Continuing the discussion of Christianity and Christian life, Paul singles out the main thing that constitutes its essence. The question is the extent to which a person shares...
Continuing the discussion of Christianity and Christian life, Paul singles out the main thing that constitutes its essence. The question is the extent to which a person shares in God's breath, the Holy Spirit, and the extent to which this breath determines his life. It is in this sense that the apostle calls Christians "temples of God."
Indeed, the human being was originally created by God in order to remain in constant fellowship with Him, a fellowship that included the possibility of the presence of God's "breath of life" in the flow of human life, which in the Bible is called the "soul." A person's "soul" (and therefore the person himself) is alive insofar as God's "breath of life" gives it life. This has always been true, and after Christ's coming, for Christians this "breath of life," God's breath, was revealed in all fullness as the breath of the Kingdom, of which every Christian is an inhabitant, if, of course, we are not speaking of nominal Christianity.
The main question of Christianity comes down to the measure of the presence of God's breath, the breath of the Kingdom, in the life of the Christian: to how much a person receives this breath and to what extent it determines the everyday course of his life. The outcome of a person's Christian path also depends on the measure of the presence of God's breath in his life. God, of course, rejects no one, and Christ will lovingly receive everyone who turns to Him, but with what will a person come to the end of his earthly path? What, in the apostle's words, will he have had time and ability to build in his life for the Kingdom?
A Christian's earthly life becomes the answer to this question. The main question of Christianity is not reduced to what to do and what not to do, but to how to live. It is not a question of external activity, even the most "correct" activity, but a question of the spiritual quality of existence. And that depends entirely and completely on one thing: on one's relationship with God and with Christ. On how far our human will follows the will of Christ, how far it is one with God's will. The greater the gap between our human will and God's will, the less God's breath, the breath of the Kingdom, determines our life.
Only this matters; everything else is secondary. This includes theological disputes, religious disagreements and divergences, and the success or failure of particular church parties and groups. There is one foundation - Christ Himself. And any activity is important only insofar as it allows a person to build life on the true foundation, to change its quality and allow the breath of the Kingdom to determine that quality. Everything that distracts from the main thing is better excluded from life. That is more reliable, because our earthly life is not endless and often ends earlier than we expect.
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3:16 Ye - All Christians. Are the temple of God - The most noble kind of building, Co1 3:9.
3:17 If any man destroy the temple of God - Destroy a real Christian, by schisms, or doctrines fundamentally wrong. Him shall God destroy - He shall not be saved at all; not even as through the fire."