Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame.
Read Chapter 15
Clement Of Alexandria
AD 215
"Si quis autem ea ratione dicit malam generationem, idem eam dicat bonam, quatenus in ipso veritatem cognoscimus. "Abluamini juste, et ne peccetis. Ignorationem enim Dei quid am habent"
Awake to righteousness and sin not. Awake from sin to be righteous. The Greek copies give "awake righteously;" Ephrem, "Stir up your hearts righteously." Sin not, because some know not that God can call the dead to life.
I speak this to your shame. It is a shame for a Christian to have any doubt about the resurrection or the power of God.
Awake up righteously and sin not.
As if he were speaking to drunkards and madmen. For suddenly to cast every thing out of their hands, was the part of drunkards and madmen, in not seeing any longer what they saw nor believing what they had before confessed. But what is, righteously? with a view to what is profitable and useful. For it is possible to awake up unrighteously, when a man is thoroughly roused up to the injury of his own soul. And well did he add, sin not, implying that hence were the sins of their unbelief. And in many places he covertly signifies this, that a corrupt life is the parent of evil doctrines; as when he says, The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, which some reaching after, have been led astray from the faith. 1 Timothy 6:10 Yea, and many of those who are conscious of wickedness and would fain not pay its penalty are by this fear damaged also in their faith concerning the resurrection: even as they who do very virtuously desire even daily to behol...
Paul sounds here as if he were talking to drunkards and madmen, for it is people like that who are in the habit of making sudden changes of behavior. Those who have no knowledge of God are those who do not believe in the resurrection of the dead.
