“Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.” Although these words of St. James are an excellent guide whenever we are asked to move from words to deeds and act decisively, the Apostle has in mind first and foremost the Word of God and His will, which we must not only hear, but do. If we knew God’s Word perfectly but did not follow it, then knowing the Word and will of God would not be a blessing to us, but a sin, just as Jesus once said to the Pharisees: “If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth.”

St. James writes: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” Every means all, without exception. This means that everything who we are and what we have is a gift from God. The prophet Isaiah even says that all our works are wrought by God – not our evil deeds, of course, but those that bring glory to God and are a blessing to His creation.

How free are we? If we believe those who say that not only our feelings, but also our behavior and the decisions that make us act, are merely part of the chemical reactions and physiological processes taking place within us, then we would have to admit that there is no point in talking about any real freedom because everything we do, plan and think is predetermined by something.

Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment” contains an extremely painful reflection that sharply reveals the duplicity of the prevailing mindset in human society: “The real Master to whom all is permitted storms Toulon, makes a massacre in Paris, forgets an army in Egypt, wastes half a million men in the Moscow expedition and gets off with a jest at Vilna. And altars are set up to him after his death, and so all is permitted.”

We live by the grace of God. We exist because God created us. Everything we need for life is a gift from God, with which He, in His immeasurable, sometimes even incomprehensible generosity, blesses everyone – not only the righteous, but also the unrighteous.

Isn’t it true that when we talk about unrighteousness, we are tempted to think about others – when in fact we should look into our own hearts so as not to be like the Pharisee who did not go to the temple to repent and seek forgiveness, but to demonstrate his alleged piety by pointing out the sins of others.