2 Corinthians 6.16 – 7.1

Luke 6.31 – 36

To hear what the LORD’s WORD in our Gospel this morning actually means, let’s go to the Greek and hear it in the mind of the Church – i.e., in the Spirit of Christ, whose Body the Church is: ‘If you love those who love you, or do good to those who do good to you, give only to those who give to you; in short, if you do not love your enemies, where is the Grace of God that is in you? Even sinners, who do not walk in the Grace of God but in the darkness, do that much.’

The word at issue here is the Greek word, charis. It can mean thanks, or credit, as it is translated in every English bible I have seen. But this translation simply is not aligned with the Mind of the Church.

The word, charis, is also the word for Grace. In the Mind of the Church, it is the uncreated Grace or uncreated energy and power of God. For example, John 1.16-17: ‘From out of His [divine] Fullness have we all received Grace upon Grace [charis]; for the Law was given through Moses, but Grace [charis] and Truth came to be through Jesus Christ.’ Came to be: Grace and Truth became incarnate; they became flesh and blood in the Body of Christ; ‘For in him the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily’ (Col 2:9).

Jesus Christ is the Son of God who came to be flesh of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. That is, His Mother was ever-Virgin (Isa 7.14; Eze 44.2). She did not know a man (Lk 1.34, Mt 1.25), so the LORD Jesus Christ was sired not from human blood nor by the desire of the flesh or the desire of a man but by the Holy Spirit of God the Father. He is fully Man as Son of the Virgin; but He is Man who is fully God because He is the Son of God eternally begotten of the Father. Precisely what, then, is this uncreated Grace that came to be flesh through the God-Man, Jesus Christ, and that we have all received from out of His Fullness?

It is the Grace of the Holy Spirit that He breathed out on His Holy apostles in His Resurrection, that He pours out on all those baptized into His death and Resurrection, and that we have all received who partake of His Body and Blood in Holy Eucharist.

If, then, we are walking in the Grace of the Holy Spirit that has been given to us in the LORD’s Body, His Church, we are walking in the Holy Spirit or in the Grace of the LORD’s Resurrection which destroys death and bestows on us the very eternal Life of the Holy Trinity. From the Grace given to us in the LORD’s Resurrection, we become ourselves gracious; we become ourselves spiritual, we become the ‘righteous who live forever.’ (Wisd 5.15) And so, we become like God, for if we are partakers of the LORD’s uncreated Grace that He gives to us in the sacramental mysteries of His Holy Church, we become ‘partakers of His divine nature’ (2 Pt 1.4).

If, on the other hand, we are walking in the spirit of the world, we will not be gracious or spiritual or like God. For we will be following the lifeless spirits of the idols; and we will become like them, spiritual corpses. We will have eyes that do not see, ears that do not hear, hands that do not feel, throats that make no sound, feet that cannot walk. Our spirit will not be alive in God’s divine Grace. It will be dead in idolatry. We will not be able to love our enemies because we will be self-absorbed, self-centered, liking only those who like us, doing good only to those who do good to us, giving only to those who give to us. We will be children of the dead and not children of the Living God.

Loving our enemy is not something we can do on our own strength, anyway. Loving one’s enemy is the property of the Grace of the Life of God’s Holy Spirit. But, we have become spiritual corpses through transgressions both voluntary and involuntary. We live in death, and in our spiritual death, we cannot make ourselves live in the Grace of the Holy Spirit.

But Our LORD Jesus Christ, through His Incarnation of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, has poured out His uncreated Grace into our souls and bodies. He is the Fountain of Life; and by His Incarnation, His death and burial and resurrection from the dead, His Body, risen from the dead, has become the Fountain of Immortality. And if His Body is the Church, then the Church is the Fountain of Immortality. The Church is the LORD’s Body in whom the fullness of God dwells bodily, and in the Church, all those who draw near to Christ in the fear of God, with faith and love, receive from out of His fullness Grace upon Grace. They are raised from death to the eternal, divine life of God; and walking in that Life, living in that Grace, they become like God, children of God.

We call upon this divine Grace to love our enemies and to do good to those who are mean to us, to give to those who give nothing back in return by living in it, by walking in it, by submitting ourselves to it, seeking to be shaped and defined by the Spirit of God’s Grace, and not by the spirit of the world ruled by the powers of darkness. To live in the divine Grace of the Holy Spirit that we have received from the LORD in the sacramental mysteries of His Holy Church, His Body risen from the dead, means living in prayer, living in the presence of God, living not by the wisdom of human opinion but by the Wisdom of God, revealed to us in Christ’s Holy Church.

That means studying Holy Scripture in the Mind of the Church – not in our own mind, not in the mind of the charlatans and demagogues who claim to know God but who, in their self-esteem, are themselves deceived and deceivers; but to learn and to know God directly from the God-Man, from His Church, which is His Body risen from the dead and that lives in the Grace of the Holy Spirit who indwells it.

It means taking up our cross given to us by the Church, by Christ Himself, in the form of fasting and prayer. It means living our life in the rhythm of the Church, the rhythm of Her liturgical worship – not in the rhythm, e.g., of the sports seasons – and partaking in the fear of God, with faith and love, from the Fountain of Immortality.

For in all of these ways our soul drinks from the Fountain of Life which is Christ. From the New Wine that we receive from the Fountain of Immortality, the wineskins of our old man that is corrupt through deceitful lusts, begin to burst; and we are renewed in the spirit of our minds. We put on the new nature, the New Wineskins, created after the likeness of God in righteousness and holiness, and in the Grace of the Holy Spirit that we have received from out of the Fullness of Jesus Christ, we receive power from on high to be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even to love our enemies, as God in Christ forgave us out of His great love for us.’ [Eph 4:22-24, 32]. His Wisdom is what nourishes our mind, His Blood becomes our Life, His Body becomes the shape and structure of our life on earth, and we become sojourners on the inner Exodus of the Gospel raised by the God-Man from our graves to our inheritance in the Kingdom of Heaven, as children of God.

Glory to Jesus Christ! Most Holy Theotokos, save us! Amen!