9. Св. Иоанн Евангелист не позволяет говорить: веруй, как хочешь, только люби

The Holy Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian, the beloved disciple of the Lord, is primarily an example and preacher of love. His Holy Gospel breathes with love, his messages are filled with lessons about love, and his life serves as a striking example of it. He interpreted all the secrets of love - both its inaccurate beginning, its movement in deeds, and its end - the height to which it raises all its own. From this side, St. is especially famous. John, and whoever begins to talk about love, immediately remembers him as a model of love, and turns to him as a teacher of love. But look at what use today’s smart people have made of this? “They have a special kind of superstition, called indifferentism, according to which they think and say: believe as you want, it doesn’t matter, just love people as brothers, do good to them and have a beneficial effect on them. So, they say, the Evangelist John the Theologian writes only about love. “In love he has light, in love he has belly, in love he has every perfection.” And whoever does not love, according to him, walks in darkness, remains in death, is a murderer. It is also known that when the Evangelist grew old and could no longer walk on his own, they carried him in their arms into the church, and he only repeated: brethren! let's love each other. – That’s how he valued love. – So, they say, we need it too: love, and that’s all; but believe in yourself as you want. I myself have heard such wisdom. Maybe some of you have heard or will hear something similar. Let us contrast their false teaching with the true teaching of Saint John the Theologian and thereby protect our meaning from wavering in the principles of Christian common sense by the superstition of indifferentists. These smart guys want to arrange everything themselves - without God - both their external well-being and their morality. That is why they manage in every possible way to weave such a system of teaching so that there is no need to talk about God in it. - And they strike at love. “They say you love yourself mutually, but what can you think about God?” “But it is from this aspect that the holy Evangelist especially amazes them. – For although he certainly constantly remembers mutual love for each other, he places this love in such a connection with God, with love for God and with the knowledge of God that it is impossible to separate them from each other. See where he produces love from? “God loved us,” he says, “and the messenger of His Son, the cleansing of our sins.” - He further adds: “If God has loved us, we must love one another” (1 John 4:10-11). - It became, according to his mind, that our mutual love should be created under the influence of faith in the Lord who came to save us, and, therefore, it does not matter how you believe. Then, “let us love,” he teaches, “one another, for love is from God” (1 John 4:7). “If we love one another, God abides in us...” (1 John 4:12). “God is loving, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him...” (1 John 4:16). You see, he has no word about love without a word about God and the Savior. “Love comes from God and leads to God,” so whoever says that he “loves his brother, but does not know or love God and the Savior, he is a liar, and there is not a single truth in him” (1 John 4:20, 1 John 2:4). Why is all the teaching of St. The Evangelist on Love can be summarized in the following words: in order to love a brother, one must love God; but in order to love God, of course, one must know Him both in oneself and especially in His saving actions on us - to know, and therefore to believe. – Hence, what is the whole will of God? In faith and love: this, he says, is the commandment: “that we believe in the name of the Son of God—Jesus Christ—and love one another” (1 John 3:23). Not only love is commanded, but also faith in the Lord, and moreover, in such a way that faith is the source of love; so if you collect into one only those places where St. John the Evangelist speaks about love alone, then his teaching cannot in any way confirm the lies of superstition: love only, and believe as you want. But in addition to the teaching of love, he also has a teaching of faith, regardless of the law of love. “And look how he decisively rejects those who say: believe as you want?” From the very first verses, what is his sermon about? - about what they say that we saw, what we heard and what our hands touched - about the Word of the living, about the fact that the life appeared, that life that was with the Father and appeared to us - this is what he says, and we preach to you, so that we may have fellowship with us, and our fellowship with God the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ (1 John 1:1-3). Home, then, at St. John the Theologian, like all the Apostles, preached about communion with God through the Lord Jesus Christ, from which the mutual communion of believers then flows. How can we now stop at the latter without having the former? “Next,” St. John asks himself the question: who is the deceitful one? - and he solves it this way: no one, “except just reject him, for Jesus is not the Christ, and this is the Antichrist, reject the Father and the Son. Everyone reject the Son, nor have the Father. “Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he also in God” (1 John 2:22–23, 4:15). Therefore, the whole point is in the confession of the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God and God. - How can we say: believe as you want? Here is another warning: “For love,” he says, “believe not every spirit, but tempt the spirits; even if they are from God: for many false prophets went out into the world. For this reason know the Spirit of God and the spirit of deceit: every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ in the flesh is from God. And every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not from God: and this is the Antichrist” (1 John 4:1-3). But whoever says: Believe as you want, does not confess Jesus Christ; for if he had confessed, he would not have spoken so. It became - and he is not from God. From whom? “And this one, surely, is the Antichrist.” Finally, the holy Evangelist depicts the entire essence of Christianity as follows: “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. If you have the Son of God, you will have life; but if you do not have the Son of God, you will not have life” (1 John 5:11-12). Who has the Son of God? - He who believes in His name. “Why,” he says, “I write “to you who believe in the name of the Son of God,” so that you may know that by believing in the Son of God, “you have eternal life” (1 John 5:13). Consequently, whoever does not believe in the Son of God does not have eternal life. How will it be all the same, believe as you want? – No. – “We know that the Son of God has come and given us light and understanding, so that we may know the true God, and may we be in His true Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and the eternal life” (1 John 5:20). These extracts are enough, I believe, to indicate to the indifferentists that they are in vain expecting to find support for their lies in the teaching of St. John the Theologian. - It’s true, they say this without ever reading his holy and divinely inspired writings, but refer to him based on rumors about his love of love. - But even if they now put forward something else besides this in defense of their teaching, for us believers, one word of the beloved disciple of Christ is enough to reject it and, without hesitation, believe exclusively in what was handed down from the Lord through the holy Apostles and contained by the Church. To these decisive words of the Apostle and Evangelist John, I will add only the following consideration. – Having alienated their minds from the Lord, unbelievers rely on beneficial activities, the source and support of which is like love. But they do this only in order to stop at something, without the confidence that they have found solid support. For if they had a sound understanding of how fruitful activity is possible for a person, they would not have stopped at this teaching. After all, we are now not in the right state. It became impossible for us to act. – In order for us to begin to act, we must enter the right state. “We can’t do this on our own.” The Lord, having come to earth, raised humanity in Himself to a rightful state; but He erected it not for Himself, but so that people would accept from Him this restored humanity and thereby gain the opportunity to act rightly. They accept him through holy baptism. For those who are baptized into Christ are put on Christ. From now on, they become one with the Lord and begin to live His life and act by His power. It became that those who rely on love, or on right activity (for love is the fulfillment of the law) must first accept the entire institution of Christianity, in order to thereby ascend to the possibility of acting rightly and, therefore, abandoning their lies. For this cannot be achieved without faith, which in Christianity is the root and beginning of everything. “The Lord Himself speaks about this: “Be in Me, and I in you.” Just as a rod cannot produce fruit of itself unless it is on the vine; so are you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the birth. He who is in Me, and I in him, will produce much fruit: for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he will be cast out like a rod, and will be consumed, and they will gather it up, and put it into the fire, and it will be burned up” (John 15:4-6). So, when someone begins to talk to you about love, or fruitful activity, in addition to true faith, tell him: wait; first believe truly, by faith join in all the saving institutions of Christianity; - through them, unite with the Lord, borrow life and strength from Him, like a graft, - and then you will begin to act beneficially. – It is true that the evidence of true life is fruitful activity in love: but in order to reach it and remain in it, one must accept all the truth of God by faith and go through all the sanctifying actions of God. - Only under this condition, - that is, only truly in love, can we object in every way to Him Who is the head, Christ (Eph. 4:15). Let us conclude this way: whoever does not contain the right faith cannot ascend to the right state, and whoever does not ascend to the right state cannot act rightly. - How can we say now: believe as you want. Faith is not only an image of knowing God and our relationship to Him; it also combines all the saving institutions given by God. Saving institutions constitute active faith. Our clever people, perhaps, would not be averse to Christian teaching; but they are most repulsed by Christian institutions. How these institutions are nothing other than faith in action and movement; then their main sin is that they do not want to act in the spirit of faith. One must be surprised how these people talk so persistently about deeds and works, and in the area of ​​​​holy faith they are most alienated from activity. Something is wrong here. After all, they know the laws of how to correctly lead the flow of thoughts. - If such crookedness is allowed here, then, perhaps, we must assume that they are not acting here, but being done - they are instruments of an alien force - and, moreover, one that is itself alien to the truth. Knowing this, brothers, let us protect ourselves from the evil of this age! – Only those who have not tasted the truth can waver in the truth. We will humbly and in the true spirit go through everything required by our holy faith. Then we will constantly have and carry a testimony within ourselves, before which nothing is anything - all the attacks of lies from the outside. – May the Lord sanctify us all with His truth. Amen. On St. Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian. You might be interested in: