NOTES for Act 10:42-43
Today, when speaking of Christianity, we most often mean a certain new religion founded by Jesus Christ. The most correct religion, containing the fullness of truth, saving, but still a religion. Meanwhile the apostles, bearing witness to Christ, do not speak of any religion at all. They speak of something completely different. First of all, of course, of the Messiah, of Christ, who has finally come and revealed God's power to the world. Christianity is first of all Christ Himself. It begins with Him, and He alone bears in Himself both the fullness of living truth and salvation.
But Christianity is not only Christ Himself. It is also our relationships with Him. Precisely the relationships as such, and not what we think about these relationships, what we feel and experience in connection with them, and still less the rites and rituals that accompany them. Everything listed may exist or not exist, may take one form or another, may differ depending on place and time. But relationships with Christ are absolutely important for Christianity; they are its human dimension. These relationships, properly speaking, are the Kingdom that Christ brought into the world.
Place now plays no role: the breath of God, the breath of the Kingdom, is now felt in the world everywhere. Only the desire of the seeker is needed. But in order to become not simply a guest of the Kingdom but its inhabitant, one must also become a subject of the King who rules it. Here one cannot do without relationships with Christ, relationships deeply personal and always completely unique. But such relationships inevitably include an element of Judgment.
We come to Christ as we are, with all our problems and sins. We will have to be freed from the problems and cleansed from the sins and their consequences. Without the corresponding assessment from Christ and rethinking followed by repentance on the part of the one seeking the Kingdom, nothing will come of it. But if a Christian passes through this path, then he has no other Judgment to await: he has passed through his Judgment. For those who live in the Kingdom there is no Judgment. For them there is the life of the Kingdom. In abundance.