NOTES for Act 3:11-16; Joh 3:22-33

John the Baptist, like Jesus, had his own community, his own circle of disciples and followers. Jesus washed those who came to Him; John did the same. In the eyes of those around them, and even, as it appears, in the eyes of some of John's disciples, their activity was if not identical, then very similar. Apparently some of John's disciples considered their teacher to be the Messiah, who, like Jesus, was hiding His messiahship for the time being.

And then John has to set the record straight. He reminds his followers that he himself never made any claim to messiahship. But the main thing, according to John, is something else: messiahship is not a human matter at all; it is God's matter, and if it "has not been given from above," then there can be no talk of messiahship. John, like Jesus Himself, is trying to make his listeners understand that one does not become the Messiah; one is born as the Messiah. And there can be no competition, rivalry, or choice here. He, John, was not born the Messiah, and therefore he will never become Him. He has another mission.

Indeed, if the messianic Kingdom really were what many wanted it to be then and at other times, if it were an earthly, religious-political phenomenon, everything would be different: the messianic calling would then be something resembling the prophetic calling, something that could be given to anyone whom God chooses. But the Kingdom to which Jesus bears witness is above all a spiritual reality, and it is inseparably bound to His own person: He carries it in Himself, carries it from the very beginning. He was born the Messiah, and there can be no alternative to Him. John understands and acknowledges this, and he tries to explain the same thing to his disciples and followers.

For the apostles, especially those among them who had been disciples of John the Baptist, John’s testimony about Jesus was of the utmost importance. It is also significant, of course, that John the Baptist was among the first — after the Most Holy Mother of God, Joseph the Betrothed, and the elder Simeon — to confess Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One. But today, having, in the words of the apostle Paul, such a cloud of witnesses, we can turn our attention to the striking example given to us by John the Baptist.

The fact is that we are all very concerned with our own importance and closeness to God. Even the apostles, who knew Jesus intimately, argued shortly before the Passion about which of them was the greatest. Against this background, the words of John the Baptist stand out: “He must increase, but I must decrease... He who is of the earth belongs to the earth... He who comes from heaven is above all.” This is not merely a manifestation of astonishing humility; it is an example for every person of the right way to stand before God.

John's testimony about Jesus is the chief meaning of his ministry. Including, and first of all, his ministry as a prophet. Indeed, a prophet is above all a witness. God's witness. A witness of the Kingdom. A person who in himself, however paradoxical this may seem at first glance, has less importance than anyone else, at least as far as his ministry is concerned. Indeed, how much is required of a witness?

In essence, only one thing: to distort nothing. To tell everything exactly as he saw it. So that the narrator himself is not in the story at all. Or is present so little that his presence has no effect on the story. If ordinary human testimony is in view, this means that the witness must be as dispassionate as human nature allows.

No emotions, no semantic accents arranged according to one's own view of the situation. Only facts, in as much detail as possible. Of course, such testimony is an unattainable ideal, but a conscientious witness always strives toward it. And if the testimony is prophetic? Here everything is more complicated, because one cannot communicate with God in a detached way, and one cannot speak of what God reveals as something extraneous. Here the personality of the witness is unquestionably important.

But along with personality comes the problem, well known to physicists, of the observer: observation is also a kind of interaction with the object, and it happens that this interaction in itself changes the state of the object observed. A pure experiment does not result. In a person's communication with God something similar sometimes happens, though in another sense. Touching human nature, the revelation given by God changes through that very contact. How, then, can one remain an unbiased witness? God finds a way: He takes a person's consciousness fully under His control.

Of course, for a time and with that person's consent. And He speaks in the language of the witness. Literally. The problem of human nature is solved. But what if the issue is the Messiah? The One for whom the very fact of His existence becomes testimony? Here only one thing is possible: to point to Him and disappear. To step aside. To become a completely ordinary person, unremarkable in terms of ministry. And John does exactly this. "He must increase, but I must decrease."

Peter does not doubt that the healing he and John performed was a witness to the reality of the Kingdom that entered the world through Christ and in Christ. From the very beginning he shifts the listeners' attention from himself to Him. This is not modesty and not an attempt at some kind of self-abasement, as readers of the Book of Acts sometimes think. Here there is a simple awareness of reality. The reality of how the Kingdom is arranged. And the Kingdom is, above all, relationships. Relationships with Christ first of all, since He is the King of His Kingdom. But also with His heavenly Father. And with other people. Here there is a whole system of relationships, forming that delicate fabric that can be called spiritual life.

This fabric forms the structure of the Kingdom and gives it shape. And a person has to be extremely careful about his intentions and purposes when the matter concerns spiritual life in general and life in the Kingdom in particular. Not in the sense of following some special etiquette. Etiquette is not needed in the Kingdom. But the ability to accept Christ's will as having priority over one's own is absolutely necessary. And not at the level of declaration, but in everyday life. Here it is precisely the experience of life in the Kingdom that helps one learn real humility.

For this is humility: to learn at every moment of one's life to put God's will, Christ's will, before one's own. And the experience of the Kingdom's life quickly makes one feel that the power of the Kingdom and its breath, without which there is no life, enter a person's heart only when one becomes completely transparent to every action of God. Transparent enough that He meets in your heart no resistance to any of His intentions, and in your life no contradiction to any of His plans.

It would seem that in such a case the person should disappear, dissolve, become an empty shell that God fills at His discretion. But in reality everything turns out differently: the more a person gives himself to Christ, the more he finds his true self. The apostles know this perfectly from their own experience. They know to whom they owe both their abilities and their life. And they bear witness to those around them about the One who, if they allow it, will enter their lives too. And having entered, He will open to them the doors of the Kingdom. And the path of salvation.

Explaining the healing that had taken place, Peter again returns to what he had already spoken about on the day of Pentecost. He again points to Jesus as the Messiah glorified by God. And he connects everything that is happening with this glorification. The matter is still the same: the spiritual process that we usually call salvation. Only for us, salvation often appears to be something deeply personal, touching, if not exclusively then first of all, ourselves. Of course, we understand that we are not the only ones being saved, but still we usually see salvation itself as an individual matter. Meanwhile Peter and the other apostles viewed it as a universal, cosmic process. First of all it includes the people of God, and then all humanity.

All the prophets point to the Messiah, and whoever listens to the prophets cannot fail to recognize the Messiah: such is the apostle's thought. But the prophets spoke about what God revealed to them, and if He revealed to them something that forms a whole picture with the Messiah at the center, then our relationship with the Messiah, with Christ, is not only our personal affair and touches not only us alone. It is part of God's plan and one of the elements in the realization of that plan.

We can, of course, ignore everything connected with Christ and with the Kingdom, but if we want to participate, we must be aware that we are participating not in some experiment whose result concerns us alone. The Kingdom is entering the world, and our salvation is connected with this movement. Whether we are saved or not will become known only when the Kingdom is revealed in fullness, at the end of time. Still, it is not peoples and not collectives who are saved, but concrete human beings.

The process of salvation itself is truly universal, but each person participates in it personally. That is why the apostle speaks of the killing of Christ, saying that the people listening to him did it "in ignorance." Of course, in any society there are always those who act fully consciously, and guilt is not removed from such people, at least until repentance. But in every society there are also those who do not understand what is happening and take part in events without realizing their meaning and significance, following the majority.

Of course, this too is a choice, but often without understanding exactly what is being chosen. In this case repentance is certainly also necessary, though not for conscious sin, as in the case of those who understand everything to the end. Still, without repentance for unconscious sin, or more precisely, for the sin of refusing awareness, it is impossible; for life in the Kingdom requires full awareness of all one's life and actions. And therefore the fullness of responsibility, without which one cannot enter the Kingdom.

Immediately after the healing, Peter begins preaching to the crowd that has gathered, drawn by reports of what happened; he strikes while the iron is hot. But Peter has no intention of attracting followers by flattering his audience: he is not afraid to confront his hearers with very serious accusations. Peter directly accuses those gathered of complicity in the killing of the Righteous One, the Son of God—something that should in itself have jolted them out of their familiar routine. But Peter goes on to reveal the monstrous meaning of rejecting Christ, reminding them how those gathered in Jerusalem for Passover demanded the release of a murderer, but killed the Author of life. Moses said to the people: ‘I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live’ (Deut. 30:19). Many centuries later, Moses' descendants chose the way of death instead of the way of life.

But the purpose of Peter's preaching is to save sinners, not to crush them morally. So Peter gives them hope of forgiveness; he is even willing to look for mitigating circumstances for those whom he rebukes (you acted in ignorance, as did your rulers).

Still greater hope comes from the words that it was first of all to those who rejected Christ that God sent Him after the Resurrection, to bless them by turning each one away from evil deeds.

Thus Peter and John performed a healing in the name of Jesus. The people’s reaction is understandable: delight, amazement... Peter immediately tries to put everything in its proper place. He says, “Why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk?” It is truly very important to Peter that people understand who performs the healing, that they know that he and John are only instruments in His hands. Glory and thanksgiving must be directed to the Lord alone.

At first glance, today's reading closely resembles the accounts of healings performed by Jesus that we find in the Gospels. Here too we have an account of a healing, now performed not by Jesus Himself but by the apostles (vv. 1–11). Of course, even earlier, during the Saviour's earthly ministry, the apostles had healed in their Teacher's name and by His authority. Yet those healings were somewhat different: then the apostles knew the Kingdom only from outside; Jesus stood before them, and for them the Kingdom was contained in Him. Peter still bears witness to Jesus, to the Messiah sent by God and rejected by people (vv. 12–26). But now, addressing the man he is healing, he speaks as one who already has the Kingdom, who dwells in it (v. 6). He no longer merely looks at the One who brought the Kingdom into the world: he himself dwells in it and brings it to people, without the slightest doubt about his mission. Of course, for him the Kingdom is still inseparable from the Risen One. But formerly he bore witness to what did not belong to him, although he was ready to give his life for the One who possessed what was not his. Now he manifests what belongs to him no less than to his Teacher. Human fullness, of course, cannot be compared with divine-human fullness; yet fullness, even relative fullness, remains fullness. Naturally, the apostle makes no claim to possess this fullness, so to speak, ‘by right’: he remembers perfectly well how and from Whom he received it. But now it has become not only Jesus' fullness but also his own, and he can give this fullness to another, to someone asking for alms while thirsting precisely for the Kingdom, perhaps without realising it himself. This bears particularly striking witness to the changes that took place in the world after Pentecost. Previously the Kingdom had been limited to the relatively small circle of people who could have direct contact with Jesus; now it was expanding to include everyone who could have fellowship with any of His disciples, whose number was continually growing. Thus the boundaries of the Kingdom brought by the Saviour expanded in the world.

These are very difficult times, aren't they? Perhaps, though, every age seems difficult to the people who live in it. We always want to hope for other times, times of refreshment. But where will they come from? From God, of course, or, as the apostle Peter says in his sermon, “from the presence of the Lord.” Yet two “small” details mentioned by Peter immediately arise.

First, while sins remain, there is no refreshment to expect; hence, “Repent and turn back.” A good life is not a life in which we can enjoy our sins, because sin is always a source of suffering for someone and of death for everyone. If we do not decide to part with the sins we cherish, they will not be “blotted out,” and pain and death will continue to burden our age.

Second, I fear that all we agree on is that our times are difficult; we each imagine times of refreshment differently. But if we expect change to come from God, we will have to agree to His understanding of a good life, which is the life of Jesus Christ. Life united with Christ's life is precisely what God intends for us as the only fully realized life.

Yes, come, Lord! Maranatha!

And here is a response from one of our visitors:

Repentance and turning to God open the human heart to the highest reality, the divine. This becomes a source of a special joy that a person begins to experience. In essence, God is the source of every joy. The beauty of nature, love, and friendship bring joy because God stands behind them all. How much greater, then, is the joy of meeting Him Himself in prayer, in reading the Bible, and in experiencing answers to prayer. Paul's words “Rejoice always” mean nothing other than: always remember God, the source of joy.

The apostle Peter's answer to the lame man sitting at the entrance to the Temple in Jerusalem makes us, too, consider what we can give to the world around us. That world most often does indeed thirst for “silver and gold,” which Christianity is unable to give it. But deep down it is not seeking only that: it awaits healing and wants to know the truth about itself and about God.

The Book of Acts contains remarkable examples of how the apostles bring people peace, healing, and meaning. Peter and John not only heal the lame man, emphasizing that this happened not by their power but by God's; in a few extraordinarily concise words they also reveal to the Israelites the meaning of their history and divine election, and point to the focus of their aspirations and hopes — Christ. In our own day, the Lord expects all this from Christianity, from the Church, and from each one of us.

These words of John the Baptist are perhaps the best description of the life of a person who has learned why he lives. For as long as the basis and meaning of human life remains the person himself - his life, his love, his faith, his ascetic labor - he will never be able to say: "I must decrease." On the contrary, he will say: "My goal is my growth; I want to know more, see more, experience more, do more..." The line separating such a life from the life of the prophets and apostles (where, in Paul's words, "it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me" - Gal. 2:20) is very thin. Yes, we really do need to learn, understand, experience, and do very much, but only on this path of our decrease does the highest calling in the world await us: to become the Friend of the Bridegroom, and not remain "earthly, speaking of earthly things."

Today's reading offers us John the Baptist's testimony about Jesus. The prophet had already recognized Him once and pointed to Him as the Messiah (John 1:29–34). Yet that testimony alone apparently proved insufficient. The reason was the jealousy of John's disciples (vv. 25–26). John himself, it would seem, had said quite unambiguously that he was not the Messiah (vv. 27–28). But his disciples' ambition probably played a part. Every outstanding person inevitably gathers a circle of disciples, and sometimes admirers, around them. Often, what keeps these people close to their teacher is not so much the desire to know the truth or learn to live righteously as a certain emotional comfort and sense of security. Perhaps this is why many disciples remained with John, although the prophet himself said that with Jesus' appearance his task was complete (vv. 29–30). But there may have been something else that kept John's disciples close to their teacher. It often happens that an event long and eagerly awaited comes as a surprise to those who prepared for it so carefully. This happens especially often when the event itself does not unfold quite as those waiting had imagined. John's disciples probably had their own ideas about the Messiah, more or less traditional for Gospel times, perhaps with an Essene coloring, since John himself was most likely connected with the Qumran community, which was Essene in character. Jesus turned out to be entirely unlike such a Messiah, which caused many to reject Him (vv. 31–32). John himself, however, apparently has no doubt about the truth of Jesus' words or His being the Messiah (vv. 33–36). Yet even the prophet's disciples, judging by their reaction to the success of Jesus' preaching, doubted Him. The last thing John wanted, of course, was to obscure Christ and the way into the Kingdom. But those frightened by the road or by the One calling them still managed to use him to hide from the Messiah who had come into the world and to remain as they were.

The account of certain people telling John that Jesus was baptizing and everyone was going to Him comes immediately after the mention of a dispute between John's disciples and the Jews. In this episode one can see an attempt by opponents, most likely from among the Pharisees, to drive a wedge between John and Jesus. But John is firm in his support of Jesus; moreover, he testifies that Jesus has been given authority from heaven to act.

Why, then, did John himself not become a direct follower and companion of Jesus? This is a difficult question. Presumably, however, John remembered Christ's words that 'it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness' (Matt. 3:15) and could have understood them in terms of a division of duties in serving God. We may also suppose that, although inspiration from above had made him aware of the importance of Christ's Person and mission, John did not immediately grasp intellectually the full significance of His coming into the world. And who, indeed, can comprehend all His fullness?

It is difficult to determine where one John's words end in this passage and the other's begin: they are inseparably interwoven and interconnected. It seems that John the Evangelist goes on to unfold and express in his own words the thoughts John the Baptist had stated briefly. Particularly important among what is said is the reminder that the words of the One who came from heaven are qualitatively higher than even the loftiest human wisdom. These words cannot be called fundamentally new or unexpected, but the reminder is important in connection with the testimony that Jesus is this One who has come. Unexpectedly, we hear that whoever accepts His testimony has set their seal to this: that God is true—in other words, has literally affixed a seal certifying God's truthfulness.

It is unfamiliar to think of ourselves as such a high authority, but the Lord places incomprehensible trust in our free choice. He wants to raise the human person high, far higher than we are capable of taking in.

How simply Jesus speaks about Himself. He calmly declares that He is the Son of God, that He has come from above and is therefore above all... And just as calmly He states that no one accepts His testimony. Then why bear witness at all? This is usually how we reason: no one will listen to us anyway, so why speak? We will sit in silence; after all, do we have a monopoly on truth? Is it somehow more our responsibility than anyone else's? Jesus looks at the situation differently. The Truth is He Himself. The Truth is what must be proclaimed. He speaks the words of God because these words are supremely important, not because a sufficient number of listeners have gathered. What matters to Him is bearing witness to what He has seen and heard; then people will appear who accept His testimony and thereby attest that God is true... And what comes first for us: bearing witness to God, or having suitable conditions in which to bear that witness?

Sometimes, after doing some good deed, one can feel a surge of strength. We are used to thinking that when we work, we give up strength and energy, and when we eat, we restore them. But this kind of logic is characteristic only of the fallen state of human nature, which we consider "natural." According to God's design, it is God who is the source of life and the giver of strength, and the human person is God's co-worker and a channel of His grace into the surrounding world. Thus a person's self-giving turns out to be participation in the source of life and the person's true nourishment, because the main thirst of the human being is the thirst for love. Jesus shows His disciples an example of such nourishment when He brings the Samaritan woman to a faith that changes her life and thereby fulfills the will of the Father who sent Him.