NOTES for Co2 5:15
What mean Paul's words about the necessity for the Christians to live "unto him which died for them and rose again" Christ? Sometimes they are understood as the necessity of remembering what the Savior did for us and what it cost Him, sometimes as the call to a certain mystic "participation" in His sufferings, explaining clearly moreover not always, what could be this mystic participation today and why it is necessary for Him. Of course, the memory is important, and the sufferings are inevitable. But indeed, the Savior came into the world not to be remembered as we often remember famous, long ago dead people, and of course not for us to suffer for Him. He knew perfectly of course that His followers will be persecuted and that they are going to suffer, but as we see, He gave no mystic meanings to these sufferings, considering them just as an inevitable consequence of the opposition of the Christians to this evil, in which is the fallen world. Another thing is important: to remember that the earthly way of the Savior does not end accidentally with death on the cross and the resurrection.
Also that if in His resurrection there isn’t of course our merit, then in His death on the cross each of us is guilty to a certain extent. And not because we participated in a mystic way in the events of two thousand years ago, but because we were all born and live in the world, where the righteous must die automatically. And if we do nothing to change these automatisms, we can consider ourselves accomplices in the death of all the righteous of all times and all peoples, including also the Messiah, Who also died the death of a Righteous innocent. And any attempt to change this automatism somehow or other brings to two things.
In the first place, it brings us inevitably to confrontation with this evil, in which lies the fallen world. And, suffering in this confrontation, we participate not mystically, but completely real in the sufferings of the Savior, and in the sufferings of all the righteous persecuted or killed for their righteousness, which is not only identical in all the times, but also one for all.
And, secondly, the attempt to change the automatism, if only we are coherent, sooner or later will bring us inevitably to the beginning of the Kingdom, the same that the Savior brought to the world at the price of His death. It would be because any righteousness has its foundation in the Kingdom, which is also one for all, and ends in particular there. And any life, joined to the Kingdom, any way, ending inside, will be the life for the Dead man and the Resuscitated, and the way leading to Him. In order to share His life that turned out (unexpected even for His closest followers) more than His death.