NOTES for Jo2 1:1-13

Today two texts are read which, at first glance, are striking because their thoughts do not coincide. The Second Epistle of John can be called a pastor's letter to friends, in which he blesses them and informs them of his arrival. In the Gospel text we read about the execution and death of Christ. And after reading these texts it may seem that, after such an execution of the teacher, a group of people continues his work, speaks about what he spoke about, and remembers him. But that is not so. Before His death Jesus says, "My God, My God! Why have You forsaken Me?" And, as if in answer to Christ's words, the apostle writes to a Christian family: "Whoever abides in the teaching of Christ has both the Father and the Son." This points out to us that, in following Christ, we are not alone on this path. Doubts and fears, a feeling of abandonment and confusion, may torment us, but we are guarded and led by Christ. Christ's death proclaimed to us the Resurrection from the dead and the salvation of the world through His sacrifice, through Communion. And as we follow Christ, we must remember His sacrifice and partake of His Holy Mysteries. Lent is a time of constant prayer and of following the path of repentance. During Lent the Church helps the Christian on this path. But the path of repentance always passes through Communion without condemnation, with a pure heart and humility. Let us walk the path of those who followed Him in Galilee, who came to Jerusalem and became silent, suffering witnesses of the execution. And let us approach the bright days of Easter in prayer and in special participation in the works of Christ.

It would seem that nothing is more opposite than love and law, love and dry religious prescriptions. Yet John sees the keeping of the commandments precisely as a manifestation of love. How can that be?

The answer may lie in the fact that the commandments given by God, and above all the Decalogue, form the foundation of the Torah. Yet the Torah is not reducible to legislation alone. In the time of the apostle, both in the Synagogue and in the Church, there were widespread ideas of the Torah as the inner spiritual core on which all human life was founded, both spiritual life and life in general. This spiritual core was called the inner Torah, and at its heart were relationships of love that bound a person both to neighbors and to God. But it was impossible to cultivate the inner Torah in oneself without relationships with God and with one's neighbors, and those relationships were regulated by the commandments. In this way, keeping the commandments became the expression and embodiment of love, including love of neighbor.

But in the light of Christian revelation, new shades of meaning were added to these traditional ideas. First of all, of course, this concerns the love of which the Savior Himself spoke as a "new commandment." Such love is no longer simply a relationship, as it had been before, at least as most biblical authors understand love: for them it is primarily an attitude toward another person, aimed first of all at that person's good. It also becomes the spiritual environment without which there is no Kingdom. Love becomes a kind of nature of the Kingdom, its spiritual substance, just as the natural elements become the natural substance of the untransformed world. And the form that gives this substance its quality is the relationships of love that bind all its inhabitants both to one another and to Christ. In such a situation, the inner Torah is no longer simply a person's spiritual core, but also that person's form, defining his own spiritual quality and the quality of his spiritual life in the Kingdom.

Then the apostle's words take on a new meaning: indeed, for love to become the environment of life, fully natural for a person, the inner Torah, unthinkable without the keeping of the commandments, must become his only form. Here one inevitably recalls the Savior's words that He came not to destroy the Torah but to bring it to fullness. To the fullness fit for the Kingdom.

Today the apostle John reminds us of a rather unpleasant possibility: it turns out that everything we labor over in the Church, our relationship with God, can all be lost. One so wants to sit down and relax... but one cannot. The apostle John says that in order not to lose what has been attained, one must watch oneself. How can this be? Grace is given forever, and God does not take back His gifts... This is true, but not the whole truth. There is not only He who is unchanging, but also we who change, and not always for the better. This is what John is talking about: one must constantly check one's inner state against the basic criterion - His commandments

What does the apostle mean when he calls his fellow believers to "watch themselves" so as not to lose the promised reward? What loss is being spoken of? And what exactly must be watched so that everything will be in order?

Judging by the context of the statement, one can think that the matter concerns doctrine, orthodoxy, which must be preserved, otherwise there is a risk of losing the Kingdom, and with it salvation. At first glance, such a call is quite natural: representatives of every religious teaching, and indeed of any other teaching, are always to one degree or another concerned about the purity of their own ranks, including purity, so to speak, of worldview. After all, any religious community needs adherents capable of spreading the teaching and attracting new members. But Christianity is not a religion; it is life in the Kingdom brought into the world by the Savior. To be its inhabitant, one needs faithfulness not to an idea, not to a doctrine, and not to a creed, but to God and Christ, to the Torah and the Gospel. This is a question not so much of views as of practical life, not so much of orthodoxy as of orthopraxy.

But then what do questions of right belief have to do with it? Can they influence that very life in the Kingdom which constitutes the essence of Christianity? It is obvious that if such influence is possible, then only in one aspect: in the aspect of the relationships that bind an inhabitant of the Kingdom with God, with Christ, and with neighbors. A person's relationships with God and neighbors are exhaustively described and regulated by the Torah; the Decalogue is sufficient for them. But relationships with Jesus depend in many respects on whom the person approaching Him sees in Him. Jesus' question, "Who do people say that I am? And who do you say that I am?" is addressed, in essence, to each of us. And one must answer it every time one wants to share a meal with Him during the breaking of bread in the church assembly.

Apparently, already in John's time there were many gnostics in and around the Church for whom Jesus was never a Man, who were ready to see in Him rather an angel or some higher spirit. The spiritual danger here lay not in wrong belief as such, but in the fact that such a view of Jesus made transformation impossible for a person, and therefore participation in the Kingdom impossible, at least in this life. Then both the breaking of bread and the very existence of the Church lost their meaning: after all, according to another apostle's definition, she could in no way be the "body of Christ" in such a case, and in any other capacity she could give a person nothing that the Synagogue could not give him.

Orthodoxy was never needed by the Church in itself; in itself it could be needed only by church structures parasitizing on her. For the Church herself, in fact, it was always necessary only from the point of view of the main question Jesus once asked the apostles: who do you say that I am? Because the very possibility of life in the Kingdom depends on the answer to it. And therefore so does the possibility of salvation.

John's words about not receiving into one's house those who do not confess the teaching of which the apostle speaks may appear to be a manifestation of extreme intolerance toward every different opinion. Meanwhile, the issue is nothing other than the person of Jesus Christ. If John had any teaching on which he insisted, it concerned precisely this question: who is Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God and the Messiah sent by God into the world, or simply a teacher, one of many who then existed?

Christianity itself consists in the answer to this question. If Christianity were simply a new religion, the apostle's position would indeed look unattractive: one might think that adherents of this new religion fear competition and prefer sectarian closedness to openness and dialogue. But Christianity is not a new religion; it is a new life. Life with Christ in His Kingdom.

Life that is inconceivable without trusting Jesus of Nazareth not only as Teacher, but also as Son of God, as Messiah, as King of that Kingdom whose inhabitant every Christian by definition must become. The one who does not receive Jesus in this way cannot be an inhabitant of the Kingdom. But can Christians receive only their own in their homes? Today such an approach may seem at least strange to us. But here it is important to take into account the features of ancient customs of hospitality in general, as well as Jewish customs of that era and the customs of the first Christians.

To greet a person in those days meant not simply to say "hello" to him, but also to invite him into one's home. And having invited him home, it was impossible not to give the guest food. One would necessarily have to sit with him at one table, sharing a meal, and therefore breaking bread. Jews, for example, never sat at one table with pagans precisely for this reason: in breaking bread a believing Jew blessed it in the name of the God of Abraham, while pagans remembered, often even if only symbolically, their pagan gods.

For a Jew, such a situation at least bordered on apostasy. For a Christian the situation was approximately the same, but here the issue was the breaking of bread in the name of Jesus; without mentioning this name, the breaking of bread was impossible for a Christian. And if someone for whom Jesus of Nazareth was an ordinary person ended up at the table together with Christians, there would be no common meal.

When some seek the meal of the Kingdom and others do not believe in such a possibility at all, the situation becomes at least ambiguous, and for everyone. It is in order to exclude this ambiguity that the apostle advises avoiding situations in which it would become possible. For every such ambiguity only distances a person from the Kingdom: both the one seeking the Kingdom and the one who does not yet know about it.