[Footnote 69: It has been said that this was the error of Hymenæus and Philetas (II _Tim._, ii, 17). It might be rejoined, with much plausibility, that their error was the error of popular theology, the fixing the attention on the past miracle of Christ's physical resurrection, and losing sight of the continuing miracle of the Christian's spiritual resurrection. Probably, however, Hymenæus and Philetas controverted some of Paul's tenets respecting the approaching Messianic advent and the resurrection then to take place (I _Thess._, iv, 13-17). If they rejected these tenets, they were right where Paul was wrong. But if they disputed and separated on account of them, they were _heretics_; that is, they had their hearts and minds full of a speculative contention, instead of their proper chief-concern,--_putting on the new man_, and the imitation of Christ.] But Jesus Christ's obeying God and not pleasing himself culminated in his death on the cross. All through his career, indeed, Jesus Christ pleased not himself and died to sin. But so smoothly and so inevitably, as we have before said, did he always appear to follow that law of the moral order, which to us it costs such effort to obey, that only in the very wrench and pressure of his violent death did any pain of dying, any conflict between the law of the flesh and the law of the spirit, in Christ become visible. But the Christian needs to find in Christ's dying to sin a fellowship of suffering and a conformity of death. Well, then, the point of Christ's trial and crucifixion is the only point in his career where the Christian can palpably touch what he seeks. In all dying there is struggle and weakness; in our dying to sin there is great struggle and weakness. But only in his crucifixion can we see, in Jesus Christ, a place for struggle and weakness.[70] That self-sacrificing obedience of Jesus Christ's whole life, which was summed up in this great, final act of his crucifixion, and which is palpable as sacrifice, obedience, dolorous effort, only there, is, therefore, constantly regarded by Paul under the figure of this final act, as is also the believer's conformity to Christ's obedience. The believer is crucified with Christ when he mortifies by the spirit the deeds of unrighteousness; Christ was crucified when he pleased not himself, and came to do not his own will but God's. [Footnote 70: +estaurôthê ex astheneias+, II _Cor._, xiii, 4.]