NOTES for Co2 10:7

As can be seen, Paul is quite skeptical about the possibility of judging a person's Christianity by face, or "person." It would seem that such skepticism is not always justified: often a person's face, in the broad sense of the word, can say much about him. Lifestyle, behavior, and even manners sometimes give a fairly complete idea not only of the outward world but also of the inner world of the one who has them.

And yet, after reflection, one has to agree with the apostle: a face, even understood as broadly as possible, says very little about a person's Christian life, and perhaps nothing at all. Of course, if Christianity were simply one more new religion, a person's face could say much about his Christianity, for religiosity, or its absence, largely forms that very face. But Christianity is not a religion; it is life in the Kingdom. And here, without one's own experience of such life, it is practically impossible to understand anything.

Of course, one could recall love, joy, and many other characteristic features of such life, but reflections of the Kingdom are sometimes found even in the untransformed world. And if one also takes into account that joy, for example, like much else, can be caused by very different spiritual reasons, we involuntarily come to the conclusion that judging how much a person has shared in the life of the Kingdom by outward signs alone is very difficult, if it is possible at all.

One criterion remains: commonality of experience. Indeed, the life of the Kingdom, like life in general, can be very different outwardly; its forms are practically inexhaustible. But its essence is one, and anyone at all familiar with this life will never confuse it with anything else, unless for some reason he himself wants to be deceived. And the apostle, as can be seen, appeals precisely to this experience, which allows one without doubts or hesitations to determine whether a given person has any relation to the life of the Kingdom or not.

If a person knows about himself that he lives one life with Christ, and if this is really so, then the one living Christ's life can have no doubt about what life he is living. And about another person, if only he senses in him the presence of the same life by which he himself lives, he will say with complete confidence: he and I live one life.

As can be seen, there is no other criterion. And this is not surprising: in the untransformed world, by definition, there can be no instrument that would register manifestations of the Kingdom. We ourselves can see them only insofar as we do not belong wholly to this world. And Paul proposes that everyone, when it comes to spiritual life, rely on this sense of the Kingdom, on the only reliable instrument that allows us to distinguish the life of the Kingdom from the life of "this world."