NOTES for Pmn 1:17
Much has been said and written about Christian love, including by Paul himself. Yet the best way to understand what Christian love is can be found in the example of those relationships that are not even described - for there is no description in question - but are mentioned in the apostle's letters, as if in passing, as something self-evident. "If you have fellowship with me, then receive him too." Of course, something similar is possible according to the laws of the untransformed world. One can issue an ultimatum to someone who depends on you. One can try to manipulate those who love you. But here there is obviously neither one nor the other. Here there is simply absolute confidence that if Christians, inhabitants of the Kingdom, are in question, then the relationships of love that bind him, Paul, with two different people will necessarily be established between those people as well. Or, more precisely, have already been established; otherwise the apostle would not write with such confidence. But where does this confidence come from? Of course, one could say that this is a matter of Christian duty, that a Christian simply cannot fail to receive a brother who needs support, and much more of the same kind. But on "Christian duty" alone, as two thousand years of Christian history show, one will not get far. Christian love, however, as the same experience shows, can work miracles. This is not surprising, since it is itself a miracle, like everything that belongs to the Kingdom. And the love of which the Savior spoke fills the Kingdom, forming its nature, its spiritual substance, the fabric of the relationships that bind the inhabitants of the Kingdom to one another and each of them to Christ, and Christ Himself to the Father. Then Paul's request becomes not only not surprising in the least, but self-evident: the Kingdom knows no distances in our sense. Here people who are spiritually close turn out to be near in the most literal sense of the word, and if we do not notice this, it is only because untransformed reality hides the Kingdom from us. But for Paul, as is clear, this barrier does not exist, and he writes to his correspondent as though it does not exist for him either. Maybe this is excessive optimism. Or maybe simply hope and confidence. Confidence in the Kingdom, in the One who brought it into the world, and in those who followed Him.