Four Hundred Texts on Love (Fourth Century) 21

52.  If a person refuses to allow God, the abode of all who are saved and source of their well-being, to sustain his life and to assure his well-being, what will become of him? And if the righteous man will be saved only with much difficulty (cf. Prov. 11:31. LXX; 1 Pet. 4:18), what will become of the man who has not attained any principle of devotion and virtue in this present life?

St. Maximos continues to develop the question. Some of us want nothing to do with God, relentlessly turn from him again and again, and not only fail to shape our lives according to his likeness, but actively strive to fashion ourselves in a different likeness. What of those of us who walk that path?