Christ sets church gifts; anathema on those who split the one Lord

“And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing.” Though these are said to be God’s doing, it is Christ who worked them. For he himself appointed the apostles in the church, and teachers as well, and worked powers; for he gave the holy disciples authority to heal every disease and every weakness among the people.

“The greeting is in my own hand — Paul’s. If anyone does not love the Lord, let him be anathema. Maranatha.” Whom, then, does he call Lord here? The Son himself is confessedly Lord, and likewise the Spirit — “for the Lord,” he says, “is the Spirit.” But blessed Paul’s aim in these words stretches toward Jesus himself; for there is, he says, one Lord, Jesus Christ.

So he anathematizes the one who does not love him. And the one who does not love him is the one who will not say he is Son of God by nature and in truth, but sets him in a second rank beside the Word from God, and wrongs the mystery of the economy by cutting the one Lord Jesus Christ into two.

From the Second Letter to the Corinthians: “But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him in every place; for we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.”

Then how is Christ not God, if he himself is the fragrance of the knowledge of the Father? No one would learn the sweet scent of the divine nature from human nature alone. Just as the scent of humanity points to a human, so the scent of deity points to God. And if Christ is said to be — and truly is — the Father’s aroma,