NOTES for Co1 13:12

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.

It is very difficult to speak about such “abstract” concepts, let alone compare them. With a certain degree of approximation, we might put it this way: in ordinary usage, faith and hope describe our relationship to facts. Faith concerns facts that “already are” (I believe that God exists, that He is good, that He created the world, that He ordered the world in such-and-such a way, that He gave His only-begotten Son...), while hope concerns facts that are “still ahead” (I hope for salvation, resurrection from the dead, eternal life...). But sometimes these words are used to express our relationship with another person: faith as trust in God, hope as reliance upon Him. The word “love” belongs to this same series: it speaks of our relationship with someone else. Yet this word truly is “greater” than faith and hope, because love means the fullness of relationship and, of course, includes both trust and hope.

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).