NOTES for Co2 8:16-24

Speaking about the collection of aid for communities in distress, Paul mentions that this is also done as a witness before people. It might seem to be a purely internal church matter with no direct relation to witness. But things are not so simple.

Of course, if Christianity were merely another new religion, matters would be somewhat different. Every organisation, including religious ones, has its own “back room” which outsiders are not shown. But the point is that Christianity is not a new religion; it is a new life. There can be no “back room” here. Or rather there can be, but it will be in full view of God and people, for life itself, the very process of the daily existence of an individual or a church community, becomes the witness.

If any duplicity becomes visible here, if there proves to be a hidden underside that outsiders had better not see, the whole witness will come to nothing. This does not mean that no one will ever believe Christians, but that Christianity will come to be regarded as an ordinary religion, and the church as an ordinary religious organisation living by the same laws and rules as any other religious organisation. Then witness will become false witness.

For authentic Christianity is life in the Kingdom, and the authentic Church is the Body of Christ. Integrity of life is needed here not in order to prove something to someone, but so that we ourselves may live the life of the Kingdom. In that case, however, church life does not and cannot have a front and a reverse side. Every work of the church is either done in the Kingdom and according to the laws of the Kingdom, or ceases to be church work in the true sense of the word.

The apostle understands this perfectly, and so he says that even what might appear to be a purely internal church matter, such as mutual aid between church communities, is done “before people” as a witness to the Kingdom. For in the Church with a capital C, things are not done otherwise, at least as long as that capital letter remains meaningful.

Speaking about mutual help among the churches and about the collection of donations, Paul pays special attention to the care and scrupulousness that are never excessive in matters connected with money (vv. 18-21). It was especially important to the apostle, it seems, to bear witness to his integrity not only before God, but also before people. Of course, he also had in mind ordinary human honesty in everything connected with his own material responsibility, both before those whose money had been entrusted to him and his companions and before those to whom he was to deliver it. In the end, what was at stake in this case was nothing less than observance of the eighth commandment, because if anything collected for the churches' aid had been lost through Paul's fault, it would have been equivalent to theft.

But the matter is probably not only the observance of the Torah. It is also the trust without which there are no relationships of the Kingdom. For Paul, it seems, the mutual help that exists among Christian communities is nothing other than a projection of the relationships uniting the inhabitants of the Kingdom onto the material relationships that exist among them in our world, which is being transformed but is not yet fully transformed. And these material relationships, like all others, can become either a witness or an anti-witness depending on what they are like. The apostle undoubtedly wants them to become the same kind of witness to the Kingdom as his preaching itself.

Such witness proved far more important than it may seem at first glance, because it made it possible to be convinced in practice that even in our world, still untransformed and therefore lying in evil, one can not only speak about inner experience connected with the Kingdom, but also live according to its laws, building relationships with other people accordingly. And such witness was truly priceless, because it visibly demonstrated to everyone that the Kingdom really had, in the Savior's words, "drawn near" - drawn so near that even in a world not yet transformed, nothing already prevents those seeking the Kingdom from living according to its laws, if only they themselves want to.