Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
The Lord benefits all and helps all, in his human role and in his divine one alike: in his divine role remitting our offenses, and in his human role disciplining us like a father so that we do not sin. Man is therefore fittingly a friend to God, since he is also His creation. In the case of the rest of things He merely commanded and they came to be, but man He fashioned with His own hands and breathed into him something of His own. That which has been imaged by Him and toward Him, then, has either been made by God because it is desirable for its own sake, or has been formed as desirable for the sake of something else. If man is desirable for his own sake, then God, being good, loved a good thing, and the love-charm is within man himself, that very thing which is called God's inbreathing. But if man came to be desirable for the sake of other things, God had no other reason for making him than this: that without man it was not possible for one to become a good craftsman, and another to arrive at the knowledge of God (for God would not have made that for the sake of which man came to be, unless man had come to be), and the power that man had hidden within him — the power of willing — God completed by an added power from outside, that of having made him, taking from man what He had made man to be, and seeing what man had, and man became what He willed; and there is nothing that God cannot do. Man, then, whom God has made, is desirable for his own sake, and what is desirable for its own sake is proper to whatever it is desirable for its own sake to, and to that thing it is also welcome and beloved. But can a thing be lovable to someone and not also be loved by him? Man has been shown to be lovable; therefore man is loved by God. For how could he not be loved, he for whose sake the only-begotten Word of faith is sent down from the bosom of the Father? Faith proceeding from His abundance the Lord Himself plainly confesses, saying, "For the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved me," and again the same one says, "And you have loved them, just as you have loved me." What, then, the Tutor intends and what He promises, being disposed both in deed and in word, prescribing what is to be done and forbidding the opposite, is by now surely clear. And it is plain that the other kind of discourse, the teaching kind, is spare and spiritual, given to exactness, namely the contemplative kind, which for now let it be set aside. It is fitting for us to love in return, with the love due to the best of lives, Him who leads us, and to live according to the ordinances of His purpose, not only carrying out what is commanded or carefully avoiding what is forbidden, but also, of the images set before us, turning away from some and imitating others as far as possible, so as to fulfill the works of the Tutor in the way of a likeness, so that indeed "according to image and according to likeness" may be fulfilled. For as we wander in deep darkness through life, we need an unstumbling and exact guide. And the best guide is not blind, as Scripture says of those who lead the blind, hand in hand, into the pit, but the Word who sees keenly and discerns what is in the heart. For just as there is no light that does not illuminate, nor anything that moves that does not cause motion, nor anything loving that does not love, so too there is nothing good that does not benefit and lead toward salvation. Let us, then, cherish the precepts through what the Master accomplishes (for that same Word, openly taking on flesh, exhibits this identical virtue as both active and contemplative together), and, taking the Word to be law, let us recognize His commandments and counsels as short roads and taut paths toward eternity; for His injunctions are full of persuasion, not of fear.
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