I hear many people say this. Since God, as the divine Paul says, foreknew those who are to be saved, predestined them, called them, and glorified them, what profit is there for me in undertaking every labor? What profit is there in showing my conversion and repentance, if I have not been foreknown by God and predestined to be saved?
To such people one must answer as follows. My brethren, why do you think not of what can save you, but of what makes you liable to torment? Why do you take from Holy Scripture only the words hard to understand? Why do you twist them and understand them perversely, to the ruin of your soul?
Do you not hear how the Lord Himself cries out every day: "As I live, I do not desire the death of the sinner, but that the ungodly turn from his way and live" (Ezek 33:11)? Do you not hear what else He says: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Mt 4:17)? And again: "There will be joy in heaven over one sinner who repents" (Lk 15:7).
Or did He perhaps say somewhere to some: You need not repent, for I will not receive you? And to others, the predestined: You must repent, for I have predestined you? No, no. The Lord did not say this and never will say it. Rather, every day in every church He cries out to the whole world: "Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Mt 11:28).
Come, He says, you who are burdened with sins, to Him who takes away the sins of the whole world. You who thirst for salvation, run to the ever-flowing and inexhaustible Fountain of salvation. Did He exclude anyone here? Did He call one man, as foreknown, to come to Him, and drive another away, as not foreknown? Not at all.
Therefore, my brethren, do not attempt to invent excuses for sins. Do not devise pretexts to justify your negligence and your indulgence toward sins. Do not take the Apostle's words as an occasion for your ruin. Rather, all of you, small and great, run to Christ the Lord, who calls you.
Whether someone is a prodigal son, or a publican, or a harlot, or a thief, or anything else like this, the Master Christ turns away from no one. At once He removes from him the burden of his sins and makes him free from them.
How does He remove this burden? As He once removed it from the paralytic, saying to him: "Take heart, child, your sins are forgiven you" (Mt 9:2). With this word the paralytic was immediately relieved of his burden, and his body received health.
So let everyone who wishes run to Him. Let one cry out: Son of David, have mercy on me! And when He hears this and asks, "What do you want Me to do for you?" let him answer: Lord, that I may receive my sight. At once he will hear from the Lord, "Receive your sight," and he will see (Mk 10:48 and following).
Let another say: My daughter, my soul, is grievously possessed by a demon. And he will hear from Him: I will come and heal her (Mt 15:22; Mt 8:7). If someone is negligent and does not wish to run to Christ for himself, then at least when he sees Him coming to him through teachers and preachers of the Gospel, saying, "Follow Me," let him follow Him like Matthew the publican (Mt 9:9). Let him leave his tax booth, that is, his love of gain. I am confident that Christ will make him, from a publican, an evangelist.
Even if someone, like the paralytic of thirty-eight years, has long lain on the bed of pleasure and carelessness, let him see that the Master Christ is coming to him. He comes either inwardly, by the action of grace, or in the person of some spiritual man. When He says, "Do you want to be made well?" let him immediately receive the word with joy and say: Yes, Lord, I desire it, but I have no man to cast me into the pool of repentance.
And if the Lord says to him, "Rise, take up your bed, and follow Me," let him rise with readiness. Let him follow diligently in the footsteps of Him who has thus called him from above.
But if someone does not wish to love Christ as the harlot loved Him, or to turn to Him with fervent repentance as the prodigal son did, or to run to Him as the woman with the issue of blood did, why does he still invent excuses for sins? Why does he devise pretexts to justify his love of sin, saying that those whom God foreknew, He also called?
To the man who invents such pretexts one may rightly say this. Truly God, who knows all things from before the ages before they come to pass, foresaw even you. He foresaw that you would not wish to obey Him when He called you, and that you would not believe His promises and words.
Yet though He knew this, He bowed the heavens, came down to earth, and became man out of love for you. Even now He comes to the place where you live in your sins. Every day He visits you, sometimes Himself in His own person, through the illumination of His grace, and sometimes through His servants.
He calls you to rise from your fall and from the sin in which you wallow. He calls you to follow Him, who has ascended into heaven, and to enter His kingdom together with Him. Yet, even with all this, you do not wish it.
Tell me, then, I beg you, who is the cause of your ruin and disobedience? Is it you, who are disobedient and unwilling to follow your Master? Or is it He who created you? He, as the all-knowing One, foresaw that you would not obey Him, and that you would remain in your hardness of heart and impenitence. Yet even so He called you to salvation.
I am certain that you will not dare answer that He is the cause. In every way you will confess that you yourself are guilty of everything.
God's foreknowledge is not the cause of our hardening. Our disobedience is the cause. God knows all things beforehand, what has been, what is, and what will be. He knows everything before it happens, and sees it as though it were present and taking place before His face. For everything has its being and existence from God, and before its being everything exists in His creative mind. The first forms of all things are there within Him.
A king on earth, at a contest, sees both those who run the race and those who enter the struggle. Yet he is not the cause either of the victory of those who prove victors, or of the defeat of those who are defeated. The zeal and effort of the victors cause their victory. The sloth and negligence of the defeated cause their defeat.
Reason about God in the same way. After He honored us with self-determination and gave us commandments, teaching us how to struggle with our spiritual enemies, He left it in our power either to oppose the devil and conquer him, or to give ourselves to carelessness and be conquered by him.
Yet even in this He does not leave us alone in the struggle. He knows the weakness of human nature. He Himself is present with us during the battle. He helps us when we desire to fight the enemy, and secretly strengthens us by His power. Thus He conquers the enemy more than we do.
An earthly king cannot do this. Since he himself is a weak and feeble man, he needs help from his subjects. But God, being all-powerful and invincible, helps those who by their own will desire to oppose the devil. He makes them victors over the evil devil.
Those who do not wish to resist the devil and fight against him, God does not force. He does not violate the self-determination of our rational nature, which He created according to His image. He does not reduce us to the rank of irrational animals.
Thus God sees us acting freely, just as an earthly king sees those who contend at a contest. But the earthly king does not know beforehand which will conquer and which will be defeated. He learns this only when he sees both parties in action at the end of the contest. Therefore, although he prepares crowns beforehand, he does not know to whom he will have to give them.
The heavenly King, however, knows before the ages both those who will conquer and those who will be defeated. Therefore He said to those who asked that one should sit at His right hand and the other at His left in His glory: "It is not Mine to give, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by My Father" (Mt 20:23).
The divine Paul knew this very thing. He rightly wrote: "Whom He foreknew, He also predestined. And whom He predestined, these He also called. And whom He called, these He also justified."
Thus God's foreknowledge is not the cause of the victory of those who will conquer by their own will and zeal. Nor is it the cause of the defeat and fall of those who will be defeated and fall through negligence and sloth. The free will of each is the cause. Zeal and courage cause victory. Negligence and laziness cause fall and ruin.
Therefore, when we give ourselves to negligence and do the desires of the flesh and the world, we must not say that those whom God foreknew and appointed will be saved. We do not understand what we are saying.
Yes, you speak truly that God foreknew that you would be lazy, careless, and negligent. But He did not appoint or decree that you should have no power to repent, if you wished, and to rise from the bed of carelessness and be zealous for salvation.
If you say this, you will be asserting that God is false. For when the Lord said, "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance" (Mt 9:13), you say something contrary to this. By refusing to repent because of your evil mind, you belch out blasphemy, as though the God who cannot lie had spoken something false.
You invent such a pretext: those who are to repent have been predestined. Let those who are foreknown and predestined repent. I am not among them.
O woe to the soul that utters such pretexts! Woe to it, for it is worse than the demons themselves. Has anyone ever heard demons utter such a word? Now we have no need to denounce the demons, for a human soul has been found that invents blasphemies worse than theirs.
How did you learn, O man, that you are not among those foreknown and predestined to be conformed to the image of the Son of God? Tell me, who told you this? Perhaps God revealed it to you in a special way, either directly from Himself, or through some prophet, or through an angel?
No, you say. I devise this by myself: suppose I have not been foreknown and predestined to be saved, then all my labor will be lost in vain.
O senseless man! Why would you not rather hold this in your mind with your whole soul? God sent His Only-begotten Son into the world for you also, for your own salvation, because He foresaw and predestined you to be His brother and fellow heir.
Holding this in mind, why would you not labor earnestly and be zealous to love Him with all your soul and fulfill His commandments? Then you would be saved. Once you believed this, how could you fail to believe that He who was slain on the Cross for your sake will never wish to abandon you? He will never permit you to perish.
Or do you not hear how He Himself says: A mother may forget the child of her womb, but I will not forget you (Isa 49:15)? If you make yourself unworthy of the kingdom of those being saved, and by your own evil deeds deliberately separate yourself from the saved flock of Christ's sheep, then see to it yourself. No one else is guilty of your ruin except you.
Therefore, my brethren, let us cast away every unbelief, doubt, and sloth. Let us run to Christ with our whole heart, with unwavering faith and fervent disposition, as servants purchased by His priceless blood. Let us stand in reverent awe before this most pure blood, given as the price and redemption for us.
Let us love our Master Christ, who gave it for our redemption. Let us receive His boundless love, which He has for us. Let us be assured that if He had not wished to save all of us, redeemed by His precious blood, He would not have come down to earth. He would not have wished to be slain for us.
For, as it is written, desiring all to be saved, He did what He did. He became man, was crucified, and died, all for the salvation of us all. Hear what He Himself says: "I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world" (Jn 12:47).
THEOSIS