Because human nature was subjected to an enemy as the just desert of sin, man must first be rescued from his power, that he might find him. Then if his life in this flesh is prolonged, he is assisted in the conflict that he may overcome the enemy. And finally the victor will be beatified, that he may reign, and at the very end he will ask: “Death, where is thy devouring?” Against Julian
Own passion rescued us from offences, and sins, and such like thorns; and having destroyed the devil, deservedly said in triumph, "O Death, where is thy sting? "
For since the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise partook of the same (Heb 2.14), that having been made partakers of His presence in the flesh we might be made partakers also of His Divine grace: thus Jesus was baptized, that thereby we again by our participation might receive both salvation and honour. According to Job, there was in the waters the dragon that draws up the Jordan into his mouth (Job 40.23). Since,
Therefore, it was necessary to break the heads of the dragon in pieces (Ps 74.14), He went down and bound the strong one in the waters, that we might receive power to tread upon serpents and scorpions (Luke 10.19). The beast was great and terrible. No fishing- vessel was able to carry one scale of his tail (Job 40.26): destruction ran before him (Job 41.13), ravaging all that met him. The Life encountered him, that the mouth of Death might henceforth be stopped, and all we that are saved might say, O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where i...
O the marvel! Since the hour when Christ despoiled Hades, men have danced in triumph over death. "O death, where is thy sting! O grave, where is thy victory? "
Like a man who is making a sacrifice in the hope of victory, Paul is inspired to see the future as something which has already happened, and he tramples upon death as if it has fallen at his feet. Death is gone, it is finished, it has vanished away. Christ has not only overcome it, he has destroyed it and eliminated it completely.
Do you see his noble soul? How even as one who is offering sacrifices for victory, having become inspired and seeing already things future as things past, he leaps and tramples upon death fallen at his feet, and shouts a cry of triumph over its head where it lies, exclaiming mightily and saying, O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory? It is clean gone, it is perished, it is utterly vanished away, and in vain have you done all those former things. For He not only disarmed death and vanquished it, but even destroyed it, and made it quite cease from being.
"O death, where is thy sting? ".
And to none other God does he tell us that "thanks "are due, for having enabled us to achieve "the victory "even over death, than to Him from whom he received the very expression.
Now, if the dominion of death operates only in the dissolution of the flesh, in like manner death's contrary, life, ought to produce the contrary effect, even the restoration of the flesh; so that, just as death had swallowed it up in its strength, it also, after this mortal was swallowed up of immortality, may hear the challenge pronounced against it: "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? "
