NOTES for Rom 8:11

Paul describes the perspective of Christian life as the complete overcoming of death. The logic is simple: we Christians are part of the same spiritual process into which Jesus Christ is included. The same breath of God acts in us, the fullness of which Jesus bears within Himself. And if in Him this fullness was ultimately manifested as the triumph of life and the complete defeat of death, then the same thing must happen with us. Indeed, speaking of Christianity, we are not speaking of a series of different events, even if they are connected with one another.

The matter is precisely one single spiritual process. The process of the Kingdom entering the world. And of the path of its King, who is inseparable from His Kingdom. Because He bears within Himself the fullness of this Kingdom. And it is precisely through Him that it enters the world. This is the process in which we Christians participate. Each according to the measure of his understanding and awareness of what is happening.

And at the foundation of this process is the breath of God. The Holy Spirit. For it is precisely God's breath, permeating the world from its very creation, that makes this world the Kingdom. Already on the first day of creation, when God separated light and darkness. And later, when evil entered the world, God's breath opposed this evil, and a person who felt it received a certain experience of the life of the Kingdom, still small and weak, but already genuine. And with Christ's coming into the world, when the Kingdom, according to His own words, "drew near," this breath was revealed as the foundation of the Kingdom, as that which binds all its inhabitants together.

It binds them both to one another and to its King. So that everyone who shares in the Kingdom now also shares the path of the King and the fullness of life that He bears. But, of course, on one condition: the breath of God with which the Kingdom is permeated must become an inseparable part of the Christian's life. It must enter his soul and heart. It must define his life. Not only from outside, but also from within. Otherwise nothing will come of it. Then the action of this breath in each of us Christians will become the same as it became in Christ. And His life will then become our life too. And death will retreat, for there is no place for it in the Kingdom.