Notes for  6 September 2026

What do the words of Job mean? The Omnipotence of God? The impossibility for man to resist God? Probably, and that also. But in the context of the entire book, they probably all the same acquire another sense, not so obvious. What is the main problem of Job? What worries him most? The misfortunes that struck him? Probably, no. However, of course the starting point was exactly the misfortunes. But oppressed Job mostly makes the fact that he perceived these misfortunes as an injustice, and moreover as an injustice from God. He is troubled, he cannot understand: is God unjust? Or He simply doesn’t care about people? Both were for Job equally a spiritual disaster, quite as, certainly for any sincere religious person. And Job, naturally as a sincere person, began to ask very "uncomfortable" questions to God, and moreover in a very rude form (to the great displeasure of his friends, who used all the theological arguments available to them to reason with Job). And then, Job finally heard God.

The God, Who paradoxically had promised nothing to him and had answered him to none of the questions and nor any of the charges pronounced by Job to His face. What thus urged Job to reconsider his previous opinions? Is it only the overwhelming greatness of God, in front of which man cannot resist? Probably, not only it. If everything was so easy, God would not have needed to intervene, the arguments moved forward by the friends of Job would have been enough. Apparently, Job understood something else: he was persuaded that God has answers to his given questions, including the question about the sufferings of an innocent righteous. Besides, God is far from wanting to justify evil and suffering: they, it seems, are generally deprived of any sense and have no justification.

He, probably, simply let Job know that He has means to make these sufferings as former, and will come in the day, when He will do it. Such an answer would really mean that God can do anything, even what turns out, according to the laws of our non-transformed world, in principle impossible. He can do anything, not because He has the power to destroy the world and create it again, but because for Him there are no hopeless situations and irretrievable losses, for His righteous man He will find a way out of any impasse. Although, of course this way out can turn out not totally such or even totally not such as the person who shouts out to God for help and injustice imagines himself.

Before us are two possible ways in which the invited guests may respond. The case of those who assaulted the servants carrying the invitations seems clear: they themselves, and in a disgraceful manner, rejected the opportunity to attend the feast. But if we think about it, the peaceful people who put their latest affairs, so important and urgent, first also insulted the one who invited them. They did not beat those sent to them and therefore were not subjected to the same harsh punishment as the murderers, but neither can they now be admitted to the place they failed to enter in time. By choosing their own affairs, they effectively put themselves on the same footing as the enemies of the feast's host.

Quite different guests are invited in their place, people who by every indication appear completely random. From the standpoint of ordinary logic, it is entirely unclear why the host needed to invite these particular people. But let us consider: was their appearance at the feast really so accidental?

Those who came to the feast are all very different. Yet even against their motley background, the host immediately noticed a man dressed inappropriately. If so, that means the other guests, though seemingly gathered at random, had managed to put on festive garments in time. It means they proved ready to respond to the master's call.

No one compels us to abandon our ordinary occupations without fail. But if they become more important to us than what the Lord offers, we risk losing this treasure. Nor will we help our own affairs.

Speaking of the relationships that bind those who live in the Kingdom, Paul returns to the Savior's words at the Last Supper and recalls love. The apostle is convinced that fullness lies precisely in it. Indeed, all the commandments were ultimately given so that those who follow them could make the right choice between good and evil; love presupposes that this choice has already been made. Therefore it is the one who loves his neighbor who reveals the fullness of the Law's fulfillment. Here the apostle evidently returns once more to the theme of the “living Torah” that a person seeking the Kingdom must become. For Paul, a “living Torah” is actually possible only there, for the Torah is to him an entirely objective reality. In Paul's time, it was generally accepted that the Torah had existed in God's design even before the creation of the world, and that in history it was merely revealed to God's people, who had likewise been conceived from the beginning.

This view is not far from the truth if we accept—and the Bible proceeds precisely from this premise—that the Torah describes the objectively existing dynamics and laws of the relationship between God and humanity. In that case it must have existed at least as long as humanity itself, and perhaps even longer, if we accept that God knew this dynamic in every detail even before He created humanity, a well-founded assumption. In that case the Torah cannot be reduced to commandments or laws alone. It is, above all, relationship: whether a person's relationship with God or his relationship with his neighbor.

Yet the fullness of relationship with both God and neighbor is necessary and possible precisely in the Kingdom. The love of which Jesus speaks, the love unknown to the world but permeating the Kingdom, constitutes the flesh, the spiritual substance, of such relationships; while the Torah, the inner Torah so widely debated in Paul's time, forms their structure. Only in the Torah does the spiritual substance of which the Kingdom consists find its form, while the Torah, in turn, finds only in the Kingdom the spiritual substance that allows it to become embodied. This takes place in and through the human person, for in the Kingdom everyone becomes a “living Torah,” just as the Savior Himself became one for those seeking the Kingdom. It is apparently this experience of life in the Kingdom that Paul has in mind when he says that the day is already dawning and salvation is near. Abstaining from excess here no longer looks even like an ascetic effort, but simply like a natural state—as natural as life in the Kingdom can be.