NOTES for Rom 13:13

The apostle's words about the daylight, in which it is better not to behave disgracefully, sometimes make people smile: reading them, one might think that under cover of night one may do what one would not do in the light of day. Meanwhile, Paul speaks of the day in a special, specifically Yahwistic sense. The Day of Yahweh, or, as it is usually called in Russian translations, the Day of the Lord, is a special time in the life of the people of God. It is a time when God directly and immediately intervenes in the people's life.

Times of natural disaster or war, for example, were called the Day of Yahweh. But such intervention was also connected with the idea of God's judgment. Judgment, however, was understood differently at different times. The earliest and simplest idea of it viewed war or natural disaster as punishment for a sin committed by the people.

But even before the Babylonian exile this idea gave way to another: judgment came to be seen as a kind of weighing of a person and his deeds on certain spiritual scales, much as neighboring peoples imagined divine judgment. Among those peoples, however, this judgment was usually postmortem, and the soul of a person appearing for judgment was weighed on the scales. Among the Jews, God weighed human deeds while the person was still alive, determining whether the person was worthy to be left alive or by his deeds had already deserved death.

The Savior speaks of judgment in a completely different way: according to Him, judgment consists in this, that light has come into the world. He clearly means the light of the Kingdom He brought into the world, and now it depends on the person himself whether he accepts this light or runs away because he understands that his life is incompatible with it.

Paul understands the Day of Yahweh in the same way: it is the day when light enters the world. And if before one could still delay making a choice, postpone repentance and conversion, now there is no time left: the decision must be made immediately, and once made, it must be carried out resolutely and unswervingly. Indeed, the issue is salvation, the Kingdom, what determines a person's fate in eternity. Hesitation is out of place here.

Today's reading from the Letter to the Romans is one of the most important passages of Scripture, if among them there can be any more or less important than others. It should lie at the foundation of Christian ideas about which means of spiritual life should be used and how they should be regarded. In practice, divinely revealed religion differs from idolatry first of all in that its means do not become its goal. To the question of what must be done to inherit eternal life, the apostle twice says "put on" (ενδύω, endyo, means to put something on oneself or to give oneself wholly to something): put on the armor of light and put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Not "bring the flesh into the proper condition" through a vegetarian diet or other means, but put on the armor of light. A person's material nature requires a certain care; its powers must be sustained, and it must also be restrained so that it does not become the main thing. But: do not turn care for the flesh into lusts. Unlike the Stoics and Epicureans, the apostle asserts that a good life and wise care (πρόνοια, pronoia, wisdom, prudence, care) for the flesh do not automatically lead us to the goal. Strictly speaking, this text approves neither a lack of control over the fleshly side of the person nor mortification of the flesh as the chief meaning of life. In our time, however, as in the apostle's time, the first danger is more pressing than the second.

The second and no less important point in today's passage is this: receive the one who is weak in faith, without disputes over opinions. The apostle affirms that we should not argue about the means of spiritual life (specifically, the issue is fasting). We give account for them before God, not before one another. Incidentally, one cannot help noticing that throughout our history, as also at the present time, fulfilling these words is an impossible task for many of us. On the other hand, the apostle extends this freedom to the realm of the means of spiritual life, but by no means to the content of the faith, as some sometimes try to present it.

Finally, it is useful to hear the word in the original: in the first verse of chapter 14 the apostle says, "the one who is weak in faith..." Άσθενής τή πίστει, astenis ti pistei, asthenic in faith. And there arises before the eyes, as in a mirror, a gaunt asthenic figure with a bloodless face and limp, hanging hands. In Russian we call this a pale infirmity. That is how we believe. And that is why we concentrate on ourselves, on our own spiritual infirmity, and on the outward manifestations of piety. This is overcome, as is known, only by the Blood of Jesus Christ.

"For now salvation is nearer to us than when we first believed." From the moment of our conversion to Christ, we look at the world with different eyes. For each of us something changes in life. And, receiving Communion, we become closer to Christ: we receive Him and the path of salvation that He offers us. And each of us "will be upheld, for God is able to make him stand."

We fall and rise on our path after Christ. A fall in the eyes of this world is prepared for us as the path of salvation. We ourselves will see the depth of our fall in repentance - but He will raise us up by His mercy, raise us on the day of the resurrection of the dead into eternal life.

The texts for the first Sunday of Advent call us first of all to watchfulness. Not only because we cannot determine the moment when a child will be born. But also because our expectation of seeing Jesus now must be like what parents feel when they have already been waiting eight months for the birth of a child. There is no patience left at all: when at last will we be able to see, to know who this is, what He is like? Life is about to change at any minute, and there are too many of those minutes.

The changes in our life that Jesus gives us are immeasurably greater. He will come to us as a newborn infant, who cannot speak and who will not get anywhere unless we carry Him. In the time left to us before His birth, we must accustom ourselves to the thought that, like any little child, Jesus means cares, constant anxieties, and watchfulness at any time of day or night.

Is He well with us? Is He warm? Will we teach Him to smile? And will we unlearn how to wage war when He appears in our life?

One of the chief shortcomings of the law, and not only in the religious sphere, is that it is very extensive. In order not to break it, let alone fulfill it, one must know it well and constantly remember to observe it. And since the law contains God’s will for how we should live in this vast world, its scope is too great for weak human beings. Judging by the apostle Paul’s words, there is nothing surprising in this, because in the Creator’s design it was not the law that was meant to govern our life. Not the law, but the Lawgiver. It turns out that there is a perfectly understandable and reliable, though by no means simple, way to fulfill the law: to love one’s neighbor. This is precisely what the apostle Paul means when he writes to Christians that we live not under law but under grace, for love is a gift that God gives us freely and undeservedly.

And since love is the fulfillment of the law, its absence is a violation of the law, that is, sin. By its nature, sin is nothing other than a lack of love. This is important because it gives us a practical way to determine whether our actions are sinful or not.

We are used to taking disorders in human relationships as a given, and if we are upset by them, it is often simply because they throw us off balance. But for the apostle, our quarreling and dark feelings toward a neighbor who has done something a little better than we have are things of the same order as feasting, drunkenness, and sensuality. This is exactly because both drunkenness and quarrels are the result of self-will, the result of our concerns for ourselves, both bodily and emotional, subordinating our striving for the good.

It is not for nothing that Paul, a little earlier, repeats Christ's words about the greatest commandment, which embraces all the others: to love your neighbor as yourself. After all, quarrels and envy, that is, sins against our neighbor, have their source in our lack of love both for our neighbor (and this is more or less obvious) and for ourselves (and this is no less important). This second part of the commandment is often not fully understood by us. Love is acceptance, and its foundation is self-acceptance, an adequate understanding of our abilities and their limits. To accept ourselves, it is very important to understand that we are not superhumans and never will be, that our abilities are not unlimited, and that we often take on too much and from exhaustion begin hurting our neighbors. Many quarrels can be avoided simply by acknowledging our tiredness and realizing that a constructive conversation should be put off until later. And our flesh often experiences many needs that require satisfaction. But for food not to turn into gluttony, it is important to understand ourselves and our needs well; it is important to understand that simple food is in fact enough for us. This is what Paul is talking about: "make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires."

And if we love ourselves as we are, accepting and recognizing our sins without turning repentance into self-torment, it will become much easier to love our neighbor. Because others are exactly the same as we are, just as imperfect. And God gives us only one means to cope with our human limitation: love.