NOTES for Co1 3:19

The superman’s dream: “all things are yours”! Everything belongs to me: the world, life and death, the present and the future... How many lives have been shattered against this dream... And it has always proved impossible to make it a reality. Life and death, the present and the future are not in our power, however much we might wish them to be. So, is Paul lying? No. There is simply one small condition. Everything is ours if we belong to Christ. Then, through Him, with Him, and in Him, all things are possible. Everything is ours if we are wholly within the will of God.

Continuing the conversation about priorities, Paul notes another very important point for understanding what life in the Kingdom is. He tells the Corinthian Christians: you have nothing to argue about; the whole world belongs to each of you. All are yours, everyone you meet on the spiritual path, and life and death, and the present and the future. But on one indispensable condition: you are Christ's. For Christ is God's, the apostle tells the Corinthians, and if you are Christ's, then you too are God's; and then everything that is God's is yours as well (vv. 21-23). Yet it is possible to live this way only when the one living becomes a bearer of the Kingdom. The apostle expresses this thought by reminding his readers that they themselves are that temple of God where God dwells, just as before the coming of Christ He dwelt only in those places which He Himself marked as places of His special presence, such as the Jerusalem Temple (vv. 16-17).

But the Kingdom, all of it, wholly and completely, becomes the place of God's special presence, and Christians become its living bearers. And the chief task both of the individual Christian and of the church community as a whole is precisely the preservation of the Kingdom, which is possible only if the system of priorities of neither the individual nor the community is distorted. It is no accident that Paul pays special attention to the inadmissibility for Christians of replacing the wisdom of the Kingdom with the wisdom of "this age" (vv. 18-19): for wisdom in those days was, first of all, the art of righteous living; in a certain sense it was a synonym for such a concept as spirituality. Thus in this case the apostle is essentially warning against replacing the spirituality of the Kingdom with the spirituality of this world. And on this in turn depends the quality of the ministry that each Christian carries out.

It is no accident that Paul speaks of the foundation on which one or another follower of Christ builds his work (vv. 11-15). The apostle understands perfectly well that for true servants of Christ and the Kingdom there can be only one foundation, common to all. And the quality of the building depends on what material the builder has at his disposal. Here the measure of rootedness in the Kingdom proves decisive: allegorically, the apostle distinguishes materials from diamond to straw. Of course, not one of those who share in the Kingdom will perish, but the quality of spiritual life and, accordingly, of ministry still matters. One can be saved by jumping out of one's ministry as out of a burning house, but such a version of salvation and such a ministry can hardly be called normal by anyone. And Paul calls precisely for full life in the Kingdom and true ministry, not for mere vegetation, whose consequence is collapse, ending without the final destruction of the unfortunate servant only by the mercy of God.

Continuing the discussion of Christianity and Christian life, Paul singles out the main thing that constitutes its essence. The question is the extent to which a person shares in God's breath, the Holy Spirit, and the extent to which this breath determines his life. It is in this sense that the apostle calls Christians "temples of God."

Indeed, the human being was originally created by God in order to remain in constant fellowship with Him, a fellowship that included the possibility of the presence of God's "breath of life" in the flow of human life, which in the Bible is called the "soul." A person's "soul" (and therefore the person himself) is alive insofar as God's "breath of life" gives it life. This has always been true, and after Christ's coming, for Christians this "breath of life," God's breath, was revealed in all fullness as the breath of the Kingdom, of which every Christian is an inhabitant, if, of course, we are not speaking of nominal Christianity.

The main question of Christianity comes down to the measure of the presence of God's breath, the breath of the Kingdom, in the life of the Christian: to how much a person receives this breath and to what extent it determines the everyday course of his life. The outcome of a person's Christian path also depends on the measure of the presence of God's breath in his life. God, of course, rejects no one, and Christ will lovingly receive everyone who turns to Him, but with what will a person come to the end of his earthly path? What, in the apostle's words, will he have had time and ability to build in his life for the Kingdom?

A Christian's earthly life becomes the answer to this question. The main question of Christianity is not reduced to what to do and what not to do, but to how to live. It is not a question of external activity, even the most "correct" activity, but a question of the spiritual quality of existence. And that depends entirely and completely on one thing: on one's relationship with God and with Christ. On how far our human will follows the will of Christ, how far it is one with God's will. The greater the gap between our human will and God's will, the less God's breath, the breath of the Kingdom, determines our life.

Only this matters; everything else is secondary. This includes theological disputes, religious disagreements and divergences, and the success or failure of particular church parties and groups. There is one foundation - Christ Himself. And any activity is important only insofar as it allows a person to build life on the true foundation, to change its quality and allow the breath of the Kingdom to determine that quality. Everything that distracts from the main thing is better excluded from life. That is more reliable, because our earthly life is not endless and often ends earlier than we expect.