“We all have the experience of falling into our familiar sins again and again. Instead of being disheartened to the point that we no longer struggle against them or despair of ever finding healing, or even give up completely on the Christian life, we must keep letting down our nets in obedience as we mindfully seek to redirect the desires of our hearts toward God. Instead of despairing that there is no hope, we must humbly accept the truth about our spiritual state that is revealed by our weakness before our besetting sins. While making no excuses for ourselves, we must trust that our ongoing battles are necessary for us to receive Christ’s healing.” (Fr. Philip LeMasters)
“Under the commandments of God, any conscious choice to violate the divine will is tantamount to dying to God. As Saint Paul makes clear, our sins constitute a rejection of God and our relationship with Him. They become spiritual death for us because sin destroys our relationship with Christ, who is our life. Our disobedience is the death-knell of our heart and soul. Physical death may not follow immediately. Yet when we disobey God’s law, spiritual death disrupts our relationship with Him and severs us from life’s source…Paul awakens us to the life-giving Way and releases us from the Law “through the body of Christ” (vs. 4). He reminds us that we are “married to [Christ] . . . who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God” (vs. 4). Just as only living trees bear fruit, so only the true and life-giving relationship with God found in the body of Christ can bear fruit (Jn 15:5).” (Dynamis 7/5/2021)
“ No one can become like God by disobeying God. It is that simple. The Book of Proverbs stresses that obtaining wisdom begins with the fear of God that is evidenced through obedience to His word. Here, in seeking wisdom, Eve disobeys God and ends up afraid of God…there is an integral relationship between obeying and knowing the Lord. By His commandments, Christ teaches us His will and His ways. By obeying His instructions, we develop a relationship of trust, devotion, and faithfulness. We find that He is good, righteous, and true.” (NET Bible, Genesis 3:6, Fr. Basil)
“…people have to want Christ in their life. This is the majesty of our God: even though He’s all-powerful and nothing can oppose His will, He restricts himself, seeking the voluntary obedience of the creature He made in his image and likeness. In other words, faith is the necessary agreement, as we say, for all the riches of his divinity to flow into our being. And it’s this which shows the value of human freedom. To make a simile, the sun is now shining even more brightly, but people have to open their eyes in order to see the beauty of the light. God doesn’t force us.” (Protopresbyter Georgios Dorbarakis)
“And so the Church values the holy, sober fathers. These are the men and women who have walked the narrow way of salvation, “putting to death the deeds of the body.” Inner stillness is the state of freedom from disordered passions. The neptic fathers do not cease to desire (they are not Buddhists). But their desires have been purified and healed – restored to proper order. Sobriety means desiring the right thing in the right way at the right time. Traditionally, this purification and healing come as a result of a life of repentance, fasting and prayer. It slays demons and heals the wounds of the soul. All things are brought into obedience to Christ.” (Father Stephen Freeman)
“Obedience is the mark of a relationship with Christ that truly knows Him. We can say we love him, but love is unseen. The evidence of our love is our obedience. Thus, the Lord said, “If you love me keep my commandments” (John 14:15). We do not know Christ because we obey His commands. Our motivation for following Christ’s instructions is our love for Him. But the apostle reassures us that our observance of the Lord’s teachings confirms that we “know Christ.” We discover in today’s passage that there is a reciprocal relationship between obedience and love. The apostle writes, “But whoever keeps His Word, truly the love of God is perfected in Him (1 John 2:5). Thus, obeying His Word gives evidence that we love God. Conversely, obedience to the Lord makes that love perfect; that is, it brings it to completion…” (Fr. Basil)
“ “know him.” The verb יָדַע (yadaʿ) includes the meanings “to know (a fact, idea, or person), to learn or realize (to come to know something), to experience (to come to know a circumstance), to acknowledge or care for (to act in a way consistent with a person’s station, whether authority or need). That knowing, or acknowledging, God means to obey him (live in a way consistent with His authority) is clear in negative formulations; those who do not know Him do not obey (Exod 5:2; 1 Sam 2:12; Ps 79:6; Jer 4:22). Other passages emphasize knowing His characteristics, and not just His authority (Jer 9:23-24). The sage is calling for a life of trust and obedience in which the disciple sees the Lord in every event, submits to, and trusts Him.” (NET Bible, Proverbs 3:6)
“God requests human obedience so that his love and his pity may have an opportunity of doing good to those who serve him diligently. The less God has need of anything, the more human beings need to be united with him. Consequently, a human being’s true glory is to persevere in the service of God.” (St. Irenaeus)
“When man disobeys, he decides he does not want to acquire moral wisdom God’s way, but instead tries to rise immediately to the divine level. Once man has acquired such divine wisdom by eating the tree’s fruit (Genesis 3:22), he must be banned from the garden so that he will not be able to achieve his goal of being godlike and thus live forever, a divine characteristic (3:24). Ironically, man now has the capacity to discern good from evil (3:22), but he is morally corrupted and rebellious and will not consistently choose what is right.” (NET Bible, Genes 2:9)
“…so perhaps it is not too bold to say that while it was through disobedience that mankind first fell, it was through self-justification that mankind truly lost Paradise. And even till this day, self-justification remains just as much a complete and inviolable barrier between a Christian and the Kingdom of God. Even our most grievous sins are no obstacle to our Christianity (as St. Herman of Alaska witnesses); there is no sin which God cannot forgive, there is no possible transgression which can drive God’s ineffable love and mercy away from us. But if we ourselves stubbornly cling to our sin, if we obstinately refuse to allow God to offer us His forgiveness, then He will not force us to receive it in violation of our free will. This is why the Holy Fathers tell us that the only unforgivable sin is the unrepented sin. And what is self-justification, other than the stubborn insistence that we have no need of repentance?” (Hieromonk Gabriel)
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