What is it – Christ’s commandments? What the Ten Commandments are, it is clear. They are God’s laws formulated in ten clear commandments of God. And what are Christ’s commandments? Is it the same or is it something different? Nobody speaks about them, nobody emphasizes them. Nobody has taught us about them. Christ’s commandments are partly expressed in the Sermon on the Mount, then in the words of Jesus the night before His death, and in other places of the Scripture too. His commandments touch the heart. They are related to the inner life of man. For example, the sixth commandment says: “You shall not commit adultery!” But Christ’s commandment says – if you look at someone lustfully, you have already committed adultery in your heart. Or the fifth commandment: “You shall not kill!” But Christ’s commandment says – if you hate your brother in your heart, you commit a sin and call down a just punishment. Christ’s commandments lead to the essence of the Decalogue – in other words, they lead us to receive the spirit of the commandments! It does not mean to observe the external forms, to pigeonhole everything, to do all your duties and then to be proud of yourself – Oh, I’ve fulfilled all my duties, I’m good, I’m efficient, an almost record breaker – and you look down on others. Pride comes automatically.

Christ’s commandments, by contrast, open our eyes so that we may see the essence. Self-fulfilment of scribes and pharisees thus loses its field of activity. Christ says: “Follow Me. Learn from Me, for I am meek and humble.” His commandments are the foundation of a true relationship to God.

The chief commandment of Christ is: To lose one’s soul for His sake and the Gospel’s. To lose one’s soul for His sake! If anyone will not lose it – he is lost. He will perish! He must lose it for the sake of Christ, for otherwise spiritual infection and pride will destroy his soul in the end.

The external observance of God’s commandments is not sufficient. Hindus and Buddhists also have their moral codes; Confucius philosophized about what the society should be like, how polite people should be… But it is like an explosion of pride, fine manners, smiles, but in fact they mercilessly keep an eye on each other – this is hypocrisy. We can press the old self down for a while, so that it is hidden, but on the first occasion to come it jumps up like a spring. Or let’s think of pharisees with their so-called petty bourgeois morality. What was it? Unconverted churchmen and officials, when formal Christianity was in power, had perfectly fine Christian manners but were proud at the root. They omitted the essence of Christianity.

On the other hand, Christ’s commandments strike at the root. God wants us to love Him – that means, to lose our all for His sake, to give ourselves wholly to Him, and to seek Him instead of ourselves. We will thus find and save ourselves. If you want to save yourself by your own endeavour, the devil and the old self will deceive you and finally you will end in the cesspool of various forms of occultism, immorality, perversion, arrogance, money-grubbing, careerism or other bondages. You will get trapped like a fly in the spider’s web.

“He who has My commandments…”, says Jesus (Jn 14:21). He wants our heart and our mind to be His through the keeping of His commandments: “Repent (i.e. change your mind)” – that was His first commandment when He started to preach: “Repent, and believe in the Gospel.” “Whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.” (Lk 14:33) Radicalism of the Gospel is the condition of the true following of Christ. It’s not like this: I observe the outward forms so as to have fine manners; that suits me; let all think me to be a polite person; and yet I am a schizophrenic and live my own life. Such person is, as Jesus says, “a whitewashed tomb”. He said these words about the Pharisees. They pretend to be holy but they are like whitewashed tombs rotten inside. Christ does not want us to be whitewashed tombs. Christ wants us to get at the root, i.e. to die to ourselves. “We are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake.” (2Cor 4:11) It means to renounce your will, to rely on God, to be ever conscious of your sin, to repent time and again, to admit that evil is in you, to be grieved by the poison of original sin in you which can unexpectedly trip you up at any time. You can easily rebel and consent to hell because the devil deceives you so cleverly, so excellently, that you start to consider the way to perdition as the greatest good, as the truth, and you believe in his old lie again: “You will be as gods” – yes, gods, but with horns!

How is it then? What in particular are these commandments of Christ? We want to know what it is when Jesus says: “My commandments.” “Blessed are the poor in spirit” – that’s the first one. And the last one of the Beatitudes is: If people spit at you, persecute you, treat you as criminals, heretics and I don’t know what all, as some dangerous sectarians, rejoice because you have a reward in heaven!

The first Beatitude: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” We tend to think: “What do others think of me?” This is bad! I should think in this way: “What does God think of me?” I need sound impudence to go against the stream. You want me to betray? Go jump in the lake! I must have the courage to look straight, the courage to laugh: “What do you want? I will be saved in the hour of death! Now you are shouting at me but once you will be dying, the devil will laugh at you. I won’t laugh at you but rather weep. Now you serve the devil and he will then ‘reward’ you for letting him pull your leg. You are not fighting against me but against Christ and against yourself.”

The old self, original sin in us, has abnormal impudence to go against the stream of sound principles and to oppose to God. It believes in lies and is ready to sacrifice itself unto death for the sake of hell and the devil but it won’t lift a finger for the sake of Christ. And it is not only for the sake of Christ but also for our sake. To love God in fact means to love yourself, but in the right way – so that you may be saved. And people don’t want this. What stupidity this original sin in us is! Be a holy egoist who wants to be happy! Eternally happy! Holy egoism! But the old self does not want this! Man simply sells his soul for a silly thing, becomes a drug addict, then is infected with AIDS, becomes homeless, a beggar, people spit at him, and finally hell is in store for him. Why? Because he believed the devil, he believed in false good, he sought his own “good”, he wanted to be happy in sin. This is how “our own” happiness looks like. He saw the tragic end of others and yet did not learn his lesson from it and followed the same way to destruction.

But why is it so? There are no prophets, no warriors to point out the ongoing spiritual fight, no true politicians, no apologists, no men who would be real God’s warriors fighting for eternal life. It would be heroism – we are ready even to lay down our lives! What for do people sacrifice their lives? For silly, absurd things, “for His Majesty and family” during World War I, for Hitler and Stalin during World War II – but never for Christ. And there were millions of them. Nothing for the sake of Christ! Nothing! Not even for one’s own sake! All seek their own interests. And what is more, we join monasteries and still we seek our own. O God, what is it that is in us? Poor Jesus, I wouldn’t like to be in His place, having such good-for-nothings: You made your bed. Now you must lie in it! And Jesus sacrifices Himself, knocks at our door for 60-70 years, and we spit in His face. He comes like a beggar, wants to save us, and we treat Him like a nobody.

One looks at it with a heavy heart, and Christianity is so rotten, inflexible. Lord, what shall we do? Give us a programme! Give us a programme and the Spirit! What shall we do?! Please, give us! But God does not give us because we are not worthy. Perhaps we would not accept His programme. We have our own programmes. The Muslims do have a programme and work like the clappers. Jehovah’s Witnesses have a programme and work like the clappers… The Masons, Satanists have a programme, make sacrifices, and are on the way to hell. They know what they want, and they do it wholeheartedly. And Christians are like birds flitting to and fro, self-willed, doing what they like. Is this Christianity? No, it’s no Christianity. It’s play-acting. It’s mere pharisaism and superficiality. Lord, penetrate our hearts! Let us bear in mind – death! You know neither the day nor the hour. Be prepared! And people live as if they should never die, as if death was something from another planet. I recall that when I was a boy, my friend’s mother died. He was one year younger than me – I was 7 and he was 6. And during the funeral, when I was standing by the grave, watching the coffin slowly lowered, I realized – though being a mere child – that one day I will die too. It was clear to me. And people are like spaced out, as if death was something unreal. Their heart is covered with fat and they live as if death, God’s judgment or eternity should never come. Well, maybe they don’t believe in eternity – but don’t they believe in the reality of death?! All you have will be taken away from you; you can’t take it with you to the grave! And people make money hand over fist, and do not care for their souls. This is original sin in us. Let us stop, let us turn to God while there is still time!

Download: “If you love Me, keep My commandments.” (Jn 14:15)