“For the Orthodox, the key sign of our liberation from sin, death, and the devil is the experience of a love set free from self-interest and fear. As the Orthodox theologian John Romanides notes, there is a distinction ‘between those who live according to Satan and death and those who struggle in Christ to attain to unselfish love that is free of self-interest and necessity.’ And what is this destination? The presence of a fearless love: ‘The salvation of man is dependent upon how much, under the guidance of God, he is capable of exercising himself in the cultivation of a genuine, unselfish, and unconstrained love for God and his fellow man.’ The struggle here – the distinction between life and death – is the battle between love and self-interest, a selfishness that is only natural given our mortal nature and the inevitability of death….
Salvation, then, is being set free from this self-interest. The sign of our progress is the advent of love in our lives….
The be set free from slavery to the fear of death is to be liberated from self-interest in the act of genuine love. Thus the sign of Christ’s victory in our lives over sign, death, and the devil is the experience and expression of love. This is resurrection and life. As 1 John 3:14 describes, love is the moment when we ‘move from death to life.'”
– Richard Beck [The Slavery of Death]