Many rather careless persons who are inclined to abuse God’s loving kindness to increase the magnitude of their sins and indulge in excessive negligence mouth such words as these: “There is no hell; there is no future judgment; God forgives all our sins.” To reduce them to silence a wise man states: “Say not: ‘Great is his mercy; my many sins he will forgive.’ For mercy and anger alike are with him; upon the wicked alights his wrath.” And again: “Great as his mercy is his punishment.”

“Where then,” you ask, “are the proofs of his lovingkindness, if we receive punishment deserved by our sins?” Yet it is clear from this fact that God’s lovingkindness is nevertheless great. In dividing our existence into two periods—the present life and that which is to come—and making the first a succession of trials and the second a place of crowning, God has shown great lovingkindness. How and in what way? Because although we have committed many and grievous sins, and have not ceased from youth to extreme old age to defile our souls with ten thousand evil deeds, he has not demanded from us a reckoning for any one of these sins but has granted us pardon for them by the bath of regeneration [baptism] and has freely bestowed on us justice and holiness.

Consider then what great proofs of lovingkindness these constitute: to remit sin by grace, and to refrain from punishing the one who after grace has sinned and deserves punishment but rather to give the sinner the opportunity and the time to make amends!

—John Chrysostom, Homily 28 on John, 1