What are the roles of the law and of grace?

St. Augustine says, “He gave the law who gave likewise grace; but the law He sent by a servant, with grace He Himself came down. And in what manner were men made under the law? By not fulfilling the law. For he who fulfills the law is not under the law, but with the law; but he who is under the law is not raised up, but pressed down by the law. All men, therefore, being placed under the law, are by the law made guilty; and for this purpose it is over their head, that it may show sins, not take them away … Now the sick confess that they are sick; let the physician come to heal the sick. Who is the Physician? Our Lord Jesus Christ .”⁵⁸⁹

Abba Theonas says, “Whoever then strives to reach the perfection of evangelical teaching, this man living under grace is not oppressed by the dominion of sin, for to be under grace is to do those things which grace commands. But whoever will not submit himself to the complete requirements of evangelical perfection, must not remain ignorant that, although he seems to be baptized and to be a monk, yet he is not under grace, but is still shackled by the chains of the law, and weighed down by the burden of sin. For it is the aim of Him, who by the grace of adoption accepts all those by whom He has been received, not to destroy but to build upon, not to abolish but to fulfil the Mosaic requirements.

“But some knowing nothing about this, and disregarding the splendid counsels and exhortations of Christ, are so emancipated by the carelessness of a freedom too hastily assumed, that they not only fail to carry out the commands of Christ as if they were too hard, but actually scorn as antiquated, the commands given to them as beginners and children by

587 St. Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation, trans., John Behr (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011) 7: p. 65, amended.

588 See Behnam Sony, Man in the Teaching of St. Jacob of Sarug (1995): p. 115.

589

St. Augustine of Hippo, Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel According to St. John 3.2–3 (NPNF I/7:19).

the law of Moses,⁵⁹⁰ saying in this dangerous freedom of theirs that which the Apostle execrates: ‘We have sinned, because we are not under the law but under grace’ (Rom. 6:15). He then who is neither under grace, because he has never climbed the heights of the Lord’s teaching, nor under the law, because he has not accepted even those small commands of the law, this man, ground down beneath a twofold rule of sin, fancies that he has received the grace of Christ … and falls into that state, which the Apostle Peter warns us to avoid, saying: ‘Act as free, and not having your liberty as a cloak of wickedness’ (1 Pet. 2:16). The blessed Apostle Paul also says: ‘For you, brethren, were called to liberty,’ i.e., that you might be free from the dominion of sin, ‘only do not use your liberty for an occasion of the flesh’ (Gal. 5:13), i.e., believe that the doing away with the commands of the law is a license to sin. But this liberty, the Apostle Paul teaches us is nowhere but where the Lord is dwelling, for he says: ‘The Lord is the Spirit, but where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty’ (2 Cor. 3:17).”⁵⁹¹