Maximus the Confessor

If someone who is born of God does not sin, how is it that we who have been born of water and the Spirit, and thus of God, do in fact commit sins? The answer is that the phrase “born of God” has two different meanings. According to the first of these, God has given the grace of sonship with all power to those who have been born again. According to the second, the God who has thus given birth is working in us to bring us to perfection. By faith we are born again in principle, but God still has to get to work on us in order to refashion us according to his likeness.

What is meant by “a cloak stained by corrupted flesh”? This is said of those who have a life stained by the lusts of the flesh. We all have clothes which bear the marks of our life, whether we are righteous or not. The person who has a clean cloak is one who leads a pure life, whereas the one who has a soiled one has got mixed up with evil deeds. Or a cloak may be soiled by the flesh if the latter is formed in its conscience by the memory of those evil deeds which spring from the flesh and which still work on the soul. Just as the Spirit can make a cloak for the soul out of the virtues which come from the principle of incorruptibility, so by analogy the flesh can produce an unclean and soiled cloak from the lusts which belong to it.