A Christian is first and foremost a fighter. He takes up 'the flaming sword of the Spirit.' From the moment he comes out of the baptism waters as a newborn:

A Christian stands in this fight. The sword does not leave his hand. The fire does not leave his heart and mind until the final moment of his life when his body returns to the dust it came from. He goes down into death filled with the smell of great love and with many tears of precious price. He knows the great love and the life. His spirit flies in victory over sin and in the fight against evil and in the burning of love and in the shining of wisdom. It soars to the high places and swims in the presence of the Beloved.

In hours of winning in the conscious fight, grace holds the person and fills him with the fruits of God's love and the light of knowledge beyond words. So the person feels he is the most blessed thing on earth. Yes, he even goes above the angels in his happiness and his unity with God. In these hours the Holy Spirit is very happy with the person.

But when the soul turns back and gets trapped in the lies of natural lust and the confusion of the unconscious, and the person is thrown down in the fight and turns away from the path of righteous commands and breaks the commands of God's love, the Holy Spirit pulls back in the heart and grieves greatly. Then all work stops and the fire of the mind stops speaking. And lo, the whole world of the person becomes dark! The spirit starts to go back. Its light goes out suddenly. It seems like it has left him all at once.

Here stands the greatest friend of the person troubled and grieving deeply:

In this loneliness and this turning away, He becomes in sorrow and sadness. He wastes Himself in sorrow and grief and deep sadness. He becomes like the 'Comforter' grieving greatly and needing comfort!! See the tenderness and softness and love and longing of the Holy Spirit for a person! For if He does not win in making the love of God the joy and the care of the heart, He pulls back in the heart and grieves and becomes very troubled. He becomes like the one who has lost a beloved one in the house of loved ones.

Here the Holy Spirit is the true friend. The true friend is the one who grieves when the person falls and does shameful things. And more than that—a strong helper who can grab the hand of the person and lift him from every fall. He washes him with the blood of Christ. He gives him what Christ had in His body—righteousness and victory over sin—a secret and wonderful gift through the work of His Holy Spirit in us. He does this by lifting the will to the level of Christ's will and lifting the mind to the level of Christ's mind, until we can work and fight sin with joy: 'For it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure' (Philippians 2:13).

For this reason the Apostle warns us greatly:

Each sin against love is a sin against the Father and against the Son, and against the Holy Spirit first of all. For He is the One who guides the person to the bosom of the Father and the Son. So every hatred and every bitterness and every spite and every enmity and every grudge and every harsh judgment or disdain or disrespect to others are sins against the work of the Holy Spirit and His message. They are enough to grieve Him and turn off His light in the heart. They silence His burning tongue in the mind. So the person is in darkness and does not know where to turn:

In this loneliness and this turning away, He becomes in sorrow and sadness. He wastes Himself in sorrow and grief and deep sadness. He becomes like the 'Comforter' who grieves greatly and needs comfort!! See the gentleness and softness and love and longing of the Holy Spirit for a person! For if He does not win in making the love of God the joy and the care of the heart, He pulls back in the heart and grieves and becomes very troubled. He becomes like the one who has lost a beloved one in the house of loved ones.

Every sin against love is a sin against the Father and against the Son, and against the Holy Spirit first of all, because He is the One who leads the person into the bosom of the Father and the Son. So every enmity and every hatred and every grudge and every envy and every insult and every judgment and every contempt or neglect or disrespect toward others are sins against the work of the Holy Spirit and His mission—enough to put Him in grief and sorrow and heaviness!! Even though He is the One entrusted with comforting the person!! For the Holy Spirit's own grief is what turns back on the person as a feeling of disappointment and bitterness and deep dryness, whether in reading or in prayer or in service, with a pain in the heart—a pang like the pang of death! For if love and comfort are lost from the person's heart, what is left for him?

In the same way, every sin against wisdom and truth and sobriety is a sin against the Holy Spirit. So every sin against chastity and holiness, every lie or slander, every pettiness and looseness in behavior or in conduct, are sins directed against the Holy Spirit Himself, because He is the One entrusted with teaching the person "all truth"—and they are enough to overpower His light and His kindling and His burning in the heart until they quench Him. For if the Holy Spirit is quenched in the heart, what is left for the person but darkness and coldness—no inspiration, no counsel, no understanding, no wisdom—only confusion in ignorance and the loss of life's purpose, so the person stumbles and does not know where he is going.

And so, if the Holy Spirit is grieved by deeds and words that are against love, and quenched by deeds and words that are against sobriety and truth, no source of comfort or hope is left for the person, no refuge to flee to, no helper to cry out to. This is why the Lord says that sin against the Father is forgiven, and sin against the Son is also forgiven, but sin against the Holy Spirit finds no way out and no forgiveness!! For it is the Holy Spirit who takes hold of the person's hand and leads him, in love and in truth, into the bosom of the Son and then into the bosom of the Father!!

Now, if we return to the list of sins that the Apostle Paul recounts in his Letter to the Ephesians and in his First Letter to the Thessalonians, considering them as sins that grieve the Holy Spirit and quench Him, we find that, taken together, they clearly fall into two distinct groups: sins against love and sins against truth—sins that grieve the Holy Spirit, and sins that quench His light and His flame.

Here we ask the reader to read slowly and carefully:

First: all the verses found in Ephesians 4:14-32, 5:1-21.

Second: all the verses found in 1 Thessalonians 5:15-24.

We find that the Apostle Paul's care in listing these sins with such precision, clarity, and understanding should not be passed over lightly by the reader, as though it were a mere reading—for these are the roots of ruin that have taken hold in the soul and have caused the death of many, the coldness of many, and the falling away of many from prayer and from love of the Word and of reading.

Let each one of us look to see which of these roots his soul feeds on, for that root is certainly the cause of his sickness, the corruption of his conscience, and the direct reason for the weakness of his will. For every one of these sins is enough to grieve the Holy Spirit or to quench Him within the heart, cutting off from the heart—sooner or later—the resources of the warmth of love, of light, and of truth!

What is now required of us is to act like emergency first aid, or else to stand for a long time before any sin that may have secretly grown to hold power over the mind or the body—crying out earnestly, with tears and pleading before the Holy Spirit, asking for greater sensitivity of conscience against this sin, because that is itself the very least form of making amends to the Holy Spirit, until He kindles again and the heart is set aflame with the warmth of divine love and the light of truth, so that we may be able to stand against the power of the sin we have loved and let rule over the heart, despite the presence of the Holy Spirit within us!!

Here we need to understand well that the Holy Spirit is a true friend—in times of hardship and distress and humiliation—for the true friend is the one who grieves at the person's fall and his descent into shameful deeds, and the Holy Spirit grieves more than anyone over the loss of a person's salvation. But He is a friend who does not only grieve—He is also a very strong helper, able to take hold of the person's hand and raise him up from every fall, even from the depths of death, and wash him with the blood of Christ, and lift from him the shame of the ugliest sins, and present him to Christ as a son, or as an ember snatched from the fire, because He is Creator and Life-giver.

And just as the Holy Spirit is grieved by the smallest sins and quenched by the least foolishness, so too He is satisfied by the smallest acts of repentance and the smallest kinds of struggle, if they are offered with complete confidence in Him, with sincerity of intention, honesty of conscience, and a courageous openness to receive His work and His comfort.

The Holy Spirit is truly gentle and utterly kind, bearing with all the struggles of a person far more than the person himself imagines. He remains faithful in His love and affection for the person, even if we grieve Him seventy times seven times every day. For returning to Him—with repentance and tears and a sincere intention—satisfies Him completely.

And over the long course of our life, He does not keep for us a record of our offenses, but rather a record of the ways we have made amends. He keeps for us every act of remorse and repentance, and keeps nothing against us from the deeds of hardness of heart and ignorance once we return to Him, because He is truly gentle and humble of heart—taking from what belongs to Christ and giving it to us (cf. John 16:14-15).