NOTES for Rom 13:12-14:4

Paul always treated with respect people who observed the norms and rules of their religion. On the other hand, in the church communities of those days there were many who "did not distinguish days," Gentiles, and in practice simply, to use modern language, secular people, for whom no religion was interesting in itself. What was to be done in such a situation? For religious people, that attitude toward religion caused, at the very least, bewilderment.

But Paul, as we can see, is in no hurry to support them. That will hardly surprise us if we understand the motives that guided the apostle.

Paul himself was, of course, a religious man; he speaks of himself as "a Pharisee of Pharisees." But he by no means makes his own religiousness absolute. There are reasons for that. If religion could be salvation in itself, if it could open for its adherents the way into the Kingdom, the apostle would no doubt have treated it differently. But he understands perfectly well that, if that were so, Christ would not have needed to come to us in order to save us. And if religion does not save, if it is a human affair, then it must be treated accordingly, as a human affair. If there are people in the church for whom religion is important, that is a matter of their conscience, and of course the apostle was far from wanting to fight anyone's religious devotion. But he also understood very well all the dangers that religion carries for spiritual life.

One of the chief dangers was precisely that religious people could make their religiousness absolute, as the only possible and only acceptable form of Christian life. Such absolutizing not only repelled nonreligious people; it distorted the very essence of Christianity, which under this approach turned into a kind of new religion, thereby being emptied out and losing its spiritual essence. And Paul speaks sharply against this, not against religion as such, but against making any religiousness absolute, including the form of it that he himself bore. There was only one way to avoid such absolutizing: leave the choice of religion to the discretion of each member of the church. In that way, each person could choose for himself the form of life in the Church, and therefore in the Kingdom, that suited him best.

In the Roman church, Judeo-Christians who strictly observed all religious regulations and recent pagans lived side by side. For zealots of religious customs and traditions, observing them was inseparable from the very possibility of entering the Kingdom and remaining there. For some, the question of kosher food was a question of spiritual life and spiritual death; others treated it rather indifferently. Paul advises leaving aside the dispute over the finer points of religious regulations, which, as he believes, can quite well be left to each person's discretion.

And the point here is not only that each person who has obtained the Kingdom has his own relationship with the One who opened this Kingdom to him. The point is that religiosity as such has no direct relation to the Kingdom at all. For those who have already obtained the Kingdom, everything turns out to be equally effective on the spiritual path: religious feasts and their absence, food and abstaining from food, and even life itself or death, because in the Kingdom they too cease to be what they are in this world, so that death in the Kingdom turns out to be only the continuation of life in another form.

In that case, disputes about religious rites or, still more, condemnation of those who look at them differently from the way religious people are accustomed to look at them, become not only meaningless but directly harmful, since such disputes often lead to condemning those who deserve no condemnation at all. Everyone who seeks the Kingdom and has obtained it will stand before God's judgment and give Him an account of everything he has done. Earlier it was still partly possible to judge a person's spiritual life by outward religious signs, so that the failure to observe certain religious norms, primarily fundamental ones, could become a basis for judging a person's spiritual life and spiritual condition. Now, when the question is already about residents of the Kingdom, the religious criterion ceases to work at all. Only an open violation of the commandments, especially when the one violating them does not repent of anything, is truly incompatible with remaining in the Kingdom. Religiosity as such has no special significance for the Kingdom. The main thing is that it not interfere, that it not lead to condemning those who do not deserve it at all, and that disputes about religion not frighten away those who are looking in the Church not for a new religion, but for the Kingdom.

"For now salvation is nearer to us than when we first believed." From the moment of our conversion to Christ, we look at the world with different eyes. For each of us something changes in life. And, receiving Communion, we become closer to Christ: we receive Him and the path of salvation that He offers us. And each of us "will be upheld, for God is able to make him stand."

We fall and rise on our path after Christ. A fall in the eyes of this world is prepared for us as the path of salvation. We ourselves will see the depth of our fall in repentance - but He will raise us up by His mercy, raise us on the day of the resurrection of the dead into eternal life.

The apostle's words about the daylight, in which it is better not to behave disgracefully, sometimes make people smile: reading them, one might think that under cover of night one may do what one would not do in the light of day. Meanwhile, Paul speaks of the day in a special, specifically Yahwistic sense. The Day of Yahweh, or, as it is usually called in Russian translations, the Day of the Lord, is a special time in the life of the people of God. It is a time when God directly and immediately intervenes in the people's life.

Times of natural disaster or war, for example, were called the Day of Yahweh. But such intervention was also connected with the idea of God's judgment. Judgment, however, was understood differently at different times. The earliest and simplest idea of it viewed war or natural disaster as punishment for a sin committed by the people.

But even before the Babylonian exile this idea gave way to another: judgment came to be seen as a kind of weighing of a person and his deeds on certain spiritual scales, much as neighboring peoples imagined divine judgment. Among those peoples, however, this judgment was usually postmortem, and the soul of a person appearing for judgment was weighed on the scales. Among the Jews, God weighed human deeds while the person was still alive, determining whether the person was worthy to be left alive or by his deeds had already deserved death.

The Savior speaks of judgment in a completely different way: according to Him, judgment consists in this, that light has come into the world. He clearly means the light of the Kingdom He brought into the world, and now it depends on the person himself whether he accepts this light or runs away because he understands that his life is incompatible with it.

Paul understands the Day of Yahweh in the same way: it is the day when light enters the world. And if before one could still delay making a choice, postpone repentance and conversion, now there is no time left: the decision must be made immediately, and once made, it must be carried out resolutely and unswervingly. Indeed, the issue is salvation, the Kingdom, what determines a person's fate in eternity. Hesitation is out of place here.

These words of Apostle Paul are the base of Christians’ conceptions about which means of the spiritual life need to be applied and how to behave towards it. The revealed religion distinguishes itself in practice from idolization first of all by the fact that its means do not become the purpose. In answer to the question to know what is necessary to do to inherit eternal life, the apostle says twice "put on " (endyo means to wear something on oneself or to be completely indulge in something): let us put on the armour of light and Lord Jesus-Christ.

Don’t "bring the flesh to the necessary aspect" (by vegetarian diet or by other means), but put on the amour of light. The material nature of man requires a known care, it is necessary to support its strengths and it is also necessary to tame it, so that it does not become the main, but: do not transform the care of the flesh into lusts.

Unlike the Stoics and the Epicureans, the apostle asserts that a good life and a wise care (pronoia, wisdom, caution, concern) of the flesh do not bring us automatically to the goal. Strictly speaking, this text does not welcome neither uncontrol of the carnal part of man, nor the mortification of the flesh as the main sense of life.

However, nowadays, as in the time of the apostle, the first danger is considerably more current, that the second. What does the call of the apostle really signifies in practice "put on the Lord Jesus-Christ"? Paul speaks about it in a context of talking of law, rules and Christians’ character. Its principal conclusion consists of the fact that "Love is the fulfilling of the Law ".

That’s exactly what the apostle implies, when talking about the necessity to put on the Christ. God commanded His followers to love one another, as He loved us. The fulfillment of this command will be the fulfillment of law; and we can also call it "put on" the Lord Jesus Christ.

“Blessed is the one who does not condemn himself for what he approves.” To condemn oneself is to fail to carry out what we undertake before God. Not to condemn ourselves in our choice means not looking back or indulging in fantasies, not wondering, “What would have happened if...?” It is the habit of walking directly before God in the secret of the heart. It is the ability to live patiently and not envy those who live differently. Sometimes we look at people who do not keep the fast and think that their lives are easier, more cheerful, and simpler. We retreat from our choice of Christ. Through doubt and fantasy, we let deceit and distrust of God into our lives.

The texts for the first Sunday of Advent call us first of all to watchfulness. Not only because we cannot determine the moment when a child will be born. But also because our expectation of seeing Jesus now must be like what parents feel when they have already been waiting eight months for the birth of a child. There is no patience left at all: when at last will we be able to see, to know who this is, what He is like? Life is about to change at any minute, and there are too many of those minutes.

The changes in our life that Jesus gives us are immeasurably greater. He will come to us as a newborn infant, who cannot speak and who will not get anywhere unless we carry Him. In the time left to us before His birth, we must accustom ourselves to the thought that, like any little child, Jesus means cares, constant anxieties, and watchfulness at any time of day or night.

Is He well with us? Is He warm? Will we teach Him to smile? And will we unlearn how to wage war when He appears in our life?

One of the chief shortcomings of the law, and not only in the religious sphere, is that it is very extensive. In order not to break it, let alone fulfill it, one must know it well and constantly remember to observe it. And since the law contains God’s will for how we should live in this vast world, its scope is too great for weak human beings. Judging by the apostle Paul’s words, there is nothing surprising in this, because in the Creator’s design it was not the law that was meant to govern our life. Not the law, but the Lawgiver. It turns out that there is a perfectly understandable and reliable, though by no means simple, way to fulfill the law: to love one’s neighbor. This is precisely what the apostle Paul means when he writes to Christians that we live not under law but under grace, for love is a gift that God gives us freely and undeservedly.

And since love is the fulfillment of the law, its absence is a violation of the law, that is, sin. By its nature, sin is nothing other than a lack of love. This is important because it gives us a practical way to determine whether our actions are sinful or not.

We are used to taking disorders in human relationships as a given, and if we are upset by them, it is often simply because they throw us off balance. But for the apostle, our quarreling and dark feelings toward a neighbor who has done something a little better than we have are things of the same order as feasting, drunkenness, and sensuality. This is exactly because both drunkenness and quarrels are the result of self-will, the result of our concerns for ourselves, both bodily and emotional, subordinating our striving for the good.

It is not for nothing that Paul, a little earlier, repeats Christ's words about the greatest commandment, which embraces all the others: to love your neighbor as yourself. After all, quarrels and envy, that is, sins against our neighbor, have their source in our lack of love both for our neighbor (and this is more or less obvious) and for ourselves (and this is no less important). This second part of the commandment is often not fully understood by us. Love is acceptance, and its foundation is self-acceptance, an adequate understanding of our abilities and their limits. To accept ourselves, it is very important to understand that we are not superhumans and never will be, that our abilities are not unlimited, and that we often take on too much and from exhaustion begin hurting our neighbors. Many quarrels can be avoided simply by acknowledging our tiredness and realizing that a constructive conversation should be put off until later. And our flesh often experiences many needs that require satisfaction. But for food not to turn into gluttony, it is important to understand ourselves and our needs well; it is important to understand that simple food is in fact enough for us. This is what Paul is talking about: "make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires."

And if we love ourselves as we are, accepting and recognizing our sins without turning repentance into self-torment, it will become much easier to love our neighbor. Because others are exactly the same as we are, just as imperfect. And God gives us only one means to cope with our human limitation: love.