The exile from Paradise led to man’s imprisonment, his self-isolation within himself. Our self, which was created to be our meeting place with the Triune God, has thus become our prison. Man shut himself up in himself and this was his punishment. By disobeying Heaven, he became his own enemy and his own victim. Spiritual division now established itself within him as quintessential mode of existence of the fallen individual. Henceforth shutting himself away inside himself will be the painful way of self-education he has chosen for himself. The exodus from Paradise, therefore, delivered man from where he had been in the arms of God into the hands of himself. Man would have been disciplined in Heaven by the tender love of God, but he chose instead to be harshly disciplined by himself.
Man’s self-education, like the education of God’s people through the Mosaic Law, was not sufficient for his salvation. The restoration of man’s relationship with God required man to be re-created through the God-man Jesus Christ. He is the ‘redemption’ of man (Rom. 3:24), because through Him man was restored, to become as God wished him to be when He created him. The God-man is the ideal man. Henceforth, each of us realizes through the God-man Jesus the goal of communion with God, for which we came into this world. Communion with God is now possible for every human being, on only one condition: his opening to the God-man Christ. This opening is faith [“For we maintain that a person is justified by faith”, Romans 3:28].
The faith that Paul speaks of is not the result of a conviction which we have come to through intellectual debate; rather it is the result of opening our hearts to the Miracle which is God himself. He grants us a reason (= confession) for faith the moment we allow Him to meet our trusting (=unlocked) heart (Rom. 10:9-10). In fact, the reason that is granted to us in this case, and specifically its quality, depends on the extent to which our heart is open to God and his works. Hence Paul’s insistence that unbelief is the product of hardness of heart, whereas faith comes from a soft and innocent heart like that of a child.
Man was not created hard-hearted. Human existence is by nature self-transcendent, for man was not made to live alone, but, whether alive or dead, to be one with the Lord. That is why Christ died and rose again, as the Apostle reminds us, to win them all, living and sleeping (Rom. 14: 7-9).
Hard-heartedness is the result of man’s impassioned turning towards himself, which first occurred with the Fall, and ever since has been a constituent aspect of his soul (Rom. 11:25: “do not be wise in your own opinion”. Cf. Rom. 12:16). Because hard-heartedness constitutes the dominant existential condition of man in this fallen world, the intervention of Divine Grace is always required, in order to soften the heart and grant us faith (Rom. 11:5-7).
The usual way for man to re-encounter his own heart is through tribulation. The compassionate heart of God is surely grieved by our sorrows – and in a way that no human being could endure – but he only permits them so that our hearts will be softened and our faith in Him will make it possible for Him to save us .
The opening of a heart that truly believes in the God-man Christ necessarily leads to love for all, since through Christ each of us is a member of all (Rom. 13:9-14). The ancient commandment “love your neighbour as yourself” was, according to the Apostle, confirmed ontologically through Christ, who through His Incarnation, His Sacrifice, his Resurrection and above all His Church, has made each of us a member belonging to all the others (Rom. 12, 4-5).
Therefore, according to Paul, it is impossible to truly love Christ and not love everyone, just as it is impossible to truly love everyone else and not love Christ. Thus, according to Paul, faith constitutes the essential criterion of right action, according to which sin is everything that is not done from real faith in Christ or from the love for all of mankind that only real faith inspires (Rom. 14: 23: “everything that is not of faith is sin.”)
There are degrees of faith (Rom. 1:16-17), as well as degrees of unbelief. Thus hardness of heart causes unbelief, unbelief causes closed-mindedness, closed-mindedness causes passions and passions cause spiritual death (Rom. 1:25-32). Accordingly, the opening of our heart leads to faith in the God-man Jesus Christ, our faith in Him gives us patience in our sorrows, our patience in our sorrows gives us the experience of the living God who stands by us in our sorrows, the experience of God’s support in our sorrows strengthens our hope in Him, and this hope is strengthened even more by the pouring of God’s love into our hearts, which makes our faith in Him still stronger (Rom. 5:2-5).
Source: https://www.silouanemartin.be/
*Protopresbyter Dr Georgios Lekkas is a cleric of the Holy Metropolis of Belgium
