NOTES for Co2 6:1-10

Describing the ministry, his own and that of his co-workers, Paul describes it as the ministry of a true poor person. Poor in the sense in which poverty was understood as early as the time of the prophet Isaiah of Jerusalem: not as a material condition, but as a spiritual state. And above all, such ministry is marked by the complete absence of any self-assertion.

Indeed, what was poverty for the first Christians, and even earlier for those righteous people for whom it, as for Isaiah's disciples, became a synonym for righteousness? First of all it was the awareness of a simple fact, obvious to them: neither they themselves nor anyone else had anything to bring to God. Of course, a person may think that he is doing something for God, but only until he truly understands what righteousness is.

And when a person understands that righteousness is not a human matter, that only God can make a person righteous, and only by being directly present in that person's life, that only this presence makes a righteous person righteous; when a person understands all this, he also understands that he can do nothing for God. He can only receive what God chooses to give him. And this means that a person can earn nothing from God or before God. Therefore there can be no question of a person's self-assertion through service to God.

In no sense: neither good nor bad. Even if someone decided to establish himself through ministry in the best sense of the word, to stand on his own feet, as we usually say, such a person would not succeed: a true servant of God has no "feet of his own." He can have only God's feet: those that God gives him, which always remain God's and are only made available for a person's use, never being transferred into his ownership.

Then there is truly no need to judge another person's ministries or, even more, to hinder them, just as there is no need to seek recognition or, even more, position in this world. For all such things require that one have something of one's own, something that belongs to you by nature or by right of acquisition, and not something borrowed for a time.

Righteousness cannot belong to a person. It is not his property or a quality acquired by his own efforts, but a state into which God brings a person and which can be taken from him as easily as it was given. The Savior Himself spoke in this very sense when He said that His followers, where their ministry is concerned, should consider themselves slaves who deserve nothing special: they have done what they were supposed to do, but they have still acquired no rights that become inalienable.

A slave may remain in the house and use everything in it, but he has no rights of his own to the house. The point is not to keep God's servants in check, but that by relating in this way to one's life and one's ministry, a person can receive infinitely more than by insisting on his rights. By living and serving God in this way, one can gain the life of the Kingdom in all its fullness. Otherwise one remains with one's own. With all the consequences that follow.