NOTES for Co1 6:19

Much has been said and written about spiritual life in general and Christian spiritual life in particular. But what, after all, is the spiritual life of a Christian? It is at times very hard for us to answer this question, perhaps also because today spiritual life is often taken to mean many things that have no direct relation to it: theology, morality, religion itself, mystical experiences, and much else that, while connected with spiritual life and born from it, is still not identical with it. After all, by spiritual life it is most natural to mean the life of our spiritual "I," which in biblical language is usually called the heart; and it shows itself first of all as will and relationship. And our spiritual life is, above all, the relationships that bind us to God and to our neighbors. That is where the most interesting part begins.

The point is that, judging by numerous biblical witnesses, God agrees to build relationships with us only on His own terms. He imposes nothing on us; He only offers us Himself, but at the same time He requires that we let Him into our life unconditionally and absolutely. He is not satisfied with less. Then it turns out that, if we want to have normal, full relationships with God, we will have to give up belonging to ourselves. And if we dare to do this, our heart and our whole life, inward and outward, will be filled with the breath of God, that breath of the Kingdom about which the apostle writes. And then God Himself will return to us the life that we dared to give Him. He will return it in a fullness we would never have found without Him, without His help and without His participation.

Modern people do not much like feeling that they are merchandise. Was I bought? Am I someone else's property? These words sounded somewhat different in a slave-owning society, where buying and selling people was an everyday practice. But one day it might happen that someone was not bought but redeemed; after this, the person ceased to be a slave or merchandise and gained freedom. The apostle Paul speaks of such an event and asks us to value what has been accomplished for our sake and glorify the One who accomplished it. The best gratitude is not to return to slavery to sin, but to conform in body and spirit to God's standards for the life of a free person.

Paul describes quite fully what we would call today the ascetic component of Christian life. However, today many people associate asceticism with "mortification of the flesh," with a struggle against one's own body, and sometimes even against one's own nature in general. The apostle understands asceticism in its original sense, as the ordering of one's spiritual life and life as a whole around that spiritual core which in his time was called the inner Torah. And one of the problems of every ascetic practice in every age has been the problem of ungoverned human intentions.

What is an intention? It is a will whose source is the person's spiritual "I," called the heart in the Bible, joined to the object toward which it is directed. Not one action, not one decision, not even a simple glance cast at something exists without the act of will that accompanies it. It is impossible not only to decide something or choose something, but even simply to see or hear something, or someone, without a particular act of will each time. Yet it often happens that the one who is looking or hearing, for example, identifies himself with what he sees or hears.

In the same way, a person experiencing one or another spiritual or psychological state can identify himself with it, as often happens in cases of intense emotion. And then it is no longer the person's will that directs him, but that with which the person identifies himself. The person himself gives his will, and therefore himself, into captivity to what is only a part of his own nature, and he loses his true self, that genuine "I" which is the source of every act of will and of all life.

Paul understands perfectly: the issue is not what a Christian may or may not see, hear, eat, or drink, but whether he becomes the spiritual prisoner of what he has seen, heard, eaten, or drunk. Whether he identifies himself with all this or remains inwardly free, able at any moment to stop doing what can hinder him on the spiritual path. Sexual immorality, the violation of the seventh commandment, turns out to be especially dangerous spiritually. And the issue here is not some special defectiveness of sexual life as such, but the fact that for a human being, unlike an animal, "pure sex" is impossible.

For a human being, it can only be part of those relationships that connect him with a sexual partner in all fullness and depth, so that even with a prostitute, in a relationship that by definition lasts no longer than one night, a person becomes one whole, and this unity remains forever, for all eternity. Here there is either the fullness of relationship and marriage in the fullness of life, or the fullness of mutual destruction and death. That is why the apostle gives so much attention to this topic: this is not moralizing, but a conversation about the Kingdom, about salvation, about life and death.