Main news for 14 February 2017

In the Gospel age, and in earlier times as well, in synagogue and near-synagogue circles one of the most popular and most discussed questions was what one could and should do in order to have the right to enter the messianic Kingdom, or, in other words, what to do to "inherit eternal life," as one seeker of the righteous path who came to Jesus formulated it.

Such a way of posing the question assumed that the Kingdom could somehow be earned, that a person was in principle capable, if not of creating this Kingdom by his own strength, for nothing of the sort, of course, could occur to any normal Jew, then at least of making his worthy contribution to its building when the Messiah came. But everything turned out to be completely different. It turned out that no one can help the Messiah build His Kingdom. And not only because human sinfulness prevents this, but also because the Kingdom cannot be built according to the laws of the untransfigured world, and we, living entirely by the life of this world, will not be able to build it according to any other laws.

But we can do something else: accept the Kingdom brought into the world not by us, and carry it further. This, in fact, is what John calls the addressees of his letter to do: he speaks of "abiding in Him," meaning, of course, the Savior. Indeed, the Savior carries the Kingdom in Himself and with Himself; in Him is all its fullness, which He can and is ready to share with us. In this respect we have nothing to add to the building of the Kingdom, we cannot supplement it in any way, we can only receive it as a gift that no human being can earn.

Even our righteousness, which is in essence only a reflection of God's righteousness, does not supplement the Kingdom: for it too, in essence, is not ours; it does not belong to us by nature. If we are righteous, it is not by our own strength and in spite of our own sinfulness. But we can be useful in carrying the Kingdom further into the world, and here our righteousness will not be superfluous. Of course, for this one must first share in the Kingdom and its life, so that there is something to carry. On the other hand, once one has shared in it, one can no longer stop: in our transfiguring but not yet transfigured world, the Kingdom can exist only in movement. It either expands, spreads through the world, taking possession of ever new hearts, or disappears and becomes invisible.

And we, as inhabitants of the Kingdom living on the boundary that separates it from the untransfigured world, find ourselves on the wave of this transfiguring breath breaking into the world. If we want to remain inhabitants of the Kingdom, we cannot fail to breathe it, and therefore cannot fail to carry it further. Only in this way, in the apostle's thought, abiding in Christ and living His life, will we be able on the day of the Savior's return to stand before Him as His own, as participants in the work He began and in which He allowed us to participate. The work through which we have received the possibility of living a life that otherwise would forever have remained unattainable for us.