The Holy Hieromartyr Dorotheus, Bishop of Tyre; The Holy Hieromartyr Cosmas, Presbyter of Armenia.
Apostle’s Fast. Abstention from meat and foods that contain these ingredients.
Romans 5:17-6:2; Matthew 9:14-17.
Read Romans 5:17-6:2
When Augustus Caesar declared a general amnesty after the civil wars, thousands of men who had fought on the wrong side, basically this consisted of men marked for death and whose names appeared on proscription lists, walked free. Some historians record that certain of them, incredulous, remained in hiding for weeks. The pardon had come. They simply could not believe it actually applied to them.
Paul knew that feeling in his bones.
He has been building his argument like a devoted engineer designs a siege-ramp in order to overcome our captivity in the citadel of our own unbelief. You see, originally, it was one trespass, St. Paul reminds us — one catastrophic act of disobedience by one man — and death became the king of this world. It occupied the throne. It collected its “taxes” from every human life without exception. We all paid. We all knew who was in charge.
But then something impossible happened. Along came one act of mercy — the obedience of another single man — and the whole calculus reverses. Grace does not merely match sin; it overwhelms it and mocks it. Where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more. The amnesty now offered to us who were ‘holed up in the keep’ is truly extravagant: complete emancipation and life forever!
And then Paul, anticipating the question that every honest person asks, asks it himself: very well, if grace is so abundant, shall we keep sinning to produce more of it?
He answers with something close to outrage. By no means! The question misunderstands everything. We are not prisoners pardoned and who then return to our cells. We have died. The old life under sin’s reign is not a citadel where we need to be bunkered down anymore. We need to relearn how we live and think because by Christ’s liberating death and resurrection we are now set free upon a new and vast expanse of free roaming meadows with rambling brooks, lush forest glades and mythical places where bursts of sun escort young maidens and men into mansions of heaven’s design. Why would we go back to the old way of living in the dank dungeon of a citadel under siege?
The amnesty Christ offers us is a new way of thinking and of being.