The apostle Paul's words are addressed to all who, having believed in Christ and begun a new life, have discovered in themselves their former inclination to sin and fall into despondency. Paul assures us that salvation is brought to us not by our sinlessness, but by God's love. God does everything necessary for our reconciliation with Him: He does not "pay for" our righteousness, but frees us from slavery to sin.

Having received faith, if we do sin, it is no longer because of hostility toward God, but because our "peaceful" relationship with Him is incomplete. But the essence of Christian life consists precisely in developing these relationships through Christ, in the "acquisition of the Holy Spirit"; therefore "there is no way for us to give in to despondency."

Perhaps many of us, since youth, have been given, say through literature classes, a "romantic" understanding of the relation of good and evil in the world: evil is numerous, ugly, and clearly in the majority, while good is lonely, understood by no one, and suffers. And so progressive "romantic heroes" must swim against the current and challenge the opinion of a conservative, hardened, and unreasonable society. "The individual and society," "the poet and the crowd" - whatever one calls this problem, it really does look like the truth. Besides the fact that this picture may be familiar to us from personal experience, we see a similar situation in the Gospel: Christ Himself was persecuted and even crucified, and He sends His disciples "as lambs among wolves" (Luke 10:3).

Yes, this is so. But is this all the Gospel says? Of course not. We confess Christ not only crucified, but also risen. This is precisely the final step that the general cultural "concept" lacks, and it cannot take it because such possibilities are simply not built into it. But only the Lord is able to bring everything to the victory of good through inevitable death and resurrection. "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it," the apostle John testifies (John 1:5), and this is the pure truth.

The "mathematics" of good is different, not like that of sin: it wins not by quantity, but by quality. And this quality is enough for everyone (see Rom 5:15), just as God promised us.

Today's reading is entirely devoted to the theme of the Covenant. Modern readers usually first notice the natural phenomena that accompanied the theophany at Sinai on the day the Covenant was made (vv. 9, 17-19). Behind these biblical testimonies it is not hard to see historical reality: traces of ancient volcanic activity have been found at Sinai, and ancient people everywhere associated natural phenomena such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions with a manifestation of the presence or action of higher powers.

Yet something else is more important here: the essence and meaning of the Covenant of which God speaks to Moses (vv. 4-6). The words about a "kingdom of priests" are not always clear to modern readers, but the New Testament context, where Christians and the Church as a whole are usually called "saints," clarifies much here. Still, it would be more precise in this case to speak not of holiness in the modern sense of the word, which often suggests perfection and even sinlessness, but of holiness in its traditional biblical meaning, that is, of being consecrated, of the new quality acquired by the life of a person who has truly come into contact with that presence of God which accompanied the Jewish people throughout their historical path and then appeared so vividly in the Church of Christ.

Contact with it really changes a person. After such an encounter he becomes different, acquiring the new quality conveyed by the biblical idea of being "consecrated" or "holy." And this new quality acquired by a person allows him to have a deeper relationship with God. Without it one cannot enter the Kingdom of God, which is why the Church, as part of the Kingdom, as the Body of Christ, contains the fullness of holiness. One can say that, to a certain degree, human nature itself changes, becoming better suited to communion with God.

Of course, such changes are not irreversible; more than that, they depend entirely on a person's relationship with God, being an inseparable part of that relationship, and if the relationship is broken, this new quality will also disappear. But God wants His relationship with His people to be as stable and strong as possible, to be what the Covenant presupposes, and He is ready to do everything to attain this goal. Yet attaining it depends not only on God, but also on the human person.