The third stage of spiritual growth in the Orthodox Christian spiritual tradition is that of perfect communion with God. For if the message of the gospel is that the Son of God has come into the world in order to overthrow the tyranny of death and restore the human race to its original perfection, such perfection must be understood as being nothing else but a state of unending oneness with God. To believe in Christ thus means, as we have already said, to live out our baptism by first cleansing ourselves from the passions, for it is the passions that give birth to sin, and it is sin that produces death. “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus.” The first step towards becoming one with God is to drown sin so that the new life in Christ might be manifest in all of its glory and beauty. The old human nature must be put to death so that the new nature, which is the living person of Christ Himself, might be raised up within. In Holy Baptism, we are thus united to Christ, and through the anointing of the Holy Spirit (in Chrismation) we gain the virtues.

So, to say that the key to our salvation lies in baptism means to say, simply and directly, that the human person cannot be properly understood apart from his or her relationship to God. This is why the Scriptures testify that from the beginning we as human beings are unique from the rest of creation in that we were created according to the image and likeness of God. And although the likeness has been marred by the effect of sin, the image, according to the holy fathers of the Church, remains indelibly imprinted within each of us. Salvation in the gospel thereby means to realize the divine likeness by sharing in all of God’s goodness. The Holy Fathers of the Church summarize this by saying that “Everything that God is Himself by nature, we must become by grace.” That is, all of God’s divine energies, His love, creative power, wisdom, intellect, understanding, freedom, mercy, kindness, just to name a few, He freely shares with us human beings so that we might become fully deified. Deification is the destiny of every human person. Everything else that human beings “do” must be done in light of this calling, or else all is for nothing.

As one Athonite theologian writes, “Since man is “called to be a god” (i.e. was created to become a god), as long as he does not find himself on the path of Theosis he feels an emptiness within himself... he feels that something is not going right, so he is not joyful even when he is trying to cover the emptiness with other activities. He may numb himself, create a glamorous world, or cage and imprison himself within this world, yet at the same time he remains poor, small, limited. He may organize his life in such a way that he is almost never at peace, never alone with himself. Surrounded by noise, tension, television, radio, continuous information about this and that, he may seek to forget with drugs; not to think, not to worry, not to remember that he is on the wrong path and has strayed from his purpose.”

This brings us back to the beginning of the faith once again, which is simply to remember that the Son of God became the Son of the Virgin so that we human beings might once again enter into the divine life of the Holy Trinity, so that we might have a share in the communion of love that exists among the three persons of the Holy Trinity for all eternity, a love which itself the truest content of eternal life. “That they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they, too, might be in us.” (John 17:21).

Let us long for this life and this love above everything earthly and transient, for it is here that we find true peace, happiness and joy.