In his manifesto What I Believe, Tolstoy remembers how, as a younger man, he grappled mightily with the Sermon on the Mount. He was told—by priests, by books, by fellow Christians—that the Sermon is simply a moral ideal. We must strive for that ideal, even if we can’t attain it. Then, one day, as he was reading the Gospels, a certain passage leapt out at him:
Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
At that moment, Tolstoy realized that Christ was deadly serious:
“Resist not evil,” knowing that you will meet with those who, when they have struck you on one cheek and met with no resistance, will strike you on the other—who, having taken away your coat, will take away your cloak also—who, having profited by your labor, will force you to labor still more without reward. And yet, though all this should happen to you, “Resist not evil.” Do good to them that injure you. When I understood these words as they are written, all that had been obscure became clear to me, and what had seemed exaggerated I saw to be perfectly reasonable.
The only way to make sense of the Gospels—the only way—is to read them literally.
The Master gave us a new commandment: “That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.”
How did Christ love us? By taking our sins upon His own shoulders, by dying so that we could live.
But what does it mean for us to die for our brother’s sins? It means that we die for our brother’s sins.
“There is only one salvation for you,” Fr. Zosima warns:
Take yourself up, and make yourself responsible for all the sins of men. For indeed it is so, my friend, and the moment you make yourself sincerely responsible for everything and everyone, you will see at once that it is really so, that it is you who are guilty on behalf of all and for all.
Christ tells a crowd of Jews, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
The Jews ask, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
Jesus responds,
Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.
Now even His disciples begin to murmer, “This is an hard saying; who can hear it?” Then they leave Him—all but twelve.
“It is the one great heresy of the Church,” said George MacDonald, “that it has always been presenting something else than obedience as faith in Christ.”