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

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

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

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

The apostle continues his reflections on life according to the Spirit and life according to the flesh, which he had already begun in the previous chapter. If earlier he only identified the problem of this monstrous rupture between what the divine nature in a person wants and what his bodily nature does, here he is already speaking about how it can be overcome.

Paul believes that the flesh is sinful in its very essence; such is the law of the created order. Therefore only a true miracle can break the opposition within a person between his sinful nature and his divine nature. And the life of God in those who open their hearts to Him becomes such a miracle. If this happens, everything changes. "But if Christ is in us, the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is alive because of righteousness."

What is that Kingdom which Jesus brought into the world? In brief, it is a space filled with the breath of God. The same breath that would later be called the Spirit, would be considered the third hypostasis of the Holy Trinity, and about which many theological treatises would be written.

And this breath, meanwhile, has its own history, going back to pre-Christian times: for the prophets were the first to speak of the breath of God, and they did not theologize, but simply sensed this breath not only in their heart, but in their whole being. But that was still only prehistory.

The real history begins on the day of Pentecost, when the breath of God bursts into the world, laying the beginning of that Kingdom whose unfolding fullness will become the meaning of all humanity's subsequent existence. And every Christian is to take a direct and immediate part in this. Paul does not say by accident that it is God who, by His breath, raises Jesus Himself from the dead. Death has no place only in the Kingdom; in the fallen world it is all-powerful, so that even the Messiah cannot escape its power. He is not subject to sin; death is not inevitable for Him. But if He is killed, then in the fallen world He dies just like any human being.

Such is the law of the fallen world that lies in evil: in it, death always has priority over life. But in the Kingdom everything is the opposite; here life has priority. In the Kingdom no one can be killed, and no one can die, unless he deliberately puts himself to death by giving sin power over himself, as happened with Ananias and Sapphira. It is no surprise that, dead in the fallen world, Jesus turns out to be alive in the Kingdom.

The Kingdom now enters the world, and the path of Christ's followers repeats His own: those who have entered the Kingdom die only in this world, and only insofar as it has not yet been transfigured. There are no dead in the Kingdom; here all are alive who have ever sought and awaited it, for in the Kingdom there is no past, present, and future, at least not as we know them in the world that has not yet been transfigured.

And at the end of time, when the Kingdom is revealed in all its fullness, everyone who has ever lived on earth will face a choice: the former order of things is passing away; where should one go next? This is what the day of the last Judgment will be. The day when life, finally, becomes life to the end and in fullness, while death, alas, becomes full and final death.