He who does not believe in the Son of God is condemned already


"He who does not believe in the Son of God is condemned already."

Why?

Because when there is light around, he remains in darkness, out of love for it. The love of darkness, the hatred of light, makes him entirely guilty, even if he does not know what the truth is, because the one who has an unfeigned love for the truth, the truth takes him out of the darkness of error and brings him to the light of truth.

An example is the Holy Apostle Paul. He was a true lover of the truth, fighting with all his soul for what he considered to be the truth, without any kind of interest. Therefore, as soon as Jesus showed him that the truth is different from what he considered to be the truth, at the same moment, he rejected the old opinion, shown not to be the truth, and he attached himself wholeheartedly to the new discovery, proven in a felt way to be true. The same thing happens to anyone who loves the truth without hypocrisy.

The truth about Christ is as clear as daylight: seek, and you will find; and the help from above is always ready to meet anyone who seeks without hypocrisy. Therefore, if anyone remains in the darkness of unbelief, he does so only out of love for darkness, and for this he is condemned in advance.

"Judge for yourselves whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God. We cannot speak anything other than what we have seen and heard."

Thus spoke the Holy Apostles Peter and John to the Jewish leaders, when they forbade them to speak about the risen Lord Jesus, after they had healed in His name the man lame from his mother's womb. They were not afraid of threats, for the truth, being evident, did not permit them to remain silent: "We have seen and heard," they said, "and our hands have handled it," as Saint John would later add (1 John 1:1). They were eyewitnesses, and these are, according to the norms of human knowledge, the most reliable witnesses of the truth; in this respect, none of the realms of human knowledge has such witnesses. The fact that eighteen and a half centuries have passed since then has in no way diminished the power of this testimony, and, consequently, the truth confessed by them has not become less evident.

If men fall into unbelief, and now there are very many who fall, they fall for no other reason than the lack of sound thinking. They do not want to judge and are led by deceptive opinions, which the deceit of the corrupt heart makes easy to seem worthy of belief.

Poor souls!

They perish, imagining that they have finally found the right path, rejoicing especially in the fact that they were the first to step on this path, becoming guides to others. But it is not great joy to sit in the seat of losers.

Saint Theophan the Confined

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