Let us abandon the selves we have made by sinning. Let us continue to be the selves we have become by grace. You see a person who was proud: if he has turned to Christ he has become humble, he has abandoned himself. If a person of unrestrained desires has changed to a life of selfrestraint, he has certainly denied what he was. If a miser, one who previously seized what belonged to others, has ceased to go around looking for gain and learned to be generous with what belongs to him, beyond any doubt he has abandoned himself. He is the generous person he was created to be, not the one he would become through his wickedness. This is why it is written, “Change the wicked, and they will be no more.” The wicked who have been changed will be no more, not because they will altogether cease to exist in their essential being. [Rather,] they will cease to exist in their guilty state of ungodliness.
