NOTES for Co2 9:7

The Christian charity is well known in the world. However, not only Christian: such a practice is familiar to the Jews and to the Muslims also. But there is between the Christian charity and the charity of the Jews or the Muslims an essential difference: unlike the Jewish or Islamic charity, the Christian charity is a purely voluntary thing. Certainly not the slightest, it is understandable by the fact that Christianity, as it is sometimes called, is "a religion of love", and love supports no constraint, no "obligation". But the problem is not apparently all the same only in the relations of mutual love binding Christians between themselves. The problem probably is that Christianity is not at all a religion, but just a life in the Kingdom. Life, which is not regulated by any rules and rituals, but the commandments given by God. And the commandments in the long run should become not an external regulation, even if they are voluntarily accepted, but rather this spiritual rod, which will organize the whole life of man from the inside, and not from the outside. With such a life, of course one can’t speak about any compulsory charity, because to regulate the charity would mean, in fact, regulating the help to the neighbor, and life in the Kingdom not only doesn’t need such regulations: they are simply impossible inside it. It is not accidentally that the apostle quotes the psalm about "the giver with pleasure", who "God loves". Indeed, joy for the good, done for the neighbor, is only possible in the Kingdom and by the laws of the Kingdom, by the laws of the not transformed world the genuine joy is possible only when you are being helped. Of course, the helper, even in the not transformed world can receive from his help a famous moral satisfaction, but not for the good he did to the neighbor, but the secondary circumstances accompanying such an action (the feeling of gratitude deeply expressed by the person swamped with benefactions of the help, the approval of the society, even the pleasure caused by the feeling of the fulfillment of the religious duty). But if the helper of the next neighbor feels in addition to that a real joy, then he has been touched by the breath of the Kingdom. And Paul, understanding very well that, calls to the charity not as a tiring religious duty, but as the demonstration of the relations of the Kingdom. Relations, without which there is no Christianity.