NOTES for Co1 10:1-13

Continuing the discussion of life in the Kingdom, Paul turns to the history of the Exodus (vv. 1-5). For him, as can be seen, this history becomes a foreshadowing of the spiritual processes taking place in the lives of individual Christians and of whole churches (vv. 6-11). This comparison is, of course, not accidental: for the apostle, the Church is nothing other than the new people of God, the very remnant spoken of by the great prophets of Israel. It is important to him that the people of God remain precisely the people of God, without spiritually degenerating and without turning either into a purely religious community, of which there have always been many, or into a peculiar kind of "table fellowship" bound not by the common life of the Kingdom but by shared views and interests. To this end it was necessary to avoid two extremes: excessive religious formalization of church life on the one hand, and spiritual slackness leading to moral permissiveness on the other.

It is in this context that Paul's warning to the Corinthian Christians about a possible fall sounds (v. 12). It was important to find the golden mean that would allow Christians to remain citizens of the Kingdom without swerving to either side. But this was not easy, because the consciousness of fallen humanity, oriented toward our world that has not yet been transformed and toward its laws, knows only one alternative: either religiosity understood as a system of rigid restrictions and regulation of all life, inner as well as outer, or what is usually called "freedom," which in the end also assumes freedom from moral norms, including the commandments given by God. It was not easy to escape this alternative, and the alternative itself became a real spiritual trial for the Corinthian church, one that could be passed only with God's help (v. 13).

The language of Paul's epistles at times becomes figurative, symbolic. In the Torah he finds examples suitable also for his contemporaries. It would seem that the event the apostle mentions and the church situation in Corinth resemble one another only conditionally. Although, of course, sin is always sin, and apostasy is always apostasy. But Paul speaks of more. He speaks of the inner connection not only of events, but also of the spiritual space within which they take place. Of that space which could be called the space of the Covenant.

The space of that union between God and the human being which, entering the flow of historical events, makes history sacred. And in this sacred history time flows nonlinearly, so that one can be related to events to which, at the level of ordinary cause-and-effect connections, one cannot have any relation. Such relations are described by symbols, within which the picture too is built not as it would be built according to the laws of linear or chronological perspective. It is in this sense that the apostle says that what was said about people who lived almost fifteen centuries before Christ's coming was also said about his contemporaries.

Because every theophany, every manifestation of God, whenever and wherever it takes place, is connected with that Kingdom which entered the world in fullness through Christ and in Christ. And, becoming partaker of the Kingdom and its life, every Christian begins to have a relation to all theophanies, wherever and whenever they occurred.

Therefore Christianity is not a person's private matter. It is deeply personal; it is founded on the personal and each time completely unique relationship of a concrete person with Christ. But once established, these relationships immediately acquire the same universal, cosmic scale that belongs to everything related to the Kingdom.

And every choice a Christian makes in his Christian life also becomes a choice of universal significance. This is what Paul reminds the addressees of his epistle about, some of whom appear to have found in Christianity only some comfortable niche for themselves, not thinking at all about what Christian life really is.

Paul considers all the spiritual problems and sins manifested in the life of the Corinthian church to be a "human trial," that is, one in which there is nothing unusual, nothing supernatural, and nothing especially terrible. The word "trial" in such a context is usually translated into Russian as "temptation," but the corresponding Greek word (like its Hebrew equivalent) means precisely "trial," although it can also contain the meaning we have in mind today when we speak of temptations. For us, however, temptations are more often connected with our own sins, while trials are usually associated with a kind of exam, a test of our faith and our faithfulness.

Yet, strictly speaking, the difference between a trial and a temptation is determined only by whether we pass the exam or fail it. If we do not fail, we speak (sometimes with pride) of a trial we have passed through; if we fail, we call the trial a temptation, grieving that our sins have once again turned out to be stronger than we are. But for the first Christians, as can be seen, there was no sharp distinction here, and Paul is no exception.

And this is not surprising: for the apostle, Christianity is not a religion where there is room, on the one hand, for vivid preaching and heroic self-sacrifice, and on the other, for a secret struggle with one's own sin, secret because it is awkward and shameful to speak about such things aloud. For Paul, Christianity is life in the Kingdom. And it does not matter what keeps a person from living this life in fullness: fear of possible or real persecution, resentment at rejection by those around him who live the life of "this world," or one of those passions or vices that have seized the mind and heart, about which the apostle says that among Christians it is improper even to mention them.

In every case, the issue is something incompatible with the life of the Kingdom and therefore something that must be overcome. That means the issue is always a trial. And that it is "human," characteristic of people, is unfortunately also true: Paul is speaking about things that, for fallen people, are all too typical, despite their ugliness. But the apostle knows something else as well: for those for whom the life of the Kingdom is more important than everything else, such trials are fully surmountable. For unlike people, God is faithful to the promises once given and to the union-covenant once established.