ΤΗΕ ROLE OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCH
Concerning
Dιvine Justice
Question
from the audience,
which
is not recorded adequately, and refers to the Justice of God.
Answer
(by Fr. Savvas):
Yes. The Justice of God is again Love. God has no passions at all.
Whenever you read expressions, like “God is angry, outraged etc.”,
they are not referring to God’s passions. These expressions are
written this way (using human behavior), only to help us humans
logically understand those situations and hopefully repent.
What
we as human beings feel like “anger” or “wrath” of God
towards us, has two dimensions:
- It is nothing but the feeling of the absence of His Divine Grace from our very existence, and
- Our suffering, due to our sinful passions, and because of the war we face from the demons.
God
is dispassionate. Who
shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation,
or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or
sword? [Romans 8:35].
Nothing can separate us from the love of God. Nothing can make God
stop loving us… not even our sins! Why? Let us have a look at that…
What did Christ die for? He died for our sins; that’s why He shed
His blood.
So,
what do we mean by saying “God accumulates wrath”?
“God
accumulates wrath”. What does this mean?
To
explain and understand it better, we will depict this with an example
from our created reality.
Suppose
you act unjustly towards a person, you repeatedly and continuously do
him wrong all the time, and he, in response to your unfair behavior,
repays you constantly with kindness, and you insist on wronging him
all the way through… and he insists on doing you good… So, let’s
say you come across this person some day in your life... just think
of it… How would you feel about having so many times rejected his
benevolence and lost those millions of chances he gave to you, so you
can be friends at last, and love each other genuinely? Wouldn’t you
feel embarrassed? Wouldn’t you feel millions of nails piercing the
top your head? You will suddenly most probably come to realize “What
have I done to him, and what HE gave me in return!”
This
is how we are going to feel like in front of Him, our Lord Jesus
Christ...because this is what Christ did and always does in response
to our deeds toward Him. We constantly do Him wrong, we ignore Him,
and we literally delete Him: “LEAVE US ALONE, we DON’T want You
in our lives”. Maybe we do not say this to Him out loud, but we say
it with the life we lead. This is exactly what we do, when we
constantly satisfy our will and do not honestly look up for the will
of God for us in every moment. We actually say to Him “Step aside.
Now, I am going to do MY thing, I will say whatever I want, and do
not care at all about what YOU say.” For example, we say “Now, I
will have an abortion (e.g. murder). I cannot afford having a child
right now, I have serious financial problems”.
We
cancel Him out. We give priority to OUR reason, to OUR will, ahead of
and over
His will! Although His
will
is our best choice in every situation, we, instead, prefer ours. For
instance, we say “I won’t have a child, right now. I will be the
one who will say how to plan my pregnancy.” We delete God; we set
Him aside! And this is what sin is. Do you understand? I chose to
speak about something apparent and blatant enough, to make us realize
how we ignore God…
Despite
all that, God never cancels us out! He goes on doing us good, again
and again… He goes on giving us His air, His light, our food, our
spiritual food…and, above all, He never stops giving us Himself,
with His Body and Blood, during every Devine Liturgy. And what do WE
do in return? We go on keeping Him away from our lives, because we do
not want to deny our egoistic will and desires. Imagine this
happening again and again, repeatedly, for 70, 80, 100 years! And we,
all the way through, stubbornly stick in our impenitence…
Just
think of how we are going to feel about it, when we will come face to
Face with our Lord Jesus Christ in His Second Coming, when all these
things will be revealed!!!… Well, this is the accumulated “wrath”
we are talking about. We will not be able to stand in front of Him,
because of our great embarrassment. We are and will be “burning”
(always talking about the impenitent), not because God wants it.
(Remember, God is always good, dispassionate and wants everyone to be
saved). We are actually “burning” all by ourselves, meaning we
stay blind, for as long as we do not repent and do not progress in
becoming pure. We are not able see the Light, to see God, we stay
uncured.
f. Savvas Agioreitis
To be continued...
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