Abstract
In understanding of Paul, the community is in the first place work of God, space where the love of God should be realized through human activity based on faith; only in the second place it is also a human phenomenon. The community was of central meaning for Paul; he understood it as an organism in which the individual members must rely on each other, and where the fact that people depend on each other and live for a common work is an expression of their belonging to Christ, a participation on his cross as a means of salvation.
The most significant principle of life of a Christian and of a Christian community is according to Paul not success, richness, glory nor extraordinary gifts and abilities, though he estimated them highly, but generous love, as expressed in 1 Cor 13 of in Rom 8:31-39.