NOTES for Co2 5:14

The apostle Paul's thought about why exactly this happens, what is required of us in order to be embraced by Christ's love, is not expressed very clearly in the Russian Synodal translation. In the Greek original the apostle writes: the love of Christ embraces us, krinantas touto, those who have understood that One died for all. The Slavonic text here says "nas suzhdshikh sie," and it uses the past tense, not the present as in the Synodal translation. Blessed Jerome of Stridon, translating this text into Latin, emphasizes this aspect even more: in the Vulgate these words sound as "nos aestimantes hoc..." This verb means "to evaluate," like the English "to estimate" derived from it.

So this is what is being said: the love of Christ encompasses us, fills our whole life with itself, when we evaluate the greatness of His sacrifice, when we understand and realize that in Him we all truly died. Moreover, it is important to realize this as an accomplished fact. Not to reason abstractly, seeking meaning for a religious phenomenon, but to judge and understand that this has already happened and, as a historical fact, has a direct relation to us. Only in this way can one receive this love, without which life loses its support.