Preachers are different, and they preach in different ways. This is especially true of Christianity, which is unthinkable without preaching. But Christians too, if we speak of the history of Christian preaching, have preached in different ways. And the main distinction in every age has been the distinction between preaching as telling and preaching as testimony.

Originally, for all Christian preachers, including Paul himself, preaching was precisely testimony, testimony about Christ and the Kingdom. This is not surprising, since Christianity is not a religion but life with the risen Christ in His Kingdom, and the first Christians could speak only about this. Of course, they could also talk about other things, but when asked what Christianity is, they could tell only one thing: about life with the risen Christ in His Kingdom.

Such a witness wants nothing from a person; he wants only to join him to what he himself has experienced, to make him, like himself, an inhabitant of the Kingdom by introducing him to the One who opened this Kingdom to him. So Paul, addressing the members of the Corinthian church, says that he needs nothing from them of what belongs to them; he needs them themselves, in order to make them the same inhabitants of the Kingdom that Paul himself had become by that time.

But another kind of preaching is also possible: not preaching-testimony, but preaching-telling. In the history of Christianity there was more and more of such preaching and such preachers as Christianity increasingly became a religion, acquiring the characteristic features of religion: its own ritual, doctrine, and structure.

Now preachers had the opportunity not only to testify about Christ and the Kingdom, but also to acquaint listeners with that religion, new to them, of which the preachers had begun to feel themselves adherents. Sometimes this could be interesting to the hearers, but unfortunately it often turned out that the main thing in Christianity, Christ and the Kingdom, moved into the background during such preaching.

Of course, in the early Christian age there were fewer opportunities for this kind of preacher than later, but judging by Paul's letter to the Corinthian church, they had already begun to appear: the Jewish religious tradition gave them many opportunities in this respect. Paul, as we can see, strives to set priorities so that the secondary does not obscure the main thing and does not prevent those seeking Christ from finding Him and entering the Kingdom.

Speaking about his apostleship, Paul does not mention by chance the signs of it that should have been obvious to any unbiased observer (vv. 11-12). But the Corinthian Christians, as we can see, were inclined to show far greater reverence toward those who behaved like people used to giving orders and, in Paul's words, to being "a burden" to churches (v. 13). Paul himself does not want to behave that way in the Corinthian church. And the issue here is not only that he does not consider such behavior ethically right, though that is clear to him (v. 14). The issue is also that for Paul, relationships between Christians must be built not according to the laws of our world, which is still not transformed, but according to the laws of the Kingdom. The laws of the Kingdom completely exclude every possibility of behavior characteristic of those whom Paul regards as false apostles. The laws of the Kingdom allow only one possibility: complete self-giving, even when there is no question of reciprocity (vv. 15-18).

And when the apostle speaks about his ministry, he is not justifying himself before the Corinthian Christians. He is not defending himself, as it might appear at first glance; he is defending the authenticity of his witness (v. 19). And this is already a matter of fundamental importance, because the authenticity of witness not only defines the spiritual state of the witness himself, but also becomes a criterion for assessing the spiritual life of the community. It is no accident that Paul fears that, when he comes to Corinth, he will find the local church far from what he would want it to be (vv. 20-21). He understands perfectly well that an inability to distinguish a genuine servant of Christ and witness of the Kingdom from a false one is a sign, if not of spiritual illness, then at least of serious spiritual problems. Such a thing becomes possible only when individual people, or the community as a whole, forget the experience of the Kingdom they have lived through, and that experience is obscured by something that has nothing to do with the Kingdom. Then those who have forgotten the Kingdom lose it, at best for a time, and at worst forever.

Yesterday's reading ends with a very important thought that the apostle Paul expresses repeatedly in different forms: “When I am weak, then I am strong.” He also remarks that he “takes pleasure in weaknesses.” In the Greek text we see the words “εύδοκω εν άστενείαις”—I find pleasure, I am content in weaknesses. Within the framework of God's Word, the thought is so simple and natural that it would seem there is nothing to discuss. Yet how impossible the apostle's words appear from an earthly, human point of view!

There is a wonderful parable by Saint Francis of Assisi about perfect joy, which a person finds when completely deprived of everything and rejected by everyone. Christian attempts to do good to all while demanding nothing in return are directed precisely toward acquiring this joy. For this is the path of becoming like the crucified God. Every attempt to find a worthy reward and gratitude for the good one has done is natural and understandable, but it leads far away from this joy.