Catechetical Lectures 2.1–2.21

Sin is a terrible thing, and transgression the most grievous disease of the soul: it cuts its sinews and becomes the cause of eternal fire. It is an evil of one’s own choosing, the offspring of the will. That we sin by our own choice the prophet says plainly somewhere: ‘I planted you a fruitful vine, wholly true; how have you turned to bitterness, a strange vine?’ The planting was good, the fruit bad; the evil comes from choice; the planter is blameless, but the vine will be burned with fire, since it was planted for good but bore fruit for evil by its own choice. For God made man upright, according to the Preacher, and they sought out many devices. ‘For we are his workmanship, created for good works,’ says the Apostle. The Creator, being good, created for good works; but the creature turned to wickedness by its own choice. Sin, then, is a terrible evil, as has been said; but it is not incurable: terrible to one who holds on to it, but easily cured for one who puts it away by repentance. Suppose someone is holding fire in his hand: as long as he holds the coal, he is certainly burned; but if he puts the coal down, he drives away the burning along with it. If anyone thinks that he is not burned when he sins, Scripture says to him: ‘Will a man bind fire in his bosom and not burn his garments?’ For sin burns the sinews of the soul …

But someone will say: What, then, is sin? Is it a living creature? An angel? A demon? What is this thing that is at work? It is not an enemy fighting against you from outside, O man, but an evil shoot that grows from you. Look straight ahead with your eyes, and there is no lust. Keep what is yours and do not take what belongs to others, and robbery is laid to sleep. Remember the judgment, and neither sexual immorality, nor adultery, nor murder, nor any other transgression will have any strength with you. But when you forget God, then you begin to think evil thoughts and to commit lawless deeds.

For you are not the only author of the deed; there is also another, a most wicked prompter, the devil. He makes his suggestions to all, but he does not prevail over those who do not obey him. That is why the Preacher says: ‘If the spirit of the ruler rises against you, do not leave your place.’ Shut your door and put him far from you, and he will not harm you. But if you carelessly receive the thought of lust, it puts down roots in you through your thoughts, binds your mind, and drags you down into a pit of evils. But perhaps you say: ‘I am one of the faithful, and lust does not get the better of me, even if I think about it quite often.’ Do you not know that a root, if it stays, often splits even a rock? Do not receive the seed, since it will split your faith. Root it out before it flowers, lest, having been careless at first, you later have to seek axes and fire. When you begin to have trouble with your eyes, get treatment in good time, lest you go blind and only then look for the physician.

The devil, then, is the originator of sin and the father of evils; and this is the Lord’s saying, not mine: ‘The devil has been sinning from the beginning’; before him no one sinned. He sinned not because he had received from nature a propensity to sin (for then the blame for sin would go back again to the one who made him so); but, having been made good, he became a devil by his own choice, taking his name from his deed. For being an archangel, he was afterwards called devil from his slandering; and being a good servant of God, he has fittingly become Satan; for “Satan” is interpreted “the adversary.” These teachings are not mine but those of Ezekiel, the Spirit-bearing prophet. For he takes up a lament over him and says: ‘You were a seal of likeness and a crown of beauty; you were born in the paradise of God’; and a little later: ‘You were born blameless in your days, from the day you were created, until your iniquities were found in you.’ Very well said, “were found in you”; for they were not brought in from outside, but you yourself gave birth to the evil. And he states the cause next: ‘Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; because of the multitude of your sins you were wounded, and I cast you down to the earth.’ In agreement with this the Lord says again in the Gospels: ‘I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.’ You see the harmony of the Old Testament with the New. Having fallen, he drew many away with him. He casts desires into those who obey him; from him come adultery, sexual immorality, and every evil. Because of him our forefather Adam was cast out, and instead of a paradise that bore marvelous fruits of itself he received the ground that bears thorns. [5] What then? someone will say. We have been deceived and are lost: is there no salvation left? We have fallen: is it not possible to rise? We have been blinded: can we not see again? We have become lame: can we not walk upright? In short, we have died: is it not possible to rise again? Will not he who raised Lazarus, four days dead and already stinking, O man, much more easily raise you who are alive? He who shed his precious blood for us will himself deliver us from sin. Let us not despair of ourselves, brothers; let us not abandon ourselves to a hopeless state. For it is a terrible thing not to believe in the hope of repentance. One who does not expect salvation piles up evils unsparingly; but one who hopes for healing is sparing of himself from then on. The robber who expects no pardon grows desperate; but if he hopes for pardon, he often comes to repentance. The snake puts off its old skin; shall we not put off sin? Thorny ground, well tilled, is changed into fruitful ground; is salvation impossible for us? Our nature, then, admits salvation; what is now required is the will. [6] God is loving toward humankind, and not a little. Do not say: ‘I have committed sexual immorality and adultery; I have done terrible things, and not once but often; will he forgive? Will he grant forgetfulness?’ Hear what the Psalmist says: ‘How great is the abundance of your goodness, O Lord!’ Your accumulated sins do not surpass the abundance of God’s mercies; your wounds do not surpass the great Physician’s skill. Only give yourself up with faith; tell the Physician your ailment; say, you too, with David: ‘I said, I will declare my iniquity against myself to the Lord’; and what is said next will happen to you as well: ‘and you forgave the ungodliness of my heart.’

Do you wish to see God’s love for humankind, you who have only lately come to the instruction? Do you wish to see God’s love for humankind and the greatness of his long-suffering? Hear about Adam. Adam, God’s first-formed, disobeyed; could God not have brought death upon him at once? But see what the most loving Lord does. He casts him out of paradise (for because of his sin he was unworthy to live there), but settles him opposite paradise, so that, seeing whence he had fallen and from what to what he had been brought down, he might thereafter be saved by repentance. Cain, the first man born, became a fratricide, the inventor of evils, the originator of murders, and the first to be envious; but when he had killed his brother, what was his sentence? ‘Groaning and trembling you shall be on the earth.’ Great was the sin, small the sentence. [8] This too was truly God’s love for humankind, but still small compared with what follows. Consider what happened in Noah’s time. The giants sinned, and much lawlessness was then poured out over the earth, and because of it the flood was to come. In the five-hundredth year God uttered the threat, and in the six-hundredth he brought the flood upon the earth. Do you see the breadth of God’s love, extending over a hundred years? Could he not have done at once what he did then after a hundred years? But he deliberately prolonged the time, granting a respite for repentance. Do you see God’s goodness? If the people of that time had repented, they would not have failed to obtain God’s love. [9] Come now to the others who were saved by repentance. But perhaps someone, even among the women, will say: ‘I committed sexual immorality and adultery; I defiled my body with every kind of licentiousness; is there salvation?’ Look, woman, to Rahab, and you too expect salvation. For if she who had practiced prostitution openly and publicly was saved through repentance, will not she who once committed sexual sin before receiving grace be saved through repentance and fasting? Ask how Rahab was saved. She said only this: ‘For your God is God in heaven and on earth.’ “Your God”: she did not dare to say “my God,” because of her licentiousness. And if you wish to have written testimony that she was saved, you have it recorded in the Psalms: ‘I will remember Rahab and Babylon among those who know me.’ O the greatness of God’s love, which makes mention even of prostitutes in the Scriptures! Yet not simply “I will remember Rahab and Babylon,” but with the addition, “among those who know me.” So there is salvation for men, and likewise for women, obtained through repentance. [10] And even if a whole people sins, it does not overcome God’s love. The people made the calf, yet God did not desist from his love; men denied God, but God did not deny himself. ‘These are your gods, O Israel,’ they said; and yet again, as was his way, the God of Israel became their savior. And not only did the people sin, but Aaron the high priest as well. Moses says: ‘And against Aaron the anger of the Lord came; and I prayed for him,’ he says, ‘and God forgave him.’ If, then, Moses, praying for a high priest who sinned, prevailed upon the Lord, will not Jesus, the only-begotten, praying for us, prevail upon God? And if God did not, because of his fall, prevent Aaron from entering upon the high priesthood, will he prevent you, who come from the nations, from entering into salvation? Repent, then, O man, you too likewise, and grace is not withheld from you. Make your way of life blameless from now on; for God is truly loving to humankind, and the whole human race cannot tell his love worthily; not even if all human tongues came together could they so much as tell any part of God’s love. For we tell some part of what is written of his love for human beings; but we do not know how much he has forgiven the angels too; for he forgives them too, since only one is without sin, Jesus, who cleanses our sins. And about them, enough.

If you wish, I will set before you other examples for us. Come to the blessed David, and take him as a pattern of repentance. The great man fell. After his rest, in the afternoon, walking on the roof, he looked carelessly and suffered something human. The sin was committed, but his honesty in confessing the fall did not die with it. Nathan the prophet came, a swift accuser and a healer of the wound. ‘The Lord is angry,’ he says, ‘and you have sinned.’ A private man said this to the reigning king; and the king, clothed in purple, was not indignant; for he did not attend to the speaker but to the one who sent him. The band of soldiers standing around did not blind him; for he thought of the angelic army of the Lord, and was in anguish as one who sees him who is invisible; and he answered the one who had come, or rather through him the one who had sent him: ‘I have sinned against the Lord.’ Do you see the king’s humility? Do you see his confession? Had he been convicted by anyone? Did many know of the deed? It was done quickly, and the prophet was at once present as accuser, and the offender confesses the evil; and because he confessed honestly, he had a very swift cure. For the prophet Nathan, who had threatened, says at once: ‘And the Lord has put away your sin.’ Do you see how swiftly the loving God changed? Yet he says: ‘You have greatly provoked the enemies of the Lord.’ You had many enemies because of your righteousness, but your self-control guarded you; but having given up your greatest weapon, you have your enemies standing ready, risen up against you. So the prophet comforted him.

Blessed David, though he had heard above all that ‘the Lord has put away your sin,’ did not, king though he was, give up his repentance; but he put on sackcloth instead of purple, and instead of gold-studded thrones the king sat on ashes and earth. And he not only sat on ashes but also had ashes for his food, as he himself says: ‘For I have eaten ashes like bread.’ He wasted away with tears the eye that had lusted, saying: ‘Every night I will wash my bed; with my tears I will water my couch.’ When his nobles urged him to eat bread, he would not consent. He prolonged his fast to the seventh full day. If a king made confession in this way, ought not you, a private person, to confess? And after Absalom’s rebellion, though there were many roads by which he could flee, he chose to flee by the Mount of Olives, as though in his mind calling upon the Redeemer who would ascend from there into heaven. And when Shimei cursed him bitterly, he says: ‘Let him alone’; for he knew that the one who forgives will be forgiven.

You see that it is good to confess; you see that there is salvation for those who repent. Solomon too fell; but what does he say? ‘Afterwards I repented.’ And Ahab, the king of Samaria, became a most lawless idolater, an outrageous man, the murderer of prophets, a stranger to godliness, a coveter of other men’s fields and vineyards; yet when he had killed Naboth through Jezebel, and Elijah the prophet came and merely threatened him, he tore his garments and put on sackcloth. And what does the loving God say to Elijah? ‘Have you seen how Ahab is pierced to the heart before me?’, all but persuading the fiery prophet to condescend to the penitent. ‘For I will not bring the evil in his days,’ he says. And though Ahab was not going to depart from his wickedness after the pardon, the forgiving God forgives him, not as ignorant of the future, but granting a pardon suited to the present season of repentance. For it belongs to a just judge to answer appropriately to each thing that has happened. [14] Again, Jeroboam stood at the altar sacrificing to the idols; his hand withered, because he commanded that the prophet who rebuked him be seized; but learning by experience the power of the man before him, he says: ‘Entreat the face of the Lord your God’; and because of this word his hand was restored again. If the prophet healed Jeroboam, cannot Christ heal you and set you free from your sins? Manasseh too was most lawless: he sawed Isaiah asunder, was defiled with every kind of idolatry, and filled Jerusalem with innocent blood; but when he was led captive to Babylon, he used his experience of misfortune as a healing course of repentance; for the Scripture says that ‘Manasseh humbled himself before the Lord, and prayed, and the Lord heard him and brought him back to his kingdom.’ If the one who sawed the prophet asunder was saved through repentance, will not you, who have done nothing so great, be saved? [15] Take care not to distrust the power of repentance without reason. Do you wish to know how strong repentance is? Do you wish to know the mighty weapon of salvation, and to learn how strong confession is? Hezekiah through confession routed a hundred and eighty-five thousand enemies. This was truly great, but still small compared with what is still to be told: the same king through repentance had a divine sentence that had already gone forth recalled. For when he fell ill, Isaiah said to him: ‘Set your house in order; for you shall die and not live.’ What expectation remained, what hope of recovery, when the prophet said, ‘for you shall die’? But Hezekiah did not give up repentance; remembering what is written, ‘When you turn and groan, then you will be saved,’ he turned to the wall, and lifting his mind from his bed to heaven (for the thickness of walls does not hinder prayers sent up with devotion), he says: ‘Lord, remember me; for it is enough for my healing that you remember me. You are not subject to times, but are yourself the lawgiver of life. For we do not live by nativity and the conjunction of stars, as some idly say; but you yourself are lawgiver both of living and of how long one is to live, as you will.’ And he whose life was without hope because of the prophet’s sentence had fifteen years added to it, the sun running backward on its course as the sign. Then, for Hezekiah’s sake the sun turned back, but for Christ’s sake the sun failed, not retracing its course but failing, and so showing the difference between the two, I mean Hezekiah and Jesus. If Hezekiah was able to annul God’s sentence, will not Jesus grant forgiveness of sins? Turn and lament for yourself; shut your door and pray to be forgiven, that he may take away the burning flames from you. For confession has power to quench even fire, power to tame even lions.

But if you disbelieve, consider what happened to Hananiah and his companions. What streams did they pour out? How many measures of water could have quenched the flame that rose forty-nine cubits high? But where the flame was poured out a little too high, there faith was poured out like a river, and there they spoke the remedy against evils: ‘You are just, O Lord, in all that you have done to us; for we have sinned and transgressed.’ And their repentance dissolved the flames. If you disbelieve that repentance can quench the fire of Gehenna, learn it from what happened to Hananiah and his companions. But some keen listener will say: ‘God rescued those men justly then; because they would not commit idolatry, God gave them the power.’ Since this objection has come up, I turn now to another example of repentance.

What do you think of Nebuchadnezzar? Have you not heard from the Scriptures that he was bloodthirsty, savage, with the temper of a lion? Have you not heard that he brought the bones of the kings out of their tombs into the light? Have you not heard that he took the people captive? Have you not heard that he put out the eyes of the king, after the king had first seen his children slaughtered? Have you not heard that he broke the cherubim in pieces? I do not mean the spiritual beings (do not suppose this, O man), but the carved figures, and the mercy seat, from between which God used to speak. He trampled underfoot the veil of the sanctuary; he took the altar of incense and carried it off to an idol-temple; he took away all the offerings; he burned the temple from its foundations. How many punishments did he deserve, for killing kings, for setting fire to the holy things, for taking the people captive, for setting the sacred vessels in the house of idols? Did he not deserve ten thousand deaths?

You have seen the magnitude of his evils; come now to God’s love for humankind. He was turned into a beast; he lived in the desert; he was scourged so that he might be saved. He had claws like a lion, for he was a robber of the holy things. He had hair like a lion’s, for he was a lion, snatching and roaring. He ate grass like an ox, for he was a beast, not knowing the one who had given him the kingdom. His body was wet with the dew, because, though he had seen the fire quenched by the dew, he did not believe. And what happens? ‘After this,’ he says, ‘I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted up my eyes to heaven, and I blessed the Most High, and I praised and glorified him who lives forever.’ When, then, he recognized the Most High and sent up words of thanksgiving to God, and came to regret what he had done, and recognized his own weakness, then God gave him back the honor of the kingdom.

What then? To Nebuchadnezzar, after doing such things and confessing, God gave pardon and the kingdom; and when you repent, will he not give you forgiveness of sins and the kingdom of heaven, if you live worthily? The Lord loves humankind, is swift to pardon and slow to punish. Let no one, then, despair of his own salvation. Peter, the chief and foremost of the apostles, denied the Lord three times before a little servant girl; but he repented and wept bitterly. Weeping shows the repentance of the heart; and therefore he not only received forgiveness for his denial, but also kept his apostolic dignity unforfeited.

Having, then, brothers, many examples of those who sinned and repented and were saved, you too must confess eagerly to the Lord, so that you may receive pardon for your former sins and be counted worthy of the heavenly gift …

… and inherit the heavenly kingdom with all the saints, in Christ Jesus, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.