The Journey towards Love

[Sola_Fide]

Do not say that you are the temple of the Lord, writes Jeremiah (cf. Jer. 7:4); nor should you say that faith alone in our Lord Jesus Christ can save you, for this is impossible unless you also acquire love for Him through your works.

As for faith by itself, ‘the devils also believe, and tremble.’ (Jas. 2:19)

- St. Maximos the Confessor

This is horribly wrong. This is the opposite of Christianity. The Bible, in so many places and so many ways, declares that there is no amount of works that can save you. This is the religion of the world. All the world's religions say that man must do good works to be saved. Christianity says that it is only Christ's perfect works that can save, and a man is saved by fully trusting in Christ's works for salvation.

Don't be misled by these worldly Pharisaical liars who say that man must do works to be saved.

As for the verse in James, the demons believe God is one. Well, that is not saving faith. Monotheism alone is not saving faith. The reason the demons aren't saved is because they believe in the wrong propositions. Jews or Muslims are not saved either, because monotheism alone is not saving faith. Saving faith is something that is Christocentric.

 

[TER]

'I believe in one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.’ Do you believe that all Orthodox Christians are members of one and the same body, and that therefore we must all ‘keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace,” must care for one… another, help one another? Do you believe that the saints are likewise members of the one body of Christ – that is, of the Church, and are our brethren, interceding for us before God in heaven? Do you respect every Christian, as a member of Christ, as His brother according to human nature? Do you love everybody as yourself, as your own flesh and blood? Do you generously forgive offenses? Do you help others in need, if you yourself have means? Do you teach the ignorant? Do you turn the sinner from the error of his ways? Do you comfort those who are in affliction? Faith in the Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church inspires, obliges you to do all this; and for all this you are promised a great reward from the Head of the Church – our Lord Jesus Christ.

- St. John of Kronstadt

 

[TER]

To love Christ means not to be a hireling, not to look upon a noble life as an enterprise or trade, but to be a true benefactor and to do everything only for the sake of love for God

- St. John Chrysostom

 

[TER]

God is loving to man, and loving in no small measure. For say not, I have committed fornication and adultery: I have done dreadful things, and not once only, but often: will He forgive? Will He grant pardon? Hear what the Psalmist says: How great is the multitude of Your goodness, O Lord!

Your accumulated offenses surpass not the multitude of God’s mercies: your wounds surpass not the great Physician’s skill. Only give yourself up in faith: tell the Physician your ailment: say thou also, like David: I said, I will confess me my sin unto the Lord: and the same shall be done in your case, which he says immediately: And you forgave the wickedness of my heart.

- St. Cyril of Jerusalem

 

[TER]

What is perfection in love? Love your enemies in such a way that you would desire to make them your brothers … For so did He love, Who hanging on the Cross, said ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' (Luke 23:34)

- St. Augustine of Hippo

 

[TER]

If you find that there is no love in you, but you want to have it, then do deeds of love, even though you do them without love in the beginning. The Lord will see you desire and striving and will put love in your heart.

- St. Ambrose of Optina

 

[TER]

“Love covers a multitude of sins,” (I Pet. 4:8). That is, for love towards one’s neighbor, God forgives the sins of the one who loves.

- St. Theophan the Recluse

 

[TER]

When a man’s intellect is constantly with God, his desire grows beyond all measure into an intense longing for God and his incisiveness is completely transformed into divine love. For by continual participation in the divine radiance his intellect becomes totally filled with light; and when it has reintegrated its passable aspect, it redirects this aspect towards God, as we have said, filling it with an incomprehensible and intense longing for Him and with unceasing love, thus drawing it entirely away from worldly things to the divine.

- St. Maximos the Confessor

 

[TER]

..without love, the works of virtue are not praiseworthy or profitable to the man who practices them, and the same is true of love without works. St. Paul makes this fully clear with reference to works when he writes to the Corinthians, 'If I do this and that, but have no love, it profits me nothing' (cf. I Cor. 13:1-3); and with reference to love the disciple especially beloved by Christ writes, 'Let us not love in word or tongue but in action and truth' (I John 3:18).

- St. Gregory Palamas

 

[TER]

An old man was asked, 'How can I find God?' He said, 'In fasting, in watching, in labors, in devotion, and, above all, in discernment. I tell you, many have injured their bodies without discernment and have gone away from us having achieved nothing. Our mouths smell bad through fasting, we know the Scriptures by heart, we recite all the Psalms of David, but we have not that which God seeks: charity and humility.

- The Desert Fathers

 

[TER]

And this is love, that we walk after His commandments. This is the commandment, That, as ye have heard from the beginning, ye should walk in it." Divine Truth is contained and found in the commandments of the Gospel. Divine love gives us will, strength, and perseverance for we walk after the [divine] commandments, for we walk after His commandments in them and with them. Our love -- as much towards the Lord Christ as towards men -- consists of living according to the commandments of Christ. For at the end, everything comes back to this double commandment: the commandment of love of God and one's neighbor. This is why the holy Evangelist recalls all the commandments to a single one: This is the commandment, That ... you walk in it [love]. We now know that the entire Gospel of Christ is contained in the single commandment on love: he who lives in love lives in Christ God. Thus, he who fulfills the Gospel of God is deserving of heaven and earth.

- St. Justin Popovich

 

[TER]

Christ's words that the 'first will be last, and the last will be first' (Mt.19:30) refer to those who participate in the virtues and those who participate in love. For love is the last of the virtues to be born in the heart, but it is the first in value, so that those born before it turn out to be 'the last.'

- St. Mark the Ascetic

 

[TER]

For him who is perfect in love and has reached the summit of dispassion there is no difference between his own and another's, or between Christians and unbelievers, or between slave and free, or even between male and female. But because he has risen above the tyranny of the passions and has fixed his attention on the single nature of man, he looks on all in the same way and show the same disposition to all.

- St. Maximos the Confessor

 

[TER]

He who loves God consciously in his heart is known by God (cf. I Cor. 8:3), for to the degree that he receives the love of God consciously in his soul, he truly enters into God's love. From that time on, such a man never loses an intense longing for the illumination of spiritual knowledge...

- St. Diadochos of Photiki

 

[TER]

He who loves the Lord has first loved his brother, because the second is a proof of the first.

- St. John Climacus

 

[TER]

He who says that he loves the Lord but is angry with his brother is like a man who dreams that he is running.

- St. John Climacus

 

[TER]

He who truly loves God, is devoted to His holy will; and no matter what might befall him, he accepts everything, as from the hand of God, with the firm faith that all this serves to his spiritual benefit. For the soul that is devoted to God, the misfortunes that befall it in this life serve as steps leading it up to perfection.

- St. John Climacus

 

[otherone]

Is it possible to love God, and not your brother?
Or love your brother, and not God?

 

[TER]

Love does not depend on time, and the power of love continues always. There are some who believe that the Lord suffered death for love of man but because they do not attain to this love in their own souls, it seems to them that it is all an old story of bygone days. But when the soul knows the love of God through the Holy Spirit, she feels without a shadow of a doubt that the Lord is our Father, the closest and dearest of fathers, and there is no greater happiness than to love God with all our mind, with all our heart and with all our soul, according to the Lord’s commandment, and our neighbor as ourself.

And when this love is in the soul, everything rejoices her, but when it is lost sight of, man cannot find peace, and is troubled, and blames others as if they had done him an injury, and does not realize that he himself is at fault: he has lost his love for God and has accused, or conceived a hatred for, his brother. Grace proceeds from brotherly love, and by brotherly love is grace preserved; but if we do not love our brother, then the grace of God will not come into our souls.

- St. Silouan the Athonite

 

[TER]

The Lord is always waiting for us to unite ourselves with Him in love; but instead, we drift further and further away from Him. We know that there can be no life without love. This means that there is no life without God, for God is Love. But His love is not according to the understanding of the world. The love that the world gives us consists of suffering and enslavement, because the spirits of evil interfere with it. There is a little bit of love, but mostly it is just enslavement.

- Elder Thaddeus