For God cannot put off his own nature, by which, as Macarius surnamed the Great1 notes, χρηστὸς καὶ φιλάνθρωπος, he is benign and a lover of men, and with great patience awaits the repentance of each of those who sin, appointing the conversion of the one who repents as a heavenly feast.
“For there is joy,” he himself says2, “in heaven over one sinner doing penance.” But if anyone, observing this goodness and long-suffering of God, by which he restrains himself from immediately avenging each crime, awaiting repentance as we have said, should neglect the precept and—an unspeakable thing!—turn the goodness of God into an occasion of contempt, accumulating sins upon sins … that man surely fills the limits of sins and thereafter is found in such a fall from which it no longer falls to him to be restored to integrity, since he leans as though upon limbs crushed by the ruin, καὶ τῷ πονηρῷ εἰς τέλος συγχωρηθείς, ἀπόλλυται, and, yielding himself to the evil one unto the end, perishes.
He illustrates this both from elsewhere and from those things
which happened to the Egyptians, who had impiously dared many things against God and committed many injuries against his people. The good Lord indeed long deferred the final destruction, inviting them by chastisement after chastisement to return to wisdom; but when they made no end of repeatedly resuming their iniquity, at last, while they pursued the people of the Lord, duly dismissed, and attempted to drag them back, the divine wrath smote them with utter destruction. Likewise, after the Lord had long tolerated with his customary long-suffering the Israelites, who committed many transgressions and were even guilty of the slaughter of the prophets of God, when he saw at last
that they had advanced to such monstrous madness that, not reverencing the divine majesty in the Son of God sent to them, they laid bloody hands upon him, he cast them away, irreversibly condemned for all time, and cast them down; prophecy, priesthood, and religion being taken from them, which he entrusted to the nations believing in him.
Since such is the divine clemency toward men3, Macarius adds:
Let us run eagerly to Christ who calls us, pouring out our hearts before him, and let us not despair of our salvation. For this too is a sophism of the devil: by the recollection of previous transgressions to induce despair. But we must think thus: if the Lord, when he came into this world, was the physician and restorer to integrity of the blind, the paralytic, and the deaf; if he raised the dead who were already corrupt, how much more will he cure the blindness of the mind, the sluggishness of the soul, and the deafness of an unheeding heart? ἐπεὶ μηδὲ ἕτερος, ἀλλ᾽ αὐτὸς ὁ τὸ σῶμα κτίσας, αὐτός ἐστι καὶ ὁ τὴν ψυχήν, since, just as no other than he is the Creator of the body, so he himself also fashioned the soul. And if he was so benignly and clemently disposed toward flowing and mortal things, πόσῳ μᾶλλον τῇ ἀθανάτῳ ψυχῇ κακίας νόσῳ καὶ ἀγνοίας ἁλούσῃ, ἔπειτα προσερχομένῃ τούτῳ, καὶ δεομένῃ, φιλανθρώπως θεραπευτικῶς χρήσεται;, how much more will he benignly apply a cure to the immortal soul laboring under the disease of iniquity and ignorance, and then approaching him and praying? For this4 is his word: “Will not my heavenly Father execute vengeance for those crying to him day and night? I say to you that he will speedily execute vengeance for them.” And this5 too is his word: “Ask, and it shall be given to you.” And again6: “If, because he is his friend, he will not give, nevertheless because of his importunity he will arise and give him as much as he needs.” By these words he exhorts us to a certain pious shamelessness in petition and to an importunate and troublesome insistence. Truly, he himself came for sinners, that he might convert them unto himself:
μόνον ἡμεῖς τῶν κακῶν προλήψεων ἀποστάντες, σχολάσωμεν τῷ κυρίῳ καὶ αὐτὸς οὐχ ὑπερορᾷ, ἀλλ᾽ ἕτοιμος ἔσται, παρέχων τὴν παρ᾽ αὐτοῦ βοήθειαν. Only let us, departing from false preoccupations, devote ourselves to the Lord, and he does not overlook us but will be ready, furnishing the aid which we need from him.
For God7 and his angels, ψυχὰς τὰς μὴ τροφῇ τῇ ἐπουρανίῳ χρήσασθαι δυναμένας, διὰ πολλῆς λύπης καὶ θρήνων ποιοῦνται, pursue with great grief and lamentations souls which are no longer able to be nourished with heavenly food.