NOTES for Co1 13:8-13

For Paul, love is undoubtedly the foundation of all the relationships that connect people living in the Kingdom with God and with one another. That is why it remains relevant even when everything else ceases to be so (v. 8). But the apostle is not speaking simply about life in the Kingdom. He clearly has in mind a certain fullness of the Kingdom itself, so to speak, the fullness of fullness. All the spiritual gifts that Paul described so vividly only a short time earlier now disappear, dissolving into love. The apostle gives a completely unambiguous explanation for this: all the gifts we can have today are still far from the fullness of that love with which the Kingdom is permeated, and therefore they are temporary (vv. 9-10). This incompleteness is connected with our own spiritual state: from the point of view of that fullness of life that will become possible in the Kingdom revealed to the end, we are still children, having only the most general ideas about the life of the Kingdom and having taken only our first steps in it (v. 11).

As one can see, for Paul the spiritual path of individual people living in the Kingdom is inseparable from the history of the Kingdom itself. For him the spiritual maturing of Christians is inseparable from the becoming of the Kingdom and its development in our world, which is being transfigured but has not yet been transfigured to the end. The realities of the Kingdom are perceived with difficulty today not only because our eyes have not yet developed enough to see the objects of the spiritual world clearly, but also because these realities themselves have not yet fully taken shape and have not been completely revealed (v. 12). But the full revelation of the Kingdom will happen only at the end of time with the Savior's return. Until then, the love of the Kingdom, which we can experience only in part, is joined with faith that the day will come when it will be revealed to the world in all its fullness, and with hope that we ourselves too will become part of this fullness (v. 13).

Paul speaks of love as the one thing that exists eternally and in eternity, surpassing everything else in this respect. Paul's words here echo Jesus' own words about love as a new commandment. It would seem that there is nothing new in love: even before the Messiah came, experts in the Torah knew that its whole essence could be reduced to two commandments, the commandment to love God and the commandment to love one's neighbor. Yet the presence of love did not abolish everything else that could be present in a person's life and in his relationships with God and other people. Jesus, however, calls love a new commandment, and Paul, as if continuing the Teacher's thought, speaks of love as something surpassing everything imaginable that may be connected with human existence in the Kingdom.

Apparently something new connected with love entered the world with Christ. Before the Messiah came, love was primarily a relationship binding a person to God and to other people. It was the intention on which such relationships rested. The space of relationship itself remained natural and psychic. In the Kingdom everything is different: there love becomes the space of relationship, the environment within which all relationships exist—with God, with Christ, and with other people.

The breath of the Kingdom that embraces a person becomes for him an environment of love. At the end of time, when the whole world once again becomes the Kingdom as it was on the first day of creation, this breath will embrace everything and become the only possible environment in which renewed nature will exist. Then love will become the sole reality of every human action, every relationship, and all of life in general. This is what the apostle reminds us when he says that without love everything else loses its meaning. For then it will remain outside the Kingdom, and therefore outside God's world.

Paul speaks of love as something that alone exists forever and in eternity, surpassing everything else in this respect. The words of Paul here strongly recall other words: the words of Jesus Himself about love as a new commandment.

At first glance, there is nothing new in love: even before the coming of the Messiah, experts in the Torah knew that the whole essence of the Torah comes down to two commandments, the commandment to love God and the commandment to love neighbor. Yet the presence of love did not cancel everything else that could be present in a person's life and in his relationships with God and with other people. Jesus, meanwhile, calls love a new commandment, and Paul, as if continuing the thought of the Teacher, speaks of love as something that surpasses everything imaginable that can be connected with human existence in the Kingdom.

It is clear that with Christ something new connected with love entered the world. Before the coming of the Messiah, love was primarily a relationship joining a person with God and with other people. It was the intention on which such relationships stood. The space of relationships itself remained natural and psychic. In the Kingdom everything is different: there love becomes the space of relationships. It becomes the medium within which all relationships exist: with God, with Christ, and with other people.

The breath of the Kingdom that embraces a person becomes for him a medium of love. And at the end of time, when the whole world again becomes the Kingdom as it was on the first day of creation, this breath will embrace everything and will be the only possible medium in which renewed nature exists. Then love will become the only reality of all human actions, all relationships, and all life in general. This is what the apostle recalls when he says that without love everything else loses its meaning. Then it will remain outside the Kingdom, and therefore outside the world of God.

To recognize that one’s "knowledge is partial ", "vision through a glass, darkly" - is an every day exercise. No matter how clear we could have seen evident objects, we cannot say we have reached a perfect knowledge, that we understood the intention in its plenitude, that we acknowledged the sense. Time, as a component of our existence, brings its correctives in all.

What seemed to us to be a point yesterday, will become a straight line today, but already tomorrow will turn out to be a flat figure. After again a certain time it will turn out that all this is just a shadow, and then we shall see the volume, the shape and the color, then we shall realize that the object moves and changes.

So we perceive the world and all which lives inside. God opens to us also gradually Who He is. Although it seems to us today that the knowledge opened to us is finished and completes, it is simply a pale shadow of what we know, even when the glass, darkly will become clearly - when the window will open we shall see the One, Who called us to His wonderful Light; the One, Who is beyond any knowledge, because He is the Truth.

Paul's words on the fact that we see the realities of the spiritual world in our current state, as a darkly reflection in a dusty mirror, echo the thoughts of certain philosophers of the heathen world. And comes in mind first of all, of course Plato with his image of the cave and the shadows on its walls. But indeed, the apostle does not speak about the not transformed world, from where the spiritual reality after the fall is really if distinctive, then with difficulty, but about the Kingdom and its life, where this kind of ambiguity cannot and should not have any place: because the Kingdom by its nature "is not of this world", it belongs completely to the spiritual world, or more exactly, it is itself the spiritual world, at least in that its measure, with which it gets in contact with man.

And all the same the inhabitants of the Kingdom in the current stage of its history are not yet totally transformed, do not yet possess in fullness this new nature, without which to become inhabitant of the Kingdom is impossible. That is not surprising: because the Kingdom also has not yet revealed itself to the world till the end, in all its fullness. We live at the time of transition, at the time of the Kingdom to come. And if we are Christian, the spiritual fate of each of us is connected to the history of the Kingdom.

Paul as we see, understands that perfectly: he knows that his own spiritual way will not end the day of his death, but the day of the return of the Savior, the day of the final and complete triumph of this Kingdom, of which he consecrated his entire life to witness. And until this day every Christian, as the apostle, lives on the border of two worlds, which deform the perception of the realities of the spiritual world. Of course, here it is not what Plato has, because in the cave of Plato, except the shadows, we see nothing generally. Of this border of the worlds, where today every Christian has to live, the Kingdom is visible quite as is visible from there the not transformed world.

Here is only before the complete transfiguration of the physical nature each of the living on earth sees the Kingdom deformed, just as a man without special glasses or with mask sees the submarine world: as our physical sight is not adapted for the adequate perception of the submarine world, so our spiritual sight is not adapted (and cannot be adapted till our full transformation) for an adequate perception of the Kingdom. But it is not so terrible: because God leads each considering the peculiarities of such kind of perception. The main thing is to listen to Him, without relying completely on your own spiritual sight inclined to aberrations.

Faith, hope, charity are the traditional triad of so called in the Middle Ages the "theological" virtues, which were considered proper only for Christians, unlike the virtues "heathen", who, according to the same representations of the Middle Ages, are proper to all people, including heathen virtuous. And Paul, as we see, from the three accentuates on charity, without denying moreover that faith and hope are inseparably connected to it. Then what means the apostle? We would have been able of course to explain everything only by the peculiarities of the spiritual device of the human personality.

Indeed, trust, and hope are always connected somehow or other to those relationships, which join man with God and with the neighbor. And charity understood as understand this word the authors of the biblical books, is the relationship, around which is built all the rest. It is particular on charity that is based every trust, and only charity allows to hope on something, whether it is related to God or to man. But the problem is probably not only in it.

All the expectations of Christians are connected somehow or other with the Kingdom, with the fact that will come the day of its full and final triumph, the day of the last Judgment and the return of the Savior. And the faith of every Christian is also connected to the Kingdom and to the One who brought the Kingdom to the world. And when will come the day waited by every Christian of the end of the current stage of the history of the Kingdom, charity will stop being only a relationship, having become this spiritual environment, in which are going to live from now on all the inhabitants of the Kingdom.

Indeed, in the Kingdom charity is the spiritual environment, inside which are build all the relationships forming its basis: the relationships of its inhabitants between themselves, their relationships with God and with Jesus, the relationship of Jesus with His Heavenly Father. And if faith and hope under their current form still belong to the world partially not transformed to a certain extent defining their form, charity as for it, manifested by the Savior Himself, this charity, which He left to His followers, belongs already now to the Kingdom entirely.