About choosing your path to salvation
Let's think about our choice. Let's think and look into our souls: aren't we creating an impassable gap between us and God?
Perhaps, through our negligence, our inattention to salvation, we atrophy our sense of spiritual perception and become incapable of perceiving the action of Divine grace? If this is really so, then what bitter tears we deserve!
While we are still living here on earth, while God’s long-suffering extends over us, before it is too late, let us understand the state of our spirit.
And if our heart reaches out to God, to holiness and purity, then let us strengthen this saving choice within ourselves!
If we notice that lack of faith, doubt and other vices are creeping into our spiritual state, then we will be afraid of this! Let us fear the disastrous abyss in which the rich sinful man found himself, and, calling upon ourselves Divine help, let us eliminate, as long as possible, the disastrous abyss between us and the Lord! Let's make a saving choice not only with our minds, but also with our hearts!
How to achieve salvation
Salvation is achieved by constantly fulfilling the commandments of God. So we will set ourselves up to fulfill God’s commandments, overcoming all difficulties on the path of salvation. And then the path of our salvation will be prosperous. Then the mercy of God will descend upon us, strengthen us and save us from all evil. Then we will achieve eternal blessed life in Christ Jesus.
How to learn to love God
Why did the Apostle Peter not resist in his love for Christ?
This happened because the Apostle Peter’s love for God at that time was still carnal. She has not yet been sanctified by Divine grace and has not received strength from Divine love.
And if so, then there was no firmness in his determination, in his intention to follow Christ to Calvary to the end.
Yes, it is not easy to love God, we must love Him as the Lord the Savior of the world Himself commanded us.
Love for God is only real when it is based on humility, when a person eliminates carnal imaginary love from his heart. How is carnal love expressed? It expresses itself in an extraordinary self-produced delight. A person strains all his strength to delight, excites his nervous system, and at the same time the blood boils, an extraordinary imagination and ardor arise. The ardor and fervor of blood and nerves is carnal love. Such love is not pleasing to God, for it is sacrificed on the altar of pride. Such love is short-lived, it quickly disappears. Therefore, in order to have constant spiritual love, it is necessary to love God humbly, meekly and strive to achieve spiritual love, which calms the nervous system, cools the impulses of our blood and gives inner peace in a humble and meek spirit.
This is what Divine, or spiritual, love should be. How can we learn such love? We can learn to love God provided that we, to the best of our strength and ability, fulfill everything that the Savior of the world commanded us.
And not only to fulfill, but also to arouse hostility within our hearts towards every sin that removes us from the love of God. This will be the beginning of love for God.
But just the beginning. In order for this love to be established and strengthened, you must constantly monitor yourself. And if ever, due to our weakness, we fall into one sin or another, we must quickly get up and bring sincere, tearful repentance.
In order for our heart to constantly remain in love, it is necessary to study in the Gospel the will of God that the Savior of the world reveals to us, to know what the Lord wants from us, to know His good and perfect will and to fulfill it until the end of our lives.
Only with constant fidelity to God is true Divine love preserved in us. And if at some point in our lives we violate this fidelity, then we will thereby violate our love for God. This internal relationship between God’s love and our love will be interrupted.
Our love for God must improve day by day. She receives a direct connection with God, enters into unity with Him and through this unity receives consolation, enlightenment, and exaltation.
But we must understand well that in achieving or strengthening this love for God it is necessary to go through a certain path of testing, a path of struggle, and, above all, with ourselves. Why? Because within us is the old man, decaying in his lusts. Because it is necessary to kill this old man within yourself - to kill everything sinful. And when we begin to do this, then, naturally, the devil, the father of sin, will rise up against us to protect his property, and then a struggle will arise. Not an easy fight!
For example, in order to curb our tongue, how much strength, attention, energy is needed! Is it really easy to overcome pride, self-love, vanity, love of praise or any other sin? Of course, all this requires considerable effort on our part and constant warfare.
But our path passes not only through internal temptations. Remember what trials the Apostle Peter underwent from people! Don’t we experience a similar fear when some people approach us with questions: “Do you believe in Christ? Are you Christian? Do you go to church?" And what do we answer? Don't we sometimes become cowardly? Are we not sometimes afraid to confess Christ? We are pitiful at this time, not having the courage to declare that we are truly Christians who honor the commandments of God.
So, let us test ourselves whether we truly love God. Does it happen that we try to love God out of our carnal wisdom? Do we excite our nerves, get excited even in prayer and fasting? Yes, this happens in our lives, especially at the beginning of our turn to God, when we, excited by this or that beauty of the Divine, admire, are excited, are ready for any feat: fasting excessively, and praying a lot, and doing alms, and for our neighbors care. Everything seems easy for us! But then this impulse passes, and a period comes when we are left alone with our natural capabilities. And here we no longer have enough strength for any feats, because we still do not have Divine love, which is achieved through constancy and humility. Remember that love for God is necessarily combined with love for your neighbor. How do we know that we love our neighbors and the Lord? If we feel that the memory of malice has faded away in us, then we are already on the path of love for our neighbor. If we have developed in our hearts a peaceful, compassionate attitude towards our neighbor under any circumstances, then know that we are already at the very door of love for our neighbor and for God.
This is how we need to improve in spiritual love.
How to come into fellowship with Jesus Christ
“Without Me,” says the Lord, “you cannot create anything.”
Indeed, it is so: in order to achieve eternal salvation, it is necessary to be closely with Christ. And if a person fulfills this condition, then he will undoubtedly gain spiritual success. He will improve, he will not only blossom spiritually, but also bear the fruits of the spirit.
How does a person enter into closest communion with Christ the Savior? Let's clarify this issue.
Christ came to earth to redeem humanity from the curse of sin and death. And in order for man to again come into unity with his Lord, Christ creates the Church with His Precious Blood. This is His Body, the head of which is Himself.
And through the Holy Spirit, through the third hypostasis of the Holy Trinity, Christ revives His church organism.
It is through this Church, through the Body of Christ, that a person enters into the closest communion with Christ the Savior. How is this done?
It happens like this. The man believed that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, is the true Lord and true man. Having believed, he accepts the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, and through this Sacrament he enters the church body, is cleansed of all sin and receives life from the Holy Spirit.
But in order to constantly remain in this organism and become animated, external presence alone is not enough. No, you need to dissolve, merge with the church organism, organically unite. To be united as a branch is united to a vine, and to be constantly revived by the grace of the Holy Spirit.
And having entered into unity with the church body, strengthen this unity through love.
This love is manifested in prayer, and in repentance, and in abstinence, and in compassion for one’s neighbor.
But this is not enough. Love must also be manifested in constantly crucifying one’s flesh with passions and lusts. And not only to crucify, but through deep humility and meekness, through constant communication with the Lord, to achieve the fruits of the Holy Spirit - honor and truth.
And the fruits of the Holy Spirit, as the Apostle Paul testifies, are meekness, self-control, faith, and love.
These are the fruits that we, who are in the church body, need to achieve in order to constantly be with the Lord.
If we do not strive for this, if we reassure ourselves that we have, they say, received Baptism and Confirmation, and then let the Lord Himself guide us, then by such negligence we will break the mysterious thread connecting us with the Lord. And once a rupture occurs, then, naturally, our heart will dry up, just as a branch sometimes dries up, which, although it is on the vine, is infected with something. And as our spiritual body dries up more and more, removing itself from the action of God’s grace, we will subject ourselves to excommunication from the church body. And then we will become like those dry branches that are separated and thrown into the fire.
St. John Chrysostom
St. Kirill of Alexandria
Jesus said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”
Creations. Book two.
St. Justin (Popovich)
Jesus said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”
Why did the Lord set this love as the first and greatest commandment, covering all the commandments and all the laws of heaven and earth? Because He answered the question: what is God? No one could answer the question of what God is. And the Savior Christ, through His entire life, through each of His deeds, through each of His words, answered this question: God is love. This is what the gospel is all about. - What is a person? The Savior answered this question: man too is love. - Really? - someone will say, - what are you saying? - Yes, and man is love, for he was created in the image of God. Man is a reflection, a reflection of the love of God. God is love. And man is love. This means that only two exist in this world: God and man - both for me and for you. There is nothing more important in this world except God and me, except God and you.
From sermons.
Blzh. Hieronymus of Stridonsky
Jesus said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”
Blzh. Theophylact of Bulgaria
Jesus said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”
Origen
Jesus said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”
And now, when the Lord, answering, says: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind- this is the first and greatest commandment; we learn the necessary understanding of the commandments, what is the greatest commandment and what are the lesser ones down to the smallest.
God, a soul completely enlightened by the light of knowledge and reason, [entirely enlightened] by the word of God. And he who has been honored with such gifts from God, of course, understands that all the law and the prophets(Matthew 22:40) are some part of all the wisdom and knowledge of God, and understands that all the law and the prophets initially depend on and are connected with love for the Lord God and neighbor, and that the perfection of piety lies in love.
Many times the scribes and Pharisees tried to tempt Christ by asking Him various questions. Others asked Him, sincerely wanting to find answers. One question was asked twice by two different people, one of whom wanted to know the truth, and the other wanted to tempt. This was a question about the greatest commandment in the law. Let's read the relevant passages of Scripture.
Matthew 22:35-38
“And one of them, a lawyer, tempting Him, asked, saying: Teacher! What is the greatest commandment in the law? Jesus said to him: " love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind“This is the first and greatest commandment.”
Mark 12:28-30
“One of the scribes, hearing their debate and seeing that Jesus answered them well, came up and asked Him: What is the first of all the commandments? Jesus answered him: The first of all commandments is: “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; And love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength“- this is the first commandment!”
1. Loving God: what does it mean?
From what we have read, it is clear that loving God with all your heart is the most important commandment. However, what does it mean? We, unfortunately, live in a time when the meaning of the word “love” is reduced only to a feeling. Loving someone is perceived as “feeling good with someone.” However, this “feeling” does not necessarily characterize love in its biblical meaning. Scripture talks about love, which is closely related to action. Therefore, to love God means to fulfill His commandments, His will, that is, to do what God wants. Jesus said this clearly:
John 14:15
« If you love Me, keep My commandments».
John 14:21-24
« He who has My commandments and keeps them, he loves Me; and whoever loves Me will be loved by My Father; and I will love him and appear to him Myself. Judas (not Iscariot) says to Him: Lord! What is it that You want to reveal Yourself to us and not to the world? Jesus answered him: whoever loves Me will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make our abode with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words».
Also in Deuteronomy 5:8-10 (see Exodus 20:5-6) we read:
“You shall not make for yourself any graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth below, or that is in the waters under the earth; you shall not worship them or serve them; For I am the Lord your God, a jealous God, punishing the children for the iniquity of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me, and showing mercy to a thousand generations. those who love Me and keep My commandments».
It is impossible to separate love for God and keeping His commandments, the Word of God. Jesus Christ spoke clearly about this. He who loves Him keeps the Word of God; and he who does not keep the Word of God does not love Him! Therefore, loving God does not mean just feeling great while sitting in a church pew during Sunday worship. It rather means that I strive to do what pleases God, what pleases Him. And we must do this every day.
There are passages in the first letter of the Apostle John that reveal the meaning of love for God.
1 John 4:19-21:
“Let us love Him because He first loved us. He who says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, is a liar.: For he who does not love his brother whom he sees, how can he love God whom he does not see? And we have this commandment from Him, that he who loves God should also love his brother.”
1 John 5:2-3:
“We learn that we love the children of God from when we we love God and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not grievous.”
1 John 3:22-23:
“And whatever we ask, we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do what is pleasing in His sight. And His commandment is that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another, as He commanded us.”
There are many misconceptions in modern Christianity. One of them, a very serious one, is the false idea that God is not interested in whether we fulfill His commandments and will or not. The misconception is that the only moment in time that matters to God is when we started out in our “faith.” “Faith” and “love of God” were separated from their practical meaning, and were perceived as theoretical ideas and concepts that could exist on their own, without interfering with a person’s way of life. However, faith implies being faithful. If you have faith, then you must BE true to what you believe! A faithful person should try to please the One to whom he is faithful. He must do His will, His commandments.
From the above it follows that God's favor and His love are not entirely unconditional, as some of us believe. This idea can also be seen in the previous passages. John 14:23 says:
“Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make our abode with him.”
1 John 3:22:
“And whatever we ask, we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do what is pleasing in His sight.”
And in Deuteronomy 5:9-10 it is written:
“Do not worship them or serve them; For I am the Lord your God, a jealous God, for the iniquity of the fathers, punishing the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me, and showing mercy to a thousand generations of those who love Me and keep My commandments».
John 14:23 has an “if” condition followed by an “and.” If the one who loves Jesus keeps His Word, And as a result, the Heavenly Father will love him, and will come with His Son, and make his abode with him. The first letter of the Apostle John says that we will receive whatever we ask of Him, because we keep His commandments and do what is pleasing in His sight. The passage in Deuteronomy says that God's unfailing love will be shown to those who love Him and keep His commandments. There is a definite connection between God's love (as well as His favor) and doing God's will. In other words, let us not think that disobeying God, disregarding His Word and His commandments does not matter, because God still loves us. Nor do you think that simply by saying, “I love God,” you really love Him. I think that we can understand whether we love God or not by answering the following simple question: “Are we doing what pleases God: keeping His Word, His commandments?” If we answered “Yes,” then we truly love God. If our answer is “No,” then we do not love Him. Everything is very simple.
John 14:23-24:
« He who loves Me will keep My word;... He who does not love Me does not keep My words».
2. “But I don’t feel the will of God”: an example of two brothers
When talking about doing God's will, people can also be mistaken. Some Christians believe that we can only do God's will if we perceive it. If we don't feel it, then we are free, because God doesn't want people to do anything if they don't feel it. But tell me, do you always go to work, guided only by your sensations and feelings? Do you try to understand how you feel about your work when you wake up in the morning, and then, based on your feelings, do you make a decision: finally get out of bed or bury yourself even more under warm blankets? Are you doing this? Don't think. You DO your job no matter how you feel! But whenever it comes to doing the will of God, we give too much space to our feelings. God, of course, wants us to do His will AND feel it. However, even if we do not feel this, it is still better to do His will than not to obey it at all! Let's look at the example given by the Lord, where He said: “And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away from you...” (Matthew 18:9). He did not say: “If your eye offends you, and you somehow feel in a special way that it is necessary to pluck it out, then do it. But if you don’t have such a feeling, then you are free from it. You can leave it untouched so that it can continue to seduce you.” The damaged eye must be removed whether we feel the need or not! The same thing happens with the will of God. The best option is to perform and feel it. If you don’t feel it, do it anyway, instead of showing your disobedience to God!
Let's look at another example from the Gospel of Matthew. Chapter 21 tells how the high priests and elders of the people again tried to catch Christ with their questions. The following parable was an answer to one of their questions.
Matthew 21:28-31:
“What do you think? One man had two sons; and he, approaching the first one, said: “Son! Go and work in my vineyard today.” But he answered: “I don’t want to”; and then, repenting, he left. And going up to the other, he said the same thing. This one said in response: “I’m going, sir,” and did not go. Which of the two fulfilled the will of the father? They say to Him: “First.”
Their answer was correct. The first son did not want to fulfill the will of his father. Therefore, he simply told him: “I will not go to work in the vineyard today.” But then, after thinking about it, he changed his mind. Who knows what influenced his decision. Perhaps it was concern for his father. He heard his father's call to work in the vineyard, but he did not have much emotional uplift for this work. He might have wanted to sleep longer, or to slowly drink his coffee, or to go for a walk with his friends. Therefore, he, perhaps still lying in bed, responded to his father’s request with his protest: “I won’t go.” But, finally waking up from sleep, the son thought about his father, about how he loved him, and, changing his mind, forced himself to get out of bed and go and do what his father asked!
The second son, perhaps also still lying in bed, said to his father: “Yes, dad, I’ll go.” But he didn’t do what he promised! He probably fell asleep again and then called his friend and disappeared, doing whatever he wanted. He may have momentarily “felt” the need to fulfill his father’s will, but those feelings came and went. This “feeling” of having to do God’s will was replaced by another “feeling” of doing something else. Therefore, the son did not go into the vineyard.
Which of these two sons fulfilled his father's will? The one who at first didn’t want to go to work, but he went anyway, or the one who felt the need to go, but changed his mind and didn’t go? The answer is obvious. We read that love for the Father is expressed by doing His will. Therefore, the question can be asked differently: “Which of the two sons loved the Father?” or “Which of his sons was the Father pleased with? The one who promised Him to do His will, but in the end did not fulfill it, or the one who still fulfilled it? The answer is the same: “To the one who fulfilled His will!” Conclusion: Do God's will regardless of your feelings! Let your first reaction be: “I won’t do that!” or “I don’t feel it!” Change your mind and do what God expects of you. Yes, of course, it is much easier to do the will of God if you have a great desire for it. However, when choosing between not doing the will of the Father and doing it without much desire, we must say: “I will do the will of my Father because I love my Father and want to please Him.”
3. Night in Gethsemane
However, this does not mean that we do not have the right or cannot turn to the Father and ask Him for other possible options. Our relationship with Heavenly Father is a true RELATIONSHIP. The Lord desires that communication with His child servants should always be available. The events of the night of Gethsemane, when Jesus was handed over to be crucified, are proof of this. Jesus was in the garden with His disciples, waiting for the traitor Judas, who was to come, accompanied by the servants of the Israeli high priests and elders, to arrest Christ and crucify Him. Jesus was in agony. He would rather this cup pass from Him. He asked His Father about this:
Luke 22:41-44:
“And He Himself went away from them a stone's throw, and kneeled down and prayed, saying: Father! Oh, that You would deign to carry this cup past Me! however, not My will, but Yours be done. An angel appeared to Him from heaven and strengthened Him. And, being in a struggle, he prayed more diligently, and His sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.”
There is nothing wrong with asking the Father for a way out of a situation. There is nothing wrong with asking Him, “Can I stay home today and not go to the vineyard?” It would be wrong to stay at home without asking Him about it! This is disobedience. However, there is nothing wrong with asking Him for another option. If there is no other option, then your Father can provide special encouragement and support for you to willingly do His will. Jesus, while in the Garden of Gethsemane, also received encouragement and support: “An angel from heaven appeared to Him and strengthened Him.”
Jesus would have wanted the cup of suffering to pass from Him, BUT only if it was God's will. However, this was not the will of God. Jesus accepted it. When Judas arrived surrounded by soldiers, Jesus turned to Peter, saying:
John 18:11:
“Put your sword in its sheath; Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?»
Jesus always did what pleased the Father, even if He didn't feel like doing it. And by doing this, He pleased the Father, and the Father was always close to Jesus, never leaving Him. Christ said:
John 8:29:
“He who sent Me is with Me; The Father has not left Me alone, for I always do what pleases Him.”
He is an example for us. In his letter to the Philippians, the Apostle Paul tells us:
Philippians 2:5-11:
« For you must have the same feelings which are also in Christ Jesus: He, being in the image of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God; but he made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a servant, becoming in the likeness of men, and becoming in appearance like a man; He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even to the point of death, even death on the cross. Therefore God exalted Him and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Jesus humbled Himself. He said, “Not my will, but yours be done.” Jesus SUBMITTED! We must follow His example. We must have the mind of Christ in us, the mind of humility and obedience, the mind that says: “Not my will, but Thine be done!” Paul continues and says:
Philippians 2:12-13:
“Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, because God is at work in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.”
The Apostle, speaking: “Therefore, my beloved,” says that, having the example of great obedience shown in our Lord Jesus Christ, we also must obey God, “working out our own salvation with fear and trembling, because God works in us also to will.” , and acting according to His good pleasure.” James continues this thought by saying:
James 4:6-10:
“Therefore it is said: “ God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble" So submit yourself to God; resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you; Cleanse your hands, you sinners; straighten your hearts, you double-minded. Lament, weep and howl; Let your laughter turn into crying, and your joy into sadness. Humble yourself before the Lord and he will exalt you».
Conclusion
Loving God with all your heart is the greatest commandment. However, loving God is not a comfortable state of mind in which we “feel” God. Loving God is doing His will! It is impossible to love God and at the same time be disobedient to Him! It is impossible to have faith and be unfaithful to God! Faith is not a state of mind. Faith in God and His Word means being faithful to God and His Word. Let us not make the mistake of trying to separate these concepts. God's love and His favor come upon those who love God, i.e. do His will and do what pleases Him. As has already been said, it is better to do the will of God, even if we do not feel the emotional impulse of readiness, than to disobey Him. This doesn't mean we have to be emotionless robots. We can always turn to the Lord and ask Him about another option if we feel that it is very difficult for us to fulfill His will, but unconditionally accepting any of His answers. God, of course, can open a different path for us, because He is the most wonderful Lord and Father, merciful and kind to all His children. If there is no other way, then He will support us in doing His will, which seems impossible to us, just as He supported Jesus that night of Gethsemane.
Hieromonk Georgy Sokolov
Dedicated to my spiritual mother
Schema-Abbess Georgia (Fedotova) † 03/10/2014
The fresh wind of the chosen ones intoxicated,
Knocked down, raised from the dead,
Because if you didn't love,
That means he didn’t live and didn’t breathe!
V. Vysotsky
1. Introduction
"God is love" (). After these words I want to put an end to it. Not because we have finally settled some debate about who God is or is not. No, God simply revealed himself to man gradually, as he “could accommodate it.” In the beginning He was a Caring Creator, then a Merciful Provider, and also a Righteous Judge, and also a Just Giver. And yet... you can give many suitable names, but all of this was, as it were, “in part,” as some hint of something perfect, with the advent of which “that which is in part will cease.” And this perfect thing came and appeared in the fact that “God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” ().
During its existence, Christianity has formulated several different understandings of the meaning of the Savior's Sacrifice on the Cross. It was redemption from sin, and liberation from curse, and victory over death, and victory over the devil. But one simple question can be applied to all these points of view: couldn't an almighty God have done all this without being crucified on the Cross? What was the need to become human and suffer? God took on human nature to heal it from sin, because according to the word of St. Gregory of Nazianzus: “What is not perceived is not healed.” But couldn’t He who originally created this nature by the mere will of His Will also heal it? God took on human nature for the sake of its deification. As St. said. : “God became man so that man could become God.” But couldn’t He who created Adam godlike also, without incarnation, deify the nature of fallen man? Do we not belittle the omnipotence of God and make God dependent on something when we say that the Incarnation and the Sacrifice of the Cross were absolutely necessary for God in order to accomplish our salvation and deification? Answering all these questions with absolute necessity we will have to admit that God could save us without resorting to the Incarnation and, even more so, death on the cross. But He did it nonetheless. For what?
To answer this question, let us assume that there was no Incarnation and Sacrifice of the Cross. Just at one moment the Heavens opened and a thunderous Voice sounded from there: “I forgive and allow!” If we were saved this way, what would be different? It would seem like nothing. But in reality, a lot would change - we would never know how much God loves us and what He is willing to do for us. He came to us, became one of us, became our friend and suffered for us only in order to show us His love. “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (). The true meaning of the Incarnation and the Sacrifice of the Cross is the revelation of God’s love to the human race. All other meanings pale before this meaning.
During the first century of the existence of Christianity, the holy fathers of the Orthodox Church discussed the question of to whom the Sacrifice of Christ the Savior was offered on the Cross. Their opinions and answers were not always consistent with each other. Only the Councils of Constantinople 1156–1157. developed a certain point of view in answering this question, deciding that the Savior’s Sacrifice was offered to the entire Holy Trinity. But, as we have already indicated, God had no need for this sacrifice, so we can also say that this sacrifice of love was also offered to us.
But if God wanted to reveal himself to people precisely as love, then wouldn’t it be most correct to talk about Him specifically as love? Most modern secular sciences are built on the principle that they are based on some self-evident axioms that are not proven, and on this basis all further scientific theories are built. For example, the theory of relativity underlying modern physics is based on the postulate that the speed of light in a vacuum is the maximum possible speed in the universe. Of course, theology cannot be put on a par with the secular sciences, if only because its age is equal to the age of humanity, and most secular sciences are two or three hundred years old, but it seems quite possible to use their construction principle for theology.
This book is a small attempt to build our reasoning about God on the basis that He is love. Sometimes it is interesting to simply replace the word “God” with the word “love” in any judgment about God and see what happens.
2. Suffering God
But why did God show us His love? There is only one answer: to teach us to love too. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, so should you love one another” (). If God is love, then the essence of salvation and Godlikeness lies in learning to love as He loved us. The Kingdom of Heaven is the Kingdom of love, and only the one who loves can enter it. One can read from the holy fathers that a person grows in love for God in three stages. At the first stage, he serves God out of fear of punishment, like a slave. At the second stage, a person pleases God for the sake of receiving a reward or payment, like a mercenary. And finally, at the third stage, a person fulfills the commands of God solely out of love for Him, like a son who does not want to upset his Father. But God does not grow in love: no matter how we treat Him, He always loves us like a Father. Therefore, when we sin, we do not actually anger Him, like the master’s slave, and we do not offend Him, like the master’s hired servant, but we hurt Him, just as a son hurts his father with his disobedience. Yes, the Divine is impassive, but He is not insensitive, and our sins cause Him grief. An example of this is the story of the miraculous icon of the Mother of God, called “Unexpected Joy.”
“A certain many-sinful person had the daily custom of praying to the Most Holy Theotokos, often repeating the words of the angelic greeting: “Rejoice, full of grace!” One day, preparing to engage in nasty lawlessness, he turned to the image in order to first perform the usual prayer to Her, and then go on a planned evil deed. When he began to pray, fear and horror attacked him: he saw the image moving and the living Mother of God with her Son. He looked and saw that the Baby’s ulcers had opened on his arms and legs, and in his side, and blood was flowing from them in streams, like on the Cross. Seeing this, he fell in fear and cried out: “Oh, Lady, who did this?” The Mother of God answered: “You and other sinners are crucifying My Son again, like the Jews.” Then the sinner burst into tears, saying: “Have mercy on me, O Mother of Mercy!” She answered him: “You call Me the Mother of Mercy, but you fill Me with sorrow through your deeds.” And the sinner said: “No, Lady, may my malice not overcome Your ineffable goodness and mercy. You alone are the hope and refuge of all sinners. Bow to mercy, good Mother! Pray for me, Thy Son and my Creator!” Then the Most Blessed Mother began to pray to her Son: “My blessed Son, for the sake of My love, have mercy on this sinner.” But the Son answered: “Do not be angry, My Mother, because I will not listen to You. And I prayed to the Father that the cup of suffering would pass from Me, but I did not listen to Me.” Then the Mother said: “My son! Remember the one who fed You and forgive him.” The Son answered: “And the second time I prayed to the Father for the cup, and did not listen to Me” (see). Mother again asked: “Remember My illnesses that I endured with You when You were on the Cross in body, but I was wounded under the Cross in the womb, for the weapon passed through My soul” (see). The Son answered: “And for the third time I prayed to the Father, but he carried the cup past, but he did not deign to listen.” Then the Mother sat the Son down and wanted to fall at His feet, but the Son cried out: “What do you want to do, O Mother?” “I will,” he says, “lie at Your feet with this sinner until You forgive his sins.” Then the Son said: “The Law commands that the Son honor the Mother, but the truth wants the Lawgiver Himself to be the executor of the law. I am Your Son, You are My Mother, and I must honor You by listening to Your prayers. Let it be as you wish: now his sins are forgiven for Your sake. As a sign of forgiveness, let him kiss My wounds.” Rising, the sinner reverently touched His most pure wounds with his lips and came to his senses. When the vision disappeared, he felt his heart filled with trembling and joy, he began to cry and sob even more, falling to the image of the Lady, thanking and praying that he would always be pardoned, as he saw in a terrible vision the goodness of the Lord, forgiving sins. And since then he has corrected his life."
Few people think about the fact that we worship a suffering God. The central and main symbol of the Church of Christ is the Cross, and we worship it, but the Savior was crucified on it. In the Ancient Roman Empire, the Romans were hostile to Christianity partly because, in their opinion, it preached cannibalism: “How can you eat the flesh and drink the blood of your God?!”, they said. For us, the words that the priest proclaims during the Divine Liturgy are natural and familiar: “Take, eat, this is My body, which was broken for you for the remission of sins” and “Drink of it, all of you, this is my blood, of the new covenant, which is for you.” and poured out for many, for the remission of sins.” And many holy saints of God saw how, during the Liturgy, a baby was brought by angels, who was slaughtered by them, divided and taught to the believers in the Holy Chalice. God suffers because of us, because of our sins. Therefore, God’s love was revealed to us precisely in suffering for us. Another way to express this idea is that God as love revealed himself to us on the cross.
3. Image and likeness
If God is love, then the first thing that needs to be said is that love cannot be created. Everything else can be created, but love cannot. So, love is uncreated, but it is possible to create a container for it, some kind of temple in which it would dwell and manifest itself. According to the Divine Plan, this temple is the human person. “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you?” - writes St. Apostle Paul: “If anyone destroys the temple of God, God will punish him: for the temple of God is holy; and this temple is you” (). “You created us for Yourself, and our heart knows no peace until it rests in You,” says. But the process of creation in general, and in particular the creation of man, is not simply the bringing into existence of some ideal image of man located in the Divine consciousness, but a complex creative process of realizing the Divine plan for man, which is more reminiscent of the cultivation of the human personality, just as what is thrown into the world grows. ground grain.
Therefore, with the creation of Adam the process of human formation did not end; rather, it just began. The Book of Genesis indirectly confirms this, for having said about the command of the Lord: “Let us make man in Our image and in Our likeness” (), it further narrates: “And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him” (). Thus, the Lord is silent about creation “in the likeness,” thereby indicating that the growth of man is not yet completed. St. speaks about this more clearly. Apostle Paul in the First Epistle to the Corinthians: “Thus it is written: The first man Adam became a living soul; and the last Adam is the life-giving spirit" (); “The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second person is the Lord from heaven" (); “And just as we bore the image of the earthly, we will also bear the image of the heavenly” (). You can also remember the blzh. Augustine, who said that Adam was in a state expressed by the formula “I can not sin,” and he had to reach the state “I cannot sin.” So, the perfection of man is not completed, and will end only after the General Resurrection.
How was the newly created Adam imperfect and what did he lack? As the temple of God, it possessed all the totality of perfection, but this temple was not yet filled with the One for whom it was intended. That is, Adam did not yet have God in himself, or, in other words, he did not have perfect love in himself. This conclusion may seem very bold, but this is indicated by the first test of love that Adam failed - the violation of the first commandment. The fact that Adam did not have love for God and love for his neighbor (Eve) is also confirmed by his response to God after the Fall: “Adam said: the wife whom You gave me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate” (). That is, Adam chose to blame his neighbor and even God himself for his transgression, rather than himself. One cannot but agree that Adam had some imperfection in himself, otherwise the Fall would not have occurred. In the first conciliar letter of St. The Apostle John the Theologian writes: “No one who abides in Him sins; everyone who sins has not seen Him and has not known Him” (), and even further: “He who does not love has not known God, because God is love” (). Man had yet to know God or know love, let love into himself, grow it in himself. Therefore, the entire history of the relationship between God and man, set out in Holy Scripture, is the history of the knowledge of God, or the history of man’s knowledge of love, or the history of man’s learning to love.
Almost all writers and teachers of the Church touched, to one degree or another, on the question of man’s Godlikeness. In ancient times, the image of God was usually seen in one particular human ability, while over time, church writers were ready to understand the concept of the image of God as a set of spiritual gifts or abilities; they invested more and more content into this biblical expression. Almost the majority of church writers wanted to see the image of God in rationality (spirituality). Some allowed, along with spirituality or rationality, free will, as a sign of the image of God. Others saw the image of God in immortality, in the dominant or superior position of man in the universe. The image of God in man was also understood by the teachers of the Church as holiness, or, more precisely, the ability for moral improvement, as well as the ability for creativity.
Some of the church writers distinguished image from likeness, while others were inclined to consider these expressions as synonyms. In the biblical account of the creation of man, a well-known distinction is made between “in the image” and “in the likeness.” Speaking about the council of the Trinity Divinity before the creation of man, the holy prophet Moses narrates that God decided to create man in His image and likeness: “And God said: Let us make man in Our image, in Our likeness...” (). Describing the creation itself, Moses says: “And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him...” (), and omits the words “in his likeness.” “Why wasn’t what was supposed to be realized,” asks the saint. – Why is it not said: “And God created man in the image of God, and in the likeness?” Has the Creator become exhausted? “It’s shameless to say anything like that.” Has the Creator really changed His intention? “It’s ungodly to even think about something like that.” Did he say it and change his mind? - No. Holy Scripture does not say that the Creator was exhausted, nor that the intention remained unfulfilled. For what reason then was it kept silent - “in the likeness”? The reason is that “in the image” we have by creation, and “in the likeness” we acquire according to our own will. To be in the image of God is characteristic of us from our first creation, but to become in the likeness of God depends on our will.”
So, the image is what was originally invested by the Creator in man, and the likeness is what was to be achieved as a result of a virtuous life. But, as we have already pointed out, Adam had everything except perfect love, which he was to achieve. Therefore, if God is love, then man’s godlikeness lies in love. “Love in its quality is likeness to God, as much as people can achieve,” says St. .
4. Knowledge of God
Probably many who read the Gospel were repeatedly embarrassed by the fact that the Savior seeks to hide His miracles. A striking example of this is the Gospel story of the Transfiguration: several hundred people followed Christ, but he takes only the three closest disciples, leads them alone to the mountain and secretly transforms himself before them. It would seem that there is no better opportunity to convince people of His Sonship of God: everyone would see His miraculous Transfiguration and hear the Father’s voice. But the Savior does not do this, and this example is far from the only one. Also, after His miraculous Resurrection, the Lord appears only to his closest disciples, and then not immediately. Why, one may ask, did He not appear to those bishops, elders and scribes who handed Him over to be crucified, and in general to all those people who shouted to Pilate: “Crucify Him!”, and to Pontius Pilate himself? After all, then they probably would have believed and been saved. Moreover, in the course of the Gospel narrative, Christ repeatedly denounces those who seek miracles, saying: “An evil and adulterous generation seeks a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah” (). In general, this question can be expanded and put as follows: why does Almighty God not show man clear evidence of His existence during his earthly life? After all, there is no doubt that in the realm of reason there is no evidence of the existence of God. It is impossible to prove that God exists, just as it is impossible to prove that He does not exist.
Let's try to answer this question this way: since God is love, knowing Him is not a matter of the human mind, but a matter of the human heart. Here, in general, I would like to be skeptical about the cognitive abilities of the human mind, which in its rational activity deals not directly with a cognizable thing, but with its idea of this thing, which is formed through perception. This method of cognition is imperfect; you can know something perfectly only by letting this something into yourself, or by becoming that something. The human heart, which was originally created and intended for the knowledge of God, has this ability of knowledge. The Savior repeatedly points out in the Gospel that God is known by the heart. So, for example, He tells the disciples about the Jews: “... the prophecy of Isaiah is coming true over them, which says: you will hear with your ears and you will not understand, and you will look with your eyes and you will not see, for the hearts of these people are hardened and their ears are hard to hear, and their eyes They have closed their own, so that they will not see with their eyes, and may not hear with their ears, and may not understand with their heart, and may not be converted, so that I may heal them” (). In this case, speaking about hearing, vision and understanding, Christ points to the cognitive abilities of the human heart. Unfortunately, if a person’s heart for a long time is a receptacle for sin, and not love, then it gradually loses its ability to recognize God, as if it becomes coarsened and deadened, as indicated by the above excerpt from the Gospel. When it is said that a person knows God with his heart, here the heart is understood not as the anatomical organ that sets the blood in motion, but as the focus of spiritual life and the location of the spirit in a person. The heart, as an internal bodily organ, has contact with the soul in an incomprehensible way, and therefore a person feels all spiritual experiences with the heart.
It should be noted that the human heart initially knows about the existence of God, although this is usually not realized by the mind. This idea was brilliantly expressed by an outstanding early Christian theologian who said that the human soul is Christian by nature. In addition, the heart is always dominant in a person, and not the mind, as it may seem. The mind always deals with what the heart wants, what it strives for, but not vice versa. Therefore, if a person says that he does not believe in God and tries to prove to himself and others that He does not exist, then in fact he simply hates God with his heart, and secretly even from himself. It is useless to prove anything in this case; moreover, it would be a violation of human freedom. On the contrary, a person who has a loving heart will never need proof of the existence of God and always willingly accepts God with his mind. In this case, evidence is simply not needed.
Why then did the Lord still show miracles? To influence his heart through a person’s mind. This is possible to some extent; it is not without reason that most of Christ’s miracles are connected precisely with works of mercy, that is, they affect the human heart. Thus, the apostle and evangelist Mark narrates that the Savior, when the disciples were in poverty at sea, performed a miracle of walking on the waters, because the apostles “did not understand the miracle of the loaves, because their hearts were petrified” (). Miracles are also often necessary for those people who face serious tests of faith. So, during the Transfiguration, the Lord took with Him the apostles Peter, James and John. In the near future, all of them faced serious trials: the Apostle Peter would follow Christ after His capture by the Jews, the Apostle John would be present at the Crucifixion of Christ, the Apostle James would be the first of the apostles to die a martyr's death. But all the same, in relation to all miracles we can say: “blessed are those who have not seen and believed” (), because true faith in the mind can only come from God, who dwells in the heart.
5. Exams of love
The process of knowledge of God, like other learning processes, presupposes some kind of teaching situations, some kind of exams. Earthly life is such an exam, or a set of such exams, for a person. Every day, hourly, and sometimes even every minute, the Wise Lord creates situations for us in which He knocks on the doors of our hearts and asks to let Him in: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him, and I will sup with him, and he with Me” (). This situation is a test of love. You may pass it, you may not pass it, and if you fail, you can retake it. Failure to pass the exam is also called sin, which can also be called rejection of love, denial of love, or dislike.
The fact that life is a test of love is figuratively confirmed by the Lord Himself in the parable of the sheep and goats placed on the right and left. Those who successfully pass this exam will be told this: “...come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry, and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger and you accepted Me; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me” (). Those who fail the exam will be told this: “…depart from Me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was hungry, and you did not give Me anything to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me no drink; I was a stranger, and they did not accept Me; I was naked, and they did not clothe Me; sick and in prison, and they did not visit Me” (). Of course, deeds of love are not limited to just the above mentioned deeds. Constantly throughout life, in actions, words, even thoughts, a person is offered a choice: between good and evil, between the will of God and sin, between love and dislike. And human free will is absolutely reduced to the freedom of choice between these two options. This choice cannot be refused; more precisely, refusal means a negative answer. And there is nothing in between that one could choose, just as there is nothing in between truth and falsehood, between good and evil, between God and the devil, between love and dislike.
In the Gospel of Luke there is a story about a dialogue between Christ and a certain Jewish teacher of the law, who “stood up and, tempting Him, said: Teacher! What must I do to inherit eternal life? He said to him, “What is written in the law?” how do you read? He answered and said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself. Jesus said to him: You answered correctly; do this and you will live. But he, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus: who is my neighbor? To this Jesus said: a certain man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho and was caught by robbers, who took off his clothes, wounded him and left, leaving him barely alive. By chance, a priest was walking along that road and, seeing him, passed by. Likewise, the Levite, being at that place, came up, looked and passed by. A Samaritan, passing by, found him and, seeing him, took pity and, coming up, bandaged his wounds, pouring oil and wine; and, setting him on his donkey, brought him to the inn and took care of him; and the next day, as he was leaving, he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper and said to him: take care of him; and if you spend anything more, when I return, I will give it back to you. Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the one who fell among the robbers? He said: He showed him mercy. Then Jesus said to him: Go and do likewise” ().
The situation described shows perfectly what the test of love is. In this case, she knocked on the heart of everyone who saw the person who fell among the robbers, but only the Samaritan opened it, and between him and the victim, those very mysterious relationships were established in which people are called neighbors or friends. It is precisely such people that the Lord commands to love, and commands both in the Old and New Testaments with a slight difference in wording. But it is not for nothing that we called these relationships mysterious, because the human mind does not understand who the neighbor is; only the love that resides in the heart can point to him. In other words, God Himself, having entered a person’s heart, shows him who his neighbor is and what needs to be done for him at the moment. But God and all His actions in the human heart are incomprehensible to the mind. It is impossible to explain to the mind what love is and how it works; one can only indicate, draw an analogy, make a hint. Therefore, the Savior does not give a direct answer to the lawyer’s question, but tells a parable. In general, most of Christ’s parables are some kind of hints for the mind, through which God strives to enter the human heart and revive it.
Often people, without understanding all this, say that everyone is a neighbor and that we need to love everyone. But the Lord does not say: love everyone, He says: love your neighbors and friends. Yes, indeed, every person can become a neighbor, a friend, but not everyone is one. A frequent consequence of this reasoning that neighbors are everything is a course of action in which a person begins to do good to those people who do not need his help at all, but passes by those who at the moment most need his love. Therefore, if we try to formulate as accurately as possible the answer to the question: who is our neighbor, we can say that this is the one who at the moment most needs our attention, help and support. But even with such a formulation in your mind, you can make a mistake, because only God, who dwells in the heart, can truly indicate who your neighbor is. And for Him to stay there, He needs to be let in, which is what the Samaritan did.
The Old Testament priests who passed by the thieves did not at all consider themselves hard-hearted and did not think that they were violating the commandment to love one’s neighbor. Simply, according to their reasoning, this person could not be considered a neighbor. They preferred to be guided by the arguments of reason and did not hear God knocking on their hearts. You might think that in a person the mind is a negative component and fights with the heart, but this is by no means the case. The heart, as we have already said, always dominates, the mind only presents its arguments to it. The struggle between love and unlove takes place in the heart. “Here the devil fights with God, and the battlefield is the hearts of people,” writes F.M. Dostoevsky. And this is rather not even a struggle, but a free choice of the heart between one and the other. Therefore, it is not the mind that is the source of sin, but the heart, “for from within, from the human heart, come evil thoughts, adultery, fornication, murder, theft, covetousness, malice, deceit, lewdness, an envious eye, blasphemy, pride, madness - all this evil comes from within and defiles a person” ().
6. Virtues
Manifestations of love in a person are called virtues. Much has been written about the fact that love is the basis and source of all virtues. Here is how the Apostle Paul speaks about this, for example: “Love is long-suffering, it is kind, love does not envy, love does not boast, is not proud, does not act rudely, does not seek its own, is not angry, does not think evil, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; covers everything, believes everything, hopes everything, endures everything” (). Or in another place: “Above all, put on love, which is the totality of perfection” (). “All the perfections that are contained in the concept of virtue grow from the root of love; so that he who has it does not lack in other virtues,” writes St. . The need to perform virtues is expressed by God in the form of commandments given to man. It should be noted that the more a person strives to fulfill the commandments, that is, the more he strives to show love, the more God strives to fill his heart. In the Old Testament this is expressed in the following words of God: “I love those who love me, and those who seek me will find me” (). In the New Testament the Savior says: “Whoever has My commandments and keeps them, he loves Me; and whoever loves Me will be loved by My Father; and I will love him and appear to him Myself” (). And also: “...whoever loves Me will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make an abode with him” (). And vice versa, the more love fills a person, the more it tends to manifest itself in him in the form of virtues. “You are the light of the world. A city standing on top of a mountain cannot hide. And having lit a candle, they do not put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick, and it gives light to everyone in the house” (). It turns out that love is, as it were, both the cause and the consequence of virtues.
It is impossible to perform virtues without having God (love) in you: “for without Me you can do nothing” () - says the Savior. More precisely, if you try to perform them not for the sake of love, that is, not for the sake of Christ, then such virtues will not be true and will not bring benefit to a person. “Love is so superior to all virtues that without it, not one of them, nor all of them together, will bring any benefit to the one who acquires them,” writes St. . Everyone knows this statement of the Apostle Paul: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, then I am a sounding gossamer or a sounding cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries, and have all knowledge and all faith, so that I could move mountains, but do not have love, then I am nothing. And if I give away all my property and give my body to be burned, but do not have love, it is of no benefit to me” (). From this passage it follows that a person can be a believer in his mind (although such faith cannot be called true), fulfilling the commandments, but his heart can be far from God, and he can be guided not by love, but by completely different motives. This is particularly confirmed by the words of Christ: “Many will say to Me on that day: Lord! God! Have we not prophesied in Your name? and was it not in Your name that they cast out demons? and did they not perform many miracles in Your name? And then I will declare to them: I never knew you; Depart from Me, you who practice iniquity" (). That is, a person can have such faith that he will prophesy, cast out demons, and perform many miracles, but at the same time not know God in his heart. There is an example of this in the hagiographic heritage, it goes something like this: there was a certain old man who, due to the way of his life, was revered by everyone as a saint. But when he was dying, another elder had a vision that angels and demons were arguing for the soul of the dying man, and this dispute was stopped by the voice of the Son of God addressed to the demons: “Take him and give him no rest, just as I found no peace in his heart.” " According to the interpretation of the holy fathers, the dying elder, during his outwardly righteous life, was guided in all his affairs by pride and vanity.
The Holy Fathers have the opinion that good done not for the sake of Christ is not true. This will be so-called hypocrisy or deceit. In the Gospel of Matthew, the Lord says to the Pharisees: “You brood of vipers! how can you say good things when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (). Therefore, this sin is also sometimes called pharisaism. There is one very good statement by an unknown author, which perfectly reflects what virtues turn into without love:
“Duty without love makes a person irritable.
Responsibility without love makes a person unceremonious.
Justice without love makes a person cruel.
Truth without love makes a person a critic.
Education without love makes a person two-faced.
Friendliness without love makes a person hypocritical.
A mind without love makes a person cunning.
Competence without love makes a person unyielding.
Honor without love makes a person arrogant.
Power without love makes a person a rapist.
Wealth without love makes a person greedy.
Faith without love makes a person a fanatic.”
And this list can be supplemented and supplemented. The author of these lines personally had to observe how even such a greatest virtue as monastic obedience, performed not for the sake of love, turned into a complete perversion, which was expressed in the fact that for the sake of the imaginary fulfillment of this virtue, a person trampled on the basic laws of love. I always wanted to tell him: you can’t help but love for the sake of obedience. Obedience is higher than fasting and prayer, but not higher than love. How can a person be guided when performing virtues not for the sake of love? Obviously, some kind of passion. Usually this is pride, but that is a separate discussion.
In addition to fulfilling the commandments, there are also various pious exercises that attract God into a person’s heart and prepare the heart to accept love. Sometimes they are also called virtues. These exercises include prayer, fasting, participation in worship, reading Holy Scripture and others. Especially in this regard, the holy fathers praised unceasing prayer of the mind and heart. However, just as in the case of virtues, if these deeds of piety are not performed for the sake of love, then they not only do not bring any benefit, but can even harm a person, which in spiritual life is called prelest. This is how St. Petersburg talks about all this. in a conversation with N.A. Motovilov about the purpose of Christian life: “Prayer, fasting, vigil and all other Christian deeds, no matter how good they are in themselves, however, the purpose of our Christian life is not in doing them alone, although they serve as necessary means to achieve it. The true goal of our Christian life is to acquire the Holy Spirit of God. Fasting, and vigil, and prayer, and almsgiving, and every good deed done for the sake of Christ are means for acquiring the Holy Spirit of God. Please note, father, that only for the sake of Christ does a good deed bring us the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Still, what we do not for the sake of Christ, although it is good, does not represent a reward for us in the life of the next century, and it does not give us the grace of God in this life either.”
Therefore, it is necessary to always be aware of why we perform certain virtues, remembering that their true goal is the acquisition of love. We will not at all contradict St. Seraphim by saying that the meaning of human life lies in the acquisition of love, if we remember that the Holy Spirit is God, and God is love.
7. Spiritual Constants
If, according to St. Apostle John the Theologian, “God is love” (), then the same can be said about man, who is created in the image of God, he is also love. Love, as an attraction, aspiration for something, is the main manifestation of human nature, as if its very essence. From birth, a person acquires for himself some stable ideas about love, we can call them spiritual constants. Or, in other words, this is what is sacred for a person, what is, as it were, a stable characteristic of his personality and motivates all his activities. Such spiritual constants are, by and large, the same for all people, among them we can particularly highlight: love for God, love for the Motherland, love for the mother, love for one’s close friend, love for one’s children. They say about a person that he has formed as a personality precisely when these spiritual characteristics are formed in him.
The interesting thing is that every temptation seeks to destroy and damage precisely these spiritual constants. The goal of the devil is not the physical death of a person, but precisely the damage, destruction of him as a person, his spiritual destruction. Disorientation of the very essence of human nature leads to damage to the very image of God in man, turning him into an animal. The main value of a person for God is his ability to love, that is, to realize the image of God in himself, and the main goal of the devil is to damage this image.
During the Chechen war, Chechen militants, mocking captured Russian soldiers, forced them to renounce God, their Motherland and their mother. Regarding God and the Motherland, this is understandable, because they fought for their faith and fatherland, but what does this have to do with the mother? Oddly enough, but it is love for parents, for father and mother, that is the most fundamental, the most central and the most stable spiritual constant of a person, and it is precisely this that the devil strives to destroy most of all through temptations. In the modern world you can find a lot of diverse and varied evidence of this. So, for example, swearing - the very name of this very common phenomenon already suggests that it insults the most sacred thing - the mother. The notorious juvenile justice system is nothing more than an attempt to destroy the fundamental love bond between parents and child. It is also very characteristic that the overwhelming majority of totalitarian sects persistently strive to instill in their adherents, if not hatred, then indifference to their parents. Church tradition preserves information about the life of Judas Iscariot: he cohabited with his mother, that is, he desecrated the most sacred thing. A person may not have God, in the sense that he may not be a believer, or may not have a homeland, in the sense that he grew up in a foreign land, but no such person has ever been born who does not have a mother.
In modern psychology, there is a very interesting theory about the basic perinatal matrices, which was introduced and developed by one of the founders of transpersonal psychology, Stanislav Grof, in 1975 in his work “Areas of the Human Unconscious”. According to this theory, during intrauterine development and childbirth, a person experiences a special unconscious experience, which has a fundamental impact on the entire subsequent life and becomes the basis of the entire psychological portrait of the individual. Stanislav Grof in his works postulated that the human psyche is formed not so much at the biographical stage as in the perinatal (prebiographical) period, corresponding to the stage of the embryo and the process of childbirth. These areas of the unconscious were called the term “basic perinatal matrices”; they were divided into 4, according to the successive physiological stages of pregnancy and childbirth:
- The static stay of the embryo in the mother's womb, characterized by peace, serenity and equanimity. The predominance of this matrix in the human subconscious corresponds, according to Hippocrates’ classification, to the type of phlegmatic temperament.
- The first phase of labor, that is, contractions. In the human subconscious they are associated with feelings of fear, anxiety, excitement, and depression. The predominance of this matrix in the subconscious is characteristic of a melancholic person.
- The second phase of labor is when the baby passes through the birth canal. Here there are feelings of struggle, shock, pain, and strong excitement. The predominance of this matrix in the subconscious is characteristic of choleric people.
- Birth and the first minutes after it. Feelings of liberation, love, joy, salvation, which correspond to the type of temperament of a sanguine person.
Although the theory of perinatal matrices is often criticized among Christians for its unacceptable expansion into the spiritual sphere of the individual, nevertheless, the practical reliability of this theory perfectly shows the strength of the spiritual connections between mother and child. The strength of these ties is confirmed by numerous testimonies of the grace-filled help of a child through the prayers of the mother, which is why a proverb even arose among the people: “A mother’s prayer will reach you from the bottom of the sea.”
A very beautiful legend about two halves, once described by Plato, came to us from Ancient Greece. According to this legend, people were once four-armed, four-legged creatures, with two faces on one head, with two “private parts.” They were called "androgynes". These people had great strength and power, and one day they decided to rebel against the gods in order to rule the world themselves. The gods, having learned about this, were angry, and the supreme ruler Zeus punished the disobedient: he divided each creature in half and scattered these halves throughout the world. This is how modern people appeared - two-armed, two-legged, with one face on their head. Since then, the separated halves have been looking for each other. If someone happens to meet their other half, both are overcome by such an amazing feeling of affection, intimacy and love that they truly do not want to be separated even for a short time. And people who spend their whole lives together cannot even say what they actually want from each other, because it cannot be said that it is only for the sake of satisfying lust that they so zealously strive to be together. Halves are looking for each other, and happiness if in the end one finds the other. Although, it would seem, what obstacles could there be to this? One half is female, the other is male, why is not every man and not every woman ready to merge in love and happiness? But no, the matter turned out to be not at all simple. The androgynes, apparently, were divided in two not evenly, as if along a ruler, but in a special way - “with torn edges,” let’s say.
This is why men and women suffer - they are looking for their one and only, the missing half, when merging with which a harmonious being would again arise, in which both the female and male parts are balanced, intertwined like the fingers of a hand, formed like a pattern in a mosaic .
Many Christian theologians have repeatedly asked the question: why did God divide man into two sexes (the very name resembles the word “half”)? Why did God create woman? If we do not touch upon physiology, but think only from a spiritual point of view, then the classic answer will be the words from the Bible: “And the Lord God said: It is not good for man to be alone; Let us create for him a helper suitable for him” (). That is, God wanted to create an object of love for man, so that man would love and be loved. But if we remember that God is love, then an amazing explanation comes: God divided the primordial man in order to enter into him as love. After all, in order to get inside something, you need to divide it, go inside and connect it back. Man is originally meant to be a temple of God, and he becomes one when he begins to love someone. We love God when we love each other. God becomes the connecting link between the two halves, and this connection between two loving souls is so strong that it is comparable to the connection between a mother and a child: “... a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife; and they will be one flesh" (). Therefore, the devil also seeks to destroy this spiritual constant through temptations: through the propaganda of fornication, sexual depravity, homosexuality, etc. When fighting with God, the devil fights precisely with the love within us, trying by any means to pervert, destroy, extinguish it.
A loving person is completely filled with life, that is, one who preserves his spiritual constants thereby protects God inside the vessel of his soul. It is enough to remember how much strength and energy the blessing of the father and mother, whom he honors and loves, gives a person. Or how inspired by love and filled with inspiration a person who has found his soul mate. This joy, vitality, happiness is the action of God within us.
Absolutely all divine commandments concern love; in the ten commandments of Moses, the first four speak of love for God, the fifth speaks of love for parents, and the remaining five speak of love for one’s neighbor. But there is one important condition: to fulfill the commandments, a person must already be able to love, that is, his heart must have some experience of love. This could be love for a mother, for one’s soul mate, for one’s children, etc. Without such experience, a person will not be able to fulfill the commandments, he will not even be able to understand them. It would be like trying to explain to a blind person what it means to see. What does such a person look like? He has a cold relationship with his mother and has never had deep feelings for her. He never had a girlfriend, he never married. He never had children. That is, such a person simply does not know how to love, he does not understand what it is, spiritual constants are not formed. How can he fulfill the commandments?
There was such a case: once a young woman came to an old monk and expressed an ardent desire to enter a monastery. The elder began to ask about her life, and she said that she did not like life in the world: she had a strained relationship with her parents, she had never loved any man, so she was never married, she never had children. She considered all this to be good prerequisites for monasticism and spoke of her great attraction to monastic life. What did the elder answer her? “Go, make peace with your parents and have love for them. Find yourself a man you love, get married, have children. Learn to love first, and then you will come to the monastery.”
What will happen if you try to fulfill the commandments without having love in your heart? This phenomenon is called Pharisaism. Such people perceive commandments only with their minds, as instructions for behavior, as a program of action that is put into some machine. Outwardly they look thoroughly correct, but there is something very repulsive about them, they usually say about them: no love, no cordiality. One well-known politician, answering the question of what qualities, in his opinion, a politician should have, named among other qualities the following: the ability to feel someone else’s pain. The Pharisee completely lacks this quality; he will treat you absolutely correctly from the point of view of the commandments, but he will never put love above the commandments, because he does not understand what it is, his heart does not have such experience. The meaning of all God's commandments is that love is above every commandment. What is love? This cannot be understood with the mind, cannot be explained in words, only the heart knows about it. The Lord, in the words of the prophet Jeremiah, promised that in the next century everyone would know this: “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law within them, and write it on their hearts, and I will be unto them. God, and they will be My people. And they will no longer teach each other, brother to brother, and say: “Know the Lord,” for everyone themselves will know Me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord, because I will forgive their iniquities and I will remember their sins no more” () .
8. Life and death
Since love is the source of life, its rejection and repulsion leads to a state called death. For the first time in the Bible, this state is indicated in the second chapter of the Book of Genesis in the words of God addressed to Adam: “...but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you must not eat from it, for on the day that you eat from it you will surely die” () . This is how the saint comments on these words: “... just as the separation of the soul from the body is the death of the body, so the separation of God from the soul is the death of the soul. And this is mainly death, the death of the soul. God pointed to it when, giving a commandment in paradise, he said to Adam: on the day you eat from the forbidden tree, you will die (). For then his soul died, having been separated from God through a crime; in body he continued to live from that hour onwards until he was nine hundred and thirty years old. But death, which arrived through a crime, not only made the soul obscene and a person subject to oath, but also the body, having made it much painful and many-passionate, it finally put it to death...” So, the true death of a person is spiritual, it is a state of the heart alienated from God. “True death is in the heart, and it is hidden, the inner man dies with it,” says the monk. Therefore, people who do not know God are, as it were, the living dead, as indicated by the words of the Savior addressed to the disciple whose father died: “Follow Me and let the dead bury their dead” ().
But the death of the heart does not at all mean its immobilization; emptiness is a vessel that cannot be empty: “a holy place is never empty.” What then fills the heart? St. , speaking about the human heart, he used an example taken from the Psalter: “This sea is great and spacious: there are reptiles there, of which there are no number” (). Further in this psalm it is written: “the small animal is with the great: there ships sail, this serpent, whom you created, curse him” (). Obviously, since the human heart was originally conceived as a container for God, then if there is no love in it, it can only be filled with some perverted semblance of love, some of its anti-analogy. Such false love or love directed inwards is pride, which usually accompanies fornication. Interestingly, this is fully confirmed by modern psychology: sexual desire and the desire to become great are the main subconscious motives of human activity. Like false love, pride manifests itself in the form of distorted, false virtues or passions, which sometimes, oddly enough, can have the appearance of true virtues, as was observed among the Evangelical Pharisees. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside appear beautiful, but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and all uncleanness; So, on the outside, you seem righteous to people, but inside you are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness” () says the Savior.
But we began to use the word “lie” so often that it was time to remember about its “father”. Often people reason like this: I am on my own, and not with God, and not with the devil. But this, as we have already said, is impossible; there is no third option in this choice. In the Gospel the Savior says: “He who is not with Me is against Me; and whoever does not gather with Me scatters” (). And the holy fathers say: “He who does not submit his will to God will submit to his opponent.” The gates of the heart are designed in such a way that if they are closed to God, then they automatically open to the devil. The Apostle John the Theologian writes: “Whoever commits sin is of the devil, because first the devil sinned” (). Therefore, the devil is the father of all sinners, but he hides this from his servants and, being a liar, pretends to be God. Therefore, the Jews were very indignant when Christ told them: “Your father is the devil; and you want to do the lusts of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning and did not stand in the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks his own way, for he is a liar and the father of lies” ().
The state of a heart that rejects God (love) from itself is painful, which is why it is also called hell. Often people accuse God of creating hell and say: “If God is love, then why does He give sinners to eternal torment.” But God did not create hell. In the Gospel of Luke, the Savior says: “The kingdom of God is within you” (), accordingly we can say that hell is also “within us.” According to the modern theologian Bishop Callistus of Diocleia, the gates of hell are locked from the inside. Absolutely right: a person himself closes his heart to God from the inside, closes his eyes, plugs his ears. There is even an apocrypha in which Christ offers Judas to leave hell, and he refuses. The love of God is perceived by such a person as hellfire. Fortunately, while a person is alive, he has the opportunity to get out of this state, let love into himself and, so to speak, be spiritually resurrected. This is how St. talks about it. : “What is the resurrection of the soul? Holy repentance, for just as sin is death for the soul, so repentance is resurrection for the soul. After all, about the prodigal son, when he turned to his father in repentance, it is said: “this son of mine was dead and has come to life” (). While he was away from his father, in a sinful country, he was dead, but when he returned, having repented, he was immediately resurrected in soul: “he was dead and came to life.” We said that this resurrection is often repeated with the soul, for when a person sins, he dies in soul, and when he repents, he is resurrected, according to these words: as many times as you fall, you will rise again and be saved.”
“The life of the heart is love, and its death is anger and enmity. The Lord keeps us on earth for this reason, so that love will completely penetrate our hearts: this is the purpose of our existence,” St. John of Kronstadt. And a few decades later, amazingly beautiful lines from the Soviet poet and composer Vladimir Vysotsky appeared:
I just feel like a ship,
Stay afloat for a long time
Before you know that “I love”, -
The same as breathing or living!
All this can be concluded in such a way that love is life, and its absence is death, which is confirmed by the words of the Apostle John the Theologian: “We know that we have passed from death to life because we love the brothers; he who does not love his brother remains in death" ().
9. What does it mean to love God?
In the New Testament, God gave only one single commandment to people: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, so should you love one another” (). Why, one may ask, did not the Lord repeat the Old Testament commandment about love for God? After all, one could say: “I give you a new commandment: love God and one another.” Is it no longer necessary to love God? The answer to this question is that the New Testament brought with it an amazing truth: God is love. What then does it mean to love God? Love love? But this is incomprehensible, this is nonsense. In the Gospel of Matthew, Christ says the following words: “...where two or three are gathered in My name, there I am in the midst of them” (). The depth of meaning of what the Lord said is often misunderstood. These words mean that God cannot dwell in isolation in one person, but dwells as an interpersonal connection of souls loving each other, where two or more are gathered in His name, that is, gathered for the sake of love. Love cannot be monohypostatic; it binds individuals who love each other and fills them.
It should be noted that God can only be between individuals, connecting them, that is, He cannot be between a person and something impersonal, such as some creation, object, idea. Only a person can truly love, and only a person can truly love, because only a person is a God-like eternal substance - the receptacle of God, everything else is temporary, which means illusory, not eternal, not true. Therefore, those who put love for any objects, ideas, principles above love for other people act very rashly. In essence, such a person puts the temporary above the eternal, lies above the truth, passion above love, the devil above God. Such a person fills the vessel of his heart not with the eternal God, but with a ghostly emptiness, non-existence. Other people, other personalities, are therefore the highest value for us, because in them we find God. The Holy Fathers say that the commandment to love God is contained within the commandment to love one’s neighbor.
We have already said that from childhood a person develops stable ideas about love - spiritual constants: love for parents, for one’s spouse, for one’s children. Based on this fundamental experience of love, a person develops relationships with other people. But the devil also does not sit idly by: through temptation, he tries to force a person to love not for other people, but for ghosts: some things, ideas, principles. In essence, this is not love, but passions - a perverted semblance of love. And then who will win who? Sometimes it is very painful to observe how even among priests and monks, that is, among those people who should be examples of love for others, passion for certain things, ideas, even commandments is put above love for people. Those who love the ghostly risk being left alone for eternity. It is in the Kingdom of Heaven that they rejoice together, but in hell they suffer alone.
According to the teachings of the Church, after bodily death there is no possibility of repentance, but I would like to believe that it still exists. This hope is best expressed in the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen called “The Girl Who Stepped on Bread.”
“You, of course, heard about the girl who stepped on bread so as not to get her shoes dirty, and you also heard about how bad it was for her later. She was poor, but proud and arrogant girl. As they say, she had bad inclinations. When she was little, she loved to catch flies and tear off their wings; she liked that flies turned from flying insects into crawling ones. She also caught cockchafers and dung beetles, put them on pins and placed a green leaf or a piece of paper under their legs. The poor insect grabbed the paper with its legs, twisted and twisted, trying to free itself from the pin, and Inge laughed:
- The cockchafer is reading! Look how the leaf turns over!
Over the years she became worse rather than better; Unfortunately for her, she was very pretty, and although she got clicks, they weren’t all the kind she should have.
– A strong one needs a click for this head! - her own mother used to say. “As a child, you often trampled on my apron, I’m afraid that when you grow up, you will trample on my heart!”
And so it happened. Inge left and entered the service of noble gentlemen, in a landowner's house. The gentlemen treated her as if they were their own daughter, and in her new clothes Inge seemed to become even prettier, but her arrogance grew and grew. She lived with her owners for a whole year, and then they told her:
– You need to visit your old people, Inge! Here's some white bread, bring it to them. They will be glad to see you!
Inge dressed up in her best dress, put on new shoes, lifted her dress and carefully walked along the road, trying not to get her shoes dirty - well, there’s nothing to blame her for. But then the path turned into a swamp; I had to walk through the mud. Without hesitation, Inge threw her bread into the mud so that she could step on it and cross the puddle without getting her feet wet. But as soon as she stepped on the bread with one foot and raised the other, intending to step onto a dry place, the bread began to sink with her deeper and deeper into the ground - only black bubbles began to flow through the puddle! And the girl ended up in hell - people with the makings can get there not in a direct way, but in a roundabout way!
The front one went off into infinity; look forward and your head will spin; look back too. And it was all crowded with exhausted sinners, waiting for the doors of mercy to open. They had to wait a long time! Huge, fat, waddling spiders entwined their legs with a thousand-year-old web; she squeezed them like pincers, binding them tighter than copper chains. In addition, the souls of sinners were tormented by eternal painful anxiety. The stingy one, for example, was tormented by the fact that he left the key in the lock of his cash drawer, others... and there will be no end if we start listing the torments and torments of all sinners!
And Inge’s mother and everyone up there already knew about her sin, they knew that she stepped on the bread and fell through the ground. One shepherd saw all this from the hill and told others.
– How you upset your mother, Inge! - repeated the mother. - Yes, I didn’t expect anything else!
She also heard the words of her masters, respectable people, who treated her like a daughter: “She is a big sinner! She did not honor the gifts of the Lord, she trampled them underfoot! The doors of mercy will not open for her soon!”
She also heard the song that people composed about her, a song “about an arrogant girl who stepped on bread so as not to get her shoes dirty.” It was sung all over the country. And Inge’s soul became even rougher, even more bitter. She also heard how her story was told to children, and the little ones called her an atheist.
- She's so nasty! Now let him suffer thoroughly! - the children said. Inge heard only one bad thing about herself from her childhood lips.
But then one day, tormented by hunger and anger, she again hears her name and her story. They told it to one innocent little girl, and the little girl suddenly burst into tears about the arrogant, vain Inga.
“And will she never come back up here?” - asked the little one.
- Never! - they answered her.
– And if she asks for forgiveness, promises never to do that again?
- Yes, she doesn’t want to ask for forgiveness at all!
“Oh, how I wish she would ask for forgiveness!” - said the girl and could not console herself for a long time. “I would give up my dollhouse if only she would be allowed to return to earth!” Poor, poor Inge!
These words reached Inge’s heart, and she seemed to feel better: for the first time a living soul was found who said: “poor Inge!” and did not add a word about her sin. The little innocent girl cried and asked for her!.. Some strange feeling gripped Inge’s soul; It seemed she would have cried herself, but she couldn’t, and this was a new torment.
On earth the years flew by like an arrow, but underground everything remained the same. Inge heard her name less and less often - people on earth remembered her less and less. But one day a sigh reached her: “Inge! Inge! How you upset me! I always foresaw this!” It was Inge's mother who was dying. She sometimes heard her name from the lips of her old owners. The hostess, however, always expressed herself humbly: “Perhaps we will see you again, Inge! Nobody knows where they will end up!” But Inge knew that her venerable mistress would not end up where she ended up. Time crawled slowly, painfully slowly.
And then Inge again heard her name and saw two bright stars flashing above her: it was a pair of meek eyes that closed on the ground. Many years have passed since the little girl cried inconsolably for “poor Inge”; the little one managed to grow up, grow old, and was called back by the Lord God to himself. At the last minute, when the memories of a whole life flare up in the soul with a bright light, the dying woman remembered her bitter tears about Inge, so vividly that she involuntarily exclaimed: “Lord, maybe I, like Inge, without knowing it, trampled With your all-good gifts under your feet, perhaps my soul was infected with arrogance, and only Your mercy did not allow me to fall lower, but supported me! Don’t leave me at my last hour!”
And the eyes of the dying woman closed, but the eyes of her soul opened, and since her last thought was about Inge, she saw with her spiritual gaze what was hidden from the earthly - she saw how low Inge had fallen. At this sight, the pious soul burst into tears and appeared before the throne of the Heavenly King, crying and praying for the sinful soul as sincerely as she had cried as a child. These sobs and pleas echoed in the empty shell that contained the tormented soul, and Inge’s soul seemed to be reborn from this unexpected love for her. God's Angel cried for her! What did she do to deserve this? The tormented soul looked back at her entire life, at everything she had done, and burst into tears such as Inge had never known. Self-pity filled her: it seemed to her that the doors of mercy would remain locked for her forever! And as soon as she realized this with contrition, a ray of light penetrated into the underground abyss, stronger than the sun, which melts the snowman made in the yard by the boys, and faster than a snowflake melts on the warm lips of a child, Inge’s petrified shell melted. The little bird soared from the depths like lightning to freedom.
The winter was harsh, the waters were covered with thick ice, and difficult times had come for the birds and animals of the forest. A little bird flew over the road, looking for and finding grains in the snow furrows made by the sleigh, and crumbs of bread near the horse feeding stations; but she herself always ate only one grain, one crumb, and then called other hungry sparrows to feed. She also flew to the cities, looked around and, seeing pieces of bread crumbled from the window by a merciful hand, she also ate only one, and gave the rest to others. Over the winter, the bird collected and distributed so many bread crumbs that all of them together weighed as much as the bread that Inge stepped on so as not to get her shoes dirty. And when the last crumb was found and given away, the bird’s gray wings turned white and spread wide.
- There's a sea swallow flying! - the children said when they saw the white bird. The bird then dived into the waves, then soared towards the sun's rays and suddenly disappeared in this radiance. Nobody saw where she went.
- She flew away into the sun! - said the children."
Love is born in response to love. Love is eternal, and it eternally loves and eternally waits for each of us.
10. Cross
The most common question that people ask when trying to refute the claim that God is love is: if God is love, then why does evil exist in the world? To answer this question, you first need to correct it a little: only sin, which is an incorrect realization of freedom, an erroneous choice, can be called evil. Therefore, asking the question: why does evil exist is the same as asking the question: why does freedom exist? God gave man formal freedom, which is the freedom to choose between good and evil, but it does not exist forever. At the end of the world, the very possibility of such a choice will be abolished and, accordingly, evil or sin will be destroyed, while formal freedom will be replaced by moral freedom - freedom from sin. But since sin is the cause of sorrow and suffering, people often also include them in the concept of evil, which is erroneous: suffering is not sin. Therefore, it would be more correct to ask this question this way: if God is love, then why does He allow suffering? Moreover, both the perpetrators of sin and completely innocent people suffer, the latter even more often and more severely, and this suffering is sometimes very absurd and cruel.
To figuratively imagine the power of this question, it is necessary to remember what happened at the Nativity of Christ. This is how St. solemnly describes the idyll of Christmas. : “We, brethren, now see a great and wonderful mystery. Shepherds with joyful exclamations are messengers to the sons of men, not on the hills of the field talking with their flocks and not playing with sheep in the field, but in the city of David, Bethlehem, singing spiritual songs. In the highest, Angels sing, Archangels proclaim hymns; the heavenly Cherubim and Seraphim sing praises to the glory of God: “holy, holy, holy...” Everyone celebrates a joyful holiday together, seeing God on earth and man lifted up to heaven. Those who are lower by Divine providence are raised to the highest, those who are higher, out of God’s love for people, bow down to those who are lower, for the Most High, in His humility, “exalts the humble.” On this day of great triumph, Bethlehem becomes like the sky, instead of shining stars it receives Angels singing glory, and instead of the visible sun - the boundless and immeasurable Sun of Truth, creating all things.” What happened after a while? One of the most terrible crimes in the history of mankind is the beating of the innocent children of Bethlehem, absolutely brutal in its senselessness and cruelty. And similar cases of absurd and cruel suffering, unfortunately, occur to this day. In ancient Christianity, the reluctance to come to terms with the idea that such suffering was allowed by God was expressed in the emergence of dualistic heresies, which proclaimed evil as an independent, self-propelling force, independent of the will of God. But Christianity rejected this teaching and explains suffering as an inevitable consequence of sin allowed by God, which nevertheless serves to save a person. How can it be?
First of all, it must be said that God as love revealed himself to man precisely in suffering for him, and in very cruel suffering: death on the cross is one of the most painful executions in the history of mankind. Moreover, He Himself said that suffering for loved ones is the highest manifestation of love: “There is no greater love than if someone lays down his life for his friends” (). If we carefully consider any virtue, we will see that every manifestation of love involves some kind of sacrifice. You need to sacrifice something of your own: property, time, strength, health, life. And every sacrifice contains some kind of suffering, and the greater the sacrifice, the greater the suffering. This explains why some people hate God. If we had a God who commanded only to take, then everyone would be believers. So, suffering for loved ones is a manifestation of love.
But this is probably the only way to talk about the suffering of free and purposeful people. What to do with those sufferings that are committed involuntarily and not for the sake of someone? The patristic tradition says that any suffering cleanses sin, atones for sin, delivers from sin, etc. But if we remember that sin is the absence of love in the heart, then how can it be cleansed? Only love. Here we need to say once again what we have already said, that the more love is manifested, the more it tends to enter a person’s heart and fill it. Any sacrifice, even made involuntarily and not for the sake of someone, is accepted by God as a sacrifice of love, and He rushes into the heart of a person, as if wanting to comfort and pity the sufferer. “We are not so much looking for love as God is looking for us to become capable of accepting it and to accept it,” writes St. . No suffering is meaningless for God. The greater the suffering, the more persistently and powerfully love knocks on the door of the heart. “The deeper the sorrow, the closer God is,” say the holy fathers. And often it is under such pressure that a person opens these doors. When did the prudent thief repent? At the peak of suffering. When did the prodigal son repent? Also at the peak of suffering. At that moment, love entered their hearts, and they “came to their senses” and came to their senses.
Well, then it turns out that by allowing us to suffer, God forces us to love? Not at all. Even with severe suffering, a person is free to leave the doors of his heart closed and not let love in. In this regard, the holy fathers compare all of humanity with two thieves crucified next to the Savior: both of them suffered, but one opened his heart to God, and the other left it closed. By allowing us to suffer, God teaches us to love, in other words: by taking something away from us, God teaches us to give and sacrifice. But why such a cruel way? This is extremely important for eternity. If we here, in earthly life, do not acquire at least a minimal experience of self-sacrifice, then in eternity, where only love exists, our existence will be simply unbearable. Therefore, perhaps, physical death exists to give a person the experience of complete self-sacrifice.
But then it turns out that in eternity, where only love exists, there is also endless suffering? No. Suffering is temporary and continues as long as a person has something to give, that is, as long as a person still has something of his own that he has not yet sacrificed. When a person gives up everything he has for the sake of love, then love fills him completely and turns into a source of inexhaustible bliss. Many Christian martyrs at the height of their suffering testified to this beatitude. Therefore, it is very important to be able to sacrifice everything even now, during temporary life, so that nothing of one’s own remains inside, not given for the sake of God, so that this particle of the ghostly “one’s own”, not sacrificed for the sake of love, does not become in eternity the cause of eternal sorrow.
It was impossible to immediately create a person as loving; love still needs to be let into the heart, cultivated in it, in other words, love needs to be learned. The totality of all sorrows and suffering that God allows to man during his earthly life to teach him self-sacrifice is called the cross. This is some cumulative sacrifice that a person needs to make. Without the cross it is impossible to know love, therefore it is necessary for absolutely everyone, it was also necessary for the primordial Adam: “... whoever does not bear his cross and follow Me cannot be My disciple” ().
Evil does not exist independently, but is only the state of beings who reject God. You can often come across the opinion that evil beings will also be saved and will be rewarded in some special way by God at the Last Judgment for the fact that they created sorrows and misfortunes for the righteous, thus helping them to be saved. To this we can only say that the crucifiers can only be saved if they themselves are crucified. You can only know God (love) by carrying the cross, and there are no other ways. So, love appears on the cross and is known only through the cross, in other words, God appears on the cross and is known only through the cross. God is love, and love is the cross.
11. Good and evil
Throughout its history, humanity has been haunted by the idea that for the existence of good, the existence of evil is necessary. This idea found various expressions in many religious teachings and philosophical concepts, even to the point that good and evil were proclaimed as different manifestations of the same essence. In M. Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita,” Woland says to Matthew Levi: “Would you be so kind as to think about the question: what would your good do if evil did not exist, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it?” ? . The answer to this question is given by the Savior Himself in the Gospel of Matthew: “Therefore, just as the tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so it will be at the end of this age: the Son of Man will send His angels, and from His kingdom they will gather together all who offend and those who practice iniquity, and throw them into the furnace. fiery; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth; then the righteous will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father” (). That is, the time will come when evil will disappear, and good will feel quite good.
But there is also the idea that without knowledge of evil, knowledge of good is impossible. After all, the tree itself, from which Adam ate, was called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that is, as if it was assumed that knowledge of one without the other is impossible. Often this thought is even expressed in such a way that it is impossible to achieve holiness without first sinning, that is, “if you don’t sin, you don’t repent.” Usually, many great sinners who repented are remembered. This view cannot be considered correct if we remember that the greatest saints, for example, John the Baptist or John the Theologian, had practically no personal sins.
If we consider love to be good, and sin (denial of love) to be evil, then we can guess that good does not enter the human heart until it (the heart) is tempted by evil and rejects it from itself. It is impossible to become perfect in love without knowing and defeating the forces that hinder it. Likewise, a potter will not fill a vessel with something good until he tests its strength and impeccability. “Woe to the world from temptations, for temptations must come…” (). “Blessed is the man who endures temptation, because, having been tested, he will receive the crown of life that the Lord promised to those who love Him” () - says St. the Apostle James, as well as many holy fathers, pointed out the need for temptations as tests. Evil, tempting a person’s heart, forces him to love himself, denying the cross. So the Apostle Peter, following the teachings of the devil, persuaded the Savior to be merciful to himself and not to ascend to the cross. By an act of free will, rejecting evil from oneself, a person ascends to the cross of self-sacrifice and gives place in his heart to true love.
The entire 15th chapter of the Gospel of Luke tells us what value a repentant sinner has before God: “All the tax collectors and sinners drew near to Him to listen to Him. The Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying: He receives sinners and eats with them. But He told them the following parable: Which of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, will not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the lost one until he finds it? And having found it, he will take it on his shoulders with joy and, having come home, will call his friends and neighbors and say to them: rejoice with me: I have found my lost sheep. I tell you that there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who do not need to repent. Or what woman, having ten drachmas, if she loses one drachma, does not light a candle and sweep the room and search carefully until she finds it, and having found it, she calls her friends and neighbors and says: rejoice with me: I have found the lost drachma. So, I tell you, there is joy among the Angels of God over one sinner who repents” (). And then the Lord tells the famous parable of the prodigal son.
Many people, both Christians and non-Christians, have repeatedly asked the question: why does God love sinners more than the righteous? Why is one lost sheep more valuable than 99 non-lost ones? Why is a lost drachma more valuable than 9 unlost ones? Why in this famous parable does the father love his younger son more than his older son? After all, this is certain - he is given the best clothes and a ring, for his sake a well-fed calf is slaughtered, because of him there is joy and rejoicing. Can we say that the reason for God's love for sinners is simply that they, like the prodigal son, “were lost and are found”? Or, having been exposed to temptation and overcoming it, they acquired some very valuable experience, some very valuable knowledge?
The Venerable Father Seraphim in his “Spiritual Instructions to Monks and Laity” writes: “Before reasoning about good and evil, a person is not able to shepherd verbal sheep, but perhaps dumb ones, because without the knowledge of good and evil we cannot comprehend the actions of the evil one.” In spiritual life, the same universal principle of knowledge, formulated by Friedrich Nietzsche, operates as everywhere else: everything is known in comparison. Only by comparing one with the other can we know the value of both. If you want to know white, you need to know black. If you want to know the truth, you need to know the lie. If you want to know the light, you need to know the darkness. If you want to know good, you need to know evil. It’s scary to say: if you want to know God, you need to know the devil. We learn the value of something when we lose it. It is not for nothing that it is said: “The joy of gained salvation is available only to those who perished.” It turns out that in paradise Adam both knew God and did not know Him, because there was no alternative, there was nothing to compare with. This is the meaning of the existence of temptations and evil in general; it is necessary for the knowledge of good. And from here it clearly follows that evil is a temporary phenomenon - until good is fully known. Free will itself, which completely boils down to the freedom to choose between good and evil, presupposes that before choosing, you need to know, so to speak, taste, both.
It’s strange, if temptation is good, then one might think that evil does not exist in this world at all. After all, one cannot call something evil that serves good, just as one cannot consider a method of teaching or a teaching aid evil. What then is evil? The Holy Fathers say that good and evil are personal phenomena. To choose between good and evil, to perceive one or the other within oneself, to convey it to others - all this is characteristic only of the individual. Only a person can be good or evil, since this is a personal position - to love or not to love.
In the Savior’s famous parable about the prodigal son, few people pay attention to the fact that there is also an eldest son in it, who did not leave his father and who, upon the return of his younger brother, became angry and condemned both him and even the father himself. Why does the Savior introduce this image? To show that the younger son, who rejected his father, acquired more love for him. Having known evil and rejected it from himself with repentance, he came to know good more and became higher in love than his older brother, who gained nothing in love. So, if the knowledge of good is impossible without the knowledge of evil, then why did God warn Adam against eating from the forbidden tree? Because there is a possibility of remaining in evil and not returning. Also, probably, the father in the Gospel parable dissuaded his youngest son from leaving.
From the fact that the forbidden tree was called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it can be assumed that the primordial Adam did not know either one or the other through experience. That is, he was like an empty vessel, filled neither with love (God) nor with anti-love (the devil). This state is not available to us, so Christians are often indignant at why God did not give every person the opportunity to make an initial choice, since we are born with original sin, that is, in the power of evil. The whole point is that without being tempted by evil and without accepting the cross, that is, without learning self-sacrifice, it is impossible to make a positive choice. The idea suggests itself that the fall of our ancestors was planned. But this is not quite the right word, rather it was predictable. If Adam had not moved away from God, he would have remained in the state of the eldest son, who, although outwardly with his father, was internally far from him, not having him in his heart. It turns out that evil exists until good is known. When good is fully known, evil will be abolished and “God will be all in all” (). Evil is not an unfortunate “side effect” of freedom, but serves to test this freedom as long as this test is necessary.
12. Conclusion
The process of knowledge of God cannot continue forever. In other words, a moment will come when a person will still be taken down from the cross, hence the expression: “they don’t come down from the cross, they take it off.” The results will be summed up; in the Holy Scriptures this is called judgment. For every person, it occurs after physical death - this is the so-called private judgment, after which, however, there is still the opportunity to change something in the afterlife fate of a person. There will also be a general trial, after which nothing can be changed. It is not difficult to guess that both of these trials will be only about love.
Christians often discuss whether the unbaptized will be saved. You can again recall the words of St. Seraphim of Sarov: “Fasting, and vigil, and prayer, and almsgiving, and every good deed done for the sake of Christ are means for acquiring the Holy Spirit of God.” The same can be said about the Christian religion in general - it is a means of acquiring God in the heart. There are more saving means, there are less saving ones, there are not saving ones at all, but this does not mean that God cannot enter the heart of a person in some other way. The Apostle Peter says to Cornelius the centurion: “Truly I perceive that God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation the one who fears Him and does what is right is acceptable to Him” (). And the Apostle Paul writes: “...it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law will be justified, for when the Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what is lawful, then, not having the law, they are a law unto themselves: they show that the work of the law it is written in their hearts, as evidenced by their conscience and their thoughts, now accusing, now justifying one another” (). It seems possible that many unbaptized will be called by the Lord into the Kingdom of Heaven, and when they say to Him: “Lord, we never knew You,” He will answer: “But I know you, I was in your heart when you created good". We must remember that the Lord baptizes us not only with water, but also with the Holy Spirit. Although trying to save yourself outside the Orthodox Church is the same as going to your intended goal not along a straight well-groomed road, but making your way through forests and swamps, or it’s like sailing on a board, and not on a well-built ship.
When the holy Apostle John the Theologian was already very old, all he did was repeat to his disciples: “Brothers, love one another!” Since by that time he was the last of those who personally communicated with the Savior, the disciples somehow began to ask him: “Teacher, tell us about the Lord. What did he say? The apostle stood up and solemnly said: “The Lord said: love one another!” The disciples were offended: “Abba! We have heard this many times already. But did the Lord really say nothing more?” The apostle thought for a moment and answered: “Why? He spoke, but to do this alone is enough for salvation.”
M.: Publication of the Sretensky Monastery, 2004. Volume 5. P. 250. Bulgakov M.A. "Master and Margarita".
Seraphim of Sarov, St. “Spiritual instructions to monks and laity.”
Motovilov N.A. "Conversation of St. Seraphim on the purpose of Christian life."
The Information and Educational Department of the UOC publishes an interview with His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry to the editorial board of the Church Orthodox Newspaper.
Christian love does not imply reciprocity, but self-sacrifice
Your Beatitude, why does this happen: in our society there is a lot of talk about love and at the same time there is an acute shortage of it? What needs to be said about love in the light of the New Testament?
The commandment to love God and love one's neighbors was given to people back in the Old Testament. However, in his conversation at the Last Supper, the Lord Jesus Christ addresses His disciples with the words: I give you a new commandment, that you love one another (John 13:34). What is new about this commandment? First of all, the love of a Christian should extend not only to those who are close to us by blood or who are pleasant to us, but to everyone who needs our help and love. On the Gospel pages, Jesus Christ calls us to selfless love. And if we love as sinners love, then what gratitude is there from the Lord for this? We are called to love even our enemies, without expecting anything in return (Luke 6:35), that is, without hoping for reimbursement for our expenses.
- How does ordinary (human) love essentially differ from Christian love?
In ordinary life, we love those who we like and who love us. And Christian love does not presuppose reciprocity, but self-sacrifice. Let's take a clear example from life: a young man loves a girl, is ready to buy her flowers and tolerate her whims. But such carnal love extends only to a few people - to parents, and perhaps to one other person. And Christian love extends to everyone. It is sublime, all-encompassing love and, reaching its perfection, extends to enemies. The Lord teaches us to bless those who curse us and to pray for those who offend us.
We must subject our flesh to the laws of the spirit
- How to achieve such love? After all, it doesn’t happen that he opened his soul and loved everyone...
Of course, Christian love does not come as easily as we would like. The Lord Jesus Christ not only commands us to love one another, but, above all, by His life He shows us an example of love and helps us to acquire it. This is the novelty and strength of the New Testament: in union with Christ in the Church, we become able to accept the gift of love from God, that love that extends to everyone, including enemies. Grace is perceived by a person as his soul is cleansed: he needs to overcome himself, crush pride, and drive away all those evil thoughts that fill our soul. This is done with the help of the church sacraments of Repentance and Communion, prayers, reading the Holy Scriptures and self-encouragement. The Lord Himself said that the Kingdom of Heaven is forced (Matthew 11:12), that is, you need to force yourself and encourage yourself to observe fasting, chastity and other virtues. We must subject our flesh to the laws of the spirit. Then we will have spiritual fruits, the main of which is love. If a person does good, forgives insults, loves his neighbor with sacrificial love, then he becomes like his Creator. By doing this, a person gains peace of mind and fills his life with joy.
A truly happy person is one whose happiness does not depend on the outside world
To have joy and peace, you need to feel happy. But how can this be achieved in the current difficult conditions, when life is becoming more expensive and prices are rising?
Our happiness does not depend on the abundance of our possessions or the external situation (economic and political) in which we find ourselves. You can occupy the highest position in society and have enormous fortunes and still feel deeply unhappy. A truly happy person is one whose happiness does not depend on the outside world. Being sons of God, the Saints were happy with what God gave them, because their hearts were filled with the grace of God. Happy is the one who knows how to be content with what he has, who strives to cleanse his heart of passions, and tries to love God and all people.
You can love yourself, pleasing your selfish desires, or you can love yourself in order to gain the Kingdom of Heaven
The Lord Jesus Christ commands us to love our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27). In order to love your neighbor, you need to love yourself? What does it mean to love yourself?
It is human nature to love oneself. Nobody wishes harm to themselves. The question is the direction of our love. You can love yourself by pleasing your selfish desires, or you can love yourself in order to gain the Kingdom of Heaven. What are the joys of this world? - This is a good job, increasing your financial status, various entertainments... Of course, we all need the necessary things - a roof over our heads, clothes, daily bread. However, Christian love for oneself does not mean the desire to acquire earthly goods. A Christian sees good for himself in fulfilling God’s commandments, which bring a person closer to God and open up the possibility of acquiring God’s grace, which fills the heart with incomparable fullness and joy.
There are many difficult circumstances in our lives. We often get lost and don’t know: what to do and how to act? For example, if someone borrowed money and does not want to return it, the question arises: should they contact the police or take some other measures?
First of all, you need to put yourself in the debtor’s shoes. And see: how would we like to be treated in similar circumstances? The Lord God commands us to do to others as we want others to do to us (see: Matt. 7:12). The Lord confronts us with a choice: to behave like sinners or to be like God? In such situations, we are tested to see how capable we are of showing mercy, compassion, forgiveness, and love.
The sacrifice of Christian love cannot be abolished by anything - neither insults, nor trials, nor disappointments...
- In the 13th chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, the holy Apostle Paul sings a hymn of love: love is patient, kind,<…>does not envy... (v. 4) - and concludes his speech about love: love never ceases (v. 8). How to understand the last phrase?
The essence of Christian love is the Christian’s ability to sacrifice. If there is no sacrifice in love, it cannot be called Christian love. Love without sacrifice is a manifestation of selfishness, pride, and self-indulgence. With the phrase love never fails, the holy Apostle Paul shows us that the sacrifice of Christian love cannot be abolished by anything - neither insults, nor trials, nor disappointments...
Only the fruits of love for God and neighbor will follow a person into another world. And in all its fullness, a Christian will be able to reveal the gift of love in an eternal better life, when not only the gifts of prophecy and tongues will disappear, but faith and hope will cease. Faith will be replaced there by the sight of the Lord, and hope will come true, love alone will reign forever and ever, forever, because true love is God Himself and God is the eternal source of love.
Loading...
