Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume IX/The Epistles of Clement/The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians/Chapter 35

Chapter XXXV.&#8212;Immense is This Reward.&#160; How Shall We Obtain It?

How blessed and wonderful, beloved, are the gifts of God!&#160; Life in immortality, splendour in righteousness, truth in perfect confidence, faith in assurance, self-control in holiness!&#160; And all these fall under the cognizance of our understandings [now]; what then shall those things be which are prepared for such as wait for Him?&#160; The Creator and Father of all worlds, the Most Holy, alone knows their amount and their beauty.&#160; Let us therefore earnestly strive to be found in the number of those that wait for Him, in order that we may share in His promised gifts.&#160; But how, beloved, shall this be done?&#160; If our understanding be fixed by faith towards God; if we earnestly seek the things which are pleasing and acceptable to Him; if we do the things which are in harmony with His blameless will; and if we follow the way of truth, casting away from us all unrighteousness and iniquity, along with all covetousness, strife, evil practices, deceit, whispering, and evil-speaking, all hatred of God, pride and haughtiness, vain glory and ambition. &#160; For they that do such things are hateful to God; and not only they that do them, but also those that take pleasure in them that do them. &#160; For the Scripture saith, &#8220;But to the sinner God said, Wherefore dost thou declare my statutes, and take my covenant into thy mouth, seeing thou hatest instruction, and castest my words behind thee?&#160; When thou sawest a thief, thou consentedst with him, and didst make thy portion with adulterers.&#160; Thy mouth has abounded with wickedness, and thy tongue contrived deceit.&#160; Thou sittest, and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother&#8217;s son.&#160; These things thou hast done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest, wicked one, that I should be like to thyself.&#160; But I will reprove thee, and set thyself before thee.&#160; Consider now these things, ye that forget God, lest He tear you in pieces, like a lion, and there be none to deliver. &#160; The sacrifice of praise will glorify me, and a way is there by which I will show him the salvation of God.&#8221;