NOTES for Col 3:17

For Paul, Christian life is life in Christ in the most literal sense of the word. It unfolds in the spiritual space of the relationships that bind the Son to the Father. And all relationships among Christians, as well as their very life, must exist precisely there. The apostle speaks of peace for a reason: inner peace is inseparable from abiding in the Kingdom as the space of the relationship of the Father and the Son.

But the fullness of the Kingdom is revealed in love. In the Kingdom, love becomes not merely a relationship; there it also becomes the environment within which all relationships exist: relationships among people, each person's relationship with God and with Christ, and finally Christ's own relationship with His heavenly Father. In itself, the Kingdom is the space of God's prevailing breath, but in the context of all interpersonal relationships possible in such a space, it is the space and environment of love.

God's breath is connected with His life, with His very existence, but when someone else is included in His existence, at the point of meeting there arises a space of love as the dynamic of that very meeting. Love itself, arising by God's will directed toward the one whom God loves, turns out to be the bridge that connects the uncreated God with all created beings loved by Him, including the human person. In relation to what cannot recognize God's will, His love is revealed as God's Wisdom, present in the world even where no one can recognize it; but in relation to a person who recognizes God's will and his own existence, it is revealed precisely as love.

And if relationships between people are built in the space of the relationships of the Kingdom, the relationships that bind the Father and the Son, then they too can only be relationships of love - not because in God's presence a person ceases to be a creature, but because in any relationships in which God participates and which He defines, it is His love that becomes predominant and forms the environment within which those relationships exist.

Such relationships cease to be purely human and become divine-human, since they are defined not only by people but also by God. This is the environment of love among Christians that Paul calls the addressees of his letter to form, whether in relationships between spouses, between children and parents, or between slaves and their masters. As long as these relationships remain purely functional, they cannot be relationships of love; but if the Kingdom comes to the forefront in each person's life, and relationships become relationships of the Kingdom, function, including social function, recedes into the background. It is precisely such relationships that the apostle speaks of in his letter to the Colossians.

Speaking about spiritual life, Paul draws attention to the relationships that form the basis of both the family and the social environment of his era: marital relationships (vv. 18-19), relationships of children with parents (vv. 20-21), and relationships of slaves with their masters (3:22-4:1). The apostle's turn to this theme might be considered quite traditional: after all, the prophets too often turned in their preaching to social themes. But for them it was never an end in itself; the prophets only emphasized the need to follow the Torah not only in personal life but also in public life, considering the Torah an entirely adequate basis for the ordering of society. One could say that Paul too follows this prophetic tradition. But he goes even further. Indeed, the prophets who lived before the coming into the world of the Messiah, Christ, spoke of what was available in their time: the path of righteousness and following the Torah as the means that allowed one to walk that path.

Paul, however, speaks of something greater: the path of the Kingdom, which opened to humanity only with the coming of Christ. It is no accident that he introduces the discussion of relationships in the family and in society with a description of the life of the Kingdom, at the center of which stands the mention of the love that unites its citizens (vv. 12-17). For in the Kingdom love is no longer simply a relationship binding people together, as it is in our world, still not transformed. In the Kingdom, love is also the spiritual environment in which all relationships exist, a kind of spiritual substance without which there is no Kingdom. And the Church, as a community of people living in the Kingdom, is called to be the manifestation of the Kingdom in our transforming world, which has not yet been transformed to the end. It must become for everyone an example showing that it is already possible to build relationships according to the laws of the Kingdom, and that no social structures in themselves are an obstacle to this, provided that people are truly bound to one another by the relationships of love proper to citizens of the Kingdom. Then everyone seeking an alternative to the laws of the untransformed world will see that such an alternative exists, that one can live by the laws of the Kingdom here and now.