“The one who believes the Lord fears punishment; the one who fears punishment becomes master of his passions; the one who becomes master of his passions patiently endures tribulations; the one who patiently endures tribulations will have hope in God; hope in God separates from every earthly attachment; and when the mind is separated from this, it will have love for God” (St. Maximos the Confessor. First Century on Love 3)
To get to the love for God means according to St. Maximos that we must pass through fear. Is there some other way? We in our time just don’t like that word, that four-letter term that we spend our lives trying to avoid. On top of that, we are to fear punishment. He doesn’t mean that the loving Lord will punish us for not loving Him in return. He has nothing but love for us, despite our inability to return that affection. As St. Paul wrote: “But God demonstrates His own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8), and still does, I might add.
The punishment meant by the theologian is a self-afflicted chastisement in the form of guilt. Those who have no faith in God have little reason for guilt. If they are not aware of His overwhelming, incomparable love demonstrated by His willing acceptance of the cross on our behalf, fear or guilt is ludicrous. Only those who meditate on the Holy Trinity will begin to grasp the sacrifice made for our salvation. As St. Paul stated so well: “Although [Christ] existed in the form of God, He did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant—He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the form of death, even death on the Cross” (Philippians 2:6).
To meditate on that overwhelming expression of God’s love for us is to realize the sacrifice. Such a gift is worthy of a present in return, but what gift is there commensurate to God’s Self-offering? Nothing does He want from us but ourselves not as we are, but as He created us to be. More than friendship, we were made to be united with the Creator. To believe that glorious truth is to avoid at all costs the guilt that comes over us when we abandon the only worthwhile goal of our lives, the struggle to respond to God’s love for us. And just as the Lord Jesus overcame all temptations because His sole intention was to do the will of the Father, so we are to accept the grace that is offered to us by the Holy Spirit in order that we can do likewise. Only with the Spirit’s help can we possibly master our passions, and only if we conquer our obsessions will we be free to offer ourselves as gifts of love to the loving God.
It will require long and patient endurance of all the trials that come our way. Rather than expecting deliverance from the tests of life, we ought to welcome them as opportunities to see what we are made of, how well we meet the moment of examination, and what more needs to be achieved before we can feel we are victors over sin. Some Christians claim it is impossible; however, “What is impossible with man is possible with God” (Luke 18:27). Hope, that least of the spiritual virtues, is the evidence of trust in the Lord within us. To surrender to defeatism, to give in to the feeling that you are as you are, nothing will change, is to refuse a challenge of the spirit. Here’s the difference between our spiritual ancestors and us—or at least those of us who will not make an effort to learn what they are made of. Is it not ironic that in our time of human advances in technology and science, when striking breakthroughs in medicine occur routinely, pushing the limits of knowledge, in sporting events, breaking records in all phases of athletics with almost each international trial, it is in spiritual development that we lag behind our Orthodox Christian ancestors.