§ 17. Jesus Christ and the People of God (Church)

The "finished" of Jesus Christ is the fullness in all its aspects: theological, historical, liturgical, spiritual and personal...

Thus He became the long-awaited sole foundation (cf. 1 Corinthians 3:11) on which the Christian faith in the transfiguration of human nature and the entire created world rests, as well as the Christian hope that every believer can participate in such transfiguration, deification (cf. 2 Peter 1:4).

Further, the Church, following His first disciples, believed in Him as in the meaning and fulfillment of Holy History as the history of divine-human relationships. And what can be more important among the questions about the meaning of history than the question of the possibility of its divine-human dimension? Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end (Rev. 1:8).

Finally, He also became the founder of Christianity and the Church in the historical sense, as a new religious worldview, a new religious tradition, and a new organized (in the broad sense of the word, and not in the sense of the original hierarchy) community of believers. Here, however, one detail is important. Christ did not come to gather His new Israel from scratch, but among a people with a good and even refined religious taste, brought up in the rich experience of the Holy History of the Old Testament. Where does this rich experience and exquisite taste come from? After all, God Himself was the pedagogue who long and patiently educated His people in order to send His Christ there.

At the same time, there was something that in no way suited Christ in Israel as He saw it, and could not be approved by Him as an example to follow. In assembling His Church, He was greatly concerned that it should in no way be built on the principles of hierarchical authoritarianism (cf. Matt. 20:25-26) and legalistic piety (cf. Matt. 23). We should not console ourselves with the thought that such traits were characteristic only of the people of Israel, modern Jesus Christ. If we look more closely at the subsequent history of the Church, we will see that sooner or later the above-mentioned phenomena become inherent in any venerable church tradition. If Christ's denunciations of legalism and other "ecclesiastical" sins, which we read about in the Gospels, had been addressed only to the Pharisees and scribes of that time, then the Gospel would not have been the Word of God addressed to all of us in the Church today, but more than a historical document about someone's disputes, more or less interesting and instructive for some of us.

The ministry of Jesus Christ took place in a specific historical situation. The theological dimension of this seemingly self-evident circumstance cannot be ignored. Let us pay attention to two aspects.

First, historicity, "intertwined" with a certain historical moment is an integral component of the life of any human personality. And this means the Incarnation of God, the life of the Son of God as a Man. It is no accident that the name of Pontius Pilate has been repeated by all mankind for two thousand years when he pronounces the Christian symbol of faith. As the Christian Orthodox Catechism teaches, "in order to signify the time when He was crucified."

Secondly, we are talking about a specific timely moment in Holy History after its Old Testament stage. The meaning of the Old Testament was that the soil was being prepared, the people were preparing to accept God in their midst. Within the framework of the course of the Old Testament, we have already touched upon such an important concept as "the people of God" – a concept without which it is absolutely impossible to discuss either Holy History as a whole, or the history of Holy Tradition and Holy Scripture in particular.

In order for this new stage of Holy History, the New Testament, to begin, it was necessary "to present to the Lord a prepared people" (Luke 1:17).

Were the people prepared to receive the Messiah? And what is meant by the concept of such "preparedness" or "readiness"? And should we ask such questions only in relation to the particular people of God as the people of Israel were aware of themselves at the time of Jesus Christ's life? Or are these questions always relevant for the people of God, right up to the present day, when the Christian Church recognizes herself as such a people?

As for the last question, we have already partially answered it a little above. And this answer should be obvious: the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament, and above all the Gospels, would not have been the living Word, that is, the Word addressed to the modern Church, if those commandments and exhortations, as well as the accusatory criticism with which Jesus addressed the Israelites of that time, applied only to them. Everything that is written in the New Testament, as well as in the Old, both in a joyful missionary and in an accusatory-critical way, is the Word of the Living God to His people, in whatever form this people appears in the arena of human history, whether it is the Old Testament people of Israel or the modern Christian Church.

Speaking about the readiness of the then (as well as today) people of God to receive the Messiah, it is necessary to answer both yes and no. Yes, the people were ready. Otherwise, there would be no one who would heed the call of the Savior to follow Him and who would then form the original Church, irresistibly and impetuously preaching the Good News throughout the entire universe. Let us not forget that all the apostles of Christ without exception, as well as His Most Holy Mother, the Most Pure Virgin Mary, like Him Himself, were faithful sons of their Jewish people, and it could not be otherwise. The very emergence of the Church as a new religious movement was, first of all, a logical continuation, a careful inheritance (as it happens only when it comes to one's own, very dear own property), and a talented rethinking of the rich sacred-historical memory and the enormous spiritual, theological and liturgical potential that were accumulated by the people of Israel in the time before the Coming of Christ – no matter what we say about the original forms of early Christian worship and about the the first steps of the original Christian theology. And in general, to say that the people of Israel were not ready to meet Christ would mean that God as a teacher "made a mistake" by sending His Son at the wrong time.