Rejection is our nature after the fall.
We cannot choose faith,
nor can we choose the holy way.
For this kind of knowledge, we need to very carefully examine the Genesis account of the Fall of Adam...
Adam fell in his immaturity by turning away from God and believing the Serpent through Eve, disobeying God... Because he was immature, he was not yet mature enough to eat of the forbidden fruit. It would kill him, and God warned him, and commanded him not to eat of the fruit of the tree in the center of the Garden... And the very day he ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good AND evil, that day Adam died... He hid from God in the Garden in shame... And while he acknowledged his disobedience to God when God asked him, he did not repent, but blamed "that Woman YOU gave me..." So both God and the Woman were to blame for Adam's disobedience...
Now what is often overlooked is the REASON for the disobedience - For like any good son, Adam wanted to BE as his Father IS, and it was this that motivated him, that made him desire to believe the Serpent, who PROMISED him that he would not die, but like his Father would KNOW both Good and evil... The Serpent persuaded Adam that by partaking of this fruit of creation, that he would then as a consequence of eating creation become AS GOD...
So that in this immature hardness of heart in his error, he was banished from the Garden, and 'permanently' prevented from re-entering by the Cherubim with the Flaming Sword... Holy Tradition records that Adam never departed from the Gate of Paradise for his entire life, so heartbroken was he at what he KNEW he had lost... That his skull was buried there, and that this skull is what is referred to as Golgotha, the Place of the Skull... That it was in this very Place that Christ took up the Mantle of the First Adam when He ascended the Tree of the Cross and was crucified and died... And Arose the third day overcoming Death in His Own Body, into which we are Baptized... For we are Baptized INTO Christ... And into His Death on the Cross - His willful and voluntary and obedient Death...
So that to say that we are totally dead until we become members of the Body of Christ, of the Ekklesia, through Baptism into Christ, is not true... We are fallen, yes... We are weakened, yes... We have sinned, yes... But having been born into the Valley of the Shadow of Death, we can walk seeking what is Good, and we can walk seeking what is evil, and most of us walk in what amounts to an admixture of both Good and evil, and this from the Fruit of the Tree of which adam did eat...
Now God is a jealous God... One cannot have BOTH Good AND evil as one's Master... IF one desires both, one will die... And if one desires evil, one is an enemy of God and is dead already... And if one desires Good unto blood - eg unto the forfeiture of one's life - God will save that one in this life... For He said: "He who saves his life shall lose it, and he who loses his life shall find it..." So the issue we face in this fallen life under the rulership of death - For we all die - is the issue of how we are to conduct our lives, and in this, we have auto-exousia, which is "authority over self", and in this, these words from the Gospel become clear:
"IF anyone is willing/is desiring,
after Me to be coming,
let him first deny himself,
then take up his cross,
and be following Me..."
Man has authority ONLY over himself, and if he chooses Good, God will support that exercise of authority in this fallen life, and if he chooses evil, God will also support him, yet the second will then live the death he has chosen, and the first will life the Life that God will give him... After the Dread and Last Judgement... We live in a world of good and evil, and we have authority over ourselves - We may not have the POWER to DO Good, but we have the power to desire what is Good, even if we find ourselves unable to DO the Good that we DESIRE to do... Paul wrote of this speaking as one "knowing the Law"...
When, and more precisely after, we are Baptized INTO Christ, we then have the POWER to do what is Good and pleasing to God, for we are now a New Creation, having God now as a part of our human hypostasis, which we formerly did not have... Yet as children newborn into Christ, we function as little more than slaves, even though we are heirs to all... And we need to then grow in Christ unto maturity in the Faith that Christ discipled to His Disciples... "
Be ye perfect..." is God's command that we mature, that we be able to eat of the fruit of the tree of KNOWING both Good and evil without becoming evil and estranged from God... For those perfected in the Faith of Christ are able to now eat of the Tree, because they have matured into following Christ in His Ascent on the Tree of suffering, the Cross of disgrace and accurssedness... And until they have done so, they are still immature and not fit for the meat of the Gospel, but only for the milk...
Goodness, this post has gone on long enough...
Arsenios
