrysostom</b>: It is not merely that the Church was barren like Sarah, or became a mother of many children like her, but she bore them in the way Sarah did. As it was not nature but the promise of God which rendered Sarah a mother, [for the word of God which said, \"At the time appointed I will return unto thee, and Sarah shall have a son,\" (Gen. 18:14.) this entered into the womb and formed the babe,] so also in our regeneration it is not nature, but the Words of God spoken by the Priest, (the faithful know them,) which in the Bath of water as in a sort of womb, form and regenerate him who is baptized.</p><p>Wherefore if we are sons of the barren woman, then are we free. But what kind of freedom, it might be objected, is this, when the Jews seize and scourge the believers, and those who have this pretence of liberty are persecuted? for these things then occurred, in the persecution of the faithful. Neither let this disturb you, he replies, this also is anticipated in the type, for Isaac, who was free, was persecuted by Ishmael the bondman. ...<br/><i>— Homily on Galatians 4</i></p><p><b>Oecumenius</b>: Not only was the Church barren as Sarah was, nor afterwards did she have much offspring like her, but it was begotten in the same manner. For Sarah did not bear Isaac by the law of nature, but by divine grace. Nor does the Church give birth by the law of nature in the baptismal font, but by divine grace. Do you see how the type in every respect agrees with the truth?</p><p>\"according to Isaac.\" For we were not begotten according to nature, but according to grace, as Isaac through the promise.</p><p>He says, \"But we, brothers, are children of the promise according to Isaac.\" Therefore being free, we ought not to be enslaved under the law of Moses.<br/><i>— Commentary on Galatians</i></p><p><b>Theodoret of Cyrus</b>: We were born not according to nature but according to grace. For, just as in Isaac's case, it was not the law of nature but that of the gospel that fashioned us. Thus the promise given to Abraham engendered us.<br/><i>— EPISTLE TO THE Galatians 4.28</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"8600018979a22e3d61d9a1f18a4f3911534f0b81380a6afdbea4c730f3e47561","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":5500,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"f8f638fefda3b8e50088cde217e194dabcaf2e05045e021c45ab2d9515da944d","translator":null,"work":null}