Love is the Fulfilling of the Law
ON GOD; Part CXXXII
“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry , Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” (Romans 8:14-23).
These last few posts have set up for us a new direction which was not planned and which we will continue in until we are turned from it as we were turned toward it. While it is not important, it should be pointed out that there is seldom a plan for these essays and many times the subject matter and content are not even considered before writing. Our direction has been to look at the sayings of Paul as they have contributed to doctrines that confound and sometimes outright contradict a teaching by the Master. This is most apparent in our example from yesterday’s post regarding what is considered the act of being born again in many parts of the church: “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans 10:9-10). In the last post we questioned this saying does this doctrine not make the words of the Lord of none effect? Where is this is one’s conformance with the Will of the Father and the words of the Master regarding True salvation. Today we take a second look at the understanding of the apostles use of the words translated as saved and as salvation so as to see Paul’s reality as compared to what is believed to be true by doctrine. First we should remember that the Master’s reality of attaining the Kingdom of God and becoming His disciple are synonymous and that both of these things happen here and now.
The Greek word sozo is translated as saved in our verse above but this is not clearly translated into the English word saved; Strong’s tells us that sozo means to save, rescue, deliver; to heal; by extension to be in right relationship with God, with the implication that the conditions before salvation was one of grave danger or distress3. The latter meanings are of course doctrinal and suffice it to say, the meaning is unclear insofar as the single word goes. The idea of ‘to be in right relationship with God’ can be seen as righteousness but this is not a gift, it is an accomplishment, it is not a thing we gain but a thing that we perform. Now in the truest sense righteousness is doing the Will of the Father and keeping the word of the Son which Paul is giving to us as a result of believing; we should remember here also that the idea of believing is not just a thought but an action as seen in the reality of believing in or believing on the Master. Vincent leads us correctly here saying that to believe in, or on, is more than mere acceptance of a statement. It is so to accept a statement or a person as to rest upon them, to trust them practically; to draw upon and avail one’s self of all that is offered to him in them. Hence to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ is not merely to believe the facts of His historic life or of His saving energy as facts, but to accept Him as Savior, Teacher, Sympathizer, Judge; to rest the soul upon Him for present and future salvation, and to accept and adopt His precepts and example as binding upon the life4. This is the depth that one should get from this saying by Paul to the Romans and it should be clear that the mere affirmation and believing are inconsequential; it is the action of the man in form that matters, that a man keeps His words and follows Him. We should see here that the words of the apostle are accurate albeit not very clear when translated into English and it is the doctrine that is taken from these words that is superficial and misleading. True salvation involves attainment of His Kingdom and this is not a promise for tomorrow as a reward for being good but it is a reward for today for keeping His words and following Him.
There is little that can be done to change the current dialogue of the churches which has been 2000 years in the making but there is much that can be done to put forth the greater truths as the Master teaches us and as He commands His disciples to amplify and teach. We are not so bold as to proclaim discipleship or apostleship as some in the churches do as we KNOW the criteria for being such and we KNOW that we have not yet accomplished this ALL. At the same time we can consider ourselves as aspirants to discipleship, that is to say that we are striving to that High Calling and in this position we take on the responsibilities of discipleship as we see them. Paramount in these responsibilities is that we live according to the words of the Master and that we follow Him in every way that we can. There is a mantram that embodies the ideas that we are trying to accomplish and which, if done properly, can accomplish the criteria for discipleship as told us by the Master. The Master says:
“If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple….So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath , he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26-27, 33)
While these are extremely hard sayings they do give us the True meaning and depth of discipleship. Our mantram is the Evening Recollection that we have seen several times in our posts; it goes thus:
May the Power of the One True God flow through His group of all true servers; May the Love of the Christ characterize the lives of all who seek to aid in His work; May I fulfill my part in the one work through self-forgetfulness, harmlessness and right speech.
What can we see here? First the Power of God which is also the Power of the God Within, that flows through each of us as servers and as aspirants. Second that the Love of the Christ, the Love that IS the Christ, should define our character as we seek to serve in His work and finally that we can live in self-forgetfulness which is tantamount to forsaking the things of the world, harmlessness which plays the same role in pride and self righteousness, and right speech which is, according to the Apostle James, the hardest part of forsaking the world.
Can we see in these two contrasting statements the same theme of discipleship? In each one must forsake ALL; in the first family, friends and ALL that he may have as possessions and he must bear his cross, which is to Truly repent and to follow the Master. In the second is this same thing again for in the Power of God and the idea of Service these same idea are contained albeit in a more modern language while the idea of forsaking is enclosed in self-forgetfulness. The added ideas here are the inclusion of Love which is the major part of the teaching that the Christ brought to humanity which are included no doubt in the bearing of one’s cross in the former and is of specific mention here 2000 years later. We see that it is to be our very character, our outward expression and in these are included the harmlessness and the right speech which are repeated again as this must be the attitude of the disciple. The old and the new; the old by way of commandment of the Lord and the new as a self-imposed Life style of Love, brotherhood and humility.
We should note here this mantram is our own wording based on the words that are published by the Tibetan who we have spoken of before as a disciple of the Christ in today’s world. We do not know whether he is still with us in the flesh as his words were all recorded for us in the thirty’s and forty’s but that is of no matter. The original words are:
May the Power of the one Life pour through the group of all true servers.
May the Love of the One Soul characterize the lives of all who seek to aid the Great Ones.
May I fulfil my part in the One work through self-forgetfulness, harmlessness and right speech.
This version says the same thing but in a way that is less familiar to the Christian and the Western worlds. The concept of One Life is the same as One God insofar as they both represent that Boundless, Immutable, Eternal and Infinite Presence that we call God and Whom we KNOW as LIFE itself. On the issue of Christ we must see the reality of the Cosmic Son of God which is what we see also in reading the Prologue to the Apostle John’s Gospel. This Cosmic Son of God is the manifestation of all that is; He is Love and the Cohesive Power that holds the entire creation in its Magnificent Order. The Christ that we KNOW, the Christ that appeared on Earth as the man Jesus is the personalization of this Awesome Power and as we read in the Epistle of Paul the Colossians “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9). We must relate this all to the way that we picture the constitution of man in our chart which shows the ideas in this mantram in man and here we need apply the reverse of the understanding of as above, so below. Man is Spirit, Soul and the Life of these in form and so also can we see God as well as the Father being Spirit, the Son being Soul and the Life of these in form being the Holy Spirit. This is alluded to in the chart but not so named and we post the chart here again for clarity:
|
Aspect of God |
Potency |
Expressed as Fire |
Aspect of Man |
|
Father |
Will or Power |
Electric Fire |
Spirit or Life |
|
Son, The Christ |
Love and Wisdom |
Solar Fire |
Soul or Christ Within |
|
Holy Spirit |
Light or Activity |
Fire by Friction |
Life Within the Form |
We must remember that the idea of man’s being as stated in Genesis, which tells us that “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:27), does not mean man as this form in Earth for man is not this form, we are the Trinity of Life within the form. From the perspective of doctrine this is a difficult thing to understand but if one looks at this with an open mind and no preconceptions from doctrine or of the way things are, we can easily see the logical reality of this. And if we apply still greater logic and see that God is NOT A MAN, this can ALL make sense and it is from this place that man is able to see ALL of scripture more clearly.
The picture that we paint here is that there is a required change in the perception of man and of his divinity and this is a change that is destined to happen over whatever period of time is necessary to bring into incarnation enough KNOWERS in enough places around the world so that this can become the norm of thought. Look at this idea in the same way as we see the slow and steady progress of new thoughts and ideas in the social fabric of our multicultural global society. Look as the smallness of the world as compared to just fifty years ago and then one hundred years ago. Look at what is socially acceptable now as compared to these time frames while remembering that these things all cut both ways; greater freedoms can create greater abuse of freedoms if we can so define this. We can see ourselves as forerunners of a new wave of spiritual interpretation and living if we can begin to spread this understanding of Love, brotherhood and harmony and begin to chip away at the age old dogma of the churches. And it is not here only that changes must be wrought as there is doctrine and dogma in ALL religion as men have relied upon priests and rabbis and imams and monks to interpret the ideas of God for them; ideas that are many times frozen in time and replicated and repeated with little change over centuries and sometimes over ages.
This is not where we intended to go with this post but here we are and we should finish our thoughts. The Master gave His disciples specific instructions and no doubt they were followed by the first wave who were the apostles and perhaps by those who followed immediately after them. From that point however we know not what happened except in the reading one might do of the works of the ‘Church fathers’ in the first, second and third centuries and the rather immediate controversies over interpretation of the Master’s words and later the same regarding the apostles. It became the role of men to determine the direction of the movement that the Christ started and we will not here deal with the beliefs of the Gnostic sects nor the apocrypha that was denied as cannon and we will not touch upon the ideas that are still expressed today regarding some disputed parts of the New Testament and the bible as a whole. The men who found themselves in charge of this all were as much politicians as they were disciples and we should know that these two do not meet in the Master’s idea of a disciple and it is here that we find the birth of doctrine and the steady march of doctrine away from the actual teachings of the Master and into what we have today albeit changed to some degree in the Reformation. In the year 2012 man is still for the most part relying upon the interpretations and the commentaries that were first expressed in the very early church and rather mimicked by others down through the ages and it is this that gives birth to the many denominations as there were and likely are invariably different parts of the whole with which there was disagreement.
We close here with the start of our next post which will follow along these same lines and complete our thought on the specific instructions of the Master to His disciples.
Note on the Quote of the Day
This daily blog also has a Quote of the Day which may not be in any way related to the essay. Many of these will be from the Bible and some just prayers or meditations that may have an influence on you and are in line with the subject matter of this blog. As the quote will change daily and will not store with the post, it is repeated in this section with the book reference and comment.
We leave both of these as our Quote of the Day as they are the specific instructions of the Master which which we will continue in our next post. We will change to the Great Commission on the front page.
And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give. Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, Nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves: for the workman is worthy of his meat. (Matthew 10:7-10)
In this Quote of the Day from yesterday we find the Master’s instructions to His disciples as he sent them forth and in this we should see our own instructions which are that we do the works of God, that we teach the Truth of the Kingdom and that we serve our fellow man. What it is that we receive from the Christ Within, what is revealed to us is FREE, we must give again FREELY and it is of great importance that we must be in a attitude of forsaking, leaving ALL the things of the world behind, bringing with us only the humble nature of a True Son of God.
And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always , even to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20) [New American Standard Version]
Here also we should see the instruction given to the disciple which is further enhanced here at the Master’s time of departure. No longer just heal and preach but make disciples of ALL through their healing and preaching; we should see here also that in His telling us to teach “them to observe all that I commanded you” that we should maintain that same understanding of giving freely and bringing to the world only the humble nature of a True Son of God. We will leave this second part again for tomorrow and discuss it a bit further and especially the fact that He told us that He is ever with us “even to the end of the age” which we should see as approaching quickly as this New Age dawns on the human family.
