Who is God? What is important for us to know about Him? The God of heaven and earth, invisible and unimaginable, appearing in darkness and flame, gives people the law, the commandments. Through understanding these commandments we can come to know Him Himself.

We will never know everything about Him: He is incomprehensible. But we can know Him, know Him personally, as a friend. This is all the more possible now, when we have heard the joy promised to all people: God became Man, opening for everyone the possibility of a personal relationship with Him.

In conversations with the disciples and in sermons, Jesus often speaks about the Torah and its proper understanding. In the Synodal text the Torah is usually called the "Law," but, though such a translation is formally correct, it still does not fully convey the meaning of the corresponding Hebrew word. Torah is more than simply law in the sense in which we usually use that word, more than only legislation or the legal order defined by it. Torah also implies a way of life corresponding to the law, including the inner, spiritual state of a person that corresponds to such a way of life. In Gospel times, in the rabbinic environment and in the Synagogue in general, the concept of the "living Torah" had spread rather widely, and ideally every believing Jew was to become such a Torah. What was meant was a person's spiritual state in which the Torah becomes something inwardly inherent to him, defining the whole of his life in all its manifestations. This understanding was very close to Jesus; it is no accident that He Himself says that He came not at all to destroy or change the Torah, but to bring it to fullness (v. 17; in the Synodal translation this thought is conveyed by the word "fulfill").

And the first thing to which He draws His listeners' attention is their intentions, or, as psychologists say today, their intentionalities. If you hate, consider yourself a murderer (vv. 21-22); if you lust, consider yourself an adulterer (vv. 27-28). Otherwise, according to Jesus' word, our righteousness does not go beyond ordinary religiosity, it "does not exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees" (v. 20), who, being deeply religious people, outwardly, on the behavioral level, of course kept all the commandments of the Decalogue.

But it turns out that for the Kingdom this is not enough. And this is not about requirements raised especially high in order to be "holier than everyone else." It is simply that in this world our spiritual quality and state determine our actions, while in the Kingdom our intentions do. One might say that in our fallen world we are what we do, while in the Kingdom we will become what we desire. And if, while hating someone, we refrain from murder for God's sake, this is a serious spiritual achievement for our fallen world. But for the Kingdom it is a failure. And the spiritual bar raised so high by Jesus is needed in order to protect us from such a failure.

Readers of the Bible often ask: what makes the Jewish people better than others, that God chose them in particular? Meanwhile the Torah gives a clear and unambiguous answer: it is not about the people as such, but about that Torah, those commandments and laws that God gave to this people. In this lies both the strength of God's people and the very meaning of its existence. And in it, in the Torah, lies its superiority over all other peoples. The point here is not that knowledge of the Torah in itself makes a person or an entire people better. The point is to follow these laws and commandments.

Of course, if such following turns into religious formalism, nothing good will come of it. It will simply produce one more more-or-less religious people. With its own religion, which in all likelihood will be interesting only to itself. But if following the Torah, following the laws and commandments given by God, becomes genuine spiritual work, God's people will become the spiritual leaven that leavens all humanity.

After all, the commandments are not simply rules written by God for human beings. Not simply a moral code, even one given from above. The commandments are God's intentions addressed to human beings. Intentions that, if a person wants it, can determine his whole life. They can make a person a vessel of God's breath and an instrument of God's action. And for a people that accepts the commandments as concrete manifestations of God's will, they can make that people God's people in the full sense of the word: a people spiritually gathered around God's presence, in the Tabernacle, in the Temple, in every place that God will choose. A people-community. A completely unique people, unlike any other.

And in this difference, in becoming and being a people-community, lies the strength of the Jewish people. It is what gives them an advantage over any of the peoples who lived before them on the land God gave them. And it is what in due time will make them the beacon that lights the way for other peoples. But not at once. Later, when the Messiah comes and brings the Kingdom to the world. He will have someone to come to. And God's people will have something to live for. For this goal is the most worthy of all.