NOTES for Jo1 2:18-29

John's words that everyone who has left the Church is an antichrist (vv. 18-19) seem to many people like a propaganda stamp, an attempt to frighten fellow believers, to awaken in them metaphysical terror before eternal destruction. If Christianity were simply one more, new religion, that is exactly how one would have to perceive them. But the point is precisely that Christianity is not a new religion, but new life. And for John, as for the whole generation of the first Christians, the Church is not a religious community, but the place where the faithful gather for a completely real meeting with the risen Christ, who also quite really blesses the bread and the cup broken in that assembly.

Therefore for John the antichrist is not some mystical figure who appears on the historical stage at the end of time in the appropriate scenery, but anyone who sets himself against Christ and His Church. The matter here is not hatred of these people or condemnation of their position, but a simple statement of fact. At first glance the apostle's judgment may appear much too harsh: after all, there is still time before the Savior's return, so those who have left can still have time to return. But it is no accident that John speaks of the "last times" as something that has already arrived.

Talk like this usually brings only a skeptical smile from the modern reader. This is understandable: there have been too many alarmists in Christian history predicting Christ's imminent return, which for some reason was always, at the last moment, either postponed in some mysterious way or canceled altogether. But the apostle has in mind not the future, even the very nearest future, but the present. It is we who live in the age of the coming Kingdom. Just as John himself and his contemporaries lived in this age.

Just as everyone everywhere has lived in this same age since the day of Pentecost, and everyone will live in it until the day of Christ's return in glory, which of course will not come when self-appointed "prophets" announce it. The coming of the Kingdom is an objective reality, completely independent of people's opinion and attitude toward it. And it touches everyone regardless of age, sex, race, language, or religion. And even regardless of whether a person knows anything about Christ or does not know. But those who know and have accepted have a special responsibility.

We do not know what relationship to the Kingdom and its life is held by those who have no idea of the Kingdom. Just as we do not know what relationships Christ has with those who have not heard of Him from people. Or who have heard and seen things it would have been better not to hear and see. But if a person knew Christ and the Kingdom and, knowing, left, then such a person has broken with Christ and with the Kingdom, and this is the same objective given as the very presence of the Kingdom in the world. Of course, the way back is closed to no one, at least until the Savior's return in glory. But those who have left must walk that way. So that they may be faithful to Christ, and not His opponents.

“I write to you not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it”... Why write about something to someone who already knows it? The Apostle John is essentially saying that his epistle is not informative: the information is already there and, moreover, it was given not by human means but by the Holy Spirit. Why, then, does he write? Could it be that a message or letter does not always have to convey new information? If everything were a matter of information, there would be no point in rereading the Bible: we have read it and know how it all ends... Perhaps words about what is already known are sometimes necessary too. Why? To become established in faith. To remind ourselves by hearing it once more. Simply so that the communion of saints may continue through conversation about what has already been discussed... and suddenly what one hears is not new information, but a new intonation.

In the Sacrament of Baptism, the Holy Spirit is given to each of us. Why then do we trust so little? We look for answers in books, from people, we think, worry, and are troubled. We lose faith in ourselves if we do not find an answer and begin to grow despondent; and if we finally understand that the answer must be sought from God and in God, we fall into despair and nearly lose faith when the answer, the understanding, has to be awaited.

But the Spirit is in us. He is given and is never taken away: God does not take back His gifts. Through our sins we can so thoroughly "plug our ears" and "cover our eyes," fill with stones all the paths inside the soul that lead to our heart, that it becomes very hard to hear His quiet voice. We can so unlearn how to see that we fail to notice His signs and His words in our life and in the surrounding world. Our heart can be so stuffed with earthly attachments, interests in the affairs and things of "this world," that the Spirit of God is forced to huddle in the very corner and from there continue speaking to us.

But He lives in us, does not depart, does not leave us, comforts us, and does not fall silent.

And if for some reason we cannot hear Him, we need to wash our eyes and ears, clear the roads covered with stones and branches, free space in our heart, and then sit and listen. And not despair if we do not hear at once. We have unlearned, forgotten how this is done. Our inner hearing is tuned to our desires and impulses of soul, not to the voice of the Spirit. We need to wait and learn to listen. To wait and endure. Sometimes one must wait a very long time. But unlike us, God is faithful. At some point we will hear His voice inside our heart. We have already been anointed, and His anointing abides in us.

In today's reading, the apostle John offers us criteria for determining the truth and acceptability of a given teaching or statement concerning the relationship between a person and God. The first criterion is given in verse 24: "Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father." In other words, the first condition for remaining in communion with God is faithfulness to the Gospel teaching. But there is also a second criterion, which John mentions in verse 27: anointing. What is this? In Jewish terminology, anointing was an outward sign of God's election and blessing. Here the anointing probably means not only blessing, but also the living presence of the Holy Spirit in the heart; it is no accident that this "living" anointing, as John says, "teaches us about everything." So the first criterion is the Gospel teaching, and the second is our living relationship with God. At the intersection of these criteria stands the teaching of the Church, which is created precisely on the basis of Scripture and the living experience of relationship with God.

Today not only Christians know about eternal life; almost everyone has heard of it. But what is the apostle speaking about? The answer looks obvious: life after death, which is usually identified with the Kingdom of God. At the same time it is taken for granted that eternal life begins "there," "beyond the grave," in the life after death, while the life we live here can by definition only be temporary. But is this what John has in mind? According to the meaning of the Greek text, "eternal life" is not so much life that continues forever as life that belongs to eternity. And that, of course, is not the same thing.

In principle, life that continues forever can be imagined, at least theoretically, even in relation to an untransfigured human being in an untransfigured world. More than that, the Bible gives us no reason to doubt that before the fall man, still untransfigured but also sinless, possessed what could be called practical immortality: in principle he could die, but death, including death from old age, was not inevitable for him. Yet even this sinless but natural life had no relation to eternity in the New Testament sense. In fact, John, like the other apostles, when speaking of eternity, has first of all the Kingdom of God in mind.

The eternity of the Kingdom is not linear, empty infinity, not a chain of moments stretching from the past into the future, but the fullness of times, where everything that exists exists as a single whole, not broken apart into successive moments as it is in the untransfigured world. And eternal life can plainly be considered only life connected with this fullness of times, rooted in it, and therefore rooted in the Kingdom. For us, if we are Christians, the Kingdom is not future but present. Of course, in our world, which is being transfigured but has not yet been transfigured to the end, it is not the only reality.

Until full transfiguration, the old order of things will also remain in it and make itself known alongside the Kingdom entering the world. But the eternal life of which the apostle speaks can already now be, and truly is, part of the Kingdom, regardless of where its existence unfolds. And at the end of time this rootedness will become visible to everyone, so that each person who has shared in eternal life may receive the fullness of the Kingdom he was seeking.

And in the evangelic time, and in the ancient times in the synagogue and in the environment around the synagogue, one of the most popular and the most controversial questions was the question on what we can and has to do in order to have the right to enter the messianic Kingdom, or, in other words what to do "to inherit eternal life", as formulated it one seeker of the right way who addressed Jesus. Such question supposed that we can deserve somehow or other the Kingdom, that man is in principle capable if it is not to create this Kingdom by his own strengths (nothing similar could come of course in the head of a normal Jew), then at least, to bring his part of contribution to its creation, when the Messiah will come. But it turns out that it is not at all the case.

It turned out that nobody can help at all the Messiah in the edification of His Kingdom. And not only because it is prevented by the human sinfulness, but also because it is impossible to build the Kingdom by the laws of the not transformed world, and by no other law, we, living completely the life of this world, can build it. On the other hand we can another thing: accept the Kingdom brought to the world not by us, and carry it further.

By the way, it is for this that John calls the addressees of his message: he says to "abide in Him", meaning of course that the Savior. Indeed: because the Savior carries the Kingdom in Him and with Him, in Him all its plenitude, which He can and is ready to share with us. In this regard, we have nothing to bring in the construction of the Kingdom, we can not complete it at all, we can only accept it, as a gift, which it is impossible for anybody of men to deserve. Even our righteousness, which, in fact, is only a reflection of God's righteousness, does not complete the Kingdom: because it is in fact also not ours, it does not belong to us by nature, if we are righteous, then it is not by our strengths and in spite of our own sinfulness.

But well, in order to bring the Kingdom further in the world, we can be useful, and here our righteousness will not be superfluous. Of course, for that it is necessary to join at first the Kingdom and its life so that will be what to carry. But, on the other hand, once having joined, it is already impossible to stop: because in our world being transformed, but not yet transformed, the Kingdom can exist only in a dynamism, either it widens, spreads in the world, taking more and more new hearts, or disappears, becoming invisible.

And we, as inhabitants of the Kingdom living on the border separating it from the not transformed world, are on the wave of this transformative breath which penetrates the world. And, if we want to remain inhabitants of the Kingdom, it is impossible for us not to breathe it, and thus, not carry it forward. Only in this way, according to the idea of the apostle, abiding in Christ and living His life, we can appear in the day of the return of the Savior before Him, as his, as participants of this work, that He began and that He allowed us to participate. The works, due to which appeared to us the possibility to live the life, which otherwise would remain for ever inaccessible for us.

It has historically been that the large majority sees Christianity as one of the world religions today. But is it really the case? Certainly, if Jesus had created Himself any new religion, Christianity would have been precisely one of religions, and could be nothing else. But He did nothing similar. He left on earth not a religious community, but a community of people living in the Kingdom.

And the church is this community of people living in the Kingdom. But later around this community and on its base were formed diverse Christian religions: Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Protestantism and others, smaller and that is why less known. The life of the Kingdom in itself does not depend on the religiosity of man, and does not define it.

But indeed, we can say the same about righteousness! Righteousness in all periods and in all the biblical books was connected not much with the religious tradition and religious canon, as with the keeping of commandments, which is unconceivable without constant daily opposition to sin penetrating into the fallen world.

And a complete righteousness is possible only in the Kingdom, in the world transformed by the breath of God, where there is no more place for sin. But if it is so, then every righteous man has a more direct and more immediate relation to the Kingdom. And thus, he has a direct and immediate relation with Christ, Who brought this Kingdom into the world.

Speaking about the spiritual life of a Christian, John describes it as becoming in Christ and at the same time being established in the Torah (the Law). Jesus is the only one in whom there is no sin (1 John 3:5). In this way He showed the world the only example in history of what in those days was called the living Torah: to become the living Torah meant precisely to be the living embodiment of the ideal that the Torah requires. Accordingly, such a person had to be completely free from every sin, because sin and the Torah, sin and God's commandment, are incompatible things. That is why, before the coming of Christ, the ideal of the living Torah remained only an ideal, one toward which many strove but which no one managed to attain.

Following the Torah cleanses from sin. The inner Torah, as believing Jews of the Gospel era called it, was the spiritual imperative without which the way of righteousness was impossible. The inner Torah was the spiritual core on which the whole life of a person seeking righteousness and striving to become the living Torah was based. Any sin destroyed this core, and that is why the apostle speaks of sin as lawlessness, as a departure from the inner Torah (1 John 3:4).

But for fallen humanity, sin is a sad inevitability, and that is why the ideal of the living Torah remained unattainable. The only hope is in the Savior, who not only showed this ideal to the world but is also ready to help everyone seeking righteousness be freed from the captivity of sin (1 John 3:5). For this only one thing is needed: to give oneself and one's life into His hands, and then He will make it part of the life of the Kingdom that He brought into the world.

There is no place for sin in the Kingdom, and therefore the one who lives one life with Christ does not sin. Sin has a place only in human life separated from the life of Christ and the Kingdom (1 John 3:6). We live in the age of the Kingdom that is coming but has not yet been revealed in all its fullness, and until the end of this age, until the full transformation of humanity and all creation, our Christian life retains the duality of which the apostle speaks.

But at the end of time, after the Savior returns in glory and our human nature is fully transformed, this duality will disappear. Only then will we become what we are meant to be according to God's purpose for us (1 John 3:2). For now we are pure to the extent that we live one life with Jesus, the life of the Kingdom that He brought into the world (1 John 3:3). And not only we Christians: everyone who acts righteously has a relation to Him (1 John 2:29; in the Synodal translation, "does righteousness"). And that is not surprising, because He is the only righteous one in the world without any qualification. He is the only one who has shown the world the pattern of the living Torah.