In the fullness of this exceptional revelation of the divine life, Christ appeared and remains the first and only of men who truly conquered the evil of world existence and fully realized God's thought about existence. Precisely because in His human life God was actually manifested in the flesh, and justified in the Spirit, and shown to the angels (1 Tim. 3:16), the world of transgression, so far removed from God that its inhabitants can seriously doubt even whether God exists above them, has again appeared as a real revelation of God. The fact of the holy life of Jesus Christ is a fact of world history, it cannot be said that it does not have universal significance; for as long as the world exists, the Gospel news of the divine life of Christ will also exist in it, and as long as this news is transmitted, until then, in the light of the moral person of Christ, the eternal image of God will shine for all morally sensitive people, never before seen by anyone and previously unknown to anyone in the living fullness of his divine being (John 1:11). 18; 17, 25-26). Consequently, by the very fact that Christ lived in the world, He fully justified God's work of creating the world, because this justification requires only that the world should correspond to the pre-eternal purpose of its existence, i.e. that it serve as the actual revelation of God.

It goes without saying that this justification of the meaning of the world's existence does not in the least destroy evil in the world and does not save the world from evil. In fact, of course, people can contemplate in Christ the living image of God and still submit to evil and perish in their sins. Therefore, the holy human life of Jesus Christ, in fact, speaks only of the fact that, despite the evil existing in the world, the world nevertheless realizes the divine idea of being. This means that by the fact of His blameless life Christ revealed only the justification of God in His creative activity, and not the justification of people before God in their deviation from God's law of life. On the contrary, if His whole work consisted only in the perfect realization of the moral law of true life, then He would bring with Him only eternal condemnation to people.

Man cannot completely submit himself to the spiritual law of moral life and cannot completely free himself from sin. Therefore, during the period of the preaching activity of Jesus Christ, even the best of people, who were able and able to deeply feel the truth of the Gospel preaching, in reality could only be confused by this truth, unexpected for them. They keenly felt their moral inadequacy, they clearly saw that it was as impossible for them to be morally reborn as it was impossible for an old man to enter into his mother's womb and be born again for the second time (John 3:1-4); and therefore, agreeing with the truth of Christ's preaching, they naturally had to be tormented by the inevitable question: Is it possible that God, wishing to save people, really demands of them such a perfect life, which is undoubtedly beyond their strength and the demand for which, therefore, inevitably condemns them to undoubted destruction? In essence the moral teaching of Jesus Christ as a teaching about the way of the cross of people to the Kingdom of God, they fully understood that the religious task of human life cannot be reduced to a simple opportunity for a person to be justified before God in all the unrighteousness of life; for any excuse for unrighteousness comes only from the moral bankruptcy of man and is only a direct affirmation of his unrighteousness. Meanwhile, man has no means to destroy all unrighteousness in himself and to save himself by actually entering the kingdom of God, and Christ Himself positively confirmed that this is impossible for men (Mark 10:27). This means that by accepting the truth of Christ's teaching about the kingdom of God, people can really find in this truth only judgment and condemnation. But the work of Jesus Christ was not a matter of judgment, but a matter of saving the world from evil. He not only communicated to people the eternal law of true life and not only showed them the real way of this life, but also gave them a real justification before God without any excuse for their sins, and created new conditions for them to live without any change in the conditions of their existing existence.

2.

The death of Jesus Christ on the Cross as a redemptive sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.

Sin can never and in no case be forgiven to man, because any excuse for sin, in essence, can only be reconciliation with it, and not at all liberation from it. In order for a person to be truly free from sin, he must necessarily destroy it in himself, i.e. he must make sin an event in his life that could exist and really was, but which no longer exists and can no longer exist. In this case, undoubtedly guilty before God of his former service to sin, man, however, would appear and undoubtedly worthy before God in his victory over sin and in the destruction of his sinfulness; For his former service to sin, as if it were only the same, would not express the actual content of his present life, but only his simple remembrance of his past life, and therefore any of his guilt in sin in relation to his present life would obviously be only his former guilt in the destroyed sin. Therefore, in this case, the former sinner would in reality turn out to be only a perfect righteous man. This means that in the event of a real victory over sin, man would undoubtedly rise from the state of fall and would undoubtedly save himself from inevitable destruction. But is this salvific case possible for man?

In view of the fact that man is not only able to submit to his sinful inclinations, but is also capable of conquering these inclinations in himself, it is logically quite conceivable that by means of a gradual exercise of the moral will he can develop his moral freedom to such a high degree that it will become completely impossible for him to sin. However, if this conceivable ideal of moral perfection were really realized in human life, then its reality could still not be conceivable in relation to man, because it would still not be possible to say of man that he can no longer sin. This could not be said because the facts of moral falls, even if they were only past in this case, would nevertheless irrefutably prove that man can actually sin, and consequently as long as he lives in the present conditions of life, in which he can undoubtedly sin, the denial of this possibility in relation to him is directly and unconditionally inconceivable. As a result, in the present conditions of human life, the reality of the complete victory over sin can be affirmed not on the basis of man's moral life, but exclusively on the basis of his righteous death for the truth of moral life; for it can really be said of the dead man alone that he can no longer sin; therefore, if a man were to accept death for his love of God and for his faithfulness to God's law of life, then by this he would really prove to himself the complete impotence of evil, since in this case his death for good would obviously be the greatest victorious triumph of good. But it goes without saying that to demand of man such a victory over sin is in essence nothing else than to demand of him that he should offer himself as a sacrifice for sin, that is, that he should gain such a victory over sin which, as acquired at the cost of his own life, it would have absolutely no significance for him, and in general would be a completely meaningless matter. After all, in fact, by his righteous death, a person can destroy not sin in general and all guilt for sin, but only his personal sin and his personal guilt for sin. If, therefore, for the sake of the abolition of sin, the conqueror of sin himself, the righteous man, must perish, then this destruction of man can equally serve neither to the attainment of the personal goals of human life nor to the attainment of the general goals of world life. This means that it can only be a completely senseless salvation of man from sin through man's own destruction.

Of course, no sane person can strive for such salvation from sin. As a result, not only ordinary, sinful people, but also the greatest ascetics of the moral life in reality can only struggle with sin and can overcome in themselves individual temptations of sin, but even the greatest righteous cannot destroy their sinfulness and absolve themselves of all their guilt for sin; because for this annihilation it is necessary not only to conquer in oneself the individual temptations of sin, but also not to experience any of its temptations at all. In order not to experience any temptations of sin, it is evident that the very possibility of sinful temptations must be destroyed. Meanwhile, this possibility is determined not only by man's own sinful nature, but also by his living connection with all other people and with the whole world in general as an area of the development of sin. Consequently, in order to destroy the possibility of sinful temptations, man must not only transform himself, but also transform the entire world in which he lives, i.e. for this he must either do an obviously impossible deed, or move otherwise in the circle of a meaningless situation: he can undoubtedly destroy his sin, but only by his martyrdom for the truth; and he can always save himself from martyrdom for the truth, but only in order to perish in the end because of his sinfulness. From this situation, left to himself, man obviously could not and would never get out of it. But he was saved from perdition by the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, which destroyed all the sin of a person who really wanted to destroy his sin, and absolved him of all guilt in sin, which is recognized and condemned by man as sin, but nevertheless remains on him because it is impossible to destroy it.

In view of the fact that Christ Himself did not commit or had any sin upon Himself, His death was not necessary for Him, because it is necessary only as a necessary consequence of human sinfulness. In fact, people die only because from the time of the first crime they have subjected their spiritual nature to the law of material existence, and as a consequence they can exist only according to the law of the physical life of the material world. Meanwhile, in the human nature of Jesus Christ there was no such abnormality: in Him it was not the spirit that served by nature the mortal body, but the body was the organ of moral life by the nature of the immortal spirit. Therefore, it was He who could not die, i.e. in other words, He could not die because of the general necessity of death for all other people. Nevertheless, however, He accepted death, and He accepted martyrdom for the truth of His moral service to God in spirit and truth. This submission to the physical law of death, by His own explanation, was a necessary means to the accomplishment of the special purpose of His activity as the activity of God's promised Christ. We know that from the very first apostolic confession of Him as Christ, the Son of God, He clearly and positively began to tell His disciples and apostles that He must suffer much and be killed (Matt. 16:15-21), because for this reason He came into the world, that He might give His life as a ransom for many (Matt. 20:28). Consequently, His martyrdom, according to the clear word of His teaching, was necessary, in fact, not in relation to Himself, but in relation to the world infected with sin. Obviously, it was the very deed that the world of sinful beings had to do in order to annihilate their sins, but which in reality the world could not do, since it would destroy not only all unrighteousness in the world, but also the entire living world of sinners themselves. Therefore, it was for the destruction of sin in the world that Christ gave His own sinless life. I give My life, – He said to the Jews, – in order to receive it again, no one takes it away from Me, but I Myself give it (John 10:17-18). He pointed to this self-sacrifice as the work of God's exclusive love for the world, as the work of God's salvation of the world through the death of the only-begotten Son of God. God, – he said in explanation of His death to His secret disciple Nicodemus, – so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life (John 3:16). Therefore, according to His own word of teaching, He voluntarily offered Himself as an atoning sacrifice in order to save the life of the sinful world from destruction by His innocent death, and thus to fulfill the holy will of His Father.

This significance of Christ's death on the cross as an expiatory sacrifice for the sins of the world is the basic dogma of the apostolic doctrine. The whole essence of the apostolic preaching consists in the exposition of the faith of the apostles that the blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, cleanses us from all sin, because in His death on the cross, precisely as the Son of God, He was the real propitiation for our sins, and not only for our sins, but for the sins of the whole world (1 John 1:7; 2:2). According to the teaching of the Apostles, the death of Jesus Christ took place precisely because it was appointed by God even before the creation of the world for the redemption of man from the transgressions of his vain life (1 Peter 1:18-20; Ephesians 1:3-7; Rev. 13:8). It was precisely before the creation of the world that God truly knew that sin would enter the world and that as a result of this the world would become unworthy of its Creator and would even cast a shadow of imperfection on His good and all-wise creative activity; and yet God nevertheless fulfilled His idea of creating the world, because the only-begotten Son of God also deigned to take upon Himself its future sin even before the creation of the world (Heb. 10:5-LO), and therefore at a certain time He actually appeared in the world for the destruction of sin by His sacrificial blood (Heb. 1:2-3). By virtue of the special purpose of His appearance in the world, it was naturally not some miraculous revelation of Him in the fullness of His divine glory, but, on the contrary, His manifest self-abasement in His human birth from the Virgin Mary; for the Infant Jesus born of it is precisely the Saviour of the world – the only-begotten Son of God (Gal. 4:4-5; 1 John 4:9-15), Who gave Himself up in an hour as an offering and sacrifice to God (Ephesians 5:2), in order to deliver the hour from all iniquity (Titus 2:14).

Anticipating possible objections to faith in Jesus of Nazareth as the promised Christ of God and to faith in the promised Christ of God as God's own and only-begotten Son, the apostles pointed to the revelation by Jesus of Nazareth of the mystery of the actual salvation of the world from evil, unknown to the world, and to the actual realization of this salvation in the person of Jesus Christ. The amazing content of Christ's Gospel, which serves as a temptation to some and madness to others, undoubtedly could not have been created by human thought, and indeed it could not have been created by the limited thought of any created being; because, according to the Apostle's assertion, not only sinful people, but even the holy angels of God had no idea how the sinful world could be freed from its sins (1 Peter 1:12; Ephesians 3:10), although on the basis of God's providence for the world, and especially for the human race, they certainly did not doubt in the slightest that the salvation of the world is possible and that it will certainly be realized in the world. And it was indeed possible and truly accomplished in the world. It was possible not by the power of man's righteous deeds, but exclusively by the power of Christ's sacrifice on the Cross, i.e. by the power of the very deed the necessity of which was first proclaimed to people by the Gospel preaching of Jesus of Nazareth and which Jesus of Nazareth actually accomplished as His own work on earth (Romans 3:19-26). This means that in the content of the Gospel preaching to people is proclaimed not some invention of the human mind, but the unconditional truth of God's wisdom (1 Cor. 2:6-8), and therefore Jesus of Nazareth, who proclaimed to people this hidden mystery of God's mind, obviously did not proclaim it with a human mind, and consequently – if He took upon Himself the work of the salvation of the world, He did not accept it self-appointed (Heb. 5:11). 5-10).

On the basis of these propositions, it can be quite seriously proved, and the Apostles strenuously proved this, that Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead, and that this Christ is Jesus (Acts 17:3), Whom the Jews ignorantly crucified, but Whom the Apostles knew for certain that He really was Christ – the Son of God. but in fact He revealed to them in Himself the truth of the real salvation of people; for, crucified on the cross and undoubtedly dead, He rose from the dead, and for many days appeared to those who ate and drank with Him (Acts 10:41), and they saw with their own eyes His glory as the glory of the only-begotten of the Father (John 1:14), and they saw His wondrous ascension, and finally experienced the saving power of His grace, since He regenerated them and made them different people with new spiritual strength and with new means for a victorious struggle for the truth of God's kingdom in the world. If He had only communicated to people the true doctrine of salvation, in the name of the truth of this doctrine He would have wished to offer Himself as an atoning sacrifice for the sins of the world, and if then all that had actually happened in the sight of all people had happened, i.e. that He died on the cross and was placed in the tomb, and then His body mysteriously disappeared from the tomb, then on this basis it would be necessary to recognize Him as the true teacher of the salvation of the world, and, bearing in mind His immaculate life and innocent death, it would be possible to believe in Him as the real Savior of the world. If, in fact, it was the case that He revealed to men the truth as the knowledge of the mind, and at the same time realized this truth as a fact of reality, then it was equally compelled for the apostolic mind both to recognize the truth of His teaching about the way of the actual salvation of the world from evil, and to confess Him Himself as the real Saviour of the world; because in this case, the true content of the religious thought of the Apostles, obviously, was not the theoretical explanation of the true concept of salvation, but the actual cognition of the reality of salvation, i.e. the actual cognition of the reality of Christ's sacrifice on the Cross.

The concept of truth without cognition of its factual reality can, of course, only be probable, and the fact of reality without cognition of its meaning and significance in the general connection of all other real facts can naturally appear to thought only as impossible. Therefore, the apostles of Christ, as long as they did not know how the real salvation of the world could be accomplished, did not believe in the reality of Christ's resurrection, and tried to explain His posthumous appearances to them as deceptions of the senses, as ghosts. When they understood that the salvation of the world could not really be accomplished in any other way than that of which Christ spoke to them, i.e. except for the sacrifice on the cross for sin on the part of the only-begotten Son of God, then the incomprehensible facts became completely intelligible to them, and therefore from that time on, the posthumous appearances of the living Christ were not only sensuously perceived by the apostles as facts, but they were also recognized by them as actual appearances of the risen Christ, i.e. as real facts.