For if you love them who love you, what reward have you? do not even the tax collectors the same?
Read Chapter 5
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
But when He calls us to this by the Only-begotten Himself, He calls us to His own likeness. For He, as is said in what follows, makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. Whether you are to understand His sun as being not that which is visible to the fleshly eyes, but that wisdom of which it is said, She is the brightness of the everlasting light; of which it is also said, The Sun of righteousness has arisen upon me; and again, But unto you that fear the name of the Lord shall the Sun of righteousness arise: so that you would also understand the rain as being the watering with the doctrine of truth, because Christ has appeared to the good and the evil, and is preached to the good and the evil. Or whether you choose rather to understand that sun which is set forth before the bodily eyes not only of men, but also of cattle; and that rain by which the fruits are brought forth, which have been given for the refreshment of the body, whic...
The publicans. These were the gatherers of the public taxes: a set of men, odious and infamous among the Jews, for their extortions and injustice. (Challoner)
What then can we deserve, who are commanded to emulate God, and are perhaps in a way not so much as to equal the publicans? For if to love them that love us be the part of publicans, sinners, and heathens: when we do not even this (and we do it not, so long as we envy our brethren who are in honor), what penalty shall we not incur, commanded as we are to surpass the scribes, and taking our place below the heathens? How then shall we behold the kingdom, I pray you? How shall we set foot on that holy threshold, who are not surpassing even the publicans? For this He covertly signified, when He said, Do not even the publicans the same?
And this thing most especially we may admire in His teaching, that while in each instance He sets down with very great fullness the prizes of the conflicts; such as to see God, and to inherit the kingdom of Heaven, and to become sons of God, and like God, and to obtain mercy, and to be comforted, and the great reward: if anywhere He must needs mention thi...
