{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/102/1020396.htm","path":"chr/ecf/102/1020396.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/102/1020396.htm","text":"Chapter 4.\u2014What It is to Live According to Man, and What to Live According to God.\nWhen, therefore, man lives according to man, not according to God, he is like the devil. Because not even an angel might live according to an angel, but only according to God, if he was to abide in the truth, and speak God\u2019s truth and not his own lie. And of man, too, the same apostle says in another place, \u201cIf the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie;\u201d 652 \u2014\u201cmy lie,\u201d he said, and \u201cGod\u2019s truth.\u201d When, then, a man lives according to the truth, he lives not according to himself, but according to God; for He was God who said, \u201cI am the truth.\u201d 653 When, therefore, man lives according to himself,\u2014that is, according to man, not according to God,\u2014assuredly he lives according to a lie; not that man himself is a lie, for God is his author and creator, who is certainly not the author and creator of a lie, but because man was made upright, that he might not live according to himself, but according to Him that made him,\u2014in other words, that he might do His will and not his own; and not to live as he was made to live, that is a lie. For he certainly desires to be blessed even by not living so that he may be blessed. And what is a lie if this desire be not? Wherefore it is not without meaning said that all sin is a lie. For no sin is committed save by that desire or will by which we desire that it be well with us, and shrink from it being ill with us. That, therefore, is a lie which we do in order that it may be well with us, but which makes us more miserable than we were. And why is this, but because the source of man\u2019s happiness lies only in God, whom he abandons when he sins, and not in himself, by living according to whom he sins?\nIn enunciating this proposition of ours, then, that because some live according to the flesh and others according to the spirit, there have arisen two diverse and conflicting cities, we might equally well have said, \u201cbecause some live according to man, others according to God.\u201d For Paul says very plainly to the Corinthians, \u201cFor whereas there is among you envying and strife, are ye not carnal, and walk according to man?\u201d 654 So that to walk according to man and to be carnal are the p. 265 same; for by flesh, that is, by a part of man, man is meant. For before he said that those same persons were animal whom afterwards he calls carnal, saying, \u201cFor what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things which are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man\u2019s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the animal man perceiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him.\u201d 655 It is to men of this kind, then, that is, to animal men, he shortly after says, \u201cAnd I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal.\u201d 656 And this is to be interpreted by the same usage, a part being taken for the whole. For both the soul and the flesh, the component parts of man, can be used to signify the whole man; and so the animal man and the carnal man are not two different things, but one and the same thing, viz., man living according to man. In the same way it is nothing else than men that are meant either in the words, \u201cBy the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified;\u201d 657 or in the words, \u201cSeventy-five souls went down into Egypt with Jacob.\u201d 658 In the one passage, \u201cno flesh\u201d signifies \u201cno man;\u201d and in the other, by \u201cseventy-five souls\u201d seventy-five men are meant. And the expression, \u201cnot in words which man\u2019s wisdom teacheth\u201d might equally be \u201cnot in words which fleshly wisdom teacheth;\u201d and the expression, \u201cye walk according to man,\u201d might be \u201caccording to the flesh.\u201d And this is still more apparent in the words which followed: \u201cFor while one saith, I am of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos, are ye not men?\u201d The same thing which he had before expressed by \u201cye are animal,\u201d \u201cye are carnal, he now expresses by \u201cye are men;\u201d that is, ye live according to man, not according to God, for if you lived according to Him, you should be gods.","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. II: City of God: Cha...","type":"page"}