It is generally accepted that from the devil, who came to “...steal, kill and destroy...” is the evil that is inherent in us in the course of our lives, just like good. So the Lord came to save us from blindness to evil, all its colors and shades. and also to see good and distinguish one from another.
Suppose you have learned to distinguish good from evil. Have you found spiritual comfort? No! Why? There is a desire for good in me, but I don’t find it to do it (Paul) We are infected with evil from the first man. His sin has irreversibly deformed us. So what? And the fact that there is no way to escape on your own. What to save yourself from and why? From judgment for original (and further) sin for eternity. For someone who believes in evolution, this doesn't sound right. 2 meters below the ground and the edge. For a believer in Creation and Eternal Life it is somewhat different. You can find eternity by recognizing the only path that the Creator offers you.
Scripture exists to distinguish good from evil. knowledge, understanding and experience is a process. in the process, periods of peace, spiritual comfort, joy appear... replaced by new doubts, dissatisfaction, etc. and so some have 40 years of humility, some have it differently, and some will die with their bones... in general, by grace through faith ...
these periods appear without Scripture. For those who recognize the Creation of the world, Scripture offers to streamline the previously damaged relationship between the Creation and the Creator, recognizing the only way for this: a substitutionary sacrifice for our innate sin and the sin we developed during life. This is exactly what the Savior did, guaranteeing us a chance at life after death. He who believes in Him who sent Me does not come to judgment...
As far as I understand the Scriptures, it saves us from eternal death by giving us eternal life, because the God of the Bible is the God of the living.
We lost access to eternal life in the person of Adam and Eve, who disobeyed God and chose to gain knowledge of everything bypassing God and autonomy from Him.
Jesus Christ, being the second Adam, demonstrated obedience and receiving knowledge from God, and not bypassing Him, as well as dependence on Him, even undergoing death on the Cross and resurrection by the Holy Spirit.
Just as Adam made our death possible, so Jesus makes our life possible.
As a result, by believing in what Jesus did for every person, people receive salvation from death, from loneliness in eternity.
Jesus saved people from themselves. Before the coming of Christ, the human race served the “golden calf.” The god of the people was money and power. The Old Testament describes how to conquer the world through interest. Such an ideology led (and today leads) to the self-destruction of humanity. Any financial crisis inevitably gives rise to war. The entire history of mankind is continuous wars for money and power. Jesus gave a new Testament - “Do not lay up for yourselves earthly treasures.” Private property is the cause of discord. There will be no private property - there will be no fratricide. An example is the USSR, where there was no private property and people lived “harmoniously.”
Jesus was given to bring reason to people who had ceased to understand obvious things:
1. love as the main component of development
2. mutual support and spiritual enrichment
3. belief in the ideals of goodness and justice
4. disobedience to darkness and the fight against any manifestations of it
5. I sin not condemnation. and help those. who is enslaved by darkness
Jesus is a call to the planet and a form of belief in the miracle that higher powers are on the side of light
I, the servant of God Dmitry Mikhailovich Vasiliev, in the 30th minute of driving the infidel self-propelled cart Mazda 323, being possessed by the demon of arrogance, fell into the sin of violating the commandments of road movement. At the crossroads of the roads of Enlightenment and Engels (cursed be this Antichrist!), I, neglecting the fact that the red light was showing at the signal, when turning at my right hand, did not allow a pedestrian to pass - a youth with God's creature, the dog Tuzik. I kindly ask you to note that Tuzik was not tightly lashed with a neck rope. Tuzik, possessed by righteous anger at my infidel cart, began barking and threw himself under my wheels. Overwhelmed by pity for every creature of God, I applied the emergency brake.
At that moment, the girl on the cart of the godless Hyundai Getz was making a maneuver to change lanes behind me, as a result, due to my emergency braking, she hit my cart from behind (diagram and list of damages are attached)
From the impact, my cart moved forward and completely crushed Tuzik. As a result of the injuries received, God's creature Tuzik died on the spot.
Recognizing the sin of violating clauses 1.3 and 1.5 of the Commandments, I am ready to suffer penance and donate a white bull to the district temple of the Road Warriors.
I do not admit myself guilty of damaging the carts, since the girl did not keep the distance given to us by law from above, and in general she is an unreasonable woman, the cause of Adam’s fall from grace.
Another and very significant problem of the Christian religion, its orthodoxy, is the bewilderment that naturally arises in a person when he hears from a priest or reads in any book revered by Christians the words Christ the Savior, Jesus, innocent and blameless, suffered for our sins, or the sins of men, or sins of the world, or freed us from sins, or cleansed us or cleansed the whole world...
Few people doubt that the historical Jesus Christ led a pure life and was a man free from sins, as we usually understand them (although there are such people, but this is not the place to talk about their hypotheses in this chapter). The behavior of Jesus himself can most likely be called exemplary, and for two thousand years it has been such an example for many Christians and non-Christians who have heard about Jesus. It was an often unattainable standard that many saints struggled to imitate. However, who did Jesus save? Even his closest disciples were not saved from the mistake of betraying their Teacher during his arrest and before the crucifixion. Judas sinfully coveted benefits, political and economic, and simply handed over the Savior to representatives of traditional orthodoxy. Peter, out of human fear and weakness, denied the Savior three times. The other apostles fled, hid, did not even dare to be present at His execution, and later did not believe Mary, who told them about the real resurrection of the Teacher, which he had predicted to all of them in advance. Doesn’t it mean that even then the Savior did not save them (the people closest to Him!) from sin, i.e. human weaknesses, mistakes and even crimes? And this is even when the Savior accepted the suffering of insults, the arrest itself, the direct betrayal of Judas, beating and mockery during interrogation... And if they tell us that the very suffering on the cross saved the apostles from their sins, then what about their unbelief in the resurrection and after the crucifixion, with their disagreements and strife even years after? What to do with the countless schisms in the Church of Christ? Sin is erroneous(untrue) action, be it a thought, word or deed. Is it not obvious that neither before, nor during, nor after the execution, Jesus did not protect even his closest followers from at least some of these mistakes? No less can be said about the subsequent millions of sins of all other followers of this teaching over the centuries. Is it not obvious that the very fact of their proclamation of their faith in Jesus and his teachings, of loyalty to both, did not save them from mistakes, sometimes the most disgusting and shameful? What does the word mean then? savior? What is its content? How does this relate to the spatio-temporal life of man, which is always emphasized by the teachers of this orthodoxy? Is there even a concept of sin outside of this space-time sphere, in which it is hardly even possible to think of any changes, and therefore definitions (like sin, righteousness...)? From what and from whom is He saved? What and to what extent did you prevent it? Do priests understand what they are saying? Does this doctrine carry Savior, suffered for human sins, And Who redeemed them, any semantic meaning? If yes, which one?
Let's ask: Maybe they mean saving humanity from suffering - after all, during his lifetime Jesus healed various diseases of many (but not all people), etc.? However, do not His mother and disciples suffer when He suffers undeserved torment? Don’t we all feel compassion when we read and hear about those horrors and injustices? Many Christians still cry when they remember that story. Don’t we, almost every day, have a lot of pain, fears, worries, and sometimes even severe torment throughout our entire life from birth to death. For many unfortunate people, the torment of their lives is comparable to that of the cross, but they often last longer. Many after Jesus Christ slowly die from terrible diseases, many are tortured and tormented by other people, often declaring themselves Christians, many are brutally killed, many are insulted and tried to deprive of honor. Isn’t it obvious that Jesus did not save humanity from suffering throughout the centuries? From what and who did he save people? Savior ?
Maybe the priests are referring to the future promised salvation of some after end of the world? If so, then they can only testify to the promise, but not to its implementation. And we know that there is often a long distance from word to deed. Moreover, as they say, not all will be saved, but some: sinners will burn with eternal fire etc. And since we saw that Jesus did not free many, if not all, Christians from sin, i.e. they continue to sin throughout their lives, throughout the entire period after the crucifixion of Jesus, then the conclusion-question arises: How many will be saved even after the Last Judgment? What then is the meaning of the term Savior of the whole world? Savior of humanity? Jesus did not save us from many sins, should sinners pay for their sins? Maybe Christians hope that Jesus will again forgive them for their ongoing mistakes, redeeming them again and again in the future with his new sufferings? Maybe they pray about this and about these sufferings of their beloved God, whom they say they serve, and therefore serve His suffering? But what then is the meaning of the statement that sinners will suffer and the righteous will bliss? And who then will be called righteous, is it not the one who sins and prays for Jesus to forgive his sins, i.e. did you suffer for him again and again? Because whoever does not pray to Jesus is usually already automatically recognized by them as a sinner and doomed, because only through Jesus (according to them) can one be saved, i.e. billions of other people who believed in their own way, even if they led a very decent life, without worshiping Jesus they will all fall into hyena - after all, only He (Jesus the person) exists door, those who follow will be saved.
I have always wondered how Christians imagine this door in the personal Jesus Christ. Where in this person do they see a passage into which they are going to rush, throwing themselves away from infidels who do not recognize the personality of Jesus as the only savior, but live, even often without knowing it, according to the word of Jesus, i.e. in love and truth, in a moral attitude towards one’s neighbor and in honoring God, but only through one’s own system of symbols? Indeed, in the minds of orthodox Christians, to honor Jehovah by calling Him something else, for example X, means creating an idol for yourself, being a damned pagan, etc., etc. All those “cursed” God-worshipers are certainly condemned by Christian priests (even before God’s Judgment) to hyena. They are usually very confident in their judgment, and consider phrases like: Christ and the Church are One, (almost said the people and the party are united. Sorry, it’s very similar!) And here the Savior obviously did not save them either from pride, or from lack of compassion, or from the inability to understand unity behind the mask of plurality, or from violating His own commandment: Don't judge! What are they from? saved Savior?
Probably almost everyone in Russia has seen the Trinity icon by Andrei Rublev. In the form of three angels, he depicted God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. On this icon, three Angels humbly bowed their heads before each other as a sign of agreement, and the Angel located in the center does not symbolize God the Father, as one might think, but namely God the Son, Christ. The other two Angels, with their figures, seem to form the edges of a bowl, inside which is God the Son (Eucharistic bowl). These three Angels are sitting around a figurative table, on which a cup is actually depicted - it was this cup of suffering that the Son of God had to drink.
In creating our world, God performed His acts of creation in a commanding form. The first chapter of the Bible says this: “And God said, Let there be light. And there was light... Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water... And it was so.” And so on. But only in relation to man does this commanding tone disappear: “And God said: Let us make man in Our image and in Our likeness...” Not “let it be,” but “let us create,” as if the Persons of the Most Holy Trinity were consulting with each other. Does God the Son agree to be born on earth under the guise of a man, suffer, and be crucified on the cross for the salvation of all mankind? - this was the main subject of the council: the Church calls this biblical episode “the eternal council of the Most Holy Trinity,” and it was this moment that Andrei Rublev wanted to display on the icon. The angels in the icon bow their heads to each other as a sign of agreement. In a word, the Lord made the decision to save man even before the beginning of his creation. God thereby took upon Himself all responsibility for the freedom given to man. The Lord says: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Christ more than once told his disciples, the apostles, that in Jerusalem He would be crucified, die and rise again on the third day. “This is why the Father loves Me,” said Jesus, “because I lay down My life in order to take it up again. No one takes it away from Me, but I myself give it: I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again” (John 10.17-18). When the Apostle Peter took out his sword to intercede for Christ and prevent Him from being arrested, the Lord said: “Put your sword in its sheath, shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given Me?” (John 18:11).
It is known that Christ, after dying on the cross, shared the fate of all mankind and with His soul descended into hell (Eph.4:9), (1 Pt.3:19), (1 Pt.4:6), (Matt.12:40 ): He brought Adam and Eve out of there and all people capable of receiving spiritual healing, gave us the opportunity to unite with God and go to heaven after life on earth. At Easter we sing: “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death through death (i.e., by His death, Christ destroyed death), and to those in the tombs (the dead) He gave life (gave life).” The entire week after Easter, the “royal doors” in the temple altar are not closed, which symbolizes the open doors of heaven for humanity.
Nevertheless, many important questions remain. Why did God need to be born on earth in the form of a man, suffer so much, endure bullying from people and finally be crucified with such a terrible execution? What's behind all this? Was it really impossible to save humanity in another way? Is it possible to forgive sinful people without these sacrifices and sufferings of Christ? To whom and for what is this sacrifice? Let's try to think in order.
First, it is necessary to find out what exactly was united in Christ at His birth: the body of man and the soul of God? To answer this question we need to digress a little and talk about how each of us works. According to the Fathers of the Church, man is three-component: he consists of body, soul and spirit. A person’s consciousness, his reason, love, and conscience are concentrated in the spirit. The Apostle Paul writes: “For what man knows the things that are in a man, except the spirit of man that dwelleth in him?” (1 Cor.2:11). Reason, love and conscience together constitute the mind of a person, his wisdom, his likeness to God. Spirit is the core of the human personality, in which the main component is the ability to love. At the same time, one must not confuse the ability to love and the ability to fall in love, the desire for knowledge and intelligence, and also confuse the power of spirit and willpower. For example, an athlete needs willpower to train hard, but being a strong-willed athlete, he may turn out to be a coward in the face of death. To consciously sacrifice your life for the sake of another, you need the strength of spirit - this is the power of love. It reveals a person’s personality more fully.
We understand the world around us with the help of the mind and senses (vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch), i.e. We perceive the world through the spirit, in which the mind is concentrated, and through the body, but the final addressee, the “recipient” of emotional and sensory information is our soul. The mind and sense organs transmit this information, as it were, in the form of impulses to the soul. The soul is the concentration of feelings. Even any problem in mathematics can be solved with passion in the soul, or with obvious boredom. Sometimes we are faced with some unexpected situation for us, we do not yet have time to figure out anything, but immediately we experience a storm of internal emotions, sensations and feelings - this is how the soul reacts, sometimes working faster than the mind, receiving impulses through the senses. It is impossible to describe any color using the logic of reason: try, for example, to explain what the color blue is to someone who has never seen it - to someone blind from birth. It is impossible to justify why, for example, you like green more, while another person likes red or pink; why one person likes one kind of music and another likes another; and why men have quite different ideas about female beauty. It is no coincidence that they say: “everyone chooses what they like.”
The soul contains our desires, feelings, emotions, will, desire for beauty, peace, prosperity, knowledge of the world around us, creative abilities, the ability to empathize, fall in love, attachment to someone or something, etc. The soul has its own character - these are the properties of the soul, innate and acquired: courage and cowardice, compliance or stubbornness, sentimentality or coldness, cheerfulness or gloominess, rudeness or gentleness, silence or talkativeness, kindness or cruelty, etc.
The soul has a will - this is the spiritual strength of a person, or the power of the soul. The will is developed in people many times more than the strength of spirit. A person needs will for physical survival, primarily for work and study, and strength of spirit is necessary so that a person always remains a person according to God’s calling: in any situation to remain honest, faithful, kind, in order to be able to overcome any temptation, any temptation.
The soul has its own preferences, some of which often turn into sinful passions - both of them can be inherited along with individual properties of the soul.
The soul has memory, not intellectual, but emotional-sensual. She remembers what objects around her look like, how colors differ, or our feelings, such as joy and sadness. Animals also have a soul, only with a significantly smaller set of properties; their properties are more simplified; it does not have a spirit and dies along with the body. The human soul is controlled by its spirit, and the soul of animals is controlled by the system of instincts placed in them by the Creator.
After the Fall, it was the soul, not the spirit of man, that became sick. What exactly? - God-detachment. The main components of the soul are desires and will (in addition to feelings). Adam violated the commandment, thereby his desires and will came into conflict with the desire and will of God: there was a break between the human soul and the Divine nature. Let us recall once again the words of Gregory Palamas: “God is the nature of everything that exists, and everything exists only insofar as it participates in God.” The human soul has severed the invisible connection with its Creator. Having lost unity with God, man lost the main Source of life: this inevitably led to the fact that his soul began to blindly seek the source of life in itself. But not receiving what she deserves, she grieves, suffers and rushes about, in a word, she is in a sick state. All her properties became distorted and acquired a selfish character. God is the source not only of life, but also of happiness and all good things. Having lost it, the human soul constantly demands something and cannot be satisfied with anything for a long time, which is why it is “capricious” and suffers even more from itself. The soul is, first of all, life, and this life has become poisoned. Without dying itself, it gives birth to death.
The core of the human personality, the human spirit, is not sick in itself, but it is heavily dependent on its sick soul and unhealthy body. Our mind, alas, is rarely dispassionate: a significant part of our conscious actions, decisions made, words spoken are committed under the influence of the sinful passions of the soul. How often we have to regret such episodes in our lives! “Everyone has the right to their opinion” sounds very democratic and fashionable today. We have the right, but it is important to remember: all our misconceptions on any issue are generated by a mixture of personal sinful passions and sometimes dense ignorance.
Conscience, the second component of the human spirit after reason, is like an “independent expert” (almost), giving assessments to everything that happens in a person’s life. Conscience is a clear “gift of God” in a person, capable of convicting him, despite the passions raging in the soul. If a person consciously devotes his life to the daily satisfaction of his whims, then his conscience, figuratively speaking, becomes as if crushed by a large stone: it seems to be there, but its voice is barely audible, and sometimes not at all. This “stone,” or better yet, “a pile of stones,” can be sorted out by first carefully reading the Gospel, where the main value is the preaching of Christ. If conscience is likened to a stream, then it must be added that this work will only dismantle the upper part of the “dam”; its pitfalls that interfere with the free flow of conscience are sinful passions.
The central essence of a person, or the main content of his personality, is the third component of the spirit - the ability to love. Reason and conscience seem to retreat into the shadows when the light of pure love burns at the heart of aspirations and actions. Love gives birth to wisdom, not logic and knowledge - they are only its “companions”. God is Love, and man is created “in the image and likeness” of God, and therefore the main thing in the human personality is the ability to love. After all, it is love that makes a person truly happy, it is love that makes a person perfect. The inner state of God is a state of love, and we can become like Him in this very way. “By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you have love one another,” says Christ (John 13:35).
Getting acquainted with the works of the Fathers of the Church, with their holiness of life and the lessons of their internal spiritual struggle, we can conclude that the human spirit itself remains healthy, but the soul is very sick. If the spirit were equally sick with the soul, then people would cease to be people, but would become demons, for whom repentance and correction are impossible: there would be no one in man to fight. The body resists the disease while the main part of it is not yet affected, and inside a person: there is a struggle where there is someone to fight. The Apostle Paul writes: “If Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is alive because of righteousness” (Rom. 8:10). The spirit easily becomes the slave of a sick and passionate soul, but the spirit is also capable of becoming, with God’s help, the “master” of its poor soul. The same apostle Paul says: “Walk in the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh: they oppose one another” (Gal. 5:16-17). The word “flesh” also means, of course, a passionate soul, which the apostle writes about further. The Holy Scripture calls those who live only to please their own whims “people of the soul, having no spirit” (Jude 1:19), (1 Cor. 2:14-15), i.e. The spirit of such people seems to be asleep. “If we live by the Spirit, we must also walk by the Spirit” (Gal. 5:25).
It was impossible even for the great holy ascetics to correct our damaged human nature, in other words, only God could heal the sick soul of man. The founders of Islam or Buddhism can theoretically be replaced by any other person, but Christ cannot be replaced by either John the Baptist or the Apostle Paul, because Not one person can heal himself, much less become a Savior for all humanity. “God appeared in the flesh, justified Himself in the Spirit, showed Himself to the angels, preached among the nations, was accepted by faith in the world, was exalted in the word” - it is said about Christ in the Holy Scriptures (1 Tim. 3:16).
So, what exactly was united in Christ? What did He save us from? According to the Fathers of the Church, in the Person of Christ the Son of God (God the Son) united His spirit with the damaged human soul and body. Since the state of a person’s spirit depends practically only on himself, it was therefore necessary for Christ to heal the human soul, and with it the body. The soul of Christ was, of course, sinless, i.e. deprived of personal sins, but she remained not yet healed. Jesus inherited a damaged soul from Adam, but was delivered from the sins of his birth, i.e. from passions transmitted by inheritance because he was born from the holy virgin Mary - the Mother of God, and without the participation of a man - from the Holy Spirit. A damaged soul, in other words, a sick one, also affects the body: Christ was mortal, passionate (subject to suffering), perishable (could grow old).
It is known from the Gospel that the devil tempted Christ more than once, and not only in the desert. The forces of evil cannot tempt God, God is perfect. Christ is another matter: He is not only God, but the God-man. You can only tempt someone who is imperfect, someone who is vulnerable. Realizing this, the devil approached Christ after His forty-day fast in the desert, when the Savior was just beginning His ministry. Imagine: a man has not eaten anything for 40 days, exhausted by hunger, having the opportunity to create any miracle! The devil reminds Christ of this: “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.” Like, what does it cost you? You’re hungry, and you have such opportunities! There is no doubt that at that moment an invisible struggle really took place within Christ: His Divine spirit overcomes sick human nature, and despite the strong temptation, rejects the offer of the devil. The Lord understood that turning stones into bread is not a sin, but if He is carried away by miracles for personal gain, He will not be able to become an example for other people. And most importantly, in this case, the sick soul would put the Divine principle in Christ at its service: it would not be the Divine spirit that would win, but the human soul and flesh.
The devil makes a second attempt: he takes and carries Christ to crowded Jerusalem, and places Him on the wing of the temple. The Tempter tells Him: “If You are the Son of God, throw yourself down, because the Angels will not allow You to be broken and will carry You in their arms.” The human soul does not want sorrows, hard work, with which the future activity of Christ was inevitably connected. The soul unconsciously seeks an easy path for itself, and it was precisely this path that the devil suggested to Jesus: they say, jump from a high temple and you will not harm yourself, and the crowd greedy for miracles standing below will be amazed!
Indeed, Christ was later asked more than once to show something special from miracles in order to prove to everyone that He was in fact the Son of God. “Show us a sign,” asked His compatriots from Nazareth, where He grew up; the Pharisees, who were jealous of the young prophet, asked for it; finally, the crowd demanded it when Christ was crucified: “Come down from the cross and we will believe in You!” The Lord rejected all these proposals, He did not jump from the temple, realizing that it is easy to make people his fans, amazing them with miracles, but internally, spiritually, they will remain slaves of their vices and delusions. You can become a real Christian not through seeing miracles, but by falling in love with the amazing wisdom of the Truth that is revealed in the sermons of Christ.
The third temptation had the same meaning, only with even greater power of temptation: the devil invited Christ to become the king of a huge empire, to become an earthly ruler. Like, imagine what opportunities will open up for you!
The Lord did not wish to be born or become a great emperor for the same reason that He rejected the second temptation of the devil. The crowd is greedy for miracles, and the crowd loves “those in power,” especially when the power is generous and strong, but the crowd remains a crowd. For a weak human soul, this is a huge temptation - to become a glorified king (as Adam was offered to become god, but without God), and here the Divine spirit in Christ again humbles His soul, healing it.
The Gospel says that after this “the devil departed from Him for a time” (Luke 4:13), i.e. This was not the last temptation in the Savior’s earthly life. These events were not accidental, but necessary for the healing of human nature. The Holy Scriptures indicate that Jesus “was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil” (Matthew 4:1). In other words, raised by God the Holy Spirit “for temptation,” i.e. this was necessary for the God-man. Almost the entire earthly life of Christ is a process of healing of the human soul by God and the main episode of this process, of course, is suffering and death on the cross.
All the last and most difficult sufferings of the Savior are an even greater example of the victorious struggle of the Spirit over the temptations of the human soul. Jesus, being in the Garden of Gethsemane with his disciples, knowing that that night He would be arrested and taken away for mockery and execution, “began to grieve and yearn” (Matthew 26:37). “My soul is mortally sorrowful,” says the Lord at these moments to His disciples (These words are repeated by the evangelists Matthew and Mark). On this night, during prayer to God the Father, Christ says: “Father! ...carry this cup past me! However, not My will, but Yours be done.” “And being in agony, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood.” “An angel appeared to Him from heaven and strengthened Him,” Evangelist Luke provides details. “Being in agony...” (Luke 22:44), “began to be horrified and anguished...” (Mark 14.33) - Holy Scripture emphasizes that in Christ there was a difficult struggle between His spirit and the damaged human nature.
Our soul, feeling the approaching death of the body, begins to grieve and suffer, bringing its spirit into confusion, even to the point of horror, because for a person, death or the expectation of death, especially a painful death, is not a natural state. The temptation is that Jesus is clearly aware of His ability to avoid the terrible execution. During the arrest, the Apostle Peter takes out his sword, but the Lord says to Him: “Return your sword to its place...or do you think that I cannot now ask My Father, and He will present Me with more than twelve legions of Angels?” (Matthew 26:52). Before this, Christ had already said that “no one takes life from Him, but He Himself gives it” (John 10:17-18).
If Christ were only a perfect God, or in other words, a Person perfect in all respects, then He could not be a real example for us: He is God, and we are sinful and weak people. The Lord showed us an example of a real struggle with oneself, a struggle that should take place in every person: the struggle of the spirit with the temptations of the soul, which is the essence of spiritual life. “You are a temptation to me...” - the Savior answers Peter to his offer to avoid execution on the cross (Matthew 16:23). “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,” says the Lord to his disciples (Matthew 26:41), (Mark 14:38). “My soul is now indignant, and what should I say? Father! Deliver Me from this hour! But for this hour I have come,” says the Lord about his suffering on the cross (John 12:25-27).
So, from the words of the Holy Scripture and from the experience of human life, it is obvious that for all people, “the flesh is weak,” the “soul grieves,” suffers along with the body, and only the “spirit is willing” and is in a state of “struggle,” i.e. . struggle, “for the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh: they oppose each other” (Gal. 5:17). Saint Irenaeus of Lyons writes: “Man consists of three: flesh, soul and spirit, and in which one (spirit) saves and forms.”
If the human soul lost its unity with God after the Fall, then the spirit of man was not in this unity even before the Fall, but was only called to it. Adam had unity with the Creator only by his nature (physiology), but he had only to acquire spiritual unity with God, and with it the traits of perfection.
Adam fell away from God, and with him all of humanity, and today we see only the dark side of this, considering it some kind of tragic misunderstanding of the first man and a catastrophe for all people. However, there is also a great benefit for humanity, which constitutes the great Providence of God: the human spirit, being constantly “in struggle,” has more opportunities for developing the ability to love God and people than Adam before the Fall, and therefore more opportunities for spiritual unity with God, which will finally take place after the earthly life of people. The Fathers of the Church said that “if there were no demons, then there would be no saints.” By the word “demons” they meant not only and not so much the forces of evil, but primarily the temptations that torment our soul. Demons are only external stimuli, as it were. God allows (allows) them to tempt people, because through temptation a person’s self-knowledge occurs, without which neither repentance, nor humility, nor spiritual growth is possible. The Apostle James writes: “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you fall into various temptations...that you may be completely perfect” (James 1:2-4). Temptations (temptations) easily lead to sin, but temptations are also the best conditions for the healing of a person and his perfection - perfection in humility and love.
To summarize this chapter, it remains to be clarified: why exactly through suffering and death on the cross was the work of saving the human race completed?
The Romans came up with a sophisticated method of executing criminals on the cross. A person experiences unbearable torment while in a crucified state: the chest muscles become numb, the person is suffocating, feels intense thirst, dizziness, severe pain in the muscles and joints. Wanting to at least slightly loosen the stretched veins and take a breath of air, a person is forced to lean on his legs, pierced by nails, causing the wounds around the nails to tear with even greater force. The physical suffering of Christ was multiplied by spiritual sorrow. People in the crowd mocked Him and shouted: “He saved others, but he cannot save Himself! If He is the Son of God, let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe in Him!” Imagine yourself in the place of someone crucified: you are experiencing unbearable torment and at the same time have a real opportunity to perform a miracle and come down from the cross! And what a temptation to show this crowd how wrong they are! Christ had until the last chance to end his torment by taking advantage of His Divine nature. Therefore, self-sacrifice was required until complete physical death - this became the highest manifestation of perfect love. Evangelist John writes that a few moments before his death, Christ said: “It is finished!” And he bowed his head and gave up his spirit (John 19:30).
People sometimes make self-sacrifice for each other, but this is not enough to completely heal the human soul: our love is extremely imperfect, fickle over time and weak. Christ, throughout His earthly life, ceaselessly and invisibly performed the healing of human nature, uniting the desires and will of His human soul with the will of God, uniting what Adam had torn apart. Carrying the Truth for the sake of love for people, He carried it with humility, without being afraid to look into the eyes of those who hated Him for this Truth, and therefore it was in the suffering on the cross that the maximum healing power of Divine love for fallen human nature could manifest itself. God is perfect and His love is perfect, so only the Lord could save humanity by becoming One of us.
Christ is called the Savior, but if you ask what He saves from and why, then, at best, they will tell you that from sin. But what kind of sin, by whom and why - this is already difficult.
Christ's contemporaries had similar difficulties with understanding. A few days before his death on the cross, Christ entered Jerusalem. The people rejoiced: they laid out clothes in front of them and laid palm branches. The people met their savior. But three days later these same people shouted to Pilate “Crucify him!” Why such a change?
These two questions are of the same breed.
In the second case, the solution was a little simpler. Israel, under occupation by the Roman Empire and considering itself God's chosen people, lived in anticipation of the coming of the Messiah as the final liberator, and the appearance of Christ told them that, apparently, these times had come.
Rumors about Christ and his miracles had been circulating throughout Israel for several years. He healed the sick, gave food to the hungry, walked on water, and even raised the dead. The final event that occurred on the eve of entering Jerusalem was the resurrection of Lazarus, who had previously lain in a tomb for four days and whose body already had a characteristic smell. The rumor about this quickly spread throughout the area. It is logical to assume that since He is able to do this, then even more so He will be able to drive out the invaders and make the kingdom of Israel the most powerful on earth. And also to establish justice everywhere, punish offenders, heal all the sick, etc.
But contrary to expectations, the inhabitants of Jerusalem heard from Christ only sermons and calls to repentance. He did not take power into his own hands, and did not even try. After which many were disappointed. Instead of hoping for the glory of the people, the expulsion of enemies and earthly blessings, they received admonitions. Contrary to the words of Christ " My kingdom is not of this world» In. 18:36, people expected some benefits from him here and now, not realizing that “ the world lies in evil» 1 In. 5:19. They needed Christ to bring order around, and He came to bring order within each individual.
Returning to the first question, it is worth recalling the words of Christ about John the Baptist: “ Truly I say to you, among those born of women there has not arisen a greater man than John the Baptist; but he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he"Mf. 11:11. In other words, the most righteous of people at that time, John the Baptist, turned out to be not holy enough to enter the heavenly abodes. He was not ready to accept all the benefits from God. How far are we from John? We judge others (instead of understanding or giving advice), get irritated, deceive (even in small things), are often hard-hearted, are not ready to sacrifice our own comfort for the sake of our neighbor, etc. And if you ask each of us what he thinks about himself, the answer will often be simple - I’m normal, but... In other words, we still don’t see anything bad behind us, and if we suddenly notice something by accident, then the first thing we will do is concoct such a mountain of excuses that we will not only make ourselves righteous, but also those affected by our actions – guilty.
But when a person begins to notice all this behind himself, becomes disgusted with himself, declares a fight with his entire insides, condemning, envious, foul-mouthed, bursting out, and fights with him for more than one year, then understanding will come. Understanding that the maximum he is capable of is to train himself to react correctly in certain situations, but he cannot change his gut. And then he will need someone who can heal him. The One who can do everything, and who came for this purpose. After all, if a person does not change, then he will turn any paradise into the place where we live now.
And if you simply don’t have enough for a new Mercedes, or, conversely, “a mouse hanged itself in the refrigerator,” then “ Ask, and it shall be given you"Matt. 7:7. But this is not why Christ went to the cross.
The wonderful, beloved holiday of Christmas... It seems that on this day something special is happening in the world, some special grace descends on all of us, the heart skips a beat in anticipation of a miracle...
But how far the world is from truly understanding the essence of this holiday. Carols, 12 dishes, Father Frost (Santa Claus), at best - a visit to church, at worst - fortune telling, drinking and entertainment... The holiday has become just a good good tradition - with a set of traditional actions.
But if we look closely at the essence of this holiday, we can reach the depths of understanding the true meaning of each person’s life and answer many, many questions that concern humanity and for which official answers have not yet been found.
Let's try to figure it out...
So, CHRISTMAS. This is the Birthday of our Savior - Jesus Christ. God sent his only begotten son into this sinful world. For what? To save us... From what? By answering this question correctly, we will essentially unravel the most complex mysteries of human existence...
Answer from the Bible (the Word of God): “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life”;
“He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that we, having been delivered from sins, might live for righteousness; by His stripes you were healed.” In the Bible, the statement that Christ “saved us” comes from the lips of the Apostles many times. The Bible speaks of salvation in a variety of terms: Christ "justified us"; we are "redeemed from the curse of the law"; we are "bought at a price"; He is “the propitiation for our sins”; Christ "has covered our sins"; We are “reconciled to God” by Him; "Christ is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world..."
By studying the Bible, the main book of humanity, we can come to important conclusions about what has been happening on Earth since its creation and the role Jesus Christ plays in all this. In a few words, the meaning can be explained as follows: God created man in his own image in order to enjoy heavenly life and communication with his Creator. Due to the disobedience of a person who violated God’s prohibition and tasted the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God was forced to expel Adam and Eve from paradise, imprisoning them in a sinful body in difficult conditions on an earth cursed for the sins of mankind. People were dying... Eternal death awaited their eternal souls - hell. No one could be justified by the law given by God to this world through Moses. God's Love was manifested in the fact that He decided to make a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. This sacrifice was Jesus Christ - the Son of God, who walked his life’s path in complete holiness and obedience to God and through the blood shed on the cross and His resurrection, opened the doors to Eternal Life for us. And now everyone who believes in Jesus Christ, repents of sins, opens their heart to Him and lives in holiness and obedience to God can go to heaven and live forever in absolute joy and bliss.
I want to ask a few unexpected, but very important questions, which for some may become discoveries and answers in life, and for others, real sensations...
Question one. Do you know that we are separated from God from our birth? The sin of disobedience that Adam and Eve committed hangs like a curse on all of humanity, and our Earth is cursed because of it. Pain, illness, death, cruelty and violence, wars... I think no one will doubt the fact that something is wrong with us and with our world. We wish things were different... We don't hear God, we don't see, we don't feel and we don't know simply because we are separated by sin, we are separated by iniquity. God is Holy, we are essentially sinners, and as life goes on, our sins become more and more numerous.
Question two. Do you know that we are ETERNAL in essence? That our SOUL does not die, it was created by God eternal. The soul is us, the body is just our shell. And when the physical body dies, our spiritual body remains forever. The soul still - and even more acutely - understands, perceives, feels everything, including pain. Official science is “stuck” on the fact that people who experienced clinical death saw a white corridor. We (officially) have not yet broken through beyond the white corridor. But at the same time, there are a huge number of people who experienced the death of the physical body and the exit of the soul. At the same time, they remained themselves, just their new body had a different structure. They tell amazing things about God, heaven and hell. By studying this evidence, we can find a lot of answers to all the questions that seem to hang in the air and which the best minds of humanity cannot answer.
Question three. Did you know that HELL really EXISTS and about 98 percent of people end up in it for eternal torment? This is a real sensation and I really hope that it will soon burst into this world, especially since it is supported by numerous facts, evidence and testimonies of people who have been there. Many such stories can be found on the Internet, they pierce to the core. The terrible torture of the soul on fire, which never stops, the stench, the screams of millions of sinners - these are not pictures from a horror film, but real people's stories about what happens to people after death if they do not repent of their sins. Personally, it was only after much study of such evidence that I understood the true meaning of the role of Jesus Christ - he came to save us from hell. I understood the true meaning of the word “repentance” - we ask God for forgiveness - and he forgives. We become pure in his eyes and can escape the penalty of sin - eternal hell. I understood the true meaning of the word “salvation” - it is something that costs too much to buy, is not valued at all in our world, but is given to us freely and undeservedly - thanks to faith in Jesus Christ and repentance.
Why is the world silent about hell? This is probably the fourth question. I am a journalist - I read and study the news. At one time, I was especially struck by two pieces of news floating around the Internet. The first is that in the 80s in the former Soviet Union, a group of geologists, while working on a project to drill an ultra-deep well, recorded sounds from the well on a special microphone, which were called “voices from hell.” These were the screams, screams and moans of millions of people. The words of the leader of this project, Azzakov, are impressive: “As a communist, I do not believe in Heaven or the Bible, but as a scientist, I now believe in hell.” The second was the news that on August 9, 1973, from the Skylab 2 spacecraft, astronauts transmitted a message that stunned all the employees of the US Space Research Laboratory: “Hell is in the middle of the Sun. We see the dead burning. We see hell" (a message about this was published in 1985 in the American magazine "World Science"). While studying solar flares using a spectroheliograph, a huge explosion occurred on the celestial body. Suddenly, in front of the stunned observers, the liquid gas stream froze. For a full 70 seconds, the device recorded a nightmarish vision: hundreds of thousands of human faces appeared on this pillar of fire, exhausted by torture in the eternal flame. For a long time, this information was kept top secret by NASA. Why is the world silent about hell? Why doesn’t he want to explore this topic, which breaks into the world with individual facts and numerous testimonies of real, living people who simply shout to those living on earth: “Believe in God. Repent. Don’t end up in this terrible place.”
Question five. Why can’t we prove the existence of God, although it has long been proven for millions of people? Many millions of believers receive real answers from God in their lives, healings and miracles, experience real meetings with Jesus, talk about heaven and hell... The Hubble Space Telescope found a Heavenly city in the center of the universe, which scientists called the Abode of God.. And is it necessary to prove what you just need to believe in? According to surveys, about 74% of Ukrainians believe in God. Maybe to get proof you just have to truly believe. I am a journalist - I asked God many questions - I received answers to many of them. And each of us can receive them.
Jesus was born, lived a holy life, He was killed by hanging on the cross, He died, but He was resurrected. He's alive! And he continues to save and heal. He is knocking on our hearts. Whether we answer his call depends on us.
Christmas... You know, today I was imbued with good feelings for our President Viktor Yanukovych. Not for any of his merits in governing the state and not for the kind of person he is - it’s not for me to judge him. And because in his Christmas greeting he spoke so sincerely and kindly about the birth of the Son of God, and said so brightly, optimistically and joyfully, “Christ has been born! Glory to Yogo.” And maybe now he doesn’t quite understand the essence of the words he said, but I believe that he will definitely understand, he will repent - and he and our entire country and Ukraine will become God’s blessed people, who will not be affected by all the horrors of the imminent Apocalypse, oh which the Bible warns us about.
