Agios Ioannis Chrysostomos
Look what the devil did to you. There are two things: sin and repentance. Sin is the wound; repentance is the medicine. Just like there are injuries and is medicine for the body, so there are sins and repentance for the soul. Sin has shame in it, repentance has courage and boldness. I want you, please, to listen carefully to me, in case you do not understand how the order of things is, and thus you lose the benefit. Watch what I’m going to say! There is the wound and there is the medicine…
There is sin and there is repentance. Wound is the sin; medicine is the repentance. In the wound there is pus and infection, there is shame, there is mockery. In repentance there is freeness of speech, the medicine, the power to purify what is infected. In sin there is infection, there is freedom, there is cleansing of sin. Watch my words carefully! After the sin comes the shame, after repentance follows courage and freeness of speech. Did you pay attention to what I said? This order of things was reversed by the devil, and he gave freeness of speech to sin, and shame to repentance. But when God removes the sins, He does not leave a scar nor allows any trace to remain on the soul; along with health He offers beauty, along with exemption from punishment He offers justice, and He makes the one who sinned, equal to the one who did not sin.
Because He removes the sin and not only He erases it, but it is like it had never existed in the past. In this way, He completely eliminates it. There is no longer a scar, no mark, no trace that reminds us of the wound. There is not the slightest sign that there used to be a wound(…). Watch my words carefully!
Because they are addressed to everyone, they concern everyone, and they lead to salvation. I’m making medicines, which are more important than doctors’ medicines(…). I deliver you in the hands of repentance, for you to get to know the power it has and what it is capable of doing, and for you to learn that no sin can either beat it, or prevail over its trength(…). Therefore, knowing the medicine of repentance, let us praise God. For glory and power are eternally His. Amen.
*The article was originally published in Greek in ikivotos.gr
