Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON GOD; Part CXLIV

“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).

To some readers of this blog it may seem that these writings are against the doctrines of the churches and with this we agree. We add here that these writings are against ALL doctrine and ALL dogma that limits the expression of God and of the Christ in the world and that confines both to some segment of the population that agrees with this or that presentation of a supposed Truth. The ONLY Truth is in the inclusiveness of ALL, regardless of their method of ‘worship’, thereby expressing the ONENESS of the Human Family with the ONE GOD regardless of what name He might be called by. ALL may not be Christians but ALL ARE CHILDREN OF THE ONE GOD and this the Apostle Paul states for us eloquently in his speech on Mars Hill to the Epicureans and the Stoics, heathens if you will, which has become a term of derision that was never intended to be such. When the Master uses this word in the Gospels he uses it in two ways which are not representative of its usage in the epistles as it is a different word that Matthew writes; ethnikos is used only by Matthew and Matthew’s Gospel contains the only reference by the Master to the idea of heathen under this word. The lexicon tells us that this word means: adapted to the genius or customs of a people, peculiar to a people, national; suited to the manners or language of foreigners, strange, foreign; in the NT savouring of the nature of pagans, alien to the worship of the true God, heathenish; of the pagan, the Gentile². We should note here that the common understanding of the word is only found in the ideas attributed to the New Testament and it is of course ancient doctrine that creates this definition. Strong’s gives us only the ideas of pagan, Gentile³ and we must then understand the idea of Gentile in order to understand Matthew’s word which is not found in classical Greek according to Vincent⁴. The lexicon says of Gentile, from the Greek word ethnos that it means: a multitude (whether of men or of beasts) associated or living together; a company, troop, swarm; a multitude of individuals of the same nature or genus; the human family; a tribe, nation, people group; in the OT, foreign nations not worshipping the true God, pagans, Gentiles; Paul uses the term for Gentile Christians². We should note that this word ethnos is also translated as heathen and is called the source word for the word used by Matthew, ethnikos. Can we see the difficulty in all of this and the rather misplaced understanding we get from Christian doctrine which has made its way into the vernacular as we see in Webster’s which defines heathen as: an individual of the pagan or unbelieving nations, or those which worship idols and do not acknowledge the true God; a pagan; an idolater. An irreligious person. The heathen, as the term is used in the Scriptures, all people except the Jews; now used of all people except Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans¹.

We should see utter confusion in these terms which is resolved by doctrine and at the expense of the other peoples of the world; that is, in the uncertainty of the meaning of the words used, the doctrines of the church are relied upon for one’s understanding rather than the Truth or the skillful art of ‘we don’t know’. With  the treasure of words and phrases by the Master and His apostles that we can understand and can do, why does the church and its doctrines focus upon the valueless and the unimportant? Why do they see value in teaching about the heathen instead of teaching about how a man should live and act as regards the things of the world to cite just one example. Jesus words are not any more cumbersome than are the ideas that are picked for dissertation and heathen is a good word to use as example as it is totally tied to doctrine and a rather false doctrine at that. There is a great disconnect between the teachings of the Master on the Fatherhood of God and the doctrines of the Church and this we have covered much through these essays. This same message is given us by the Apostle Paul in the speech that we reference above where he speaks of the ONE God and the unity of His children and he is speaking to those that the church would consider as heathen. Let us look again at these verses and then at some of the uses of the words translated as heathen. Luke tells us of Paul that:

“Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry“. Paul is waiting here for his companions, Timothy and Silas, and is alone in the city except for the presence of some unnamed men who Luke tells us “brought him unto Athens“. The rendering here of the idea of “wholly given to idolatry” is wrong and is corrected in many of the later translations; the American Standard Version (ASV) for example renders this as “he beheld the city full of idols“.

“Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him“. The idea here that he disputed with others seems to have some relationship to the idols of the city; however he disputed also with the Jews and unidentified devout persons. Vincent tells us that: We learn from Pliny that at the time of Nero, Athens contained over three thousand public statues, besides a countless number of lesser images within the walls of private houses. Of this number the great majority were statues of gods, demi-gods, or heroes. In one street there stood before every house a square pillar carrying upon it a bust of the God Hermes. Another street, named the Street of the Tripods, was lined with tripods, dedicated by winners in the Greek national games, and carrying each one an inscription to a deity. Every gateway and porch carried its protecting God. Every street, every square, nay, every purlieu, had its sanctuaries, and a Roman poet bitterly remarked that it was easier in Athens to find gods than men (G. S. Davies, “St. Paul in Greece”). One can understand how this is odd to Paul, a Jew who is unaccustomed to this variety of figures; As regards Hermes we will have something to say at a later time but for now we should see Him as another Avatar, another Son of God who we will come to know as the first to proclaim Himself as the Light of the World. As to the heroes and winners, we do as much yet today and so it may be difficult to really understand the position of this Greek civilization regarding God without reading much of their literature. Suffice it to say here, the Greeks like other civilizations in that day saw God in many ways and ascribed Him names based on the action considered thereby attesting to our understanding of the emotionalism and the superstitions of the times. The Jew was to pull back from this type of understanding of the world and of God and their great sin was always that they fell back into these superstitions and this emotional approach to the actions of God which they did not understand. This is the nature of the teaching of the Old Testament and this teaching was directed specifically to the Jew although it was a lesson hard to learn; it should not surprise us to KNOW that God interacts with different societies and civilizations in different ways according to His Plan and not according to our understanding.

“Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks, encountered him. And some said, What will this babbler say? other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection. And they took him, and brought him unto Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is? For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears: we would know therefore what these things mean. (For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their timein nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.)“. The “Epicureans, and of the Stoicks” should be seen here as subdivisions of the whole of the men of Athens; Vincent tells us that the Epicureans. Disciples of Epicurus, and atheists. They acknowledged God in words, but denied his providence and superintendence over the world. According to them, the soul was material and annihilated at death. Pleasure was their chief good; and whatever higher sense their founder might have attached to this doctrine, his followers, in the apostle’s day, were given to gross sensualism and that the Stoics. Pantheists. God was the soul of the world, or the world was God. Everything was governed by fate, to which God himself was subject. They denied the universal and perpetual immortality of the soul; some supposing that it was swallowed up in deity; others, that it survived only till the final conflagration; others, that immortality was restricted to the wise and good. Virtue was its own reward, and vice its own punishment. Pleasure was no good, and pain no evil. The name Stoic was derived from stoa, a porch. Zeno, the founder of the Stoic sect, held his school in the Stoa Paecile, or painted portico, so called because adorned with pictures by the best masters. We should understand that these depictions of the “Epicureans, and of the Stoicks” are according to what is KNOWN about them on the outer levels of understanding and that there is perhaps more depth in their understanding as both schools of thought have survived to this day albeit under different names. We should also see that to these men the teachings of the apostle were strange and that they were willing to listen and to learn from Paul; these men were learned in the teachings of the founders of their schools of thought and were not rampantly worshiping anything that moved as is commonly thought by much of the Church.

Here we come back to the idea of heathen and we should see that insofar as the “Epicureans, and of the Stoicks” are concerned there is nothing bad in what they believed and thought and nothing that should lead one to see them as men who could be described as: an individual of the pagan or unbelieving nations, or those which worship idols and do not acknowledge the true God. Nor do they fit as savouring of the nature of pagans, alien to the worship of the true God, heathenish; of the pagan, the Gentile. These are ideas of doctrine and in both of these we see the words true God in a way that one would understand that this God is the property of the Jew and of the Christian. This however is not the perceptive of  Paul who goes about to teach them, not so much to convert them, as he says that the God that they worship is the same as the Father God of Jesus.

“Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars’ hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation” Two words we correct here according to Vincent; first: Devotions (seba>smata). Wrong. It means the objects of their worship — temples, altars, statues, etc.⁴ and second: Ignorantly (ajgnoou~ntev). Rather, unconsciously: not knowing. There is a kind of play on the words unknown, knowing not. Ignorantly conveys more rebuke than Paul intended⁴. The rest is rather clear, Paul is preaching the ONE God and that there is no other and he does not claim possession by saying that this ONE God is the Right ONE that he worships; he rather says that his is the SAME God and is the ONE God that both of them worship although they did so in different ways. The Epicureans in their way, the Stoics in their way and the Christians in their way. Paul also here affirms that this ONE God IS Lord of ALL and that He is the Creator of ALL, of ALL men made of ONE blood. The word blood here means exactly that, blood and in this simple saying by the apostle is testimony to the ONENESS of humanity, a ONENESS that has been overlooked and ignored for more than 2000 years because it does not fit into the several doctrines of the churches. What would Paul have said were he speaking to the Hindus or to the Buddhists, both of which were active religions in his day and still are today? He would likely speak in the same terms of ONE God and the SAME God; the Creator of ALL, of ALL men made of ONE blood. In all likelihood the Epicureans and the Stoics agreed, we are not told; and in all likelihood so would the Hindu and the Buddhist.

“That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring” These next words by the apostle are also among those that are overlooked and ignored and are more telling of our relationship with God than are any others that are as plainly spoken. Having established in his speech that there is but ONE God and that ALL things are made by Him including ALL men of one blood, which we interpret as ONE Human Family joined by the commonality of our blood, Paul next sets out to tell the Epicureans, and Stoics “That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him” and in this we should see the same message that the apostle would give to us today and that the Master gave to us in His words. Paul then reveals a mystery to them and to us and one that is only seen in the Master’s words which are couched in the parabolic language of sayings like: “At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you” (John 14:20). Paul says “though he be not far from every one of us: For in him we live, and move, and have our being” and in this is a Great Truth concerning man’s relationship to God and the apostle continues to add the idea of the Fatherhood of God saying that “we are also his offspring” (All these references from Acts 17:15-28).

We close this with some words of doctrine by John Gill in his Exposition of the Bible⁸. He says that: For in him we live, and move, and have our being The natural life which men live is from God; and they are supported in it by him; and from him they have all the comforts and blessings of life; and all motions, whether external or internal, of body or of mind, are of God, and none of them are without the concourse of his providence, and strength assistance from him; though the disorder and irregularity of these motions, whereby they become sinful, are of themselves, or of the devil; and their being, and the maintenance of it, and continuance in it, are all owing to the power and providence of God. As certain also of your own poets have said; the Syriac version reads in the singular number, “as a certain one of your wise men has said”; but all others read in the plural; and some have thought, that the apostle refers to what goes before, that being an Iambic verse of some of the poets, as well as to what follows, which is a citation from Aratus  and whom the apostle might have called his own, as he was his countryman; for Aratus was a native of Solis, a city of Cilicia, not far from Tarsus yea, some say he was of Tarsus, where the apostle was born: but Aratus being an Heathen, and the apostle speaking to Heathens, calls him one of them; and the rather, that what is cited might be the more regarded by them: though the expression is also said to be in an hymn to Jove, written by Cleanthes, who taught at Athens; and so the apostle addressing the Athenians, might, with greater propriety, say, “as certain of your own poets say”: it is also said to be in Aratus the astronomer, and in the poet Homer; so that the plural number may well be used. Which is, for we are also his offspring; the offspring of Jove, says Aratus; which the apostle applies to the true Jehovah, the Creator of all men, by whom, and after whose image, they are made, and so are truly his offspring; upon which the apostle argues as follows. Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God In the sense before given; for the apostle is not here speaking of himself, and other saints, as being the children of God, by adoption, and by regenerating grace, and faith in Christ Jesus, but as men in common with others, and with these Athenians.

Can we see here the totality of doctrine as regards this revelation by the apostle Paul and how the words are made to mean things that are nowhere spoken by the Master nor by His apostles except that there is much misinterpretation of them? The first idea of “For in him we live, and move, and have our being” is not addressed at all but is rather skirted around by saying that all things come from God. Then Gill cites the repetition of this saying as it is from their own poets (or philosophers) and this is to take away from its force because that Paul copied it from their writings; in this we should just understand that Paul is familiar with their views on God and talks to them in terms that they can readily understand. Gill goes far to call these poets or philosophers heathens and this in the Christian sense of the word and not in the Truer sense which would basically be other people; a multitude (whether of men or of beasts) associated or living together; a company, troop, swarm; a multitude of individuals of the same nature or genus; the human family; a tribe, nation, people group. When not tied to doctrine heathen is the Gentile, other people who may be different. Gill agrees that ALL are created by God as there is little choice in this but he goes on in the next verse to take this all back to doctrine, separating the Christian from the other offspring which is a position that has done much harm to the church and to the world.

This is not where we had intended to go with this post and we did not get to finish our ideas on money; we will try to get to this and to finish with Paul’s saying that has adorned the top of our essays for many days now.

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.

Values to Live By

A Love of Truth—essential
for a just, inclusive and progressive society;

A Sense of Justice—recognition
of the rights and needs, of all.

Spirit of Cooperation—based
on active goodwill and the principle of right human
relationships;

A Sense of Personal Responsibility—for
group, community and national affairs;

Serving the Common Good— through
the sacrifice of selfishness. Only what is good for all
is good for each one.

The world of the future depends on what each one of us chooses to do today.

We leave this Quote of the Day again for today with the hope that we can discuss these important points in the next post. We should remember here the premise that we presented near the beginning of our posting of this Quote of the Day: It is interesting to note that the ideas of the Quote of the Day embody much of the Master’s teachings and can set the stage for the beginning of each man’s revelation and realization of the Light of the Soul; that is, that by the intentional practice of these ‘rules’ of conduct one can put himself in the position of a follower of the Master and an keeper of His word and this regardless if he has ever heard of the Christ or wants to be affiliated with any ideas Christian. By keeping these sound principals of Life in mind and practicing them a man can lift himself up above and beyond the world of men and into the world of the Good, the Beautiful and the True as it exists for those in whom the Christ Within, the God Within, is awakened. Ponder on this.

In accord with the ideas that we close with above we bring again to your attention the ideas by which a man should Live. This Quote of the Day is the realty of how we should focus our lives and in so doing, all the other things alluded to above will take care of themselves and this is a great part of the selfless attitude of the disciple and his ability to forsake ALL.

• ¹ Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1828 and 1913
• ² New Testament Greek Lexicon on BibleStudyTools.com
• ³ Strongest Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible – 2001
• ⁴ Word Studies in the New Testament; Marvin R Vincent D.D. 2nd edition, 1888
• ⁸ Bible commentaries on BibleStudyTools.com