Paul writes that he is carrying aid to the Christians of Jerusalem and Judea, collected in the churches of Macedonia and Achaia. And for the apostle this is not simply something done along the way, as today we sometimes deliver a package to friends or to friends of our friends when going to another city on a business or private visit. For Paul, taking the donations collected for the Jerusalem church is part of his apostolic ministry. And this attitude toward such donations reminds us once again that works of mercy for Christians are not only a matter of material or social support for those to whom it is given.

In church life there is no social service in its pure form: the Church knows only spiritual ministries. And helping those who need it is no less a spiritual ministry than preaching, mission, or apostleship. This is understandable: Christian life is not divided into “spiritual” and “worldly.” Such a thing would be possible if we were one kind of people in church, another on the street, and still some third, fourth, or fifth kind at work, among acquaintances, on vacation, and in the other places where we have to be.

Nevertheless, this is often exactly how it is, and then what are called religious duties enter our life. Among these religious duties, one of the most important for Christians is considered to be “works of mercy,” or “social service.” There is nothing surprising here. If our “spiritual” life exists separately from our “worldly” life, there must necessarily be a connection between them. “Spiritual” life penetrates the “worldly,” and at this intersection there appears what we perceive as our “religious duties.” These are the duties that may be a joy to us or a burden, but that must still be performed simply because they are duties. Having performed them, we receive the right to “spiritual” life in church, to prayer, to participation in the breaking of bread, and simply to communion with God as such. If you do not perform religious duties, do not go to church!

Of course, in practice everything is not quite so: the practice of church life has long since developed mechanisms that presuppose a certain compromise between the right to communion with God and the scope of those same religious duties. But the logic still does not change; the principle of the interconnection between “spiritual” life and “worldly” life remains exactly the same.

For Paul, however, life is not divided into “spiritual” and “worldly.” To deliver the collected donations is for him not social service, but the same act of love as his whole apostolic ministry and the whole Christian path: a path where there was no division into “spiritual” and “worldly,” and therefore no religious duties that included works of mercy. There was only the Kingdom and its life, one and indivisible.

Speaking of his apostolic ministry, Paul clearly pays special attention to both the spiritual and the material unity of the Church. It is no accident that he especially asks the Roman Christians to pray for him: for him, it is clear, it is very important that the Roman church, which he wants to visit, participate in his ministry through prayer (vv. 30-32). The spiritual unity of the Church for the apostle is evidently not an abstraction, but a completely concrete reality: in order to experience spiritual unity in a personal meeting, one must learn to experience it also when the inhabitants of the Kingdom are separated by physical space, whose overcoming in our not yet fully transformed world requires certain efforts, both spiritual and physical. If brothers are remembered only as long as they are nearby, then those who remember have not yet partaken of the Kingdom, where memory does not depend on physical distances. The proverb "out of sight, out of mind" is quite fair for the untransformed world, but it does not apply to the relationships of the Kingdom.

On the other hand, Paul evidently considers very important the financial help that Christians from other churches, made up apparently mostly of converted Gentiles, give to the Jerusalem church (vv. 25-27). Here the matter is not so much spiritual support as material, financial support. But for Paul, it is clear, such material support is also a spiritual matter. And not only because helping brothers in need is a work of love and an act of a righteous person, but also because the Kingdom includes every possible kind of interpersonal relationship, including financial ones.

The saying "friendship is friendship, but keep the tobacco separate" is, even for people living in our not yet fully transformed world, an example not of what relationships with one's neighbor should be, but of what they should not be. This is all the more true when the Kingdom is in view, for here all relationships between people are transformed, not only those that we customarily call "spiritual" and that, as people often think, should not touch the financial and, more broadly, material side at all, as though it were something "base" and "unspiritual." For the apostle, however, everything connected with relationships among people in the Kingdom has to do with spiritual life. And he rejoices in every manifestation of love, whether it is expressed in prayer or in financial support.

In the final part of the epistle, the apostle seems to justify himself before the Roman community. He travels a great deal, one might think, and could have come to Rome to meet face to face with those waiting for his pastoral word. But however pleasant it may be to associate with like-minded people and share in the life of Christian communities, his labor is dedicated to bearing witness to Christ crucified and risen among those who do not even know of the one God. The example of the apostle Paul is very important for us too. Not because no one has heard of Christ, but, on the contrary, because the example Christians give is not a very successful proclamation to the world. Because it is often awkward and embarrassing simply to pronounce one's Creed in public. It is far easier to remain within the narrow circle of those with whom one no longer has to find a common language and before whom one does not have to answer for every little thing not yet surrendered to Christ. But the apostle tells us that we must go and bear witness to what we have seen and know, answer for our lives and bear witness no matter what. Not with words, but with deeds, with an entire life given to Jesus.