We were enemies of God by means of Sin; and God ordained that the sinner should die. Of two things, then, one must needs have happened; either that God should adhere to His word, and destroy all men, or that by giving scope to His loving-kindness He should annul His sentence. But see the wisdom of God. He secured, at once, reality for His sentence, and active operation for His loving-kindness. Christ “took on Himself our sins in His body, on the Tree, that we, being dead to sins” through His death, “should live unto righteousness.” He that died for our sakes was not of small account. He was not a literal sheep, He was not a mere man, He was not simply an Angel, but He was God Incarnate. The iniquity of the sinners was not so great as was the righteousness of Him that died for them. Our sins did not equal the amount of His righteousness, who laid down His life for us, who laid it down when He pleased, and when He pleased resumed it.

–St Cyril of Jerusalem, Lecture xiii. 53.

The spirit of Christianity is not literal, not pedantic, not regulatory; it is renewing and liberating. The acquisition of this spirit is not gained through a legalistic interpretation of words and texts but in the acquisition of love and faith, conscience and freedom… To be renewed according to the Gospel – wholly and to the end – is not granted to everyone. But to enter upon this path, or at least to try to enter upon it, is possible for everybody, at least for everyone who thinks seriously about Christian culture. This renewal is accomplished when the reader of Scripture does not merely register in his mind what has been said but endeavours to seek out and strengthen within himself and, if necessary for the first time, create within himself that which is described in the text: to evoke within oneself a feeling of mercy and commit oneself to it; to evoke within oneself repentance and to experience it creatively, to contemplate with one’s heart the perfection of God and abide within it until the heart and will have been filled with it (an act of conscience); to discover within oneself the power of love and turn it (albeit for a moment) towards God and then towards people and all that lives… At first the Christian begins to ‘put off the old man’ (Colossians 3: 9 – 10; Ephesians 4: 22) and then asserts the new within him. The true divine nature of Christ is revealed to this new man. And all of this is to be accomplished in the heart and feeling, but not only in them – it is to be accomplished by the intellect, but not only by the intellect; by the will, but also through deeds; through faith, but also through deeds; and first and foremost through vital love’

- Ivan Ilyin, The Foundations of Christian Culture

Repentance is the daughter of hope and the renunciation of despair.
- St John Climacus

The end of prayer is to be snatched away to God.

-St Gregory Palamas, Triads, quoting St John Climacus