IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 405

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON GOD; Part CLXXXVI

ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ

GoodWill IS Love in Action

ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ

“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (Romans 8:1-13).

We have completed our look at these first thirteen verses of the Eighth Chapter of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans; twelve of them we have covered in this last round of essays and we discussed the thirteenth as we began our look at this chapter’s middle part back in In the Words of Jesus part 348. Albeit with some interruption, we have been on the first twenty three verses of this chapter for about seven weeks and we could stay longer as in every reading there is more realization for us all. We used this last verse as a way to lead to the beginning of our discussion that started with “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God” (Romans 8:14) which began our journey into what we can now see as a picture of the reality of Life in form and in the message of this verse we can see now the culmination of the ideas presented over the last several days. The simple reality of the ideas that precede are found in the simplicity of the final thought; “For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live“

When this is seen as the life and the death of the physical form, there is little of value in the Apostle Paul’s words. This must be seen in relation to the spiritual Life of the man in form; not in relation to the doctrinal ideas of eternal Life for those that believe but rather the Life of the Soul consciously in the form and the personality of a man. John Gill, in his Exposition of the Bible⁸, says that the reality of this all is eternal Life; and this is so but in a way that Mr. Gill does not appreciate nor see; he says:

For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die
Such persons are dead, whilst they live, and shall die a second or an eternal death, if grace prevent not. It may be asked, whether one that has received the grace of God in truth, can live after the flesh; flesh, or corrupt nature, though still in such a person, has not the dominion over him: to live in sin, or in a continued course of sinning, is contrary to the grace of God; but flesh may prevail and greatly influence the life and conversation, for a while; how long this may be the case of a true believer, under backslidings, through the power of corruptions and temptations, cannot be known; but certain it is, that it shall not be always thus with him. It may be further inquired, whether such an one may be so left to live after the flesh, as to die and perish eternally; Christ expressly says, such shall not die that live and believe in him; grace, which is implanted in their souls, is an incorruptible and never dying seed; grace and glory are inseparably connected together; but then such persons may die with respect to their frames, their comforts and the lively exercise of grace, which seems to be here intended; as appears from the next clause⁸.

This idea is a part of the foundation of the doctrines on eternal Life from the Christian perspective. It is in the confusion of the reality of the man that the doctrine is established as here we see that man HAS a Soul rather that man IS a Soul and that the gift of eternal Life is imparted to those that believe in Christ. Here again it is important to understand the reality of what it means to be a true believer or to believe in Christ as it regards the Life of a man and some, like Mr. Vincent, do see this as we do; as a strong and vital idea. Vincent says 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 life.⁴. The most important part of this is of course the last statement which is in the doing, the action of a man who Truly believes in or believes on the Christ; that he will keep His words and will follow Him.

To change the view of the average man in the world as to his own True nature is a difficult task and this is a task that is right to fall upon the churches of the world as science, physical sciences as they are, only see what is and without any spiritual component. In today’s world of science we can trace the activity of the universe down to the smallest of particles and one can hold the contents of a library in the palm of his hand; this is the nature of the Energy that IS the body of God which flows through and IS expressed through this physical form of the Earth and the manifest universe. The assembly of the uncountable units of energy that are ordered into the forms that we see are not too much unlike the uncountable units of energy that are ordered, in some strange and mysterious way, into the bodies of men; the former is an act of our Undefinable God and the latter is an act of the Reality of man, the undefinable Spirit. The very power of the energy of thought and the reality of the energy of emotion are also at play in these created physical universes and are an integral part of each of them but these cannot be seen and are only felt by those who can perceive their effects, As race we scoff at the paranormal and at the same time embrace the supernatural aspects of God such as healing and what we humbly call providence. What would the world do today if one were to attain to True discipleship in the ultimate of Faith which is to KNOW and become as our scriptures say that Peter and Paul were? What would the world do today if one could Truly heal by his mere proximity to those that are in need of healing as we read about in the Book of Acts as regards Peter and Paul? What would the world do today if there were a True KNOWER and disciple who could do those Greater Things that the Master tells us of? What would the world do today if there was among us one who had the KNOWING Faith of a mustard seed?

It is likely that there are some in the Earth that can be in answer to these questions and who know that they would likely be an unwanted spectacle in the world as we KNOW it today. And there are small miracles that occur throughout the Earth and which are wrought by True believers and this attests of the Power that we as men do have, but these small miracles are uncoordinated and unpredictable and most importantly misunderstood by those who perform them as well as those who may see them. The point here is that the Inner Man, the Soul, has total Power over this physical world and it takes only a way of expressing that Power through Life in form that is lacking and, which is possible through full communion of Soul and the Soul’s expression; the body and the personality of man. All is possible when the fullness of the Godhead is our expression as men and this is the pinnacle of our existence and the goal for every Soul.

This is the essence of this last line of our saying above by Paul to the Romans as well; Paul is not so specific but he paints the generalities of this all in His saying “if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live” which is to say that if we do mortify the deeds we shall live. And who is it that shall live? Paul tells us in his own rather parabolic way of  our need to be after the things of the Spirit, of minding the things of the Spirit; of having the “Spirit of God to dwell in you” as well as the “Spirit of Christ“ and all this is to say that the True man, the Spirit, the Soul, is these spiritual things if the man in form goes after them and focuses on them; if he becomes them in his conscious personality. This is the Life of the Christ Within expressed through form and this is the living that the apostle is telling us of. There is however a cost and that is that one focus upon the things of God, that he be after the things of the Spirit and that he be minding the things of the Spirit as it is by this means that Paul tells us that we accomplish this change; “through the Spirit” and it is in this change and by doing these things that we can “mortify the deeds of the body“. How alive a man can be is dependent upon his degree of success in his ability to put out of his Life the “deeds of the body“.

Paul tells us of the opposite position to this Life as found in his saying that “if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die” and we KNOW from the reality of Life that this is not the death of the man in form. Mr. Gill tells us in his commentary above that this death is in one’s loss of eternal Life and this according to church doctrine and both Mr. Gill and doctrine here paint living after the flesh in the grossest ways of sin. He adds here as well that another doctrinal approach of once saved, always saved, should perhaps be embraced in the words of the apostle but this is not to our topic today. We should note here that Mr. Gill is speaking of those who believe as we do as to the keeping of the Master’s words albeit he is likely not as clear as we are on what exactly those words Truly mean. This all then falls to the sensibility of the ‘believer’ and what he understands in his own mind regarding such things as righteousness and Love and this we discussed in the last post. What then is this idea of dying if it is not the body and it is not the loss of eternal Life? It is simply one’s existence apart from the True Life of the man, the Soul; it is remaining trapped in this temporal Life in form and finding at the end that he has not done as is necessary to progress which is to “lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven” Matthew 6:20). By the effects of the illusion and the glamour, the True nature of this death is not realized by the man in form  who has not realized the presence of the Soul, the Christ Within, and the ensuing duality, and this is the result of what Paul tells us as “the creature was made subject to vanity” (Romans 8:20).

This ends our look at these thirteen verses and of the twenty three verses as well but the lessons we have found in them will come to our future essays as we have already seen with our most frequent use of the ideas that we now call Paul’s teaching on the reality of Life in form. We close today with a related saying from Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians where he speaks of being dead with Christ and what this may Truly mean to the man in form. We post it from the King James Version (KJV) and because of the translation of certain words, from the Revised Version (RV) as well:

• “Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances, (Touch not; taste not; handle not; Which all are to perish with the using;) after the commandments and doctrines of men? Which things have indeed a shew of wisdom in will worship, and humility, and neglecting  of the body; not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh” (Colossian 2:20-23); King James Version.
• “If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations, 21 “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” 22 (referring to things which all perish as they are used), according to human precepts and doctrines? 23 These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting rigor of devotion and self-abasement and severity to the body, but they are of no value in checking the indulgence of the flesh” (Colossian 2:20-23); Revised Version.

 We will continue with our thoughts in the next post.

Note on the Quote of the Day