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Glory be to Jesus Christ!
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Today there were three readings, one of which was in honor of the martyrs, the other two – on two consecutive days – since tomorrow is a holiday.
The two connected readings of the Apostle are united by a broad general theme of the spiritual life of Christians. A very deep topic, but I will only briefly comment on some points.
– how does true love fundamentally differ from untruth, from delusion. In general, many researchers and preachers note that there is no theory of love
in the Bible, but there is a described experience, first of all of God's love, but also of love in a
broader sense (I will add that a person can love in different circumstances, so the Lord, to not to leave different people outside a certain theory of love
just doesn't give any scheme, any theory,
but gives faith).
Here John compares true love with its falsifications. The example of Cain, who killed his brother out of jealousy, is very eloquent, showing that true love does no harm, unlike fake love. Before
being tempted to sin, Cain falsified worship (offering a sacrifice without cleansing from sins and repentance), falsified communion (not listening to God's advice), used brother's trust (to get close to him), finally killed him, and then did not show true repentance
before God. All these are manifestations that are also characteristic of falsifications of love. And the Lord warns us against all that.
This is about the heart compared to God. It is clearly visible here that John as heart here calls that part of somebody's personality that reveals it, one can say characterizes the personality, that it is
most evident when it has freedom, acts completely freely, casually, perhaps spontaneously. Here this human general freedom is called heart
. That is, in such a context, all free actions, thoughts and feelings of a person are born in the heart
, and a person is responsible for them. Therefore, the commandment to love God begins with the heart
. What about forced, involuntary actions? Or inactivity? They are also related to the heart, just as stillness is a form of movement. Simply in this case, a source of the person's acts is not the heart, but the heart participates in them.
(This sentence above edited 08:31:30 EET, 2023-02-14)
Someone (perhaps some psychologists or neurologists, neurobiologists, etc.) will say that even a spontaneous unforced action has certain prerequisites, reasons related to connections in the brain that did not arise completely spontaneously, etc. I have to say that John's heart
is not just the spontaneity and freedom
of a person, but the core of the personality
, the core of the human hypostasis.
Hypostasis
— the concrete existence of nature (here, human hypostasis — therefore, human nature) — in theology is a logical category that indicates the uniqueness and quantification of what exists (This sentence edited 10:01 PM EET 2023-02-14). It is basic, not reducible, and cannot be reduced to other categories, just as basic concepts are described in geometry, but have no definitions. In the language of Orthodox theology, in the heart there is a uniting of natural will and freedom with personal will, personal arbitrariness. This arbitrariness, for example, can be established and detected by the fact that a person can really do
one of several possible actions, and he / she actually does one of them, in particular, if by action
we understand inaction or something similar (If the person didn't have arbitrariness, then the actions of all people in the analogical situations would be the same that is not the case. More precisely, similar people in the analogical situations would act the same if there were not arbitrariness, or even the most exact, the person's behaviour would be determined solely by the out-of-personality reasons, e. g. natural conditions – Added 10:34 PM EET 2023-02-14).
Nevertheless, the arbitrariness is not reduced to the freedom of choice and exists even if the person does not do any act of choosing, does not choose from several possibilities using some criteria or reasons.
(Added 10:09 PM EET 2023-02-14)
When our heart does not blame us
– therefore, when a person in a free state not only spontaneously and unforcedly, completely freely actualizes himself / herself, that is, when there is nothing that would burden a person from his / her side.
In another place, Paul says about this: Although I do not know anything (bad) about myself, I am not justified by that, but the Lord is my judge
– he is precisely talking about the heart. It is in this state that the appearance of God's faith in a person is possible. See about it in the work On the power of human
at the link:
John talks about spirits and the spiritual, spirituality. … you defeated them …
— them, that is, antichrist spirits.
Spirit is associated with motivation and drives for a person. There are
good works on this at the links:
Two daily Gospels were read about the arrest of Jesus in Gethsemane, the illegal trial in the Sanhedrin and the three-time denial of Peter. Also very deep meaningful readings, which will also be read during Lent and Holy Week, here I will dwell only on some details.
Struck the servant of the high priest with a sword – Peter struck Malchus with a sword, as is evident from other Gospels.
The trial of the Sanhedrin was held at night to speed things up, but the Law forbids trials at night. Therefore, it was illegal.
Jesus in Mark openly calls Himself Son of Man
and Lord
from the prophecy of Daniel and the Psalm (Daniel 7:13-14, also Psalm 110 (109):1). There is nothing wrong with the expected Messiah quoting these prophecies about Himself, as Jesus Christ did. Moreover, the very form of the question of the high priest Caiaphas testifies to a certain belief that the Messiah can be called the Son of God (even from the point of view of the Jews). In particular, in other synoptics, Jesus refers to this faith in the answer (it sounds softer
in them). Jesus is thus accused by the Sanhedrin of … their own unbelief, not having any sin. But it is evident that the unbelief of the Sanhedrin is not the sin of Jesus, and therefore in no way can any condemnation be based on this charge. Anger blinded the Jews, and they hastily passed their unrighteous sentence.
There is an essay about Peter's renunciation at the link:
Glory be to Thee, our God, glory be to Thee!