Saint Paul — "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha."
If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha.
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Anyone who does not love the Lord Jesus Christ should be cursed and cut off from the community, awaiting the Lord's return to judge them. It is a stark warning that genuine devotion to Christ is non-negotiable for belonging to the faith. Lack of love for Jesus places a person outside the circle of believers and under divine judgment rather than within the bonds of Christian fellowship.
Relevance to Saint Paul
Paul wrote this closing line to the fractious Corinthian church he founded, where loyalty to Christ was being diluted by factions, idol-meat disputes, and moral compromise. As a former Pharisee who persecuted Christians before his Damascus road conversion, Paul knew firsthand the cost of rejecting Jesus. His blended Aramaic-Greek phrase reflects his bicultural identity as a Hellenized Jew and apostle to the Gentiles.
The era
Written around 55 CE, Corinth was a wealthy Roman port saturated with pagan cults, temple prostitution, and mystery religions competing for devotion. Early Christians were a tiny minority facing social pressure to participate in civic idol worship and emperor veneration. Excommunication mattered because the church functioned as a tight-knit survival community. 'Maranatha' (Aramaic for 'Our Lord, come') tied Greek-speaking converts back to the original Jewish-Christian movement awaiting Christ's imminent return.
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