NOTES for Jam 1:7
There are many Christians in the world who are more or less sincerely convinced that God acts only in the Church and addresses only them, Christians. It is hard to say when such a conviction appeared in the church environment. It has existed as long as Christianity itself.
The source of this confidence is connected with the perception of Christianity as a new religion given by God in order to renew the world through those who become its adherents. Then everything is logical: if God created a new, uniquely true religion, then all other religions are by definition untrue. God is not there and cannot be there. He is only in Christianity, though at this stage in our time people usually point not to Christianity but to some concrete Christian denomination to which the speaker belongs. All the rest are outside God, outside the Kingdom, and outside salvation.
Meanwhile Christianity was neither conceived nor created by its Founder as a new religion. It was founded as a new life, life in that Kingdom which the Savior brought into the world. And He Himself never said that His activity and the circle of His communion would be limited only to His followers, that He would never go beyond the boundaries of His Church.
Of course, those who have already entered the Church do not need to seek a meeting with Him by some other means. In His Church there is everything necessary and sufficient for full communion with Him. But there are other people in the world who have not yet entered the Church, and may never enter it, at least during their earthly life. There can be many reasons for this, and it is not for us to judge them. It is important for us only to remember that Christianity is precisely a new life. The life of the Kingdom. Life in fullness and without boundaries.
A life that objectively cannot be limited by any earthly framework. Nor by any heavenly framework either: from the beginning God wants no one to perish and wants every sinner to turn and be saved. The coming of Christ is not a religious event, and not even only a spiritual event in the human sense. It is an event of universal, cosmic scale. His coming, like the appearance of the Kingdom in the world, objectively and quite really changed everything and touched all and each.
The breath of the Kingdom blows in the world, touching everyone who sincerely seeks the truth. This means that God's hand can now reach absolutely everyone. Of course, this was possible for God before as well, in pre-Christian times. But now He has the opportunity to work with each person in an environment that spiritually corresponds completely to the character of His work. And everything good that a person has in his life comes from one source. There is no other: God is one, the Messiah is one, and the Kingdom also is one.