"God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him. By this, love reaches its end-goal with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, we also are in this world. There is no fear in love, but fully mature love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not fully mature in love. We love, because He first loved us."

What are you afraid of?

The self-indulgent are afraid of the loss of pleasure.

The self-preserving are afraid of the loss of resources.

The self-governing are afraid of the loss of control.

Death is the loss of pleasure. Death is the loss of resources. Death is the loss of control. 

We are afraid of death.

Because we are afraid of death, we are enslaved to sin. Our twisted impulses were twisted in the first place by the fear of death. To the degree we are afraid of death--afraid of the loss of pleasure, the loss of resources, the loss of control--to that degree we are enslaved to sin. It reigns in our mortal bodies so that we obey its impulses, as St Paul wrote to the Romans.

The cure for this deformity in our souls is love. But it is not a worldly love. It is a cruciform love. God loves the world in this way, that He gave His Son as light to shine in the darkness of a fallen world and shine into the darkness of Hades itself.

Just as Moses lifted up the bronze serpent in the wilderness as the cure for deadly snake bites, so God has lifted up His Son to display the cure for fear, death, and sin. If you want to see what love is, you see it in Christ on the cross. This is not the Father punishing His Son. This is the Greek concept of paideia (παιδεἰα)--a path of cultivation and education that attains a goal in the end. This is a Son willing to be trained by His Father. This is the Son displaying His obedience, even to death on a cross. This is the Father's love for the Son. This is the Son's love for the Father. This is Son offering up Himself up to the Father without blemish through the eternal Spirit of God. This is the Father raising His Son from death through that same Spirit.

It is beyond a shadow of a doubt that God loves us because His Spirit is everywhere filling all things. The Spirit of God is the Spirit of love which is the Spirit of sacrifice. He loved us first.

Now the only question is do we love Him?

If we do, then we will allow ourselves to be conformed to the cross. If we love God, we will allow God to lead us on a path of cultivation and education that attains this goal in the end: that we are no longer afraid of death and therefore no longer enslaved to sin and its twisted impulses. If we love God, we will embrace asceticism. We will embrace fasting, almsgiving, and prayer as the disciplines that straighten our crooked impulses and clear the path for the Spirit of God to come and dwell in us and cleanse us from every stain and save our souls.

When we fast, give alms, and pray, we are combatting self-indulgence with self-denial, self-preservation with self-sacrifice, self-governing with self-submission. We are learning to strive against sin, resisting even to the point of shedding our own blood out of love for God just as He shed His own out of love for us.

No better summary and encouragement could be given to us than the one St. Paul gives in Romans 8:

So then, brothers, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh— for if you are living in accord with the flesh, you are going to die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.