He therefore that despises, despises not man, but God, who has also given unto us his Holy Spirit.
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John Chrysostom
AD 407
“And don’t grieve,” he adds, “the Holy Spirit of God.” This is a terrible and startling matter, as he also says in the epistle to the Thessalonians. For there he uses an expression of this sort. “He that rejects, rejects not man, but God.” It is the same here. If you utter a reproachful word, if you strike your brother, you are not striking him; rather you are “grieving the Holy Spirit.”
So that even if you should defile the Empress, he says, or even your own handmaid, that has a husband, the crime is the same. Why? Because He avenges not the persons that are injured, but Himself. For you are equally defiled, you have equally insulted God; for both the one and the other is adultery, as both the one and the other is marriage. And though you should not commit adultery, but fornication, though the harlot has no husband, yet nevertheless God avenges, for He avenges Himself. For thou dost this act, not despising the man, so much as God. And it is manifest from this, that you do it concealing it from man, but you pretend that God does not see you. For tell me, if one who was thought worthy of the purple, and of infinite honor from the king (Emperor), and was commanded to live suitably to the honor, should go and defile himself with any woman; whom has he insulted? Her, or the king who gave him all? She indeed is insulted too, but not equally.
Wherefore, I beseech you, let...
But if repentance is a thing human, its baptism must necessarily be of the same nature: else, if it had been celestial, it would have given both the Holy Spirit and remission of sins. But none either pardons sins or freely grants the Spirit save God only.
