NOTES for Rom 8:38-39

In fact, every Christian witness is always by the witness of the Kingdom. It is not surprising: because the main task and the main sense of the earthly ministry of the Savior was to bring the Kingdom in the world, and Its main affair afterward, as today, and until His return in glory, became the cultivation of the Kingdom in our world being transformed, but not yet transformed. But it is possible to witness about the Kingdom differently, and one of the central becomes the witness of this love, which penetrates into it.

There is nothing surprising here: because the Savior spoke Himself about mutual love, as about "a new commandment". It would seem, what can be new in what is old, as the world? And were few things said about love before the coming of Christ? But all the same, there is something new and important in the words of Jesus. Certainly, love (at least, in the sense, in which this word is used in the biblical books) supposed always, above all, a certain relation to the neighbor, relation, in which only good was wished to this neighbor.

But Jesus speaks about something bigger: he speaks about the Kingdom, where love is not simply a relation, but the environment of life of the inhabitants of the Kingdom, this spiritual environment, without which there is no kingdom. Love is, in a certain sense the basis of the Kingdom, its spiritual substance, just as natural substances form the environment of our non transformed world. And if somebody joined the Kingdom, became its inhabitant, dived completely into this spiritual environment, it is indeed already completely impossible to remove him from there.

For, the Kingdom does not belong to our world, does not live according to its laws, it enters our world, transforming it, changing its nature, but changing it, it does not become a part of it, the element of this old order of things, which it is called to transform. It is not surprising that in the non transformed world there is not such power, which could influence the relations linking man to the Kingdom and to his inhabitants. But connects them the relation of love, this love, of which the Savior Himself gave example to His followers and which people of righteous life belonging to various Christian confessions, demonstrated many a time. The love, which nobody will indeed take away from man, unless he shall deliver it himself.