In today's reading, the apostle Paul offers us a kind of verbal icon. It may be compared with Isaiah's vision in the Temple in Jerusalem or with the images of the Apocalypse. This icon reveals the God to Whom we offer thanksgiving. Thanksgiving makes us not merely spectators but participants in what is depicted—such is the law of spiritual life.

The apostle then speaks of God in action, of the One Who said of Himself: “I brought you out of Egypt with a strong hand and an outstretched arm.” His action is limited by no conditions; He always leads us in triumph in Christ. But here is the wonder: what kind of triumph is meant? Triumph in Christ turns out to be God's spreading the fragrance of the knowledge of Himself, like the blowing of a gentle breeze revealed to the prophet Elijah.

“The fragrance of the knowledge of God” is a somewhat refined expression, for the Greek original simply says “the smell of the knowledge of Him.” Who does not remember the children's tales in which it was said that “it smells of Rus'”? A smell is a perceptible sign of the presence of something invisible. God is invisible, but the people come to know Him, and this wafts in the air, making His presence perceptible.

Continuing the theme of witness, Paul says of the word of God that for some it proves life-giving, and for others deadly (v. 16). These words recall others from the letter to the Romans, where the apostle says the same thing about the Torah, which, according to Paul's testimony, both gives life and kills at the same time (Rom. 7:7-13). There is nothing surprising here: Paul looks at the Torah not simply as a law once given by God and then formally carried out, but as the living word of God, which acts on the soul and heart of a person every time that person wants to follow the law given by God by keeping the commandments. Understood this way, the Torah proves inseparable from the word of God and from the Kingdom. That is why it is impossible to ignore it, just as it is impossible to ignore God's revelation and the Kingdom itself: both require self-definition from a person, a clear and unambiguous "yes" or "no," becoming, depending on the answer given, either a source of life or the beginning of a path leading to death.

But to bear witness in such a way that the reality of God's word and the reality of the Kingdom become obvious to those around is possible only when the witness himself preaches "from God, before God, in Christ" (v. 17). What he says must be revealed by God, and revealed not to someone else from whom the witness might have heard what he testifies about, but experienced by him himself as his own revelation. Testimony itself is possible only in the presence of God, which confirms the witness's words, assuring those who are ready to hear God but for whom the arguments of human wisdom alone are no longer enough. And finally, the witness must live one life with the risen Christ, the life of that Kingdom about which and from which he bears witness. After all, the main task of Christ's witness is to let those who listen to him feel what the Kingdom is and what God's breath is. And if he succeeds in this, the witness can consider his task fulfilled. Everything further depends on the choice each person makes for himself.