When we read about the bewilderment and indignation of John the Baptist, who did not want to let Jesus be baptized in the Jordan, it becomes clear to us: John recognized Him. Participation in this baptism was supposed to testify that a person confesses his sinfulness to God, admits that he is not right; and now in the river stands the One who is right before God.

Yet Jesus still receives baptism, which means that God has another righteousness besides rightness before Himself. This is the righteousness of love, which is "fulfilled" when the righteous One decides to share life with the unrighteous, the sinless One with sinners. This may be incomprehensible and unpleasant; it may contradict our ideas about justice, but Christ enters the water together with everyone, and it turns out that the Father's beloved Son is one of us.

How do we evaluate our life before God, our spiritual condition, our relationships with the people around us? If we think that everything is all right with us, "no worse than with others," and are satisfied with what we have, then we need nothing more, and we do not need God either. There is no repentance in this, not even its beginning. Repentance begins with the realization that not everything is all right, that all our efforts do not allow us to attain a life truly worthy of a human being, that we need God and His saving grace. That is, the first movement of repentance is the rejection of ourselves as we are, a refusal to consent to our own sin, a renunciation of it. The second step of repentance is turning to God, acknowledging the necessity of His presence, bringing Him our failure, and waiting for our cleansing, healing, and filling with life from Him.

But repentance also has a third component: the fruit of which John reminds us. Our expectation of change is meaningless if we do not show our readiness to change. We show it not by a "mood," not by a word, but by deed. We must begin to live as righteously as if we had already received everything from God; then He will have freedom to give us strength to carry out this righteousness, to fill our actions with inner content, with love. This will be the saving grace with which God answers our repentance.

It is interesting to ask whether one can repent and be cleansed from sin just like that, just in case. Is this hypocrisy? Hardly: the Pharisees were deeply religious people who would scarcely have allowed themselves open deception. But what, then, provokes John's anger? Pride? The confidence of those who came that they, descendants of Abraham as they were, could not by definition be unworthy of the Kingdom? Yes, no doubt. Pride has never brought spiritual benefit to anyone. And yet the matter, it seems, is not only this.

Why would a cleansing washing, and the "baptisms" performed by John were precisely cleansing washings, be needed by someone who was confident of his own sinlessness? After all, Judaism of that era did not know such a concept as "original sin." For a Jew of the Gospel era, sin was something very concrete, and only the person who had committed such a sin was considered a sinner, not every human being by definition, as we think today. Why, then, should those who had not sinned be cleansed? As can be seen, precisely just in case. What if this strange preacher, so much like the ancient prophets, is right? What if one more cleansing is needed in order to be worthy of the coming Messiah? What if... In short, one extra washing, in any case, will do no harm.

Only spiritual life is not a religious rite; here nothing is done "just like that" or "just in case." Just as there is no "faith just in case." It exists, or it does not. No third thing is given.