Main news for 31 October 2019

King James Version (en)

Colossians, Chapter 2, verses 6-7

¹ He still exhorteth them to be constant in Christ

⁶As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him:

⁷Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.

NOTES

Paul speaks of the Christian life as "abiding" and as "walking" in Christ. In the language of Jewish tradition, such words usually described a faithful Jew's following the Torah and keeping the Torah, observing the commandments. The apostle, as we can see, uses the same words to speak about following Christ and about relationship with Him. And this, of course, is no accident: the first, and perhaps also the second and even the third, generation of Christians saw in Christ the image of the living Torah, the fulfillment of an ideal that before Christ's coming had remained unattainable.

Every believing Jew who took spiritual life seriously strove to become a living Torah. But for this one had to live in such a way that nothing except the spiritual and moral imperative that came from God and was called the inner Torah would determine the life of the seeker. It was practically impossible for a fallen human being to attain such a state: the nature damaged by sin stood in the way. Jesus can show the world the example of the living Torah precisely because His nature is free from the power of sin. But the same task stands before each of His followers: Christ's followers also must become a living Torah.

Otherwise it is impossible to live the life of the Kingdom, for here one must be in a special spiritual state that requires a certain quality of inner life, and this quality requires that a person's life be determined only by the inner Torah, only by God's will acting in that person and by the corresponding intentions. Such a person becomes like Christ not outwardly, but in essence, for in Christ too God's will acts directly, and in all its fullness. Yet a person can become a living Torah only in direct communion with Christ, in the spiritual space of the relationships that bind him to Him.

Otherwise nothing will come of it: without living relationships with Christ and outside them, a person will remain alone with his sin, as happened in pre-Christian times, and then failure is inevitable. This abiding in the dynamic of living relationships with Christ, as though within them, in the spiritual space they form, is what Paul calls "abiding" in Christ and "walking" in Christ, pointing to both as an indispensable condition of normal Christian life.

Continuing the discussion of Christianity and Christian life, Paul turns to the theme of his own ministry, and...

Continuing the discussion of Christianity and Christian life, Paul turns to the theme of his own ministry, and the apostle sees its meaning in the fact that the word of God was fulfilled in it (vv. 24-29). In speaking of "fulfillment," the apostle evidently has in mind the original sense of the corresponding Greek word, which implied "fulfillment" as filling up, bringing to fullness what had not yet reached fullness.

In this way Paul draws the attention of the recipients of his letter to the twofold task that stands before the Church in our world, which is being transformed but has not yet been transformed to the end, applying it to the concrete ministry of individual Christians. On the one hand, the ministry of every Christian presupposes his own rooting in the life of the Kingdom, which, of course, is unthinkable without the transformation of his human nature. For such transformation, God's direct action on this nature is necessary, and the apostle, of course, does not speak accidentally of the power of God working in him, as in everyone who does God's work (v. 29): for God's work cannot be done by human strength alone; here the direct intervention of the One who entrusted this work to the minister is needed.

On the other hand, the ministry of a minister turns out to be not simply the performance of a concrete task, even if that task is a commission given directly by God. It is directly connected with the fullness of the Kingdom, toward which every Christian strives. And every ministry, if it remains to the end God's work, becomes not only the minister's step toward this fullness, but also the emergence of the fullness of the Kingdom through a concrete ministry, manifested in it just as in every work of God. And the apostle's sufferings now turn out not simply to be sufferings for Christ; they turn out to be their continuation, just as the very existence of the Church in our world, not yet transformed to the end, turns out to be the continuation in it of that history of the Kingdom which began with the Savior's coming into the world and continued with His death on the cross and His resurrection.

That is why Paul speaks of the consolation that the news of his sufferings was to bring to the recipients of his letter (vv. 1-3): for they meant not only the apostle's own faithfulness to his ministry, but also that the Kingdom is growing and the day of its full triumph and the Savior's return is drawing near - news truly joyful for every Christian.

Paul (certainly not accidentally) speaks a lot and very often about faithfulness. And it is not only about faithfulness to God, to Christ and the Kingdom, although first of all, indeed it is about it. But in addition to these, it is about the faithfulness to the choice once made, which is sometimes, as it may seem paradoxical, more important than faithfulness to God, Christ or the Kingdom. Indeed what means faithfulness to God? Or faithfulness to Christ? If Christianity was a new religion, or a new theology, or a new moral doctrine, everything would be simple and clear: in that case it would be enough for us to declare our commitment to the appropriate doctrine and its Founder, well, maybe even participate regularly in some ritual activities and carry on certain distinctive marks. But indeed, it is not about a new doctrine and either about a new religion, but about a new life, about a life in the Kingdom, that the Savior brought to the world.

And constancy is necessary in life, and above all constancy in relationships, defining our life priorities, which in their turn, are defined by the value system, that we follow. Of these elements, is formed faithfulness - to friends, the family, to the coreligionists, to the vocation of life and to the chosen path. And mainly such faithfulness distinguishes itself in no way from the faithfulness to God and Christ, without which is impossible the life in the Kingdom. Faithfulness is one, and it means constancy of the relationships, and also the constancy of the system of the values and life priorities. Without such faithfulness, any life is impossible not only in the Kingdom, but also in our non transformed world. However in the world non transformed without this internal spiritual core, which at the level of life relationships of life, manifests itself through faithfulness, one can in a way still live, although it is of course only with a big reserve that we can call life this existence, that man has to lead.

And here is, in the Kingdom, without it, it is impossible to hold on even one moment. Because, the spiritual space of the Kingdom is formed in particular by relations - the relationship of its inhabitants between themselves, their relationship with Christ, the relationship of Christ Himself with the Father. Without them, there is no Kingdom. And thus, it is also not without faithfulness, without which relationships in the kingdom are impossible.

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