NOTES for Co1 16:1-24

At the close of his letter to the Corinthian church, Paul, as always, mentions the people who shared his labors and ministry with him. About some we know a little from other New Testament books; about others we can only guess, because only their names are known to us. Some of these people were probably little known to the Corinthian church, or even not known at all. And still the apostle asks the Corinthian brothers to receive them as their own.

Meanwhile church guesthouses like those that exist today at some churches did not exist in those days, so one of the brothers would have had to receive the people Paul writes about into his own home. But the apostle, as one can see, is not embarrassed by this. He does not ask them to receive his companions if there is opportunity or desire; he is absolutely certain that the Corinthian Christians will have both the opportunity and the desire. If the matter concerned the laws and norms of our world, which has not yet been transformed, such an attitude could be regarded, at best, as tactlessness. But Paul in this case acts according to other laws, according to the laws of the Kingdom, where there are no strangers, and therefore it cannot happen that one of the brothers who has come from far away will have to spend the night on the street.

And this confidence of the apostle that such a thing is possible, that he can rely on the Corinthian Christians with regard to hospitality, testifies that both in the Church in general and in the Corinthian church in particular, the spiritual situation was normal despite everything Paul himself wrote to his Corinthian brothers about. After all, one can receive into one's home a person one sees for the first time only when relations with him are either established immediately, at first sight, or have existed for a long time already. Both are possible only by grace and only in the Kingdom; the nature of our world, which has not yet been transformed, acts destructively on any relationships, which under such influence either grow cold or become formal, unless people are bound by something natural. And the very fact that Paul does not doubt his Corinthian brothers for a minute is the best testimony to the reality of the Church as a community of people living in the Kingdom and according to the laws of the Kingdom: the Church as it should be, as it was conceived and created by its Founder.