Main news for 3 January 2025

Much has been said and written about Christian love, including by Paul himself. Yet the best way to understand what Christian love is may be from the example of those relationships which are not even described, there is no talk of descriptions, but are mentioned in the apostle's letters as if in passing, as something self-evident. "If you are in fellowship with me, receive him also." Of course, something similar is possible according to the laws of the untransformed world. One can present an ultimatum to someone who depends on you. One can try to manipulate those who love you. But here, clearly, there is neither one nor the other. Here there is simply absolute confidence that, if the issue is Christians, inhabitants of the Kingdom, the relationships of love linking him, Paul, with two different people will necessarily be established between these people too. Or, more precisely, have already been established; otherwise the apostle would not write with such confidence. But where does it come from, this confidence? Of course, one could say that it is a matter of Christian duty, that a Christian simply cannot fail to receive a brother who needs support, and much else of the same kind. But on "Christian duty" alone, as two millennia of Christian history show, one does not get far. Christian love, however, as the same experience shows, can work wonders. This is not surprising, for it is itself a wonder, like everything that belongs to the Kingdom. And the love of which the Savior spoke fills the Kingdom, forming its nature, its spiritual substance, the fabric of those relationships that bind the inhabitants of the Kingdom to one another and each of them to Christ, and Christ Himself to the Father. Then Paul's request becomes not only not at all surprising, but self-evident: the Kingdom knows no distances in our sense; here people spiritually close to one another turn out to be near in the most literal sense, and if we do not notice this, it is only because untransformed reality blocks the Kingdom from us. For Paul, however, as one can see, this barrier is absent, and he writes to his correspondent as if it did not exist for him either. Perhaps this is excessive optimism. Or perhaps simply hope and confidence. Confidence in the Kingdom, in the One who brought it into the world, and in those who followed Him.