NOTES for Jo1 3:23

It was observed for a long time that the main theme of John's messages is the theme of love. Of course there is nothing surprising here: because even the last conversation of the Savior during the Last Supper was also devoted to love, this love which becomes the hallmark of Christians and the hallmark of the Kingdom. It would seem, before a lot was said and written about love, including in the biblical books. Then why Jesus speaks about love, as "a new commandment"? And why the apostle repeats His words, linking this love to the personality of Jesus Christ, to Whom without trust it is impossible?

Of course if it was about this love, which was known for a long time before the coming into the world of the Savior, there would have been nothing really again in the commandment about love. But He says Himself: love each other, as I loved you. It is not surprising that the apostle connects the possibility of Christian love between people to the faith in Jesus Christ: without trust in the One, Who revealed this new love to the world, without communicating with Him, without the fact of living with Him the same life of the Kingdom, nobody of men can love like that.

And the problem here is not in the intensity or the depth of the relationship (and love in the sense, in which the authors of the biblical books understand this word, is not emotion, but especially relationship), but in its new quality. Of course love remains love also in the Kingdom, and in the not transformed world. But in the not transformed world it can be nothing big, than relationship. But here is, in the Kingdom it becomes not only relationship, but also this spiritual environment, inside which this relationship is born and develops. This kind of environment also exists in the not transformed world, but here it remains natural, psychic (because the psyche is also a part of the nature, although completely special).

But in the Kingdom, where the human nature is transformed, relationships between people can’t already exist any more in a purely natural environment, here they ask for a spiritual mediation, because the Kingdom is also penetrated by the breath of God, it is above all spiritual, and only after natural. And the love becomes this spiritual environment, inside which are build all the relationships of the Kingdom. One could call love the main substance of the Kingdom, its own nature. And the concrete forms of the existence of this nature are defined by these relationships of love, which connect the inhabitants of the Kingdom between them. It is not surprising that John calls Christians to love: because it is the same thing as to call them to live the life of the Kingdom. The only life that we can consider Christian.