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“I have come into the world as light” (John 12:46), the Lord said about Himself. This Light stood before the Jews, clothed in flesh; it stands before us, clothed in the Gospel. This Light stands before us, “so that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. He who believes in Him is not condemned, but he who does not believe is already condemned (John 3:15; 3:18).” Who does not believe in the Son of God? - Not only the one who openly and decisively rejects Him, but also the one who, calling himself a Christian, leads a sinful life, pursues carnal pleasures, the one who has God as a belly, the one who has God as silver and gold, the one who has God as earthly glory, the one who has honored earthly wisdom, hostile to God, as if it were God. “Everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds be exposed, because they are evil, but he who does righteousness comes to the light, so that his deeds may be revealed, because they are done in God” (John 3:20-21). Without self-sacrifice, a person is incapable of faith, his fallen mind opposes faith, boldly demanding an account from God of His actions and evidence in the truths He reveals to man, the fallen heart wants to live a life of fall, to the mortification of which faith strives: flesh and blood, despite the grave that is approaching them every hour, also want to live their own life, the life of corruption and sin. That is why the Lord proclaimed to everyone who wanted to be numbered and follow Him with living faith: if anyone wants to come after Me, deny yourself, and take up your cross, and follow Me, for whoever wants to save his soul will lose it, and whoever loses his soul for My sake will find it (Matthew 16:24-25). The fall has been so internalized by the entire human being that the rejection of this fall has become a rejection, as it were, of life. Without this rejection it is impossible to acquire faith - the guarantee of eternal, blissful, spiritual life; whoever wants to revive the passions of the heart or body, to enjoy them, wants to revive his fallen mind, falls away from the faith. Living faith is a procession into the spiritual world, into the World of God. It cannot abide in one who is nailed to the world below, where flesh and sin reign. Faith is the door to God. There is no other door to Him: “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb. 11:6). This door gradually opens before one who purifies himself by constant repentance; it is wide open before a pure heart, but it is closed for a sinner. Only by faith can one approach Christ, only by faith can one follow Christ. Faith is a natural property of the human soul, planted in it by a merciful God at its creation. 25 This natural property was chosen by God at the time of redemption, like a branch from the branches of a tree, for the grafting of grace into it. Faith was rightly chosen by God as an instrument for the salvation of people: we perished by believing the flattering words of God’s and our enemy. There was once a sound of words from the lips of a villain in paradise, our forefathers listened to them, believed them - and were expelled from paradise; now in the vale of exile the voice of the Word of God - the Gospel - is heard for their descendants, and those who listen and believe the Gospel again enter paradise. “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord,” the apostle teaches, “and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved, because with the heart one believes for righteousness, and with the mouth one confesses for salvation” (Rom. 10:9-10). True living faith, only a person confesses it with his lips, brings him salvation. She brought salvation to the thief on the cross, she brought salvation through repentance to many sinners in the last, dying minutes of their lives. It is so important, necessary for salvation, to confess with the lips the faith of the heart and the conviction of the soul, that the holy martyrs of all centuries of Christianity, starting with the very apostles of Christ, agreed better to endure terrible and prolonged suffering, to shed their blood like water, than to utter a renunciation of Christ, even only feignedly, with their lips alone, without the participation of the heart. God requires from man one living, true faith for his salvation. She, as a guarantee of salvation and eternal bliss, should be dearer to a Christian than his earthly life. Martyrdom was the fruit of true knowledge of God, bestowed by faith. Martyrdom was a matter of faith. This work has been and is being blasphemed by those who highly value the deeds of fallen human nature: in their blindness they call this magnanimous, most holy feat, given to humanity by God, a consequence of insanity. So important is every thought of the God-given dogmas that the holy confessors, like martyrs, sealed the Orthodox confession of the dogmas with agonizing suffering and streams of blood. According to the importance of faith in the cause of salvation and sins against it, they have a special weight on the scales of God’s justice: they are all mortal, that is, the death of the soul is associated with them, and eternal destruction will follow them, eternal torment in the abysses of hell. The mortal sin is unbelief: it rejects the only means of salvation - faith in Christ. Mortal sin is renunciation of Christ: it deprives the renunciant of living faith in Christ, manifested and contained by confession of the mouth. Mortal sin is heresy: it contains blasphemy and makes those infected by it alien to the true faith in Christ. The mortal sin is despair: it is the rejection of active, living faith in Christ. Healing from all these mortal sins is holy, true, living faith in Christ. Confession of the mouth is essential in matters of faith: the great legislator of the Israelites, the seer of God, Moses, had just uttered a word with some sign of doubt in the matter of faith, when he was deprived of entry into the Promised Land (see Numbers 20:10-12)... Church history tells that in the first times of Christianity, during times of persecution, some pagans feignedly, in jest and ridicule, uttered an oral confession of Christ, and suddenly the grace of God overshadowed them: they were instantly transformed from inveterate pagans into zealous Christians and sealed with blood the confession that was first pronounced as blasphemy. 26 Suffering and death for the commandments of the Gospel are also a matter of living faith in Christ, also martyrdom. 27 And this martyrdom primarily belongs to holy monks. Inspired by a living faith, the holy monks, like Abraham, left their fatherland and their parents' home; like Moses, they preferred suffering in Christ to earthly pleasures; like Elijah, half naked, they chose deserts and dens as their place of residence; with the eyes of faith they looked at heavenly rewards. In their deserts, far from people, far from entertainment and corruptible activities, they embarked on a feat against sin, cast it out of their actions, from their thoughts, from their feelings, and the Holy Spirit descended into their pure souls and filled them with grace-filled gifts. Living faith in Christ and in the Gospel gave the saints the strength to endure the struggle against sin and made them vessels of the Holy Spirit. Faith is the mother of patience, the mother of courage, the power of prayer, the guide to humility, the giver of hope, the ladder to the throne of love. Faith in Christ, manifested and confessed visibly and invisibly by the fulfillment of Christ’s commandments, contains the guarantee of salvation intact, and brings Christian perfection to those who have left the world in order to devote themselves entirely to evangelical activities. In those who have achieved Christian perfection, strengthened faith through the action of the Holy Spirit looks with special clarity at the promises of God, as if it sees, as if touches, eternal blessings. And it happens, according to the teachings of the Apostle, in the full sense of “the realization of things hoped for and the assurance of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1). Those enriched by living faith in Christ change in their attitude towards the visible world and earthly life: the law and sentence of decay, change and end in the corruptible objects of the visible world becomes obvious to their pure eyes; earthly advantages, being short-lived, are insignificant before these pure gazes. Those who have been enriched by a living faith in Christ fly like winged ones through all sorrows, through all the most difficult circumstances. Intoxicated with faith in the omnipotent God, they do not see labor in work, and do not feel illness in illness. They recognize God as the only actor in the universe; they have made Him their own by living faith in Him. The Savior of the world, sending His holy apostles to preach worldwide, commanded them to teach all nations to believe in the true God and live according to His commandments. “Go,” He said, “teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20). The doctrine of faith must precede baptism; the teaching of living according to the commandments must follow baptism. The first teaching is theoretical, the second is practical. The holy Apostle Paul said about the first: “how I did not miss anything useful, which I did not preach to you and teach you publicly and from house to house, proclaiming to the Jews and Greeks repentance before God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:20-21); about the second: “Christ is in you, the hope of glory, whom we preach, admonishing every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus” (Col. 1:28). God has given two teachings about God: the teaching by word, acceptable by faith, and the teaching by life, acceptable by activity according to the commandments of the Gospel. The first doctrine can be likened to the foundation of a building, and the second to the building itself, erected on this foundation. Just as it is impossible to build a building without a foundation for it, so a foundation alone will serve no purpose unless a building is erected on it. “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:26). But where are you hiding, true and holy faith? I could not recognize you in fanaticism, which was not imprinted with evangelical meekness, it breathed with fervor and exaltation! I could not recognize you as a self-willed teaching, separating from the Church, forming its own new system, vainly and arrogantly proclaiming the acquisition of a new true Christian faith eighteen centuries after the incarnation of God the Word. 28 He who feeds on faith already tastes during his earthly journey the eternal life assigned to the righteous at the end of this journey. The Lord said: “Whoever believes in Me has eternal life” (John 6:47). By faith, the saints of God endured cruel temptations: having in the Persians the wealth and pleasure of eternal life, they did not value earthly life with its delights. By faith they accepted sorrow and suffering as gifts from God, which God vouchsafed them to imitate and partake of His sojourn on earth, when He deigned one of His Persons to accept our nature and accomplish our redemption. Immeasurable pleasure, born of faith, absorbs the severity of sorrow, so that during suffering only one pleasure is felt. The Great Martyr Eustratius witnessed this in his dying prayer, bowing his head under the sword. “Bodily torment,” he said to God, “is the essence of joy for Your servant” (Cheti-Minea. December 13). By faith, the saints plunged into the depths of humility: they saw with the pure eye of faith that human sacrifices to God are gifts of God in man, debts of man, unnecessary to God, necessary, saving for man, when man tries to bring, aggravate, and pay them. “Hear, My people,” says God, “and I will speak to you; Israel! and I will testify before you: I am God”—“your God.” It is not for your sacrifices that I will reproach you... for the universe is Mine and what fills it” (Ps. 49:7-8,12). “What do you have that you wouldn’t get? And if you received it, why do you boast as if you didn’t receive it?” (1 Cor. 4:7). “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required, and to whom much has been entrusted, from him will be required more” (Luke 12:48). God's saints worked miracles, raised the dead, foretold the future, were intoxicated with spiritual sweetness and at the same time humbled themselves, trembled, seeing with bewilderment, surprise, fear that God was pleased to spare the dust - the dust, the dirt, entrusted His Holy Spirit. Oh horror! From the sight of these mysteries, silence falls on the beholder's mind, unspeakable joy fills the heart, and the tongue becomes weary of knowledge. By faith the saints entered into love for their enemies: the eye of the mind, enlightened by faith, unswervingly looks at God in His Providence and attributes all external guidance to this Divine Providence... The soul accepts temptations as a cure for its ailments, thanks the Physician - God and sings: “tempt me, O Lord, and try me, melt my insides and my heart” (Ps. 25:2). With such a consideration of temptation, people and other instruments of temptation remain aside as instruments. There is no anger towards them, no enmity! The soul, glorifying the Creator, thanking the Heavenly Physician, in the rapture of unspeakable feelings, begins to bless the instruments of its healing. And so! Suddenly, love for her enemies flares up in her, a person is ready to lay down his soul for his enemy, he sees in this not a sacrifice, but a duty, the indispensable duty of an unbreakable slave. From now on, heaven is opened by us, we enter into love for our neighbors, through it into love for God, we are in God, and God is in us. These are the treasures that faith contains—the intercessor and giver of hope and love. True, God-pleasing faith, in which there is no flattery or deception, consists in fulfilling the commandments of the Gospel, in diligently and constantly planting them in one’s soul, in the struggle with the mind, with ungodly sensations, movements of the heart and body. And the mind, heart, and body of fallen man are hostile to the Law of God. The fallen mind does not accept the mind of God, the fallen heart resists the will of God, the body itself, having undergone corruption, has acquired its own separate will, given to it by the Fall, which richly imparted to man the deadly knowledge of good and evil. Our path to the wisdom of God is narrow and sorrowful! Holy faith leads us to it, trampling and crushing the opposition of the mind, heart, and body of the fallen. To faith [God] reveals Himself and bestows that knowledge of God of which man is capable, which he cannot acquire by his own means. Faith provides the mind with knowledge that exceeds reason: the mind, through judgment and research, accepts only those knowledge that are subject to its comprehension; faith assimilates to the mind knowledge that is inaccessible to its comprehension. Such is all revealed knowledge about God and the Sacraments of Christianity. Natural faith, by which we can believe in God, must be distinguished from active faith, which appears in the soul from the fulfillment of the Gospel commandments, and from living faith, poured into the heart by the Holy Spirit. 29 Everyone can believe in God and in the Gospel (see Mark 1:14-15; Acts 20:21), active faith is acquired by the ascetics of Christ, living faith is a gift of God, the property of the saints of God alone. There is no benefit in seeing the Lord with bodily eyes when the mind is blind, when faith - this power of spiritual vision - does not work. On the contrary, when faith acts, then the heavens are opened and the Son is seen at the right hand of the Father, everywhere according to the Divinity and fulfilling everything, indescribable. 2 Nothing prevents us from acquiring faith! Let us acquire faith and we will receive a vision. Let us cease to be content with the weak literal knowledge of God, let us stretch out our weakened hands to the works of faith, let us acquire an active, living faith - only to this faith is the Lord. When the Jews asked the Lord: what should we do to do the works of God? - The Lord answered them: this is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent (John 6, 29). Living faith in Christ is a work, and the work of God is so extensive that salvation is completely achieved through it. Such faith is expressed by a person’s entire life, his entire being; it embraces his thoughts, his heartfelt feelings, and all his activities. “Whoever believes” with such faith “has eternal life” (John 6:47). “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent” (John 17:3). Living faith is seeing and knowing God (see Heb. 11:27). A living faith is a life devoted entirely to piety and mortification for the world. Living faith is a gift of God. The holy apostles asked Him for this great gift from the Lord when they said to Him: “Increase our faith” (Luke 17:5). Only through living faith can a person renounce the imaginary virtues of his fallen nature and become a disciple and follower of the Lord with the mind and activity befitting a renewed nature. “The most important things in the law are judgment, mercy and faith,” said the Savior of the world to the blind righteous (Matthew 23:23), distracting them from their own destructive truth, from acting according to their own understanding and according to their own will, leading them to the saving truth of God, to actions according to the will and mind of God. Don't we, brothers, also need to pay attention to the instruction of the Lord? Have we ever considered these “great things of the law: judgment, mercy, and faith?” Have we not managed in our lives without guidance from the instruction to which the Savior gave such significant significance? Wasn't our activity for this reason a chain of errors, and wasn't our behavior a constant, uninterrupted error? Living a life pleasing to God must be entirely based on faith. “The righteous will live by faith” (Heb. 10:38), says Scripture. “The word of the Lord is right; all His works are in faith” (Ps. 33:4). 30 “Without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb. 11:6). Faith teaches us to direct all actions according to the commandments of the Gospel, and not according to the suggestions of fallen will and mind. Activities directed according to the Gospel gradually free a person from the predominance of passions. He ceases to be carried away and deceived, in his meek dispensation, not disturbed by either anger or lust, the dominion of the mind, restored to power by Divine grace, appears. The Lord “will guide the meek into judgment, He will teach the meek in His way” (Ps. 24:9). 31 Strangers to this good deed of God are those who lead a sinful life, possessed, killed by their passions: “the wicked will not rise” in their spirit “to judgment, nor sinners to the assembly of the righteous” (Ps. 1:5); they will not receive spiritual intelligence, which is given only to the servants of God, with whom in due time the feat of the servants of God is crowned. Faith in Christ is strong in the Christ she professes; faith in something false is full of cold fruits. Faith in Christ gives Christ to the believer. And you can entrust everything to Christ with complacency and joy: both yourself and your neighbors. Venerable Simeon the New Theologian. A word about faith. Philokalia. Part 1. The suffering of the holy martyr Philemon. Chetii-Minei. December 14. Venerable Simeon the New Theologian. Ch. 1. Philokalia. Part 1. Here we point out some religious parties that attracted the attention of the Northern capital in 1823 and 1824. Callistus and Ignatius Xanthopoulos. Ch. 16. Philokalia. Part 2. Translated by P. Yungerov: the word of the Lord is right and all His deeds are true. – Approx. ed. Translated by P. Yungerov: He will guide the meek in judgment, He will teach the meek His ways. – Approx. ed. You might be interested in: