In fact, however, man always consents to sin of his own will. If he did not consent to sin, there would be no sin. In our own speech we often say: What can one do? I cannot manage myself.
We speak as though we were doing what we do from some necessity. Yet we know that we do it all willingly. So the Apostle's word does not affirm that sin is involuntary, nor does it deny its willing character.
Ordinarily, before sinning, a man does not want sin, and after sinning he does not approve it. But while he is sinning, he both wants sin and considers doing the sinful deed better than not doing it.
It seems as though someone from outside came, took his hands and feet, and even his soul with its thoughts, feelings, and desires, and committed the sin. In reality, sinful excitement truly does come upon him.
Yet the man himself sins, with his whole person, and only by willing consent to sin. One may only be perplexed over what mystery lies in sin. But man cannot be acquitted of guilt.
Let us repeat what was said before. Man is spirit, soul, and body. The norm of his life is life in the spirit under the action of the fear of God and conscience. Soul and body must be subject to it and spiritualized by it.
When in the fall man tore himself away from God and resolved to arrange his well-being by himself, he received selfhood and self-pleasing as a new principle of life.
Since the spirit by nature is detached from created things, and since the character of its life is self-sacrifice to God, selfhood could find no food for self-pleasing in it. It therefore turned to the soul and body.
The soul and body are usually moved by impulses of what is pleasant and useful. They have many needs. Each need multiplies many desires, according to the multitude of objects suitable for satisfying them.
Each need presents a special form of self-pleasing. The objects that satisfy them provide food for self-pleasing. Having descended into this realm, man entered a kind of disorderly, many-voiced crowd.
There everyone offers him what is his own, what is pleasant and agreeable to him. At the beginning of the fall, tasting the sweetness of self-pleasing, man himself raised this passion into the principle determining his activity.
Therefore, moving amid that crowd, as soon as he senses something pleasant offered to him, he immediately falls upon it. He is bribed by that sweetness of self-pleasing first received.
In such a mode of action, one does not look at whether the deed is right or wrong, but only at whether it is sweet. Therefore sinfulness lies here at the very root.
Everything done according to the principle of self-pleasing is sinful, although not every such deed, by kind, is contrary to righteousness. The unrighteousness here is that the demands of the spirit receive no attention at all.
These demands belong to the essential needs of human nature. In general they are not disputed, for they are present to consciousness. But in action they are not taken into account, because they give no food to the sweetness of self-pleasing.
Instead, they demand self-sacrifice. Thus fallen man would be sinful even if, in the outward form of his deeds, he did what was natural to soul and body by satisfying their needs.
In reality, however, his life is more unrighteous than this alone. It is also unrighteous because he measures the satisfaction of needs by sweetness, not by any higher standard. Therefore he always falls into excess.
It is unrighteous also because he determines the relation among needs, which should be satisfied more and which is more necessary, by no higher principle. He likewise chooses objects for satisfying them by the same sweetness.
From this comes disorder, which acts harmfully upon man and destroys itself. All this already greatly increases sinfulness. But this is still not all.
The spirit of the fallen man is selfhood: I myself. From this selfhood passions were born which proceed directly from selfhood and rest on nothing natural. Such are pride, envy, hatred, malice, greed, vainglory, and the like.
Selfhood seeks self-pleasing and can find it only in soul and body. Having descended into them, it entered there with the whole host of passions.
Even there, without this, many unrighteous things were possible. They lay in failing to preserve the measure of satisfying needs, their mutual relations, and the choice of objects for satisfying them.
But because the poison of the passions was poured into them, unrighteousness exceeded every measure. Under their influence everything there was distorted. The satisfaction of needs was turned into the satisfaction of passions.
It took an unnatural direction, destructive both for the one acting and for others. All this together is the sin dwelling in us.
It covers itself with the natural needs of soul and body. It is set in motion by the sweetness of self-pleasing and is directed by the passions.
It may be described thus: a self-centered, passionate, pleasure-loving, soul-and-bodily self-pleasing. Its offspring are many, but they usually keep silent. They are very like a band of robbers hidden in ambush.
Like robbers in ambush, or beasts in a den, they are hidden somewhere in us, as though they were not there. Yet the human spirit, even in the fallen man, is still alive and constitutes the norm of human life.
Therefore man usually stands on the side of the spirit. That is, he acknowledges the lawfulness of its demands and is not alien to the desire to act according to them. He praises the law as good.
But as soon as action according to the spirit is required, since the spirit is opposed to sin in all its described manifestations, the offspring of sin against which the proposed deed must be directed immediately rises up.
Together with it, all that is akin to it and radical rises up: self-pleasing, which seeks sweetness. A dispute and struggle occur. The spirit presents its reasons, while sin with its offspring displays its charms.
The demands of the spirit are detached from created sweetness. If they promise a good, it too is spiritual and detached. But sin gives tangible sweetness directly in the action contrary to the spirit's demand.
Therefore the man, who first chose sweetness as the principle determining his deeds, inclines toward the action that gives sweetness and commits sin.
After sin, he again listens to the spirit and condemns his own action. But when he again approaches some deed required by the spirit, he again yields to sin. He has been bribed beforehand by sinful sweetness.
So every sinner acts so long as he remains a sinner. In him is fulfilled what the Apostle said: I praise the law as good, but sin dwelling in me deceives me and draws me to lawless deeds, and I sin.
Oecumenius asks: How does sin contrive to do this? He answers: "It offers me sweetness in the deed before me, and thus deceives me into not remaining faithful to what I recognized as right and wanted."
Theodoret writes that when the Apostle speaks thus, "by sin he means the slavery of the mind, that is, the spirit, and the dominion of the passions. The mind, or spirit, does not itself perform the deed, because it hates what is done. Yet the dominion of the passions is active here."
THEOSIS