If, for example, we imagine such an ideal man who, throughout his life, with a great multitude of all kinds of good deeds and holy thoughts, had behind him only one and only evil thought, then in this ideal conception we will have before us not the image of a perfect man, but, on the contrary, the image of a guilty condemning of an unfortunate sinner; for "whoever keeps the whole law, and sins in one thing, becomes guilty of all" (James 2:10; Galatians 3:10). For the only evil thought of a man cannot be made good by the fact that all the other thoughts of that man were good, and if it cannot turn from bad into good and remain bad, then the man is guilty of it, and if he is guilty of it, then he is subject to condemnation for it. The unconditional law of good does not weigh a person's good and evil deeds and does not judge by the needle of the scales what is more in a person – good or evil; He simply points out to man, whether everything that was and is in man was and is in him according to the law of good, or not everything? If it turns out that, despite the great multitude of all kinds of good deeds and holy thoughts, man nevertheless had one and only evil thought, then the law notes the simple existence of this fact and thereby indicates that not everything in man was in accordance with the law of good, that in man's life, therefore, this law was not fulfilled. Therefore, if a man were judged according to the law, it goes without saying that he could not find justification for himself in the very law which he did not fulfill, since at the trial he would not be asked at all how many good and how many evil deeds he has done, but only why his whole life does not serve only as a realization of the law of goodness, – and in relation to this question man would necessarily be unanswerable. All the good deeds that he did, he had to do, and, consequently, he has no merit in these deeds, and the only evil thought that he had in himself, he should not have had, and, consequently, he cannot justify himself in the fact that he had this evil thought in himself.

The impossibility of such justification before God clearly showed the Apostles that people do not really need a wise teacher of the true life, but their Savior from the untrue life – from the very life that they actually lead and which does not at all deserve to be really worth leading for a person. If man could of his own accord cease this untrue life, then, of course, only a simple revelation of the true law of life would be required for him, and then, by the free fulfillment of this law of life, he would be able to realize his true purpose in the world and thereby be able to justify his present life on earth as a free-rational moral personality. Then, of course, people would not need any saviour: if justification is by the law, then Christ died in vain (Gal. 2:21), But the knowledge of the true law of life in reality serves only to decisively condemn man, because this knowledge makes him a conscious transgressor of the truth (Rom. 7:9-13), and by virtue of this he not only turns out to be unworthy of life, but also becomes guilty of a direct denial of that very life. for the sake of which alone he is called to being. Therefore, in the knowledge of the true law of life, in addition to the duty to justify his life, man necessarily imposes upon himself another impossible duty, namely, to free himself from all guilt against the truth of life, if in fact he lives contrary to the law. Yet this liberation from guilt in sin is in reality absolutely impossible for man. Even God Himself can only forgive man, i.e. He can only free man from the punishment for his guilt against the truth of life, and make it so that the guilty man is innocent, even God Himself cannot do this, because for this it would be necessary to turn unrighteousness into truth and to consider evil as good, i.e. for this it would be necessary, so that God himself would be the same champion of falsehood as man is. Therefore, although in the knowledge of the true law of life people undoubtedly acquire for themselves the surest means for justifying their lives, this means, in essence, turns out to be completely invalid for them, because even with a clear knowledge of the true law of life they are still unable to fulfill their purpose in the world. And if they are not able to become worthy of life, then it goes without saying that no God's mercy is able to grant them this non-existent dignity.

It is clear that only man himself can justify his life, and it is clear that he can justify it only by the unswerving fulfillment of the religious and moral law of life. If, however, this justification of life is in reality impossible for man, and yet it is not desirable for him to think of himself as if he had been born and lived on earth with a living human consciousness in vain, then he has only to perform an incredible miracle and an impossible deed over himself: if he must absolutely destroy in himself all his guilt against the truth of life, then he has no other means to destroy this guilt in himself than to destroy himself along with his guilt, but to destroy him in such a way that after his destruction he still remains alive, only worthy of life. For as long as a man lives, all his guilt remains in him and on him, and if during his whole life a man commits only one and only sin, then this one sin is still his eternal sin; for no high righteousness can ever turn sin into virtue, and even God Himself can only forgive a person, and even God Himself cannot make a forgiven sinner a holy man. But as soon as a person dies, then all his guilt naturally dies with him, for he who died was freed from sin (Romans 6:7); because sin exists in man, and man ceases to exist from the moment of his death. Hence, if only he could appear alive again, then he would obviously come into life from non-existence, and therefore, if only he really died in order to destroy his guilt in himself, then he would really come into life as a new man. His old guilt would have remained on the man who lived unrighteously and did not want to be a sinner, and died, and no longer exists. But, unfortunately for man, if he dies, he will die forever and cannot come into life again, and therefore, having destroyed his guilt in the destruction of himself, he would obviously not thereby put an end to the blatant senselessness of life, but would only end his senseless life with the meaninglessness of death.

In view of this senselessness of death, man can only say to himself: What good is it to me if the dead do not rise! Let us eat and drink: for tomorrow we will die (I Corinthians 15:32). But although man undoubtedly has a natural right to live as he wants to live and as he can live according to the given conditions of life, he at the same time carries within himself the ideal consciousness of himself as a moral person, and this consciousness imposes on him the duty to live as he ought to live precisely as a moral person. This ideal consciousness lives in man, and it lives in him not according to some selfish calculation of his – not to create, for example, the ideal beauty of his life in the interests of his self-gratification, but only by virtue of his living conviction that it expresses the real truth of his life.

It is truly worshipped and truly realized only by men who are firmly convinced that the ideal of the moral person is not some creation of the human dream of the possible greatness of man, but the true expression of the eternal truth about man; so that the realization of this ideal becomes for man not only desirable in the interests of attaining the dreamy beauty of life, but must necessarily be attained by man for the sake of its unconditional truth, i.e., precisely for the sake that every man who has an undoubted right to live on earth on the occasion of his birth becomes worthy of life only in the realization of the moral ideal of the human personality. But man is subject to the conditional shadows of physical life and involuntarily creates an illusory life for himself according to the physical determinations of the external conditions of life. Therefore, the perfect ideal of the moral person in reality does not express the image of man's present existence, but only the unconditional norm of the perfect life that man must lead, regardless of all the conditions of his existing existence, and therefore man actually carries within himself the mysterious consciousness of the unconditional ideal of conditional life only for the purpose of condemning himself. By virtue of the moral necessity of this self-condemnation, he must naturally ask himself: why, in fact, does he carry within himself the ideal consciousness of the eternal truth of life, when in fact he is unable to realize this truth? And if only no other answer can be given to this question than a simple reference to real life: see to it and judge for yourself frankly why you live on earth and why you carry within yourself the ideal image of moral perfection –

And by virtue of his awareness of this meaninglessness of life, he cannot fail to understand the depth of the apostolic question and cannot help but pose it: I am a poor man! who will deliver me from this body of death (Romans 7:24)?

The urgent necessity of this deliverance and the decisive impossibility of it clearly revealed to the human thought of the apostles the miraculous mystery of Christ's work in the world. They understood their Teacher as the true Saviour of the world, Who, in the present conditions of human nature and life, suffered the suffering of all people who are clearly aware of the great falsehood of their lives and experience in themselves the deep torment of this consciousness, and Who died the death of all people who sincerely desire to destroy in themselves every crime against the truth of life and have no other means for this destruction. except for the destruction of themselves in the senselessness of death, and Who finally rose from the dead and by His resurrection brought about in the world the saving law of the universal resurrection.

IV. The Christian Teaching on Salvation as the Divine-Human Work of Christ, the Son of God

1.

The Human Life of Jesus Christ as a Real Manifestation of God's Truth in the World.

In the person of Jesus Christ, according to the Gospel depiction of His life and according to the apostolic testimony about Him, people saw the first conqueror of evil. Born of a woman and subject to the judgment of the law (Gal. 4:4), i.e. man, like any real man in general, He lived in the same natural conditions of life in which the entire human race lived and lives since the first Fall. Hunger and thirst (Matt. 4:2; cf. Lk. 4:2; Mk. 11:12; Matt. 21:18; Jn. 4:7), physical fatigue (Jn. 4:6) and spiritual sorrows (Lk. 12:50, Jn. 12:27, 13, 21, Matt. 26:37), the need for the sympathy of loved ones (Mt. 26:38; cf. Mk. 14:33-34) and cold indifference even on the part of one's closest relatives (Mk. 6:30). 2-6 cf. Lk. 4:23, cf. Matt. 13:54-58, John. 7:5) – all this was familiar to Him on an equal footing with other people, and all this in relation to Him personally was covered by the exceptional feat of His uninterrupted martyrdom. In response to His concern for the religious enlightenment of people, He met with malicious hatred on the part of the ignorant denounced by Him, and even direct attempts on His life on the part of numerous fanatics (John 5:16, 7, 19, 11, 53; Luke 4:23-30; Matt. 12:14, cf. Mark 3:6), and endured His actual condemnation to a shameful death, and endured an outrageous mockery even of the very shame of His death on the cross (Matt. 27:10). 33-43, Mr. 15:29-32, Luke. 23, 35-37). Meanwhile, physical deprivation, moral suffering, undeserved persecution from strong enemies, and death on the cross itself fell to the lot of His long-suffering life not by some fatal coincidence of accidental circumstances, i.e. not because some evil fate, contrary to His own thoughts and desires, made Him an unfortunate loser in life. In fact, He had at His disposal the most powerful means of acquiring the slavish worship of men, because He could feed the people and save them from all kinds of misfortunes; and the people of His people would surely be very glad to see Him on the royal throne of His illustrious ancestor. But He Himself rejected this desire of people (John 6:15) and did not wish to become the ruler of the world (Matt. 4:8-10, cf. Luke 4:5-8); for above the transitory ranks of earthly human kingdoms He clearly saw the eternal kingdom of God and desired only one thing, that the truth of this kingdom should be justified in people (Matt. 6:33). In fact, people did not know this kingdom at all and did not seek its truth at all – this is precisely the whole mystery of the deep human sufferings of Jesus Christ.

Before the beginning of the preaching of the Gospel, people did not know at all what the kingdom of God was, and where it was located, and when it would be revealed, and how it would be revealed. They have always lived such a life that they did not constitute the kingdom of God, and if they did think of entering this kingdom, they usually imagined it in such a way that it was somewhere outside them, and in order to enter it, they had only to step beyond the boundaries of their human existence and, by the grace of God, find themselves in heaven. This was a gross error that decisively destroyed people and ruined God's work in people, because, naively imagining that they live only in the world, and not in the kingdom of God, people thereby tore the world away from the kingdom of God and made it a kingdom of sin, a kingdom of the devil. Christ destroyed this gross error of people and revealed to people the truth unknown to them. He explained that it is impossible to say of the kingdom of God, "Here it is here or here it is," that all who wish to find it can only be said of it: "Behold, the kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:20). After all, it is not any particular corner of the world, but the entire world of God that is God's kingdom. For whoever contemplates the world with religious thought, for him heaven is the throne of God and the earth is His footstool (Matt. 5:34-35), and all life on earth is a manifestation of God's goodness and wisdom (Matt. 5:45, 6:28-29, 10, 23; cf. Luke 6:35,12, 27-28,12, 6-7). Therefore, people are actually living in the kingdom of God now. If none of the people thinks this at all, it is only because people themselves destroy the truth of the world as the kingdom of God by the obvious unrighteousness of their life in the world. But with this unrighteousness of life, wherever man exists, i.e. in heaven or on earth, he will still not become a member of the kingdom of God and, consequently, will not see it anyway. Therefore, every person who really wants to see the kingdom of God must obviously strive not to replace the earth with heaven or the existing world in general with some other world, but to change himself into another person – into such a person as would be a true man from God; so that the moral perfection of his human life would really prove that people are not the offspring of the earth, but God's creations, and thus the heavenly Father of men would be glorified by his human life (Matt. 5:16). Only under the condition of such a change can people see that they really live in God's world, in God's kingdom, and only under this condition can they receive a real reason to think about their eternal life, since God's kingdom is undoubtedly eternal, just as God Himself is eternal.