We are baptised into the death of Christ, and it is the remedy for the Fall

[soso]

On death

On the one hand [Death] is the triumph of Satan, the punishment of the Fall, and the last enemy.

Christ shed tears /at the grave of Lazarus and sweated blood in Gethsemane:

[the Life of Lives //that was in Him] detested this penal obscenity /not less than we do, but more.

On the other hand, [only he //who loses his life] will save it.

We are baptised /into the death of Christ, and it is the remedy for the Fall.

Death is, in fact, [what some modern people call “ambivalent].”

It is Satan’s great weapon and also God’s great weapon:

it is holy and unholy; our supreme disgrace and our only hope;

[the thing () Christ came /to conquer] and [the means //by which He conquered].

Satan produced human Death. 

But when God created Man He gave him such a constitution that, if the highest part of it rebelled against Himself,

 it would be bound to lose control over the lower parts: i.e., in the long run to suffer Death. 

This provision may be regarded equally as a punitive sentence (“In the day ye eat of that fruit ye shall die”), 

as a mercy, and as a safety device. 

It is punishment /because Death

—that Death //of which Martha says to Christ, “But . . . Sir . . . it’ll smell”—

is horror and ignominy.

(“I am not so much afraid of death /as ashamed of it,” said Sir Thomas Browne.)

It is mercy /because by willing and humble surrender to it Man undoes his act of rebellion

and makes [even this depraved and monstrous mode of Death]

[an instance of that higher and mystical Death //which is eternally good and a necessary ingredient in the highest life].

“The readiness is all”—not, of course, the merely heroic readiness but that of humility and self-renunciation.

Our enemy, so welcomed, becomes our servant:

bodily Death, the monster, becomes blessed spiritual Death /to self, if the spirit so wills

—or rather if it allows [the Spirit of the willingly dying God] [so to will in it].

It is a safety device /because, once Man has fallen, natural immortality would be the one utterly hopeless destiny for him.

Aided to the surrender //that he must make /by no external necessity of Death,

free (if you call it freedom) to rivet /faster and faster /about himself /through unending centuries [the chains of his own pride

and lust and of the nightmare civilisations //which these build up /in ever-increasing power and complication,

he would progress /from being merely a fallen man /to being a fiend,

possibly beyond all modes of redemption.

* 삽입구인 형용사구 free (if you call it freedom) to rivet ... and complication.

* 부정사구 to rivet (...) [the chains of his own pride and lust and of the nightmare civilisations //which~]

* (...) ; 부사구 /faster and faster /about himself /through unending centuries ( rivet 와 목적 사이에 부사/전구가 낌)

* 형절 //which these build up /in ever-increasing power and complication,

This danger was averted.

[The sentence //that (those //who ate of the forbidden fruit) would be driven away from the Tree of Life] was implicit

/in the composite nature //with which Man was created.

But to convert this penal death /into the means of eternal life

—to add to its negative and preventive function a positive and saving function—

it was further necessary that death should be accepted.

* 부정사구 to add (/to its negative and preventive function) [a positive and saving function] (add와 목적 사이에 전구가 낌)

Humanity must embrace death freely, submit to it with total humility, drink it to the dregs,

and so convert it into that mystical death //which is the secret of life.

But [only a Man //who did not need to have been a Man at all /unless He had chosen],

[only one //who served in our sad regiment /as a volunteer, yet also one //who was perfectly a Man],

could perform [this perfect dying]; and thus ([which way you put it] is unimportant) either defeat Death or redeem it.

He tasted death /on behalf of all others.

He is the representative “Die-er” of the universe: and for that very reason the Resurrection and the Life.

Or conversely, because He truly lives, He truly dies, for that is the very pattern of reality.

Because the higher can descend /into the lower

[He //who from all eternity has been incessantly plunging Himself /in the blessed death of self-surrender to the Father]

can also most fully descend /into the horrible and (for us) involuntary death of the body.

Because Vicariousness is the very idiom of the reality () He has created,

His death can become ours.

[The whole Miracle], far from denying what we already know of reality,

writes the comment //which makes that crabbed text plain:

or rather, proves itself to be the text //on which Nature was only the commentary.

In science we have been reading only the notes to a poem;

in Christianity we find the poem itself.

From Miracles
Compiled in Words to Live By