The apostle Paul's words are addressed to all who, having believed in Christ and begun a new life, have discovered in themselves their former inclination to sin and fall into despondency. Paul assures us that salvation is brought to us not by our sinlessness, but by God's love. God does everything necessary for our reconciliation with Him: He does not "pay for" our righteousness, but frees us from slavery to sin.

Having received faith, if we do sin, it is no longer because of hostility toward God, but because our "peaceful" relationship with Him is incomplete. But the essence of Christian life consists precisely in developing these relationships through Christ, in the "acquisition of the Holy Spirit"; therefore "there is no way for us to give in to despondency."

Perhaps many of us, since youth, have been given, say through literature classes, a "romantic" understanding of the relation of good and evil in the world: evil is numerous, ugly, and clearly in the majority, while good is lonely, understood by no one, and suffers. And so progressive "romantic heroes" must swim against the current and challenge the opinion of a conservative, hardened, and unreasonable society. "The individual and society," "the poet and the crowd" - whatever one calls this problem, it really does look like the truth. Besides the fact that this picture may be familiar to us from personal experience, we see a similar situation in the Gospel: Christ Himself was persecuted and even crucified, and He sends His disciples "as lambs among wolves" (Luke 10:3).

Yes, this is so. But is this all the Gospel says? Of course not. We confess Christ not only crucified, but also risen. This is precisely the final step that the general cultural "concept" lacks, and it cannot take it because such possibilities are simply not built into it. But only the Lord is able to bring everything to the victory of good through inevitable death and resurrection. "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it," the apostle John testifies (John 1:5), and this is the pure truth.

The "mathematics" of good is different, not like that of sin: it wins not by quantity, but by quality. And this quality is enough for everyone (see Rom 5:15), just as God promised us.

"This son of yours," says the older son. The younger son renounced sonship by demanding his share of the estate as if his father were already dead, and by living as if there were no father, as if he were not the son of one who knows how to love. The older son did not do this; he lived with his father and did everything his father asked him to do. He may even have truly loved his father. But, as one priest said in a sermon on the prodigal son, by refusing his brother, by not wishing to call him brother, the older son also refuses the father; he deprives himself of sonship just as the younger one did before. For if the younger one is now a son, "this son of yours," and he does not consider him a brother, then by that very fact he ceases to be a son.

It follows that only lack of love for our neighbors deprives us of the possibility of being children of God. And it is precisely love that makes us His children, because love is the family trait of the saints. A saint is one who belongs to God, and God is love.