Posts
 |
| Source: legacyicons.com |
When we let the flesh have its own will in everything, and it exceeds its proper bounds and rises up against the soul, then it destroys and corrupts everything. This is not owing to its own nature, but because it is out of proportion … And what hope of salvation is there left, if it is impossible for one who is bad to become good? This is not what he says.
How else would Paul have become such as he was? How would the penitent thief, or Manasses, or the Ninevites—or how would David, after falling, have recovered himself? How would Peter after the denial have raised himself up? (1 Cor. 5:5). How could the man who had lived in fornication have been enlisted among Christ’s fold? (2 Cor. 2:6–11). How could the Galatians who had “fallen from grace” (Gal. 5:4) have regained their former dignity?
What he says, then, is not that it is impossible for a man who is wicked to become good, but that it is impossible for one who continues wicked to be subject to God. Yet for a man to be changed, and so become good, and subject to Him, is easy … It cannot but be that where the Spirit is, there Christ is also. For wheresoever one Person of the Trinity is, there the whole Trinity is present. For it is undivided in Itself, and has a most entire Oneness.
—St. John Chrysostom, Homily XIII on Romans VII
