{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-5409","native_reference":{"book_number":550,"chapter_from":1,"chapter_to":1,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":10,"verse_to":10},"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>Augustine of Hippo</b>: No one persuades God, for all things are manifest to him. But a person does well in wishing to persuade others when it is not himself that he wishes them to like but the truth that he persuades them of.… When one pleases others on account of truth, it is not the proclaimer himself but the truth that pleases.… Thus the sense is, \"Do I then persuade men or God? And since it is men that I persuade, do I seek to please them? If I still sought to please men, I should not be Christ's servant. For he bids his servants to learn from him to be meek and lowly of heart, which is utterly impossible for one who seeks to please men on his own account, for his own private and special glory.\" … Both then can be rightly said: \"I please\" and \"I do not please.\"<br/><i>— EPISTLE TO THE Galatians 5 [1B.1.10]</i></p><p><b>Cyprian</b>: For our own part, it befits our conscience, dearest brother, to strive that none should perish going out of the Church by our fault; but if any one, of his own accord and by his own sin, should perish, and should be unwilling to repent and to return to the Church, that we who are anxious for their well-being should be blameless in the day of judgment, and that they alone should remain in punishment who refused to be healed by the wholesomeness of our advice. Nor ought the reproaches of the lost to move us in any degree to depart from the right path and from the sure rule, since also the apostle instructs us, saying, \"If I should please men, I should not be the servant of Christ.\" There is a great difference whether one desires to deserve well of men or of God. If we seek to please men, the Lord is offended. But if we strive and labour that we may please God, we ought to contemn human reproaches and abuse.<br/><i>— Epistle LIV</i></p><p><b>Cyprian</b>: Therefore, dearest brother, endeavour that the undisciplined should not be consumed and perish, that as much as you can, by your salutary counsels, you should rule the brotherhood, and take counsel of each one with a view to his salvation. Strait and narrow is the way through which we enter into life, but excellent and great is the reward when we enter into glory. Let those who have once made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven please God in all things, and not offend God's priests nor the Lord's Church by the scandal of their wickedness. And if, for the present, certain of our brethren seem to be made sorry by us, let us nevertheless remain in our wholesome persuasion, knowing that an apostle also has said, \"Am I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth? \" But if they shall obey us, we have gained our brethren, and have formed them as well to salvation as to dignity by our address. But if some of the perverse persons refuse to obey, let us follow the same apostle, who says, \"If I please men, I should not be the servant of Christ.\" If we cannot please some, so as to make them please Christ, let us assuredly, as far as we can, please Christ our Lord and God, by observing His precepts.<br/><i>— Epistle LXI</i></p><p><b>Cyprian</b>: But the discipline of all religion and truth is overturned, unless what is spiritually prescribed be faithfully observed; unless indeed any one should fear in the morning sacrifices, lest by the taste of wine he should be redolent of the blood of Christ. Therefore thus the brotherhood is beginning even to be kept back from the passion of Christ in persecutions, by learning in the offerings to be disturbed concerning His blood and His blood-shedding. Moreover, however, the Lord says in the Gospel, \"Whosoever shall be ashamed of me, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed.\" And the apostle also speaks, saying, \"If I pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.\" But how can we shed our blood for Christ, who blush to drink the blood of Christ?<br/><i>— Epistle LXII</i></p><p><b>Cyprian</b>: But if continency follows Christ, and virginity is destined for the kingdom of God, what have they to do with earthly dress, and with ornaments, wherewith while they are striving to please men they offend God? Not considering that it is declared, \"They who please men are put to confusion, because God hath despised them; \" and that Paul also has gloriously and sublimely uttered, \"If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.\" But continence and modesty consist not alone in purity of the flesh, but also in seemliness, as well as in modesty of dress and adornment; so that, according to the apostle, she who is unmarried may be holy both in body and in spirit. Paul instructs and teaches us, saying, \"He that is unmarried careth for the things of the Lord, how he may please God: but he who has contracted marriage careth for the things which are of this world, how he may please his wife. So both the virgin and the unmarried woman consider those things which are the Lord's, that they may be holy both in body and spirit.\" A virgin ought not only to be so, but also to be perceived and believed to be so: no one on seeing a virgin should be in any doubt as to whether she is one. Perfectness should show itself equal in all things; nor should the dress of the body discredit the good of the mind. Why should she walk out adorned? Why with dressed hair, as if she either had or sought for a husband? Rather let her dread to please if she is a virgin; and let her not invite her own risk, if she is keeping herself for better and divine things. They who have not a husband whom they profess that they please, should persevere, sound and pure not only in body, but also in spirit. For it is not right that a virgin should have her hair braided for the appearance of her beauty, or boast of her flesh and of its beauty, when she has no struggle greater than that against her flesh, and no contest more obstinate than that of conquering and subduing the body.<br/><i>— Treatise II. On the Dress of Virgins.</i></p><p><b>Cyprian</b>: That we must not please men, but God. In the fifty-second Psalm: \"They that please men are confounded, because God hath made them nothing.\" Also in the Epistle of Paul to the Galatians: \"If I wished to please men, I should not be the servant of Christ.\"<br/><i>— Treatise XII. Three Books of Testimonies Against the Jews.</i></p><p><b>Jerome</b>: Let us not suppose that the apostle is teaching us by his example to despise the judgments of others … but if it can happen that we can please God and others equally, let us also please others.… The word now is inserted specially here, to show that people are to be pleased or displeased according to the circumstances, so that he who is now displeasing for the sake of gospel truth was at one time pleasing for the sake of people's salvation.<br/><i>— EPISTLE TO THE Galatians 1.1.10</i></p><p><b>Jerome</b>: (Verse 10.) For now I advise men or God: or do I seek to please men? If I were still pleasing men, I would not be a servant of Christ. Let us not think that we are taught by the Apostle to despise the judgments of men by his example, who in another place said: Knowing therefore, the fear of the Lord, we persuade men: but we are made manifest to God (2 Corinthians 5:11); and that: Be without offense to the Jews, and to the Gentiles, and to the Church of God: as I also please all in all things, not seeking what is profitable to myself, but what is profitable to many, that they may be saved (1 Corinthians 10). But if it is possible, that we may please both God and men at the same time, it is necessary to please men. But if we do not please men in any other way than if we displease God: we ought to please God rather than men. Otherwise, he himself brings forward the reason why he is pleasing to all through all things: Not seeking, he says, what is useful to me, but what is useful to many, so that they may be saved. But whoever, out of that charity which does not seek its own things, but those that are others', pleases everyone so that they may be saved: certainly he first pleases God, to whom the salvation of men is a care. However, it also has a word, which is specifically added here, either to please people temporarily or to displease them: so that he who does not please at the moment because of the truth of the Gospel, may have pleased formerly for the salvation of many. Paul had pleased the Jews at one time, when he was an emulator of paternal traditions, having lived blamelessly according to the law, and he had such enthusiasm and faith in the ceremonies of the ancestors that he even became involved in the killing of Stephen, and he went to Damascus to bind those who had deserted the law (Acts 9). But after he was transferred to the vessel of election from a persecutor, and began to preach the faith which he had once attacked, he began to displease the Jews, whom he had previously pleased. This is therefore what he says: Am I seeking to please the Jews, by displeasing whom I pleased God? For if I were still pleasing them, I would not be a servant of Christ. For I would affirm the law, and destroy the grace of the Gospel. But now, I am not even brought to the pretense of observing the law, because I cannot please both God and the Jews at the same time. For whoever endeavors to persuade others with a word taken from human usage, with what he himself possesses and has once imbibed, and in many passages of the Scriptures it is read, from which this is one: The persuasion is not from him who called you (Gal. 5:8). And also in the Acts of the Apostles: Therefore many Jews came to him in the inn, to whom he explained, testifying about the kingdom of God and persuading them about Jesus, from the Law of Moses and the Prophets until evening. And all of this happened because it had been spread (or slandered) about him that he secretly observed the Law and had mixed with those who were practicing Judaism in Jerusalem.<br/><i>— Commentary on Galatians</i></p><p><b>John Chrysostom</b>: \"For am I now persuading men: or God?\" or am I seeking to please men? if I were still pleasing men, I should not be a servant of Christ.\"</p><p>Granting, says he, that I might deceive you by these doctrines, could I deceive God, who knows my yet unuttered thoughts, and to please whom is my unceasing endeavor? See here the Apostolical spirit, the Evangelical loftiness! So too he writes to the Corinthians, \"For we are not again commending ourselves unto you, but speak as giving you occasion of glorying;\" and again, \"But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment.\" For since he is compelled to justify himself to his disciples, being their teacher, he submits to it; but he is grieved at it, not on account of chagrin, far from it, but on account of the instability of the minds of those led away and on account of not being fully trusted by them.<br/><i>— Homily on Galatians 1</i></p><p><b>John Chrysostom</b>: Wherefore Paul now speaks, as it were, thus:-Is my account to be rendered to you? Shall I be judged by men? My account is to God, and all my acts are with a view to that inquisition, nor am I so miserably abandoned as to pervert my doctrine, seeing that I am to justify what I preach before the Lord of all.</p><p>He thus expressed himself, as much with a view of withstanding their opinions, as in self-defence; for it becomes disciples to obey, not to judge, their master. But now, says he, that the order is reversed, and ye sit as judges, know that I am but little concerned to defend myself before you; all I do for God's sake, and in order that I may answer to Him concerning my doctrine. He who wishes to persuade men, is led to act tortuously and insincerely, and to employ deceit and falsehood, in order to engage the assent of his hearers. But he who addresses himself to God, and desires to please Him, needs simplicity and purity of mind, for God cannot be deceived. Whence it is plain that I have thus written to you not from the love of rule, or to gain disciples, or to receive honor at your hands. My endeavor has been to please God, not man. Were it otherwise, I should still consort with the Jews, still persecute the Church, I who have cast off my country altogether, my companions, my friends, my kindred, and all my reputation, and taken in exchange for these, persecution, enmity, strife, and daily-impending death, have given a signal proof that I speak not from love of human applause.<br/><i>— Homily on Galatians 1</i></p><p><b>John Damascene</b>: If, he says, I was trying to deceive you in saying these things, am I perhaps able to distort God's thought, who knows the secrets of one's mind, and whom I take every care to please in all things?</p><p><b>Oecumenius</b>: \"For am I now persuading,\" as if this has been judged and established with him. \"am I now persuading people, or God?\" Then, that they may not suppose that he wishes to persuade them and proclaim different things to others (for those who deceive him accused him, that to some he proclaims circumcision, to others something else) and that they might fall away as if being flattered, he says: \"Or am I seeking to please people?\" I do not say these things to flatter and please you, he says. For if I were seeking to please people, I would also be opposing the Judaism, and friends and kinsmen, and would not have run to Christ abandoning all.<br/><i>— Commentary on Galatians</i></p><p><b>Tertullian</b>: Oh blasphemy, bordering on martyrdom, which now attests me to be a Christian, while for that very account it detests me! The cursing of well-maintained Discipline is a blessing of the Name. \"If,\" says he, \"I wished to please men, I should not be Christ's servant.\" But the same apostle elsewhere bids us take care to please all: \"As I,\" he says, \"please all by all means.<br/><i>— On Idolatry</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"9335152e021c8f34f0fa4ed91d842029bf2823b8a533c2bcff04e27fd9db6d32","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":5409,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"07c44ee6e36175b171d91ea12ee23e5a58b1bafb320aa274640567d1bc7fb581","translator":null,"work":null}