When Jesus sends His disciples to proclaim the Kingdom that has drawn near, He tells them: “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves.” A natural question arises: why does everyone around them turn out to be a wolf? And if that is so, why and for what purpose does Jesus...
When Jesus sends His disciples to proclaim the Kingdom that has drawn near, He tells them: “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves.” A natural question arises: why does everyone around them turn out to be a wolf? And if that is so, why and for what purpose does Jesus send the disciples out to preach?
The answer, however, lies in the very nature of their proclamation—in what those who are sent intend to proclaim and what they are to bear witness to. The disciples are to bear witness to the Kingdom: a Kingdom that, in the Saviour's own words, is “not of this world,” and which the world rejects for that very reason. This is not even because the Kingdom is alien in nature to the world, but because it is hostile to it. The world lies in evil. If it were simply different from the Kingdom, there might be no hostility: the Kingdom's action upon the world would transfigure it, change its nature, and the world would become the Kingdom by opening itself to God's direct action. But there are forces in the world that oppose the Kingdom, and the world has submitted to them and fallen wholly under their power—which is why it is called fallen. It is therefore hostile to the Kingdom, not by nature, but because of the present state of that nature. Consequently, everyone who lives by the laws of this world becomes hostile to everyone who lives by the Kingdom and bears witness to it.
This opposition is as organic as that between wolves and sheep. Wolves do not attack sheep out of malice, but out of hunger. Indeed, the same is true of predators in general and their prey: it is nothing personal, only the necessity of survival. Unlike the well-known character in Krylov's fable, neither wolves nor other predators look for excuses. “It is your fault that I want to eat”—that is a human view of the situation; animals know nothing of such concepts, and their instincts tell them nothing about moral categories.
People who live by the laws of the fallen world often react in much the same way to witnesses of the Kingdom and to those who live its life. They want to get rid of such people, to make them disappear from the world and from their own lives simply because they are different—because they bring into the world and into those people's own lives something that will destroy the existing order of things, outside which the fallen human being cannot imagine life. Unlike wolves and other predators, of course, people usually find some way to justify this desire. Yet at its core is the same instinct of self-preservation, the desire to survive and not perish that drives a wolf to attack a flock of sheep. Until a person wishes to change, until they wish to escape the power of the evil in which the fallen world lies, they will react to witnesses of the Kingdom as a predator reacts to prey—not from any personal motive, but simply according to the law of this world.
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2:1 How great a conflict - Of care, desire, prayer.As many as have not seen my face - Therefore, in writing to the Colossians, he refrains from those familiar appellations, "Brethren," "Beloved."
2:2 Unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, unto the acknowledgment of the mystery of God - That is, unto the fullest and clearest understanding and knowledge of the gospel.
2:6 So walk in him - In the same faith, love, holiness.
2:7 Rooted in him - As the vine. Built - On the sure foundation.