Memorial Day of John the Theologian: why the saint is called the “apostle of love”

John the Theologian is the apostle of love.

The Apostle and Evangelist John, called the Theologian, was the son of the Galilean fisherman Zebedee and Salome. The birthplace of John the Evangelist was Bethsaida. His parents were pious people who lived in anticipation of the Messiah; even in adolescence they taught John the Law of Moses. From childhood, Saint John helped his father in his work on fishing and trade. The priest had some wealth, had workers, and was not an insignificant member of Jewish society. John's mother, Salome, according to legend, is the daughter of Saint Joseph the Betrothed, who is mentioned among the wives who served the Lord with their property. John's comrades and like-minded people were the inhabitants of the same Bethsaida, the holy brothers Peter and Andrew, and later also the holy Apostles. They listened together to the sermon of John the Baptist and became his disciples, although they had not yet left either their home or their studies. Having heard the testimony of John the Baptist about Christ as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, John the Theologian, together with Andrew the First-Called, followed the Savior (John 1:35-40). However, John the Theologian became a constant disciple of the Lord later, after a miraculous catch of fish on Lake Gennesaret (Galilee), when the Savior Himself called him along with his brother James (Matt. 4:21; Mark 1:19). Together with Peter and brother James, the Apostle John was honored with special closeness to the Savior; he was with Him in the most important and solemn moments of His earthly life. The Apostle John was present at the resurrection of Jairus's daughter (Mark 5:37; Luke 9:51), saw the transfiguration of the Lord (Matthew 17:1; Mark 9:2; Luke 9:28), heard a conversation about the signs of His second coming, witnessed His Gethsemane prayer (Mark 14:33). During the Last Supper, the Apostle John fell to the chest of Jesus (John 13:25). Church tradition unanimously identifies John the Theologian with the disciple “whom Jesus loved.” “Breast” in Church Slavonic is “persi”, probably from here comes the name of John the Theologian as the Savior’s confidante, subsequently this word becomes a common noun to designate a person, especially someone close to him.

The Apostle John the Theologian was characterized by calmness and depth of contemplation combined with ardent fidelity, tender and boundless love with ardor and even some harshness. From the brief instructions of the Evangelists it is clear that he had an extremely ardent nature, his heartfelt impulses sometimes reached such violent jealousy that Jesus Christ was forced to calm them down, as those who disagreed with the spirit of the new teaching: Seeing this, His disciples, James and John, They said: Lord! Do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and destroy them, just as Elijah did? But He, turning to them, rebuked them and said: You do not know what kind of spirit you are; for the Son of Man came not to destroy the souls of men, but to save. And they went to another village (Luke 9, 54 - 56) The Apostle John the Theologian was one of the first witnesses of the Resurrection of the Savior. And after the Ascension of the Lord, we often see the Apostle John together with the Apostle Peter. Along with him, he is considered a pillar of the Church (Gal. 2:9) and spends most of his time in Jerusalem. Faithful to the will of the Lord, he cared for the Most Pure Virgin Mary, like the most devoted son, and only after Her Dormition he began to preach in other countries. According to legend, after the Dormition of the Mother of God, the Apostle John, according to the lot that fell to him, went to Ephesus and other cities of Asia Minor to preach the Gospel, taking with him his disciple Prochorus. They set off on a ship that was wrecked during a strong storm. All participants in the voyage except John the Theologian were washed ashore by the waves after some time, and he, after spending about two weeks in the depths of the sea, was miraculously found by Prokhor on the shore near the city of Ephesus, alive and unharmed. While in the city of Ephesus, the Apostle John constantly preached the teachings of Christ to the pagans. His preaching was accompanied by numerous and great miracles, so that the number of believers increased every day. Years passed, all of the twelve apostles had already accepted martyrdom for their faith, only the Apostle John remained alive and continued to preach. Under Emperor Domitian (81-96), the Apostle John was summoned to Rome as the only surviving apostle, and by order of this persecutor of Christians he was sentenced to death. The apostle drank the cup of deadly poison offered to him and remained alive, according to the words of Christ before the Ascension: “and if they drink anything deadly, it will not harm them” (Mark 16:18), then he was thrown into boiling oil, but the power of God preserved him even here unharmed. After this, the Apostle John was exiled to the semi-desert island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea, where he lived for many years. His preaching, accompanied by many miracles, attracted all the inhabitants of the island to him: he converted most of its inhabitants to Christianity, cast out demons from pagan temples, and healed many sick people. Since ancient times, the Gospel of John has been called spiritual; compared to the first three, it mainly contains the Lord’s conversations about the deepest truths of faith - about the incarnation of the Son of God, about the Trinity, about the redemption of mankind, about spiritual rebirth, about the grace of the Holy Spirit and about Communion. From the first words of the Gospel, John raises the believer’s thought to the height of the divine origin of the Son of God from God the Father: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word came to God, and God was the Word” (John 1:1). The Apostle John expresses the purpose of writing his Gospel as follows: “These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and by believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:31). In addition to the Gospel and the Apocalypse, the Apostle John wrote three epistles, which were included in the New Testament books as Council Epistles (that is, district epistles). The main idea in his messages is that Christians need to learn to love: “Let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God; He who does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4:7-8). Being an example of love for those around him, the Apostle John commanded all Christians to love the Lord and each other, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ. The Apostle of Love - this is what Saint John is called, since he constantly taught that without love a person cannot approach God and please Him. Love is the main feature of the spiritual appearance of the Apostle John the Theologian. The entire life path of the apostle is the service of Love. In the last years of his life, the Apostle spoke only one instruction: “Children, love one another.” The disciples asked him: “Why do you repeat the same thing?” The apostle replied: “This is the most necessary commandment. If you fulfill it, then you will fulfill the entire law of Christ.” The Apostle John the Theologian outlived all his fellow apostles and died at the beginning of the 2nd century, presumably at the age of one hundred and five years. Until the last days of his life, he gathered disciples around him and passed on to them the fundamentals of the teachings of Christ. The circumstances of the death of the Apostle John are unusual and even mysterious. At the insistence of the Apostle John, seven of his closest disciples buried him in a cross-shaped grave, and alive: “...draw my mother earth, cover me!” When the rest of the students heard this story and decided to dig up the teacher’s burial site, the grave turned out to be empty. This event seemed to confirm the assumption of some Christians that the Apostle John would not die, but would remain alive until the Second Coming of Christ and would expose the Antichrist. The reason for this assumption was the words spoken by the Savior shortly before His ascension. When the Apostle Peter asked what would happen to the Apostle John, the Lord answered: “If I want him to remain until I come (the second time), what is that to you, follow Me.” The Apostle John notes in his Gospel on this matter: “And this word went out among the brothers, that that disciple would not die” (John 21:22-23).

Epiphany Cathedral in Yelokhov

On October 9, the Holy Orthodox Church brightly celebrates the death of one of the first and beloved disciples of Christ. It is no coincidence that his confidant, apostle and evangelist, John the Theologian, is called the Apostle of Love.

Saint John was the son of the Galilean fisherman Zebedee. His mother's name was Salome. Before his conversion to Christ, he was a disciple of St. John the Baptist. After turning to Christ, Saint John never again departed from the Lord. Because I loved Him with my pure heart more than anything else in the world.

During the earthly life of the Lord, John, among the three beloved disciples of the Lord, was honored to witness the appearance of divine glory on Mount Tabor.

Was at the resurrection of Jairus' daughter. At the Last Supper, the Lord revealed Judas, the traitor, to him.

Imbued with love for his Lord and Heavenly Teacher, John, the only one of the disciples, stood at the Cross during the Lord’s suffering. And to him, as a pure virgin, the Lord from the Cross entrusted in his dying moments the care of His Most Pure Mother.

Before the Dormition of the Mother of God, he lived in Jerusalem. And after Her Dormition in the city of Ephesus, where he preached the Gospel of Christ.

For preaching the Gospel, he was first exiled to Rome, where he was tortured. And when the poison and boiling oil did not harm him, Emperor Domitian exiled him to the island of Patmos.

There he wrote a book - the Apocalypse, which sets out the future fate of the Christian world.

Under Domitian's good successor, Nerva, Saint John was released and returned to Ephesus again. There John died peacefully, the only one of all the apostles. In addition to the Apocalypse, he wrote the Gospel and three conciliar messages.

The Apostle John the Theologian, says Archimandrite Kirill (Pavlov), confessor of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, is usually called the Apostle of Love. Because he mainly preached mutual love for each other.

Saint John was imbued with deep love for the Christians who lived with him and for all Christians in general. The desire for peace and love to spread between them, and not enmity and hatred. He attached high importance to love and believed that fulfilling the commandment of love alone was enough for salvation.

Tradition says that when he became very old and could not go to different countries preaching the Gospel, then, sitting in his house, he constantly repeated to those who came to him:

- Children, love each other! When asked why he repeated these words so often, he answered:

– Whoever fulfills the commandment of love will fulfill all the commandments. And in his Epistles to Christians that have come down to us, he often repeats:

– Let us love God because He first loved us. He who does not love has not known God, because God is love (1 John 4.19, 8). He who loves God must also love his neighbor, because whoever does not love his brother shows by this that he does not love God either.

Just as Christ laid down his life for us, so we must lay down our lives for our brothers. He who loves his brother abides in the light. And whoever hates his brother is in darkness (1 John 3.16; 2.10-11). Likewise, in the Gospel, the Apostle John draws attention mainly to those incidents from the life of the Savior in which His love for people was primarily expressed and which primarily aroused love for Christ the Savior.

What reasons motivate us to love each other? First of all, by nature we are brothers. Because everyone descended from one progenitor Adam. And in heaven we have a common Father - God. This means that we all make up one great family and therefore must love each other as if we were half-blooded. Moreover, constituting one family as people, all of us, by the title of Christians, are in an even closer relationship with each other. Because, according to the teaching of the Apostle Paul, we constitute one spiritual body, whose head is Christ (Col. 1:18).

But in what relation are the members to each other in one natural body? Are they at odds with each other? Is it armed, for example, with a hand against a leg or an eye against an ear? No, they act in harmony with each other. They mutually assist each other and are in such a community that if one member suffers, then the others suffer with it.

If irrational members act this way, then much more should we, the rational members of the spiritual Body, whose head is Christ, act this way. He wants us to live in peace and harmony among ourselves.

The Lord Jesus Christ commands most of all that we love one another.

Remember what He prayed for and what He inspired to the apostles before His suffering:

“Holy Father,” He cried out to His Heavenly Father, “keep them from hostility, so that they may be one, just as We are (John 17.11).

“My children,” He said to the apostles, “I command you, that you love one another (John 13.34). Do you see how much Jesus Christ wanted us to live in mutual love?

Jesus Christ not only commanded us to love other people, but also presented in Himself a model of love for us. Why did He, being God, descend from heaven to earth and take upon Himself our mortal flesh? Out of love for us people. Why was He, an innocent one, subjected to severe suffering and crucified on the Cross as a lawless one? For the same love for us.

Why is He patient with our sins and not only has mercy on us, but also sends us various gifts of grace? Out of love for us. We must love each other even more because love for our neighbors has a high moral dignity and constitutes the great perfection of a Christian. She likens us to God, because God is love (1 John 4:8).

God acts in everything out of love for His creations, especially for us - people whom He loves so much that He sent His only begotten Son into the world, so that we may live by Him.

Love is the source and sum of all virtues, and therefore it is higher than all other virtues.

“Now,” says the Apostle Paul, “faith, hope, and love abide; but the greatest of these is love (1 Cor. 13.13). Without love, all our knowledge, deeds and faith itself have no moral value.

Archimandrite Kirill (Pavlov) not only talked about John the Theologian and what love is, but also showed an example of it with his life. Everyone who met the priest will remember this forever.

Prayer to John the Theologian for the increase of love

O great and all-praised apostle and evangelist John the Theologian, confidant of Christ, our warm intercessor and quick helper in sorrows! Pray to the Lord God to grant us forgiveness of all our sins, especially those we have sinned from our youth, throughout our entire life, in deed, word, thought and all our feelings. At the end of our souls, help us, sinners, to get rid of airy ordeals and eternal torment, and through your merciful intercession we glorify the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Found a violation? Report content

Archbishop Averky (Taushev)

Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian
“O virgin, who is the story of your greatness? fortify miracles, and pour out healings, and pray for our souls, as the Theologian and friend of Christ.”

(Kondak).

With these words, the Holy Church today glorifies the memory of the beloved disciple of Christ, confidant and virgin, the holy Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian.

All the Apostles, of course, were loved by our Lord Jesus Christ, but for the youngest of them, John, He, as we know from the Gospel, had some kind of special touching love. And St. himself John felt it. “The disciple whom Jesus loves most”

- this is what he repeatedly says about himself in his Gospel, humbly keeping silent about his name.
Obviously, due to some affinity of souls, the Apostle John was especially close to the Theanthropic soul of the Lord. Therefore, at the Last Supper, the last supper of the Lord with His disciples, at which so many important and significant things happened, he was in such great closeness to the Lord Jesus that, according to the expression of the Gospel, it was as if he was “reclining on his chest
(that is, on his chest)
Him,”
which is why his name “confidant” came about, which has since come into general use when talking about a person who is very close to another. “He is his confidant” is how they usually express it in such cases.”

Why did the Lord Jesus Christ love John so much?

Without a doubt - for the particularly elevated mood of his soul, for his virgin purity - for the fact that he was a true virgin

both body and soul.
For only the heart of a virgin, unattached to the earth, is capable of easily soaring to the sky; only the heart of a virgin, not entangled by earthly attachments and passions, is capable, without much hard work and struggle with itself, to completely and completely surrender itself to God. Therefore, such sublime and incomprehensible secrets of God are easily revealed to a virgin, which are difficult for other people who have not preserved their virgin purity to even think about. For the same reason, the heart of a virgin easily and deeply perceives the highest and holiest of all secrets - the mystery of Divine love
.

And we, indeed, know that many things were revealed to the Apostle John that the other Apostles did not receive. His Gospel itself is filled with such extraordinarily sublime truths that it is not for nothing that since ancient times it has been primarily called “spiritual.”

, and the Evangelist John himself was likened to an eagle soaring high in the skies. And his wondrous, incomprehensible Apocalypse, still not fully interpreted and not amenable to a comprehensive disclosure of all the wondrous and terrible visions contained in it about the final destinies of the Church and the whole world!

“The spectator of ineffable revelations and the narrator of the highest mysteries of God”

- with these words the Holy Church tenderly glorifies the wondrous mystic John, and he, alone of all the sacred writers, assigns the high and honorable title of
“Theologian”
.

The Apostle John the Theologian also has another honorary title: he is usually called the “Apostle of Love”

, for no other of the sacred writers has revealed so fully and deeply, so touchingly and convincingly the sublime teaching of the Lord about love.

Love! - this is the highest and most sacred of everything that exists in the world. There is nothing more majestic and beautiful than love, for love is a living creative principle by which everything is created and moves in the world. Love is the most sacred thing, for it is nothing more than one of the main, fundamental properties of God the Creator, one of the names of God, in which the essence of the Divine nature, incomprehensible to us, is expressed in the most understandable way for us.

"God is love",

- teach us St.
Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian: “And he who abides in Love abides in God, and God abides in him”
(1 John 4:16).

Love is the highest and most sacred thing in the world, and yet there is no other concept that would be so vulgarized in our time, so humiliated and devalued by modern man. Regarding the correct understanding of love and, especially, genuine Christian love, spiritual

, then it is becoming more and more difficult to find it these days in the modern godless, de-churched human world.
This is where all the disasters of modern humanity come from, threatening to erupt into a terrible world catastrophe. The modern world is perishing from the lack of genuine Christian love and fraternal unity of all true believers in Christ on the sublime foundations of this love. Some beautiful words about love and the unity of all will not help here, for genuine Christian Love is inseparable from the Truth and, where there is no Truth, there cannot be true love
, but only hypocrisy. And many people are completely naive in thinking about saving the world, treating sick humanity with some purely external measures and means, through all sorts of organizations and reorganizations of the state and public life of people and similar “experiences from empty to empty.”

All this is for nothing!

No external measures, no “reforms” will help, will not save humanity from the terrible destruction that is so clearly and obviously approaching it, especially since the collapse of our Orthodox Russia.

Remake in a new way the soul of a person who has departed from God, from Christ, from the Church, from the sublime law of the Gospel - put love in his heart

so that she becomes the main driver of his life!

Only in this and only in this is our salvation!

This is precisely what the “Apostle of Love” St. teaches us so touchingly and convincingly. John the Theologian, both in his wonderful “spiritual” Gospel, where he alone of all the evangelists expounds the most sublime words of Christ about love, and in his three conciliar epistles. True love, according to the teaching he expounded, is only

one that spiritually connects a person with God and spiritually unites people among themselves in the Name of God.

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another as you have loved, and that you also love yourselves (each other)!”

- he quotes the words of Christ spoken at the Last Supper:
“of this all understand, as you are my disciples, if you have love for one another”
(John 13:34-35).

“If you love Me, you will keep My commandments!”

(John 14:15).

“Whoever has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will manifest myself to him.”

(John 14:21).

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as you have loved; no one has greater love than he who lays down his life for his friends.”

(John 15:12-13).

“I command you this, that you love one another”

(John 15:17).

“And I told them Your name,”

- this is how the Lord Jesus Christ prayed in his high priestly prayer to God the Father:
“And I will say, Yes, those who loved me will be in them, and I in them”
(John 17:26).

We find all these wonderful speeches of the Lord Jesus Christ about love, so powerfully and vividly expressed, only in the fourth Gospel of Christ’s beloved disciple.

His own instructions about love in his conciliar messages are also remarkable.

"God is love",

- this is what St. teaches.
John: “This is love, not that we loved God, but He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Beloved! If God so loved us, then we should love one another” (1 John 4:10-11).

“Whoever says: I love God, but hates his brother, is a liar.”

(1 John 4:20).

“We know love in this, that He laid down His life for us, and we must lay down our lives for our brothers.”

(1 John 3:16).

Beloved disciple of Christ, his confidante, virgin and Apostle of Love, St. John the Theologian was awarded a special honor: to him, as a virgin, the Lord, hanging on the cross, entrusted the Most Holy Virgin - His Mother, saying to Her: “Woman, behold Your son,”

and to him:
“Behold your Mother.
And from that hour the disciple watered himself” (John 19:26-27).

And his entire further fate was completely different from the fate of the other Apostles of Christ. While they all ended their earthly life with martyrdom for Christ, St. John the Theologian outlived them all, living to a ripe old age, and the only one of the Apostles died, his natural, but also very mysterious death. If only he died?... An ancient legend says that his body, a few days after the burial, was not in the grave, and that he lives and will live until the Second Coming of Christ, that he will denounce the Antichrist who has appeared in front of everyone. This belief is partly reflected in our church hymns.

What is the main covenant that this beloved disciple of Christ left us?

In the last years of his life, due to old age, he could no longer walk on his own. The disciples carried it in their arms to the Christian meeting, and the elder, exhausted over the years, with difficulty raising his trembling hands for blessing, repeated the same words all the time: “Children! love each other!"

One day the disciples asked the Apostle:
“Teacher!
Why do you keep repeating the same words to us?” And the good old man answered them:
“This is the main commandment of the Lord.
Whoever fulfills it will fulfill the entire law of Christ.” How many beautiful words we hear today about love, but, for the most part, about love without Christ, or from those people who only in their selfish ways mention the Name of Christ, without believing in Him and not truly loving Him , but all this is just empty words that cannot save the dying world. For us, if we are true Christians, there is no other way than to firmly remember and in our lives try to carry out the great covenant left to us by the greatest confidante of Christ and the Apostle of Love, St. John the Theologian:

“My children! let us love one another not in word or tongue, but in deed and truth.”

(1 John 3:18). Amen.

Orthodox Life

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God” (1 John 4:7).

Did you think we would remember the Apocalypse? This is the most common association with the “son of thunder,” as the Savior nicknamed John the Theologian. But against the backdrop of menacing predictions, one somehow completely forgets that the pious man was nicknamed... the apostle of love. John speaks about this highest quality of the human soul in his epistle.

The Antichrist, the embodiment of absolute evil, must come, but should this occupy the heart of a Christian? No, the heart of a person who believes in the Lord should be occupied by Christ, and we are called in His honor. John calls God light, contrasting Him, like a bright and warm sun, with the pitch darkness that prevents a person from living, seeing, rejoicing, and hiding a threat. In order for the soul to be illuminated by the light of Christ, one must get rid of sins. It seems that this is impossible, but only because we rely on our own strengths, understanding their limitations. But we have a Savior who, by His grace, delivers us from the darkness of sin: “And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2).

What is sin? This is the destruction of a person from the inside, the loss of connection with happiness. Because a person connected with God is happy from the state of love, which is revealed to him in full only with the Lord. “Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15), John calls, showing us that the true value for a person is beyond the visible world. This is why Christ came to give us this vision. To give both the vision and what will be revealed behind this ability to sense spiritual matter - “eternal life” (1 John 2:25).

The Savior literally adopted us, giving us the opportunity for those who do the truth, that is, those who act according to the law of love, to be called children of God. Not slaves - children. And this is a true act of God's love towards humanity. And since deification presupposes an ascent to the likeness of God, love as a moral category becomes the central motive of a Christian’s life. The Apostle warns that we must love one another with all our hearts, just as Christ laid down his life for us. At the same time, a person in whom there is no love “remains in death” (1 John 3:14). Keep the commandments of the Lord, says the apostle, and then God will abide in us. And remembering on what commandments the entire Christian law is based, we again return to this pinnacle of everything - love.

Anyone who does not love simply does not see God. This is why the world so often rebels against Christian truths, because its content turns out to be anti-God. At the center of life is man. But such a setting of value guidelines turns each individual person into a center, forcing them to engage in a kind of spiritual separatism and cultivate only self-love. Love for God as the center of life truly unites people and, oddly enough, teaches them to love each other. “He who does not love does not know God, for God is love” (1 John 4:8). God is Spirit, and His Spirit is Love. By loving God, we adopt His main property, love, which determines our attitude towards our neighbors. Can you imagine what a world full of love could be like? And it is real, but outside of our time. But “we have this commandment from Him, that whoever loves God should also love his brother” (1 John 4:21), because “whoever says, ‘I love God, and hates his brother,’ he is a liar, for he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20).

But how to achieve this perfect love? The Apostle calls for fulfilling God’s commandments and praying. Prayer is a conversation with the Heavenly Father. This is why He is a Father because He will not leave His children without help. We cannot independently become a receptacle for the Spirit of Love. But “if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us” (1 John 5:14).

The Lord is our Savior, Truth, Way and Love. The Apostle John calls us to find Him and become His faithful followers. And the main criterion for the life of a believer, about which John the Theologian warns, is Love. We wish we had more of it in this cruel and complex world.

Vladimir Basenkov

Light

The main testimony of the holy Apostle John, which he himself calls the gospel (that is, the Gospel), is that God is light, and in Him there is no darkness (1 John 1 :5). God as light is repeatedly spoken of in John’s Gospel: God the Word is the true Light, which shines in darkness and enlightens every person who comes into the world (John 1 :5,9). Christ says: I am the light of the world; whoever follows Me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life (John 8:12 ). Light and darkness are two opposites, meaning being with God and without Him, true life and sinful life. But light and darkness are not equal to each other - these are not two equivalent principles. Because there is only one sanctifying and enlightening principle - the Word, and darkness cannot embrace Him (see: John 1 , 5). For the Apostle John, darkness is the absence of light, life without God. There is danger in the darkness; being in the darkness, a person cannot find the right path.

But if God enlightens everyone, as the Gospel says about this, then why does darkness exist? Because we ourselves choose darkness instead of light: If we say that we have fellowship with Him, but walk in darkness, then we lie and do not act in the truth (1 John 1 :6). In the Gospel this thought is expressed differently: Light has come into the world; but people loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil; for everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds be exposed, because they are evil (John 3 :19-20). Darkness becomes an obstacle that man himself erects between himself and God. Sinful darkness and enlightenment by Divine light cannot be combined. Therefore, you cannot be somewhere between light and darkness. If a person does not want to get closer to the light, then he remains in the darkness of ignorance. But this is precisely where the greatest danger lies - to consider yourself enlightened, but in fact to be outside of God. Isn’t the light that is in you darkness? (Luke 11:35 ). Divine enlightenment is so necessary so that we can see the truth and not be deceived. Therefore, the ancient psalmist exclaimed: Show us the light of Your face, O Lord! (Ps. 4 , 7)

Those who walk in the light, like Christ in the light, have fellowship with each other and are cleansed by the Blood of Jesus Christ from all sin (see: 1 John 1: 7 ). To be in the light is to be in true life. To see the light, you need to purify yourself. Therefore, the beginning of the path to light is repentance: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, then He, being faithful and righteous, will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1 :8-9).