For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
He says not in the likeness of flesh, but in the likeness of sinful flesh, for he certainly received the human nature, but human sin he did not received—hence that which He thus assumed he calls not the likeness of flesh, but the likeness of sinful flesh, because though He had the same nature with ourselves, He yet did not have the same character or disposition. He means, then, that the law having been unable to bring to effect its own design—by reason of the weakness of those beneath its covenant, possessing as they did a mortal nature, and one answerable to infirmities and passions—the only-begotten Word of God, becoming incarnate, by that human flesh overthrew sin, fulfilling all righteousness and admitting no taint of sin; and by enduring the death of sinners, as though Himself a sinner, manifested the injustice of sin, in that it delivered up to death a body over which death had no just claim. And this then both overthrew and put an end to death: for in thus submitting to death through the unjust sentence of sin (while not at all answerable to it, in that He never committed sin) He became the price of redemption of those justly subjected to death, as one free among the dead.
He says not in the likeness of flesh, but in the likeness of sinful flesh, for he certainly received the human nature, but human sin he did not received—hence that which He thus assumed he calls not the likeness of flesh, but the likeness of sinful flesh, because though He had the same nature with ourselves, He yet did not have the same character or disposition. He means, then, that the law having been unable to bring to effect its own design—by reason of the weakness of those beneath its covenant, possessing as they did a mortal nature, and one answerable to infirmities and passions—the only-begotten Word of God, becoming incarnate, by that human flesh overthrew sin, fulfilling all righteousness and admitting no taint of sin; and by enduring the death of sinners, as though Himself a sinner, manifested the injustice of sin, in that it delivered up to death a body over which death had no just claim. And this then both overthrew and put an end to death: for in thus submitting to death through the unjust sentence of sin (while not at all answerable to it, in that He never committed sin) He became the price of redemption of those justly subjected to death, as one free among the dead.
Theodoret of Cyrus, "The Letter to the Romans" on Romans 8:3-4
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