Monthly Archives: March 2012

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON GOD; Part XLIX

In yesterday’s post we went back to our discussion of the Aspects of God and restated some of what we have come to know regarding the ONE GOD taking on the roles of the Father and the Son. In an of itself this is a difficult concept to grasp and perhaps this is the reason why the Trinity is treated as Three separate but distinct Persons by so many. However, under the Light of the Soul this is an understandable concept and is not any less understandable than the Three Persons theory; in either case this is a concept that must be taken on Faith. We cited yesterday the idea of Faith that the writer of the Book of Hebrews gives to us saying that: “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear” (Hebrews 11:3). Now we used this in a different context in the last post, that of the role of the Christ who is the manifestation and the cause of ALL that IS, than we want to see today but they are very related. Looking at the teachings and the scripture on the Trinity there is little actual evidence of the reality of It.  Except for a few verses there is little mention of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in any single thought and the Truth of the Trinity must be extracted from distinct and different statements as we have done in our posts. Yet, men believe; with no evidence and a variety of interpretations and doctrines regarding the Trinity, men do believe. This is where our understanding of Faith comes in; we are of God and like God and, as the Inner Man, the Soul, the Christ Within, we KNOW God and some of this realization does always seep through into our carnal consciousness and, unless we turn it off completely by ignoring it or falling headlong into the world, we are and will be aware by Faith of some of the mysteries of the Kingdom of God. This is Faith and this is a flash of Wisdom from above and, as we have discussed before there is a fine line between Faith and Hope; when we are told a thing that we don’t understand and believe it because we are told it should not be seen as the reality of Faith. When we sense the realty of it from our Inner Man through what we call our conscience, then we can say we have Faith as we have that testimony of Truth.

We discussed recently the few sayings of John the Baptist and we reflected on the True spiritual nature of what he said in his brief time with us (In the Words of Jesus parts 212 and 255). Likely he taught the Jews in his day much more than the little that is recorded and among his pearls of Wisdom is this: “He that cometh from above is above all: he that is of the earth is earthly , and speaketh of the earth: he that cometh from heaven is above all. And what he hath seen and heard, that he testifieth; and no man receiveth his testimony. He that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true. For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God: for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him. The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand. He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 2:31-36). The Baptist is understood as the forerunner of the Master who was sent from God to be the “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight” (Mark 1:3). He took no notice for himself but alluded to the Master as the One; he humbly tells the Jews that “I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire” (Matthew 3:11).

The Apostle John records this about the Baptist in the Prologue to his Gospel and in that same section that tells us of the Wondrous Nature of the Word, the Logos, who is of course the Christ. John says of the Baptist that: “There was a man sent from God” (John 1:6) and in this single saying there is much revelation and Wisdom. We discussed before our understanding that there were disciples of the Lord who chose to come into incarnation with the Master as His help to ensure that the Great Plan of God was successful. We use the word disciple here, for lack of a better term, to denote a Soul that has overcome the wiles of the flesh and made his way into the Kingdom of God. These are ‘HOLY’ men and foremost among them was John the Baptist. If we cannot understand this then we must believe that God is a respecter of persons, that He formed this one man to accomplish this great feat and bestowed upon him the Holy Spirit. John Gill in his Exposition of the Bible⁸ says this about this verse: There was a man sent from God. John the Baptist: he was not the Logos, or word; nor was he an angel, but a man; yet an extraordinary one, in his conception of a barren woman, and in being born when both parents were stricken in years; and whilst he was in the womb, he leaped for joy at the salutation of Mary; and as soon as born was filled with the Holy Ghost; and when he was grown up, and appeared in public, it was in an uncommon manner: his dress and his diet were both out of the common way; and his temper and spirit were that of Elias the prophet; and as for his work and office, it was very peculiar; he was the forerunner of Christ, and the first administrator of the new ordinance of baptism, and the greatest of all the prophets: this person had his mission from God, both to preach and baptize⁸. Without understanding the reality, Gill tells us that the Baptist’s temper and spirit were that of Elias the prophet and this even though the Master tells us plainly that “For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John. And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear” (Matthew 11:13-15). We should also note the contrast to the idea that we discussed a few posts back regarding the saying of the Apostle John regarding the Holy Ghost saying “for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified” (John 7:39). Gill is likely reflecting on the scripture from Luke story of the birth of the Baptist saying: “For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb” (Luke 1:15).

Can we see clearer the departures between the scriptures and the doctrines? and the reality of the Master’s caution to us ALL from His saying about the Baptist above: “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear“? Coming back to the saying by the Baptist above which is deemed to be speaking solely of the Christ and His mission but which we should understand to mean ALL men as seen from the spiritual perspective. We have seen often the verses in which we see the similarities and the sameness between us and the Master ranging from that saying by the apostle that: “as he is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17) to the oneness we find in accomplishing His commandment that we be “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48) and His saying that: “The disciple is not above his master: but every one that is perfect shall be as his master” (Luke 6:40). The writer of Hebrews tells us this of the Master which ties together our thoughts on His perfection and thereby our oneness with Him in our achievement of the same: “And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him” (Hebrews 5:9). Let us break down the words of the Baptist:

• “He that cometh from above is above all: he that is of the earth is earthly , and speaketh of the earth: he that cometh from heaven is above all”. Can we see in this the idea of the Soul, the Christ Within, and the conscious personality of the man. The Soul is from above and the carnal personality of man is from below; the carnal personality knows only the things of the Earth but the Soul that is in Heaven is above it ALL. Remember where we are to look for and to find the Kingdom: “Neither shall they say , Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). It is interesting to note that some bible versions and commentaries render the word within as among but there is no reference to this in either the lexicon nor in Strong’s. We have noted before that this is a rather direct saying by the Master which is largely ignored in favor of the various doctrines of the church. Vincent tells us of this that: Within. Better, in the midst of. Meyer acutely remarks that “you refers to the Pharisees, in whose hearts nothing certainly found a place less than did the ethical kingdom of God.” Moreover, Jesus is not speaking of the inwardness of the kingdom, but of its presence. “The whole language of the kingdom of heaven being within men, rather than men being within the kingdom, is modern” (Trench, after Meyer)⁴. How can we look at this? The Kingdom of God is that place where we are as Souls and, in many respects we can say that we are the Kingdom; it is the Life and the consciousness that motivates the phenomenal appearance.
• “And what he hath seen and heard, that he testifieth; and no man receiveth his testimony. He that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true”. Speaking here of “he that cometh from heaven“, the Baptist is telling us that what it is that we see and hear as Souls, as the Inner Man, that is what he will testify in our consciousness. We should note that the Baptist refers to man only in this phrase as a way of separating the idea of He (he) as the Soul, the Christ, from the carnal man in form. This is to say that the Christ Within, the Soul, is testifying always of what “he hath seen and heard” and that “no man receiveth his testimony“, that is no carnal man. Can we see this in the Baptist’s words?
• “For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God: for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him”. Here we have the understanding of the disciple and the apostle, the man if form who is focused upon the Soul and the Christ; he is no longer man in the Baptist’s words but he is now “he whom God hath sent” and who has the Christ Within active in his conscious personality making him Soul conscious, a disciple if you will, and this activity of the Soul in form is the fullness Holy Spirit.
• “The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand. He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him“. The rest of this is deeper yet. We know God is Love and that the Master is Love incarnate; the Soul of man is Love incarnate as well at that time when he can let that Love flow through his personality, when he can become as these sayings from the Apostle Paul who tell us:

• “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
• “Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace” (Ephesians 2:15).
• “And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (Ephesians 4:24).
• “And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him” (Colossians 3:10).

Can we see the meaning of these sayings in our context, that Paul is speaking of the same dual nature that we speak of. Being in Christ is the Soul active in form; abolishing the enmity of the flesh and creating one new man who is Soul infused; putting on the new man, the man of righteousness and of God and the new man after the image of the Christ that created him. The Christ Within exists within the totality of the Christ and of God and all things that we can consider ‘given‘ to Christ are given to us as Souls as well; this is a Truth that has its reality in many sayings from scripture and which we can see in those we refer to above on being as the Master. The Baptist ends this in words that we are used to hearing from the Master and from the Apostle John by saying that if we “believeth on the Son“, that is that we follow the Christ and the Christ Within, we will have everlasting life“. We should remember that everlasting is from the same Greek word as eternal and to have that here should be understood as to realize this as a man in form. The rest of this saying by the Baptist is the converse of this result of following Him and we should get a better understanding from the Baptist’s use of the idea “shall not see life“.

So much of how all this works is beyond our ken and the life of the Baptist is especially so. He is apparently a very advanced Soul as we should see from his presence on Earth as the Prophet Elijah around 858 B.C. and then again as the forerunner to the Christ. How and when did he accomplish this discipleship so as to be so far ahead of us? There are answers to this and the other mysteries of the Kingdom of God and these answers are available to us as disciples of the Master and we should understand this to mean that we follow Him and keep His words and come to that point of which He tells us to be and this is briefly defined as “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect“.

We did not intend to go so far afield today but these are important points which we should consider as we journey on the Path. We will return to our discussion of the Holy Spirit in the next post. Closing today, let us go back to the ideas of perfect that we discussed above and add this saying which can be more understandable in today’s Light.

“Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Corinthians 13:8-12).

Ponder on this.

Note on the Quote of the Day