There are many Christians in the world who are more or less sincerely convinced that God acts only in the Church and addresses only them, Christians. It is hard to say when such a conviction appeared in the church environment. It has existed as long as Christianity itself. The source of this confidence is connected with the perception...
There are many Christians in the world who are more or less sincerely convinced that God acts only in the Church and addresses only them, Christians. It is hard to say when such a conviction appeared in the church environment. It has existed as long as Christianity itself.
The source of this confidence is connected with the perception of Christianity as a new religion given by God in order to renew the world through those who become its adherents. Then everything is logical: if God created a new, uniquely true religion, then all other religions are by definition untrue. God is not there and cannot be there. He is only in Christianity, though at this stage in our time people usually point not to Christianity but to some concrete Christian denomination to which the speaker belongs. All the rest are outside God, outside the Kingdom, and outside salvation.
Meanwhile Christianity was neither conceived nor created by its Founder as a new religion. It was founded as a new life, life in that Kingdom which the Savior brought into the world. And He Himself never said that His activity and the circle of His communion would be limited only to His followers, that He would never go beyond the boundaries of His Church.
Of course, those who have already entered the Church do not need to seek a meeting with Him by some other means. In His Church there is everything necessary and sufficient for full communion with Him. But there are other people in the world who have not yet entered the Church, and may never enter it, at least during their earthly life. There can be many reasons for this, and it is not for us to judge them. It is important for us only to remember that Christianity is precisely a new life. The life of the Kingdom. Life in fullness and without boundaries.
A life that objectively cannot be limited by any earthly framework. Nor by any heavenly framework either: from the beginning God wants no one to perish and wants every sinner to turn and be saved. The coming of Christ is not a religious event, and not even only a spiritual event in the human sense. It is an event of universal, cosmic scale. His coming, like the appearance of the Kingdom in the world, objectively and quite really changed everything and touched all and each.
The breath of the Kingdom blows in the world, touching everyone who sincerely seeks the truth. This means that God's hand can now reach absolutely everyone. Of course, this was possible for God before as well, in pre-Christian times. But now He has the opportunity to work with each person in an environment that spiritually corresponds completely to the character of His work. And everything good that a person has in his life comes from one source. There is no other: God is one, the Messiah is one, and the Kingdom also is one.
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1:1 A servant of Jesus Christ - Whose name the apostle mentions but once more in the whole epistle, Jam 2:1. And not at all in his whole discourse, Act 15:14, etc ; or Act 21:20-25. It might have seemed, if he mentioned him often, that he did it out of vanity, as being the brother of the Lord. To the twelve tribes - Of Israel; that is, those of them that believe.Which are scattered abroad - In various countries. Ten of the tribes were scattered ever since the reign of Hosea; and great part of the rest were now dispersed through the Roman empire: as was foretold, Deu 28:25, etc Deu 30:4. Greeting - That is, all blessings, temporal and eternal.
1:2 My brethren, count it all joy - Which is the highest degree of patience, and contains all the rest. When ye fall into divers temptations - That is, trials.
1:4 Let patience have its perfect work - Give it full scope, under whatever trials befal you. That ye may be perfect and entire - Adorned with every Christian grace. And wanting nothing - Which God requires in you.
1:5 If any want - The connexion between the first and following verses, both here and in the fourth chapter, will be easily discerned by him who reads them, while he is suffering wrongfully. He will then readily perceive, why the apostle mentions all those various affections of the mind. Wisdom - To understand, whence and why temptations come, and how they are to be improved. Patience is in every pious man already. Let him exercise this, and ask for wisdom. The sum of wisdom, both in the temptation of poverty and of riches, is described in the ninth and tenth verses. Who giveth to all - That ask aright.And upbraideth not - Either with their past wickedness, or present unworthiness.
1:6 But let him ask in faith - A firm confidence in God.St. James also both begins and ends with faith, Jam 5:15; the hinderances of which he removes in the middle part of his epistle. He that doubteth is like a wave of the sea - Yea, such are all who have not asked and obtained wisdom. Driven with the wind - From without. And tossed - From within, by his own unstableness.
1:8 A doubleminded man - Who has, as it were, two souls; whose heart is not simply given up to God. Is unstable - Being without the true wisdom; perpetually disagrees both with himself and others, Jam 3:16.
1:9 Let the brother - St James does not give this appellation to the rich. Of low degree - Poor and tempted.Rejoice - The most effectual remedy against doublemindedness. In that he is exalted - To be a child of God, and an heir of glory.
1:10 But the rich, in that he is made low - Is humbled by a deep sense of his true condition. Because as the flower - Beautiful, but transient. He shall pass away - Into eternity.
1:11 For the sun arose and withered the grass - There is an unspeakable beauty and elegance, both in the comparison itself, and in the very manner of expressing it, intimating both the certainty and the suddenness of the event. So shall the rich fade away in his ways - In the midst of his various pleasures and employments.
1:12 Happy is the man that endureth temptation - Trials of various kinds. He shall receive the crown - That fadeth not away.Which the Lord hath promised to them that love him - And his enduring proves his love. For it is love only that "endureth all things."
1:13 But let no man who is tempted - To sin. Say, I am tempted of God - God thus tempteth no man.
1:14 Every man is tempted, when - In the beginning of the temptation. He is drawn away - Drawn out of God, his strong refuge. By his own desire - We are therefore to look for the cause of every sin, in, not out of ourselves. Even the injections of the devil cannot hurt before we make them our own.And every one has desires arising from his own constitution, tempers, habits, and way of life. And enticed - In the progress of the temptation, catching at the bait: so the original word signifies.
1:15 Then desire having conceived - By our own will joining therewith. Bringeth forth actual sin - It doth not follow that the desire itself is not sin. He that begets a man is himself a man. And sin being perfected - Grown up to maturity, which it quickly does. Bringeth forth death - Sin is born big with death.