St. Maximos the Confessor answers the following question:  

If, according to Saint John, “he who is born of God does not sin, because God’s seed is in him, and he cannot sin,” and if he who is “born of water and Spirit” is himself born of God, then how are we who are born of God through baptism still able to sin?  

An excerpt from his answer: “So even if we should possess the Spirit of adoption—which is a life-giving seed that bestows the likeness of the Sower upon those who are born of it—but do not offer Him a disposition of the will pure of any propensity or inclination toward something else, we will, as a result, willingly sin even after “being born through water and the Spirit.” But if, to the contrary, we were to prepare the disposition of our will to receive cognitively the operations of the water and the Spirit, then, through our ascetic practice, the mystical water would cleanse our conscience, and the life-creating Spirit would actualize in us the unchanging perfection of the good through knowledge acquired in experience. What is lacking, therefore, in each of us who is still able to sin, is the unequivocal desire to surrender our whole selves, in the disposition of our will, to the Spirit.  

Read the full text here: https://www.scribd.com/document/40331... 

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