In baptism, man won the first and, one might say, decisive victory over sin. But in order to finally triumph over sin, it is necessary to banish it completely from one’s nature, one must completely cleanse one’s soul and body from the slightest signs of the old man. Only then will the “fetters” of sin finally fall away, and a person will fully assimilate eternal life for himself. “The Lord accepts the one who approaches Him with repentance and faith, forgives him all his former sins and, sanctifying with the sacraments, supplies him with the power to overcome the sin that lives in him, but he does not cast out sin itself, laying it on the person himself to expel him with the help of the grace bestowed on him for that” (St. Bishop Theophan).
As a result of this, the positive side of regeneration – putting on Christ, is also only a rudimentary imperfection. Man is conformable to Christ, but only in the sense of a common idea and the beginning of life, in the sense that he has chosen Christ henceforth as his Lord and Teacher, and by no means in the sense of complete similarity to nature. Man has only determined himself to serve Christ, but has not yet fulfilled his determination, has not yet assimilated for himself in the fullness of that life, which he called henceforth his duty and his highest good. The soul, even in rebirth, has only just turned and entered into the Divine life; it is rather only ready to perceive this life than enjoy it. “Baptism is only the beginning of the resurrection from hell” (st. Ephraim the Syrian). “In Christians, as children of God,” says St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, “there must be the beginning image of God, by which they must be like their Heavenly Father.” “God sowed good seed on the human heart, and made him good, and helps him and strengthens him to do good.” This seed is more specific than St. Tikhon is called “living faith”, i.e. precisely by defining oneself according to Christ*. So, a person has only “the firstfruits of the Spirit” (Rom. 8:23), or “the beginning of the image of God”, has only a seed.
If the righteousness received by a person in baptism is rather a possibility than a reality (in the sense, of course, of a complete likeness of nature), if it is only a seed, then the future life becomes very clear and understandable.
“Holy baptism, in the words of St. Athanasius of Alexandria, opens us (only) the path to enlightenment”, only gives us the opportunity to begin our salvation. “He who has taken the bath of resurrection,” says St. Gregory of Nyssa, “is like a young warrior who has just been entered into military lists, but has not yet shown anything militant or courageous. Just as he, having tied his belt and put on a mantle, does not immediately consider himself brave and approaching the king, does not speak with him boldly, like a friend, and does not ask for favors distributed to those who labored and labored, so you, having received grace, do not think to dwell with the righteous and be counted among them, if you do not endure many troubles for piety You will not wage war with the flesh, then with the devil, and you will not bravely resist all the shootings of the evil spirits.
A person has received grace, determined to do good; but the habitual element of sin remains before consciousness as a tempting principle and finds more or less sympathy for itself in human nature as well. Therefore, in case of inattention on the part of the baptized, the mortified enmity against God and His holy kingdom can rise again and make the acceptance of the sacrament in vain. The blessed kingdom was conceived in man, but has not yet conquered all of his nature, has not completely likened it to itself. “It happens,” says St. Macarius of Egypt, “that there is grace in another, but the heart is not yet pure.” Something similar takes place in the sacrament; man will have to struggle with the remnants of his former existence, with sinful habits, p. habit in general to live according to the elements of the world. Only after this struggle, when the possibility of sin is blotted out, can the goal of man be considered achieved and his salvation completely perfect. “If it is necessary,” says St. John Chrysostom, “to receive the Kingdom of Heaven, then it is not enough to be freed from sin, but you still need to practice a lot in virtues. legal point of view); but in order to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven, it is necessary to acquire virtue.
The task of human life after baptism
Whoever has been freed from sin in baptism will, of course, not be punished for his former sins; but if he is satisfied with this cleansing, then he will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. It is necessary to work on oneself even after baptism, because otherwise all the promises of a person, all his desires from now on to be righteous will turn out to be only an empty sound: having rejected the former life, a person must start a new one, and not remain indifferent. “As soon as,” says St. Gregory of Nyssa, “the soul hates sin, adopts a virtuous way of life as far as possible, and receives the grace of the Spirit into itself, turning it into life, then it will become completely new and recreated.” It is not enough, therefore, to hate sinful life and renounce it—it is necessary to root out the slightest remnants of it; it is not enough to define oneself for life according to Christ—it is necessary to put the grace received into life. In this sense, one can say that the grace of baptism can be increased or decreased. “Spiritual grace,” says St. Cyprian of Carthage, “which in baptism is equally accepted by believers, then by our behavior and actions either decreases or multiplies, just as in the Gospel the seed of the Lord is equally sown, but due to the difference in the soil, one is exhausted, and another multiplies in various abundance, bearing fruit thirty, sixty, or a hundred times greater.”
Therefore, a continuous feat of gradual purification, further perfection, or ascent from infancy to the age of a husband is necessary; the end of this ascent is the likeness of God, or holy communion with God, i.e. immortal life. “How soon,” says St. Macarius, “the soul has loved the Lord, it is snatched from the nets (of the world) by its own faith and diligence, and together with help from above, it is worthy of the eternal Kingdom, and, having really loved the latter, by its own will and with the help of of the Lord, is no longer deprived of eternal life.”
Let us conclude this section with the words of St. Theophan, to whom we have repeatedly turned to check our understanding of the teachings of Holy Fathers. “He who has fulfilled all the commandments,” writes the late Saint, “decorates his soul with all sorts of virtues and makes his heart a temple worthy of being the Lord’s abode. He (the Lord) dwells in it then. with him in Holy Communion, but, helping him in the life of the saint, he still does not completely calm down in him, because until all the virtues are settled in the soul through the fulfillment of the commandments, traces of passions still remain in it, an unpleasant smell to the Lord sin. He does not rest in it, as if not trusting it and only making for Himself a resting abode in it. When the soul is sanctified by virtues, then He faithfully enters into it, as into a house, and dwells calmly, undisturbed by movements unpleasant to him. sin and passions. The subsequent life, therefore, is not a mechanical, secondary appendage, but a necessary addition to the free-willing and at the same time mysterious upheaval experienced by a person in baptism.
On the other hand, with the Orthodox concept of the essence of rebirth, one can easily explain the phenomenon that people are saved who died not only immediately after baptism, without actively declaring their faith, but also before baptism (the so-called baptism by blood).
If the essence of the sacrament is to strengthen a person’s zeal for the good, then it is quite clear that this zeal still makes him a member of the Kingdom of Heaven and gives him the ability to acquire the bliss of holiness for himself, even if in real life a person had to confine himself to only one verbal promise to live holy. When a person after baptism does nothing for his improvement, although he has the opportunity, this is a sign that he was only half baptized, that he really does not have love for goodness and desire for holy communion with God. It is natural for such a person to be deprived of the reward promised to him: according to the mood of his soul, he is a stranger to the Kingdom of God. But if a person did not do anything just because he could not, or because death did not allow him to fulfill his promise, then, of course, the Kingdom of Heaven is open to him: he desires it with all his soul, with all his soul he wants to be holy and with saints, he wants follow Christ. His soul, therefore, is ready for the contemplation of the all-holy God and for communion with Him; this fellowship will therefore be his desired destiny. “The thief,” says St. Ephraim the Syrian, “having confessed verbally, is saved, because he did not have time to repent in reality; by his change (turning from enmity to Christ to love for Him, from joy before the mockery of the Righteous to reverent recognition of him holiness and the desire to at least be remembered in the Kingdom of the Desecrated) he showed in himself the desire to turn and actively, if time were given to him; just as one can be condemned in impiety by a word, so by a word one can turn out to be pious. And this is precisely because God is not looking for external actions, not merit on the part of a person, so as not to give him bliss in eternal communion with Himself for nothing, but seeks only the ability to perceive this communion and gives it, as much as He Himself can or wants to give, how many people can accommodate. “Man,” according to St. Macarius of Egypt, “will enjoy the promise to the extent that, having believed, he loved it, and not in what he worked. Since the gifts are great, it is impossible to find worthy labors. But faith and hope must be great so that by them, and not by labors, retribution is measured. The foundation of faith is spiritual poverty and immeasurable love for God.” Once this love for God exists, once a person recognizes in his soul his insignificance without God and sincerely aspires to Him with his whole soul, then salvation will be granted to him, even if he does not have time to declare his irrevocable decision by deeds. “Only he who wished good, but met an obstacle in doing it …, according to the disposition of his soul, no less proved his will by his deeds” (st. Gregory of Nyssa).
Therefore, even rejection of the sacrament in the prescribed form may not harm a person, once this essence of true Christianity has formed in him – the desire for the Kingdom of Christ, who, for reasons beyond his control, did not have time to fulfill his desire to be united with Christ, nevertheless, is accepted on a par with the baptized. “Permissiveness (in this case) is valued as the deed itself, because (in this case as well) the foundation of the deed is assumed by the will” (Ephraim Sirin). Baptism with blood replaces the mystical baptism with water, of course, not by its external form, not by washing with blood instead of water, for there is a martyr’s death without the shedding of blood; it is identical with it in its inner meaning: both this and that come from an irrevocable decision to serve Christ and the renunciation of one’s sinful desires.
Thus, the salvation of each individual person, according to Orthodox teaching, is not an event that occurs only in the Divine consciousness, not a matter of legal imputation, according to which the Lord would award a person this or that fate on the basis of some external circumstances, i.e. on the basis of either the merit of Christ or the man’s own merit. Salvation is necessarily mediated by man’s transition from sin and selfishness into the Kingdom of goodness and love, which man is looking forward to here, but will be inherited in all its fullness in the next age. This transition begins in baptism, when a person is confirmed by the power of God in his decision to be a true Christian; continues in the form of a natural (free-gracious) development of the laid seed of eternal life after baptism; and ends with the entry of a person to where he has prepared himself with the help of the means given to him, for which he has developed susceptibility in himself, i.e. Heavenly Kingdom of light, truth and love. A person “acts where the mind has its goal and what it loves” (st. Macarius of Egypt).
Source: with abbreviations that do not distort the meaning, from the work of Archbishop (Finland) Sergius: “The Orthodox Doctrine of Salvation”. Ed. 4. St. Petersburg. 1910 (pp. 140-155, 161-191, 195-206, 216-241).
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