This is a difficult video to record, because I speak of something that has never been an issue for me personally, and I think for most of the Orthodox—and as far as I know, the Catholic believers as well—this topic is almost incredible. It’s incredible that we have to even consider this. The idea that somehow one can call oneself a Christian while at the same time denying the existence of the devil and denying the reality of sin, denying the reality of the risk that one might lose one’s salvation because of sin—these are things that are beyond anything that has to do with my personal experience. And yet, I’ve seen in the many—we are talking hundreds of messages, some of them published, some of them unpublished because they were abusive, but hundreds of comments and messages that we receive constantly in response to our videos, in which good-intentioned, clearly honest people call themselves Christians, and yet at the same time they say that somehow, just because they claim that they believe in Christ, sin doesn’t touch them any more, and they can keep on sinning, but somehow, some sort of magic, somehow that sin doesn’t affect them any more—and that is such a demonic lie. That is such a demonic temptation.

It’s like saying that you are a follower of Christ in the sense that you are in your armchair in your comfortable home and you watch Christ’s life unfold on your TV screen, and you are a follower of his and you see him: you are there for the next episode. But that’s not what following Christ means. Christ asks that we follow him in this spiritual battle, a battle against whom? It’s not a battle against our own flesh and blood. We know that from the Gospel. It’s not a battle against God himself. We might wrestle with God because of our inability to align our lives with his will, but it’s not a fight against him. We want him to defeat us. We want Christ to defeat everything that is evil and fallen in us, so that everything good that he planted in us might finally bring forth fruition. So then, my brothers and my sisters, this is a battle against whom, if not the devil? And for what purpose, if not to defeat sin and to allow the seeds of virtue, by God’s grace, completely by God’s grace, to flourish in us?

We have a lot more in common than it looks like, and that’s why I want to record this video. We all agree that there is a risk to lose our salvation. We all know from the creation of creation—not even the creation of humanity—from the very beginning, from the angelic beings, we know that creation can misuse the freedom God gave us in order to disobey God’s will for us, which is our salvation. We see that in the angelic beings. This is how the devil and the fallen angels got to exist. We see that in our very first forefathers, Adam and Eve, and all their descendants. We see that in the Gospel. We see it everywhere: the devil is present. There’s evil in this world. Christ calls us to let this evil behind. He talks about the narrow path. He talks about picking up our crosses. He talks about the need to deny ourselves, to hate ourselves, our lives in this world, in order to not lose our selves and our lives in the kingdom. He talks about a constant battle. He talks about the need to keep watch, to repent, to fast, to pray. What for if not to break free of the grip that sin, through the devil, has now got hold over us in order to move towards him?

My brother, my sister, don’t allow—don’t allow this lie of the devil, that he doesn’t exist, that sin doesn’t matter, to compromise your salvation. If God’s teaching is that we need to go through this life in order to oppose sin and the devil, if God’s teaching is this, then whose teaching opposes God’s teaching? If this is God’s teaching, if this is the teaching of the One who loves you, my brother and my sister, then whose teaching is it that opposes this? Is it not the teaching of the one who hates you? If this is the teaching of the One who gave you breath, who created you out of love, whose teaching is the opposing one? Is it not the teaching of the one who wants your destruction out of hatred? Beyond it all, silent, but intentional and with a very clear and well-tried plan is the devil. Beyond it all is the devil, pushing us into disobedience, pushing us into ignoring all the warning that God has given us from Adam and Eve all the way to our time.

Behind it all is the devil with the same two techniques he’s had from the very beginning. First he hides himself. He may hide himself as a snake, as he did in the garden of Eden. He may hide himself under the guise of an angel of light, as Christ himself warns us, but he will hide himself so we don’t run away scared. And then he’s going to step in and whisper sweetly into our ears exactly what we want to hear: “Sin doesn’t matter. God is so loving. God is so overwhelmingly forgiving that sin doesn’t matter. All you have to do is confess Christ. Just confess him with your lips, and then you are free for a life of sin, which somehow doesn’t taint you, just because you confess and you acknowledge your faith in him.”

But Adam and Eve saw God with their eyes. Adam and Eve heard God speak, heard God walk. Adam and Eve had more faith, more awareness of God’s existence than all of us, and yet, by receiving the advice of the opposing one, by receiving the advice of the one who hates us, and allow his advice to enter their ears, they have fallen from paradise. And what did the devil tell them was indeed the same thing: “God did tell you not to eat from that fruit, but go ahead. It’s not going to be that bad. In fact, it might be quite good. It might actually make you God-like.”

Yes, my brother; yes, my sister, the hope is that everything will be forgiven, and God indeed is great enough and loving enough to erase the sin of the whole world, but that is something that we pray for, something that we ask for, something that we struggle for, something that we expect and hope for as a gift, not as a given that we can just use and abuse in order to just serve our base passions and our sinfulness. What the devil does is that he offers us release, a way out which is not his to offer. He places himself in the place of the true Master, of God, and he offers generously a freedom that is not his to offer. He doesn’t have it, but he offers it. He offers us a forgiveness that is not his to offer. He cannot offer it, because he doesn’t have it, but he offers it anyway, because his ultimate purpose is just for us to accept his advice as the true advice, to accept him as the real god, so that even without realizing, we get through this life thinking that we serve Christ, thinking that we follow him, calling ourselves Christians, calling Christ, “Lord, O Lord!” while in fact we listen to the demons’ voice, the devil’s voice, not Christ’s.

It’s like one of those drug dealers that have destroyed so many lives, telling us, “Don’t listen to your parents. Your parents are boring and old-fashioned, and they don’t really understand you. It’s all about you. You are the one who knows what the world is all about. Just ignore their advice and trust me. Just taste this. It’s not that bad. It’s not going to hurt you. In fact, it’s going to give you a good time and make your life so much better.” God has promised us freedom, and God has died for us in order to give us that freedom. It’s God’s. It’s God’s to give us that freedom; it doesn’t not belong to the devil. It belongs to God to give us forgiveness and salvation, and not to the devil. Don’t allow the evil one to replace God in your life.

Basically, he generously offers us absolution of sin while still constantly pushing us into that sin, because he wants us to believe that sin has no eternal implications, but he knows that sin does have eternal implications, and if we don’t fight to step out of sin, even if we keep on falling, even if indeed true freedom from sin doesn’t come from us but from God himself, but it’s ours to struggle, he knows that if we don’t at least put in the struggle, the fight, then those implications of our fallenness could be eternal. Don’t—don’t confuse your true, loving Master with the evil one. Don’t call your darkness “light,” my brother and my sister. Don’t call your sin “virtue.” Don’t call the destroyer your Creator, the One who loves you.

Darkness is darkness and light is light, and there is no mix between the two. From the fallen angels, through our forefathers, Adam and Eve, and their own descendants, we’ve seen that disobedience to God’s will leads to the perdition of one’s soul. From the very beginning we’ve seen that just to have faith, just to believe that God is, in the reality of God’s existence, is not enough to save someone. The devil knows very well that God is real. His belief in God is beyond anything we can have. Adam and Eve, again, communicated, were in such direct relationship with God, something we can’t even comprehend in this time of ours, and their descendants also retained that ability to talk with God directly, and yet through all those generations all the way to us, God warns us against the devil; God warns us against listening to him; God warns us against ending up thinking that somehow the devil is not real and sin doesn’t count.

Our Fathers, the Fathers of the Church, from the various centuries, warned us that the devil’s ultimate trick and ultimate push will be to make us believe that he is not real, because once we forget about him, then it’s going to be much easier for him to whisper into our ear that sin doesn’t matter and that sin has no real implications. From Adam and Eve all the way to the gospel authors, all the way to St. James, who tells us that what is the use—“What is the use of faith without deeds? Faith without deeds is dead. If you want to see faith, I’ll show you my faith through my deeds, because just like a body without a soul is nothing but a corpse, a dead body, so faith without deeds is dead.”

My brothers, my sisters, I have nothing but love for you. I have no desire to impose anything on you. I am nothing but one of you, worse than you, more sinful than you. But if you call yourselves Christians, listen to Christ’s word. Go through the Gospel, and try to read once again—I know you do, but do it again—read through the Gospel once and try to see how many times, every single page, Christ warns us against the evil one and tells us that there are things we need to do, and he shows us by doing them himself, from all-night vigils, from prayer, by taking himself into solitude to be able to pray harder, fasting—everything, all these things that he does in order not to fall as a human being into temptation, he does them so that we see him doing it, and then we need—we have to, we— it’s necessary for our salvation to imitate him.

This is what following Christ means. This is what he tells us that it means. “Follow me and take up that cross. My followers, my friends, will fast after I’m no longer with them. Pray without ceasing. Keep watch.” All these things are there, and if God, if Christ teaches us all these things, is it not obvious that it is the evil one, the devil, maybe under the guise of an angel of light, but the devil nevertheless, who whispers in our ears opposing things to God’s will for us, opposing things to God’s teaching and commandment for us. Don’t mistake your Creator for your destroyer. Don’t call your darkness “light.” Don’t call your sin a virtue. Don’t call your destroyer your Maker.

My brother and my sister, the devil is real. For those of us who have experienced that in practice, this is almost a nonsense that we have to prove this, to argue for this. But for those of you who have been fortunate enough not to experience the devil directly, trust—not me, not the 2,000 years of witnesses telling you the devil is real and that sin can compromise your salvation—but trust the words of the One in whom you claim you believe, the words of God himself, the words of Christ our Lord himself.

I have nothing but love for you, and I pray for your salvation, and I pray that you are saved way before I am saved, and I pray that through your prayers I shall be saved as well. This is not a competition, my brothers and my sisters. It doesn’t matter who’s first or last there. Let’s just push ourselves and help ourselves, support ourselves, correct ourselves, so that we may all pass through those blessed doors of the kingdom, all of us, because indeed it is possible, because God indeed can make it possible. All the work of the devil and all the sin of this world is nothing when put against one drop of his blood, the blood he shed for us on that cross. But this is not something for us to grab, use, and abuse, but something to silently and with piety and with repentance receive, pray for, hope for, and spread in the whole world.

Be blessed, my brothers and my sisters. Be blessed to the core, to the marrow, of your beings. Amen. Amen. Amen.