NOTES for Co1 4:8-21

For Paul, Christianity is first and foremost life with Christ in His Kingdom, and witness to Him and to this life. This is why the apostle says below that the Kingdom is “not in word, but in power.” Judging by the apostle's words to the Christians in Corinth, for them it was different. It is no accident that Paul speaks of authentic Christian life as the life of people who are persecuted, poor, and unsuccessful. He seems to contrast such a life with the life led by many Christians in Corinth who had found their place in the world. It is possible, of course, that some of Corinth's church leaders had indeed built something resembling an ecclesiastical career—although at that time it was naturally quite unlike what it became later, when church institutions were not only legal but even official and highly influential.

Yet the problem was not one of scale but of the inner condition of those who pursued such a career. The problem was precisely that these people had found themselves in this world and had settled into it, perhaps not as luxuriously as ecclesiastical careerists in other ages, but quite comfortably. The trouble was not that they had become leaders of certain local church or church-adjacent groups and movements; it lay in their inner condition, which the apostle describes in a single word: you have become rich. They had lost the spiritual condition that Jesus—and Isaiah of Jerusalem centuries before Him—called poverty. What matters here is not what a person has or how much, but what they rely on, and whether they think they truly possess anything. God's poor person understands perfectly that they are empty and ready to receive into themselves, into their life, soul, and heart, whatever God may wish to fill them with. With their whole being they sense that they have nothing in this world on which they could rely, and indeed nothing valuable at all, nothing worth clinging to.

The rich person, on the other hand, is certain that they possess something of the sort—something that belongs to them by right, not because God gave it to them, but because they earned and deserved it. One can rely on what one has earned and deserved; it will not fail. It is yours. You are rich. Yet this wealth proves earthly, of this world, and unrelated to the Kingdom. The rich person may be rich in words about the Kingdom. But only the poor person attains its power, and the apostle knows this perfectly: he himself was richer than many, yet chose poverty for the sake of Christ and the Kingdom.

Paul speaks very often in his messages of what is the Tradition. And, probably, one of the best, of the widest and of the most exact of its definitions is his call "imitate me". It is interesting to mark that in certain translations in other languages, we meet the second part of this sentence (" I urge you to imitate me, as I imitate Christ"), being, as seen, a late insertion, such as we sometimes meet in the texts of the New Testament. And we can consider this insertion of completely convenient, considering the sense and the character of Paul's ministry, which really made of the imitation of Christ his basis.

In fact, without such an imitation, one can’t speak about any Tradition: because Christianity is not a religion, the prescriptions of which it is necessary to carry out, but a life in the Kingdom, and the first example of which was the life of the Savior Himself. And every Christian is called to live as Christ, a full life of the Kingdom. Of course, it is not at all about a certain external imitation: in life in general and in the spiritual life, especially, there is nothing worse and more horrible than imitation, the imitation of the life of others. And it is not only about the life of the Savior, but also about the life of any of the righteous Christians or about the fathers of the Church: because any life is unique, and the life path of each is exceptional. But the life in the Kingdom is impossible for anyone without living and also perfect unique relations in every case with Christ, who, in all its originality, they all have between themselves something common.

Here is this common in the relationships of each of the Christians with Christ forms the core of the Christian Tradition, as the experience of life in the Kingdom. But apart of the relationships with Christ, such life still supposes the relationships with the neighbor. And the relationships are even more diverse, than the relationships with Christ. Every Christian lives his life in the Kingdom and in the Church, quite as Paul lived himself. And, of course, when it comes to men, the reasons for copying, for imitating the life of others are even less, than in the case of the Savior. But here is, to make the center of life the testimony about Christ and the Kingdom was really the task of every Christian.

The concrete depends on circumstances, among which each has of course his in life, in something typical, in something unique. And one does not need here to imitate silly the life of others, but to understand it from the point of view of the laws of the Kingdom, according to which lives every Christian righteous. And having understood, use the experience of the predecessors in his personal life in order not to repeat the errors of others and not invent the bicycle. Then every Christian will become a real witness of the Kingdom, and the Church as a whole will be what it should be: the body of Christ.

What power, one wonders, does the apostle mean when he speaks of the power of the Kingdom? One might say that he means the power of God, and this answer would not be wrong. But what lies behind it? Indeed, much was said about God's power even before Christ came into the world, and it was understood in different ways. Of course, even then all believers realized that God's power and what the pagan world understood by power were different things. But this difference was not always clearly understood. Above all, it meant that God could intervene at any moment in any situation, changing it in a way completely unexpected by an outside observer, so that what seemed unshakable instantly collapsed while what had been entirely powerless and insignificant suddenly gained strength and became the decisive factor.

Yet this usually still concerned the laws of the untransformed world, which God uses to carry out His plans, often in spite of those who oppose Him and by turning events to His advantage in a wholly unpredictable way. Perhaps the most remarkable illustration of such a reversal is the story of Joseph. His brothers did everything to prevent God's plan, as they understood it, from coming to pass, but all their efforts, as later became clear, only brought that plan closer to fulfillment.

Paul is speaking about a different situation: one in which the Kingdom has already entered the world and is already borne witness to by people who have experienced life in it and communion with the One who brought it into the world. Here, of course, the subject is no longer external power. It should be noted that during the Second Temple period the proclamation of God became, in a certain sense, a proclamation of the word—both the Word of God in every sense of that expression and the human word without which people could not tell the world about their own experience of communion with God and hearing the Word.

Such was, in particular, the preaching of the Pharisaic mentors and teachers with whom the Savior so often disputed during His earthly ministry. This too was testimony, but testimony to their own, often subjective, experience of communion with God. Christian testimony, however, is always objective in the true sense of the word. It is testimony not about oneself before God, but about Christ and the Kingdom. Such testimony is possible only when the witness has already entered into the life of the Kingdom, lives by that life, and has its power at work within him. It is evidently this power to which the apostle bears witness, seeing in it the manifestation of the Kingdom.

How many words are said has about the Kingdom of God. Certainly, Jesus, when explaining what it is, naturally used the words; but the very best definition of the Kingdom than He gave is, probably, when He says that it { the kingdom} is " amongst you ", when He Himself stood in the midst of them. Since then - words, words, words...

Very nice words. But the Kingdom isn’t in words, neither in its teaching. The dominion of God is in the heart of man, it is a living, efficient power, transforming the inside, filling man with light, joy, righteousness, peace, - and effusing into the world around, transforming it also. Look which changes took place in the human relationships during the last 2000years, which attitudes began obviously to be considered of inadmissible (slavery, various kind of discrimination), - behind all this stands a spiritual principle: the Kingdom of God is in the heart of men. Certainly, all this is still only the beginning of the transformation, we are still "spiritual pithecanthropus", but let's wipe our eyes and we shall see the action of this bright Divine power and therefore shall praise the Lord.

What the apostle Paul speaks about is one of the most difficult and at the same time most necessary things in Christianity. From a worldly point of view, the path that the Lord Himself takes and to which He calls His disciples is the path of failure, the path of humiliation. “We have become a spectacle to the world”—the Greek text uses the word θέατρον, theater, spectacle: people who are watched with derision. Jesus, who was welcomed as the Messiah—scourged and crucified on a tree. Paul, the most learned of the Jews—weak and forever persecuted, constantly insulted by his own children. Peter, the head of the new religious community—crucified upside down... Is such a path not madness? The Christian’s place is in this company. This is difficult, because we so greatly desire honor, recognition of our merits, and, finally, well-being. Paul’s experience is important to us because, together with those to whom he writes, we can see the One for whose sake he endures all this. And then, in response to our consent to become refuse and a laughingstock to the world, we will hear the Creator’s words: “You are precious in My sight” (Isa 43:4).