And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has enabled me, that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry;
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John Chrysostom
AD 407
If you have sinned and God has pardoned your sin, receive your pardon and give thanks. But do not be forgetful of your sin. It is not that you should fret over the thought of it, but that you may school your soul not to grow lax or relapse again into the same snares. This is what Paul did, not hiding his actions as a blasphemer, persecutor and injurer. It is as if he were saying: “Let the life of your servant be openly exposed, so that the loving kindness of the Lord might be all the more apparent. For although I have received the remission of sins, I do not reject the memory of those sins.” And this not only made transparent the loving kindness of the Lord but made the man himself the more remarkable. For when you have learned who he was before, then you will be the more astonished at him. When you see what he came to be out of what he was, then you will commend him the more. So if you have greatly sinned, you yourself upon being changed will hope all the more by seeing him. Such an e...
Consider how he abounds in the expressions of humility. For so “to me last of all he appeared,” he says. He views himself alone “as one born out of due time.” He himself is “the least of all the apostles,” and not even worthy of this appellation. And he was not content even with these, but that he might not seem in mere words to be humbleminded, he states both reasons and proofs: of his being “one born out of due time,” his seeing Jesus last; and of his being unworthy even of the name of an apostle, “his persecuting the church.” For one who is simply humbleminded sets down the reasons for his contrition. To Timothy he makes mention of these same things, saying, “I thank him who has given me strength for this, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful by appointing me to his service, though I formerly blasphemed and persecuted and insulted him.”
The advantages arising from humility are generally acknowledged, and yet it is a thing not easily to be met with. There is affectation of humble talking enough and to spare, but humbleness of mind is nowhere to be found. This quality was so cultivated by the blessed Paul, that he is ever looking out for inducements to be humble. They who are conscious to themselves of great merits must struggle much with themselves if they would be humble. And he too was one likely to be under violent temptations, his own good conscience swelling him up like a gathering humor. Observe therefore his method in this place. I was entrusted, he had said, with the glorious Gospel of God, of which they who still adhere to the law have no right to partake; for it is now opposed to the Gospel, and their difference is such, that those who are actuated by the one, are as yet unworthy to partake of the other; as we should say, that those who require punishments, and chains, have no right to be admitted into the tr...
