Deuteronomy 32:39

So the apostle was petrified, knocked down and laid low, raised up and patched up. The words, you see, were realized in him: "It is I that will strike and I that will heal." You see, it doesn't say, "I will heal, and I will strike," but "I will strike, and I will heal." I will strike you and give myself to you. Thus being laid low, he was horrified at his own justice, in which he was certainly without reproach, praiseworthy, great, even glorious among the Jews. He reckoned it was waste, he thought it was loss, he counted it dung, "that he might be found in him, not having his own justice, which is from the law; but that which is through the faith of Christ, which is," he says, "from God."

He is God, so he also takes pity. He gets angry, and he takes pity. He gets angry and strikes; he takes pity and heals. He gets angry and does to death; he takes pity and brings to life. In one person he does this. It's not that he does some people to death and brings others to life, but in the same people he is both angry and gentle. He is angry with errors; he is gentle with bad habits put right. "I will strike and I will heal: I will kill and I will make alive." One and the same Saul, afterward Paul, he both laid low and raised up. He laid low an unbeliever; he raised up a believer. He laid low a persecutor; he raised up a preacher.

[Paul's conversion] fulfilled in him what was written in the prophet, "I will strike, and I will heal." What God strikes, you see, is that in people which lifts up itself against God. The surgeon isn't being heartless when he lances the tumor, when he cuts or burns out the suppurating sore. He's causing pain; he certainly is, but in order to restore health. It's a horrid business; but if it wasn't, it wouldn't be any use.

It is not possible for the good to exist in me unless it is made to live through the death of my enemy. As long as we keep grasping opposites with each of our hands, it is impossible for there to be participation in both elements in the same being. For if we are holding evil, we lose the power to take hold of virtue.

The true method of our enquiry demands that we should begin with him, through whom God first manifested Himself to the world, that is, with Moses, by whose mouth God the Only-begotten thus declared Himself; See, see that I am God, and there is no God beside Me. That godless heresy must not assign these words to God, the unbegotten Father, is clear by the sense of the passage and by the evidence of the Apostle who, as we have already stated, has taught us to understand this whole discourse as spoken by God the Only-begotten. The Apostle also points out the words, Rejoice, O ye nations, with His people as those of the Son, and in corroboration further cites this:—And there shall be a root of Jesse, and One that shall arise to rule the nations; in Him shall the nations trust. Thus Moses by the words, Rejoice, O ye nations, with His people indicates Him Who said, There is no God beside Me; and the Apostle refers the same words to our Lord Jesus Christ, God the Only-begotten, in Whose rising as a king from the root of Jesse, according to the flesh, the hope of the Gentiles rests. And therefore we must now consider the meaning of these words, that we, who know that they were spoken by Him, may ascertain in what sense He spoke them.