Love of God - St Maximos the Confessor

Love of God is opposed to desire, for it persuades the intellect to control itself with regard to sensual pleasures.  Love for our neighbor is opposed to anger, for it makes us scorn fame and riches.  These are the two pence which our Saviour gave to the innkeeper (cf. Luke 10:35), so that he should take care of you. But do not be thoughtless and associate with robbers; otherwise you will be beaten again and left not merely unconscious but dead.

St Maximos the Confessor from Four Hundred Texts on Love, The Philokalia Volume II


I laughed out loud when I read this.  Seems like it's supposed to be funny, actually, and at the same time deadly serious.  St Maximos does something typical of earlier fathers with this parable; he applies it to the interior war.  He was a monk, that group of Christians which is notably serious about being made holy; not afraid of "offending the Cross" by doing everything possible in their efforts to please God and be free of sin in their thoughts and actions.

There are key words that need to be understood here. The first is 'desire'. In this context it's a Platonic idea, but one that's widely accepted by the Greek Christian fathers. Desire is (I think, I don't have the Greek text to double check this) the work of one part of the soul, according to Plato's tripartite model. None of these parts are evil by nature (not after regeneration, at least). But this part especially, "when not transformed by positive spiritual influences, is susceptive to the influence of negative and self-destructive forces". If this is accurate, it's not a stretch to read this as 'lust' in the broad sense.

The other word is 'intellect,' probably nous in Greek. It deserves an explanation, since this is not at all what we understand by the word. From The Philokalia glossary:

Intellect (νους - nous): the highest faculty in man, through which - provided it is purified - he knows God or the inner essences or principles of created things by means of direct apprehension or spiritual perception. Unlike the dianoia or reason, from which it must be carefully distinguished, the intellect does not function by formulating abstract concepts and then arguing on this basis to a conclusion reached through deductive reasoning, but it understands divine truth by means of immediate experience, intuition or 'simple cognition' (the term used by St Isaac the Syrian). The intellect dwells in the 'depths of the soul'; it constitutes the innermost aspect of the heart.  The intellect is the organ of contemplation, the 'eye of the heart'.

No getting off the hook of Jesus' commandments to do stuff.  No assurance of salvation except what the Holy Spirit gives you directly.  In fact, the two go together (cf. John 10:27, Matt 7:21).  Welcome to Eastern Orthodoxy.