NOTES for Co1 13:1-7

Continuing his reflections on the Church, Paul composes a true hymn to love. In composing it, the apostle undoubtedly must have remembered the Savior's words about the commandment of love, spoken during the Last Supper, words Paul could not have failed to know. And yet the assertion that any efforts are meaningless in the absence of love makes one stop and think (vv. 1-3). After all, the matter is undoubtedly the actions of a righteous person, and actions that are deeply motivated. Why, then, are they worthless in themselves, despite the rightness of the motivation, if there is no love? The answer to this question is not hard to find in the second part of the hymn (vv. 4-7). Indeed, to treat people as described here is completely impossible if one remains within the framework of our not yet transfigured world. One can love this way only by dwelling in the Kingdom and living its life.

Then it becomes clear what love the apostle is speaking about in the first part of his remarkable hymn. The matter is not the love that is possible even among fallen people in our not yet transfigured world. The matter is the love of the Kingdom, the love that permeates all relationships here, being their foundation and driving force. In our not yet fully transfigured world, love is possible as an act of the will and as a relationship. We love those to whom we actively wish good.

But the very fabric of interpersonal relationships in our not yet transfigured world has a different nature; it is not identical with love, though sometimes it can bear love. In the Kingdom, however, every relationship is by definition an act of love. No other forms of relationship are possible there in principle; the nature of the Kingdom does not allow them. And if a person does not have such love, it means only one thing: such a person has not yet touched the Kingdom. Therefore, whatever he may do, even from the highest motives, he cannot enter the Kingdom until love becomes for him the sole spiritual foundation of all life and all relationships, both with God and with neighbors. The sign of this change can be the kind of attitude toward life and toward people that is described in the second part of the hymn Paul wrote.

Why Paul puts so high the charity? Why even faithfulness till death in itself, turns out little for the Kingdom without charity? Of course, we could say many things on what is faith, including the religious faith without charity. Moreover, there is probably no sense today to speak much about it: the examples of religious fanaticism (and this is what it is, in fact, the fullness of faith without a lesser grain of charity) are in front of the eyes of all. It is obvious that such a faith only destroys man, not talking of the fact that it is rather often dangerous for the close relations. But the problem is probably not only in it. The apostle indeed, does not probably want to speak here about only this human charity, which was known in all times, but also about the love of the Kingdom, witnessed by Jesus Himself, in particular at the Last Supper. And it obliges a little to look otherwise on the words.

Indeed, this charity, about which speaks, including, and also the Bible, is itself, above all, a relationship, an intention, directed on the neighbor and carrying in itself the desire to do good to this neighbor. Of course, such an intention can be accompanied by reflections, and feelings, but one and another are only the complement to the main part. Jesus speaks of something big, He speaks about the Kingdom, where charity is this spiritual environment, inside which we build all the relationships binding the inhabitants of the Kingdom.

We could call the charity in a certain sense the spiritual substance of the Kingdom, and the one who is not involved in this charity, in fact will not be also involved in the Kingdom. And then everything is meaningless: because, the sense of the Christian life consists only of it, to join the life of the Kingdom. The Christian needs nothing else, and everything is useless. And Paul himself, living the life of the Kingdom, understands that of course perfectly. And, as seen, does not get tired to remind these fundamental things for the Christian life to the coreligionists.

Even before the coming of Christ, it was commonly accepted that love for God and neighbor is the whole essence of the 'Torah and the Prophets,' as Scripture was called in those days. But in the context of Christian revelation the concept of love received different, new content. Of course, love, at least in the biblical sense of the word, had already meant above all an attitude toward a person that desired only good for him, and an interaction with him that would be for his good.

Biblical love has little in common with sympathies or antipathies, with whether a neighbor is humanly pleasant or unpleasant to someone, or even with how that neighbor behaves. Even if he becomes an enemy, he must not be hated, avenged, or harmed, though at times such a person must be stopped if he is trying to harm someone, and stopped firmly enough. But even then love for neighbor includes the possibility of giving him a new chance to restore normal relationships with those to whom he had been an enemy, if there is any ground at all to hope that such restoration is possible.

All this belonged to the ideas of righteousness and of the righteous person's relation to neighbors that had formed before the Christian era. And Paul insists that everything said remains in force for Christians. But he also speaks of more. Before, righteousness was a possibility that could either be realized or not realized in the life of a particular person.

That particular person could fall short of the fullness of righteous life, yet everything he did on the path of righteousness still had its meaning. Even if a person could not show the fullness of love, he could at times still say of himself that he had moved in the right direction and had managed to achieve this or that. Paul says: all this is excellent, but if one does not go to the end, if one does not learn to build relationships of love with neighbors, everything else is worth nothing.

In the Kingdom only relationships of love are possible; if they are absent, if a person has not learned to build such relationships with neighbors, he cannot enter the Kingdom. Not because someone wants to punish him or despises his achievements, but because without such a skill it is impossible to live the life of the Kingdom. That is why the apostle speaks of love, which alone gives meaning to all other achievements: without love a person will still remain outside the Kingdom. With all his achievements.