How should God react to humanity’s disobedience of the divine commandment?

Humans desired the world, and so their being in the presence of God became a matter of mere words and expressions. Sin became habitual in people’s lives. Although we feel its bitter weight as a burden at times, at other times we return and submit to it with all our essence, inclination, will, and energy. As the apostle Paul says, “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me” (Rom. 7:18–20). How, then, should God respond to this human state? Does He still love us? And what must we do in order to renew our nature, which we corrupted by our own will? Is God occupied with His heavenly glories, or will He condescend to deal with us? Will He free us from the dominion of sin to which we willingly gave ourselves over?

I ask God, my God: “O Love, do You still love humans, and long to return them to Your bosom? We humans are unable to ascend to You, for we are drowning in our sins and weaknesses. Will You descend to us, O Holy One?

“O eternal and immortal Love, behold, heaven yearns to learn the mystery of Your wisdom that is full of love. Will You proclaim to us and to heaven the mysteries of Your love?

“Now my God, behold, our lives are corrupted, and we need the One who will renew our nature and liberate us from our eternal death. What will You do for us, O absolute unlimited love?”

St. Cyril the Great says, “God in his love to man provided for us a way of salvation and of life. For believing in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and making this confession before many witnesses, we wash away all the filth of sin, and are enriched by the communication of the Holy Spirit, and made partakers of the divine nature,⁶⁶⁶ and gain the grace of adoption.”⁶⁶⁷

666 This expression and those like it in the Holy Bible and the Church Fathers certainly do not mean that the human being participates in the divine essence . Rather, through divine grace, the image in God that was lost through sin is renewed in him, and he partakes of everlasting immortality and incorruption, and enjoys the life of righteousness and holiness and the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

667 St. Cyril of Alexandria, A Commentary upon the Gospel According to St. Luke: Part I , trans. R. Payne Smith (Oxford University Press, 1859) Sermon 11: pp. 46–47, amended.

For faith in the Holy Trinity is a divine revelation by which the believer experiences the ultimate divine love, and enters into a personal experience of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The true believer finds in the Trinity the fulfilment of every inner need. Our faith in the Trinity touches our lives and being, for we have no life within us without experiencing the love of the Holy Trinity for us, and the works that result from this ultimate love. St. Gregory of Nazianzus says, “To the churches I shall bestow my tears. Through all the vicissitudes of my life God has led me to this point. Tell me, Logos of God, whither now? Towards the unshaken seat, I pray, where is my Trinity, and that united brightness by the faint reflections of which we are now upraised.”⁶⁶⁸