NOTES for Gal 3:8-12

Today the Apostle Paul speaks to us about the faith that alone can serve for our justification. He quotes the prophet Habakkuk, emphasizing that faith alone, and nothing else, can become the source of life for us. On Christmas night we will witness a strange and inexplicable miracle: the God whom nothing can contain will appear in this world as a helpless Infant. He Himself becomes like the tiny mustard seed from His parable that we read today in the Evangelist Luke. He does not come amid a blare of trumpets as a Warrior and Ruler. He Himself is forced to become a refugee and flee to Egypt from the very human evil whose defeat we expect from Him. And therefore an effort of faith is required of us in order to worship Him together with the shepherds and the Magi. It is precisely of this effort that the Lord speaks in today’s Gospel: strive to enter through the narrow gate.

We often confuse what depends on us, what belongs to the realm of our freedom, with what depends on God alone. We do not know when God will put the leaven of the Kingdom into our dough, but we can knead the dough. We cannot hurry the dough so that it rises faster. But we can make sure that flies do not settle on it.

We cannot decide for ourselves when the Kingdom of God will begin to grow within us. We do not know when God will sow this seed in us. But preparing the soil in the garden does depend on us. We cannot do this by ourselves, but God will not enter our garden without permission; He stands at the door and waits for us to open it to Him. With God's help, we must weed the garden so that the seed of the Kingdom of God is not destroyed by weeds from the very beginning. We must make sure that pests do not take up residence in the garden. But we are not responsible for the seed itself or for the speed at which the tree will grow. Most likely, we will not see its growth.

Before the coming of Christ most of the Jewish believers expected that the Kingdom will come immediately the day of the arrival of the Messiah, that it will be seen by all and each, such that nobody can any more doubt of its reality. Jesus speaks differently: He compares the Kingdom with the leaven, the presence of which is imperceptible at first, and the action takes time. He speaks about the history of the Kingdom, which has already with Him entered the world, but did not yet reveal itself in it to the end, then at the beginning of its history one can completely not notice it at all, as if nothing changed with the arrival of the Savior. For many, His words seemed probably strange and incomprehensible: why, If He Himself has already brought all the fullness of the Kingdom in the world, a certain time was still needed for this Kingdom to reveal itself. Why not to reveal it all on the very day of His arrival?

If the Kingdom that Christ brought into the world was such as expected to see it most of the believers, everything would have really happened that way. Indeed, most of those who waited for the Messiah and for the Kingdom, waited for something completely earthly, even if built differently than the heathen States, but existing by the same earthly laws, by which exist all human societies. The laws of the messianic Kingdom had to correspond to the Torah, the Messiah Himself had, unlike the heathen rulers, to be a righteous King, and for the rest nobody waited for anything particular from the Kingdom, if of course we do not consider the miracles, which, as expected many believers will spill abundant flow on the Messiah and His Kingdom. Such a Kingdom could have really appeared, if it is not suddenly, then fast enough, within the life of a generation.

But Jesus spoke about another Kingdom, which had to cover the whole world, having beforehand transformed it in a way that it receives the possibility of living according to other laws. Time is needed for this transformation, that is why the Kingdom has in our world being transformed its own history, about which speaks the Savior comparing the Kingdom with the leaven. Is it possible that there was an immediate transformation of all the creation the day of the arrival of the Christ? Probably, yes: because for God nothing is impossible. But the chance to enter the Kingdom would then have been only to very few chosen ones. But God wants to save if possible everyone, and thus, the chance must be also given to each of those who are destined to be born on earth. And time is needed for that, about which says the Savior. Time, which in such a situation becomes the practical manifestation of God's love to each of us.

The Lord Jesus Christ spoke these words in answer to an unknown person's puzzled question about the number of those being saved. As far as one can judge, the logic of the conversation from which the evangelist Luke recorded only Christ's words is as follows. The Lord says more than once that salvation depends on a person's thoughts and deeds, on the state of his heart, on his relation to God. He calls people to repentance and to the correction of life; in the absence of all this, salvation is obviously impossible. Many Jews of that time, though not all, believed that with the coming of the Messiah, salvation would automatically be given to all "full" participants in the Old Covenant. In part this view was determined by an overly primitive understanding of the prophets' words, and in part it was a legacy of the formal religiosity of the post-exilic era. In one way or another, the thought that salvation from sin and death would not be given to everyone and not automatically caused bewilderment in many, and even strong protest. It is in this context that the question put to Christ apparently sounds: "Will those who are saved be few?".

"If there really are few who are saved, if not all Jews automatically fall into their number, then I may not be among them!" This is the emotional subtext of the question. It must be said that "assigning" whole categories of people to the saved regardless of their personal spiritual condition is a very common thing, characteristic not only of Jewish thinking, but of human thinking in general. In answering this, the Lord Jesus Christ shifts the conversation to an entirely different plane. He does not offer new criteria for selecting those who will or will not be saved. The Lord addresses the questioner personally, saying that salvation depends on the will and efforts of each concrete person. The path of salvation must be sought, and the entrance into the Kingdom is the narrow gate, through which one can pass only by applying effort. "Strive," says the Greek text of the Gospel; "labor in spiritual struggle," the Synodal text brilliantly translates this verb. The matter, then, is not how narrow the gate is, but what the will and effort of the person himself are like.

The apostle Paul speaks to us today about the importance of a living relationship with God. Everyone who has experienced a personal encounter with God knows this experience of Christ's cross “publicly portrayed before our eyes.” His death for us and His resurrection become the reality of our daily life. Then we continue on our way, the way with Christ and in the Church. Here it is important not to replace our relationship with Him by external signs. This certainly does not mean that we may neglect the sacraments or the teaching of the Church. The question is what comes first: rules or the living God? How do we obtain salvation: do we earn it, or receive it freely by God's grace? Enthusiasm for the “works of the law” so often leads to a sense of self-sufficiency. Paul reminds the Galatians, and us along with them, that the Lord Himself acts within us and that attempts to achieve something by our own efforts in the spiritual life are futile.

Continuing the discussion of faith and "works of Torah," Paul draws attention to the most important difference between them: faith is based on relations between God and the human person, while "works of Torah" remain the fruit of human efforts alone. The apostle does not remind the Galatian Christians by accident that the reality of the breath ("Spirit") of God, the breath of the Kingdom, was opened to them through an act of faith, through the trust in Christ of which they proved capable, and not through any "works of Torah." So why, Paul asks the recipients of his letter rhetorically, do you now rely not on this trust, not on the breath of the Kingdom so well known to you, in a word, not on the spiritual, but on purely human means, which is what any religious activity is in God's eyes (vv. 2-3)? And the One who gave you a share in the reality of the Kingdom, who let you feel His breath ("Spirit"), did He do this by means of "works of Torah," rather than by calling you to faithfulness ("through instruction in faith") (v. 5)?

The apostle once again turns to the image of Abraham: after all, he was certainly faithful to God, and God was with him, but in those days there could be no talk of any "works of Torah," since the Torah itself did not yet exist; it was first revealed to the people much later, through Moses. But then others also can count on receiving what Abraham received if they turn to God and remain faithful to Him, becoming Abraham's spiritual heirs (vv. 6-8). Paul does not deny the path of unfailing adherence to the Torah; he merely points to the obvious fact that the Torah was given not as a means of justification before God, but as a kind of signpost indicating the direction in which one must move, though without faith one cannot arrive there (vv. 9-11). If one walks the path indicated by the Torah to the very end as one should, without violating a single commandment, one can obtain at the end the same life that those who follow Christ obtain (v. 12).

But everything must be fulfilled, fully and to the end, and no human being has the strength to do this. Only one thing remains: to follow Christ, who opened to everyone ready to entrust himself to Him the path of faith walked by Abraham (vv. 13-14). Paul reminds the Galatian Christians of the foundations. He speaks to them not about religion, which in itself brings no one closer to the Kingdom, just as it does not move anyone farther away from it, but about spiritual life in the true sense of the word, where the relations of people with God and with one another turn out to matter most. Relations without which there is no Kingdom.

Today's reading continues the theme of the Kingdom, but now in a somewhat different, eschatological aspect. Eschatology is often confused with apocalyptic, yet they are not the same. Eschatology is a rupture in time and history through which the Kingdom can be seen; apocalyptic is a philosophy of history in which history is viewed as the process of the world's movement towards the Kingdom.

Jesus often speaks of the coming of the Kingdom as a rupture in time, when the former order of things comes to an end. It then becomes clear that, in the face of the new reality revealed at the moment of rupture, former assessments and criteria prove inadequate. This is manifested first of all in a change of priorities: if outward proximity previously played the decisive role, spiritual relationships now do.

When speaking of outward proximity, of course, one must not have only territorial or geographical proximity in mind. National, religious, and every other kind of proximity determined in one way or another by the structure and laws of the untransformed world is also implied here (vv. 25-28). Spiritual proximity, by contrast, becomes decisive (vv. 29-30). This is why the path into the Kingdom proves narrow (vv. 23-24): it begins in a world not yet transformed, living by laws very far from the laws of the Kingdom, but in order to enter the Kingdom, one must begin living by its laws here and now.

This is neither a whim nor a test of loyalty. One can follow the path into the Kingdom only by living according to its laws. For the Kingdom itself, in our world which is not yet fully transformed, depends on those who seek it. It is no accident that Jesus draws His listeners' attention to the fact that at first the Kingdom is completely imperceptible in the world that rejects it and becomes visible only at the end, when the world is transformed (vv. 18-21). Only the person who bears the Kingdom within can find it, and such a person cannot live according to the laws of the world lying in evil. This is why the path leading into the Kingdom proves narrow. But at its end lies the fullness of life awaiting everyone who follows this path to the end.

We have read many times already that Christ's Kingdom is not like all our human "kingdoms." It is like salt in food, like yeast in dough, like a seed in the ground that has not yet sprouted. It is real, but not visible to the "naked eye." It cannot be defined by our concepts, but its presence irreversibly changes this world.

That is exactly why it is so hard to limit "membership" in this Kingdom, however much "chosen ones" of every kind try to do so. The question asked of Jesus about the number of those being saved, that is, the participants in God's Kingdom, in essence means a demand to mark the boundaries of salvation: "who is inside, and who is outside?"

This question remains unanswered: instead of a limited sect, there is a call for everyone. Yes, entering by the "narrow gate" is hard, and the chance of being left out is quite real. But the gate is not closed; it is merely narrow. And everyone for whom this is truly important and necessary can find himself at Christ's feast with those who have also passed along this path.

The Kingdom of God, the presence of Christ in our life, is often imagined as something great and bright, something impossible to miss. But in the parable of the mustard seed the Lord Jesus gives us a completely different image. The seed of the mustard tree can barely be seen with the naked eye. It is so small that it is unnoticed by an outsider, and often even by its owner.

That is, the Kingdom has already been given to us as if in potential, in the form of a tiny seed. It does not look like a great tree, like the tangible presence we long for so much. And yet, just as genetically the seed and the tree are one and the same organism, so the small particle of the Kingdom that each of us has and that must grow is the same Kingdom that appeared in its fullness in the person of Jesus.

The narrow gate becomes very concrete when you enter the subway carrying large bags. You have to pass quickly through the turnstile, but a suitcase, two bags, and a couple of flowerpots wrapped in newspaper are hanging from you. All this is very heavy; you very much do not want to leave it behind, and you very much want to get through. But you cannot, because one thing catches on another, everything slows you down, tries to pull free, and prevents you from reaching the place where you urgently need to go. Apparently it is the same with the Kingdom of Heaven: we very much want to enter, but to do so we have to let go of everything that is not our true self.

Speaking of the Kingdom, the Savior undoubtedly has in mind the Kingdom that He Himself brought into the world, not the one usually imagined by the people listening to Him. His listeners, as a rule, imagined a strong earthly state, living according to the laws of the Torah and therefore enjoying God's protection, headed by a righteous King to Whom God had given special authority over the world and over people. Such a kingdom, of course, could also be open not only to Jews, but everyone else would in any case have to become Yahwists and accept Judaism in order to make use of what the Messiah would bring into the world.

But Jesus, meanwhile, is speaking of something else: of the Kingdom as a spiritual reality that exists independently of any earthly structures and institutions, whether governmental or social. This Kingdom enters the world through Him, and the way into it is opened by relationship with Him and with His heavenly Father. The true Kingdom of Christ is a space of relationships, above all the relationships that bind Christ with the Father. And anyone can enter the space of Their relationships, regardless of language, nationality, cultural tradition, or religious tradition. Christianity is not a religion and not even a spiritual practice, but life in the Kingdom, and therefore in the space of relationship between the Father and the Son. Here the question of who is first and who is last is not so simple. In essence, it has no meaning at all: in the Kingdom everyone receives the fullness of life that he can contain. But who will be joined to this fullness earlier is indeed an open question.

It would seem that in Judea in Gospel times there were many people whose main goal and meaning in life was precisely the expectation of the Messiah and the Kingdom. But their expectation became for them a kind of religion, or more precisely, part of their religious life, at the foundation of which naturally lay Judaism. And religion tends to become something valuable in itself and self-sufficient, often obscuring the goal for which it arose and exists.

On the other hand, there were many people in the world seeking, often without realizing it, precisely the Kingdom and its life, often not knowing where or with Whom to seek it. And if it was often very difficult for religious messianists to humble themselves before the Messiah as He is, then for seekers of the Kingdom, unburdened by any religion, it was much simpler and more natural to come to Him. And no wonder: Jesus Himself says that it is hard for a rich person to enter the Kingdom. And here it no longer matters whether we are speaking of material, cultural, or religious wealth.