Love is the Fulfilling of the Law
ON LOVE; PART XXXVII
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•Α
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•Α
Wakefulness is the way to life. The fool sleeps As if he were already dead, But the master is awake And he lives forever. He watches. He is clear. How happy he is! For he sees that wakefulness is life. How happy he is, Following the path of the awakened. With great perseverance He meditates, seeking Freedom and happiness. So awake, reflect, watch. Work with care and attention. Live in the way And the light will grow in you. By watching and working The master makes for himself an island Which the flood cannot overwhelm. The fool is careless. But the master guards his watching. It is his most precious treasure. He never gives in to desire. He meditates. And in the strength of his resolve He discovers true happiness. He overcomes desire – And from the tower of his wisdom He looks down with dispassion Upon the sorrowing crowd. From the mountain top He looks down at those Who live close to the ground. Mindful among the mindless, Awake while others dream, Swift as the race horse He outstrips the field. By watching Indra became king of the gods. How wonderful it is to watch. How foolish to sleep. The beggar who guards his mind And fears the waywardness of his thoughts Burns through every bond With the fire of his vigilance. The beggar who guards his mind And fears his own confusion Cannot fall. He has found his way to peace5.
We ended yesterday with some words on Wisdom and with our comment regarding the relationship of Wisdom and Love. We must ever fight to disregard the current understanding of the idea of Love as it exists in the world today, as that attractiveness between individuals based upon some emotional feelings or longing and desire and, as regards one’s children and other family and even pets, as a sense of belonging. We should also add here the ideas of Love as they are expressed regarding animals and causes and ideas and inanimate things and these are more easily digested as we love whatever gives us pleasure and delight1. Much like the reality of Love as we are to express it as Christians and and disciples is not this Love as the world sees it, neither is Wisdom. The Apostle Paul gives us much of the right ideas on Wisdom and on Love but we fail to see the reality of what he says. Let us look at a few of Paul’s sayings on Wisdom:
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“Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nought: But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory” (1 Corinthians 2:6-7).
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“For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness” (1 Corinthians 3:19).
There is a definite difference between these two ideas of Wisdom as outlined here by Paul and perhaps this is where we find a Truer understanding. There is “the wisdom of this world” which is “foolishness with God” and there is the “wisdom of God” that we say in the last post essentially IS God. Solomon tells us of Wisdom that “I wisdom dwell with prudence…..The LORD possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning…..Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him; Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men.” (Proverbs 8:12, 22-23, 30-31) and in this we should see the same as what John tells us in the Prologue to his Gospel about the Christ saying: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men” (John 1:1-4). This relationship between Love and Wisdom is dynamic and we should note that there is little talk in the Old Testament specifically about Love as we should understand it from the Master’s teachings and there is little talk of Wisdom in the Gospels and the words of the Master and this reality can be seen in the thought we put forth yesterday regarding different times and cultures as there is little about Love in the words of the Buddha as well. That Christ is the harbinger of Love may be the best way to look at this.
Christ brought to us a NEW message, one that had not been heard before and the greatest part of this message is Love and again, not the Love that we normally think of as men in form. Here we are more than 2000 years later and, while little of this True Love may be visible in the world today, we are at the same time at the highest point of that Love in the history of the race. The Master introduced to us an aspect of God and of Life and as a seed this has grown to the ONE WORLD attitude that many hold today, an attitude that was alien to the race not too long ago. The importance of this has been taught to us by the Master and His apostles and this teaching has been largely ignored but we must understand that we are closer today to fulfilling this Love as a race than we have ever been before. The Master taught us these two things, the one as a repetition of the words of the Old Testament and the other as His unique saying that should and will guide mankind, the Golden Rule.
“The first of all the commandments is, Hear , O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this , Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these“
(Mark 12:29-31
Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them
(Matthew 7:12)
Paul took these sayings and their intent and recast them in a way that we could understand the importance of this Love that the Master was teaching. Paul tells us that of ALL the the things that we as men can consider the gifts of the Spirit, as the thoughts of men saw them and in some quarters still do, that there is something better; he says:
“But earnestly desire the best gifts. And yet I show you a more excellent way. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 12:31, 13:1-3,13;New King James Version).
There is a clarity here that cannot be denied regarding the importance of Love as a man’s expression but we have for centuries struggled with this because we DO NOT KNOW what this Love really means. We have said that it is not that attraction we feel or that emotion which we feel and our attempt at defining this Love that the Master teaches and that Paul amplifies has resulted in our use, from Webster’s 1828 version, of the definition of Charity and here we should remember that this Greek word agape is translated as Charity by the King James translators as we see here in the original King James Version:
“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself , is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked , thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth” (1 Corinthians 1:8; King James Version).
While the verses used above are in different groups to keep this shorter, the idea should come across regarding the usage of the words Love and Charity to translate agape and hence our own understanding of Love which is:
In a general sense love is benevolence, good will; that disposition of heart which inclines men to think favorably of their fellow men, and to do them good. In a theological sense, it includes supreme love to God, and universal good will to men.
This is the message of the Christ on Love or rather on agape which we translate as Love. Our reality is that we must understand this as it is presented and this is easy from the scripture above; THIS LOVE IS UNIVERSAL GOODWILL; and for us this GOODWILL IS LOVE IN ACTION. Getting back to our ideas of the relationship between Love and Wisdom we come back to the words of Solomon who, speaking about Wisdom says much the same as the apostle tells us about Love and again, we must try to mediate our understanding of the riches that are spoken of.
“Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her. Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left hand riches and honour. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her: and happy is every one that retaineth her. The LORD by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath he established the heavens. By his knowledge the depths are broken up , and the clouds drop down the dew. My son, let not them depart from thine eyes: keep sound wisdom and discretion: So shall they be life unto thy soul, and grace to thy neck. Then shalt thou walk in thy way safely, and thy foot shall not stumble” (Proverbs 3:13-23).
While it may go unnoticed to many, we should see the reality of these words that tell us that Wisdom is “better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold” and that we should read the following verses: “and in her left hand riches and honour” with these in the left hand as being more than the preceding things of the world. Can we see the similarity of thought between this and Pauls words on Charity or Love?
The word Love poses many problems for the understanding of the man in the world today and it may be that some degree of Light from the Soul is necessary for the proper discernment of this word. One must hope that this is not the case and that it is more likely that the right understanding of Love will bring some degree of the Light of the Soul into one’s Life. Assuming that the latter is the Way, it should be the objective of ALL aspirants to be examples of this Universal Love and to be teachers of it as well for if God is Love then we are Love as well and this is then our RIGHT expression.
The word Wisdom poses similar problems with the right understanding of that True Wisdom from the Soul, the Christ Within. As we see above from Paul’s words saying that “the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God“, there must be more than one way to view this idea. The Wisdom of the world is depicted for us in the Master’s words as well when He tells us of the cleverness of the unjust steward saying: “And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light” (Luke 16:8). Perhaps the best way to see Wisdom from a spiritual perspective is in the words of the Apostle James that we use so often and in these ideas from Paul.
- “Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise” (1 Corinthians 3:18).
- “Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty” (1 Corinthians 20:27).
- “But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth. This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy” (James 3:14-17).
While James tells us the reality of True Wisdom as it springs from the Soul, Paul tells us how it may work out on one’s Life. We should take note that the idea of fool in the context of the first saying above may not appear to be the same as the context in which we saw this word as translated from the words of the Buddha. However, depending on how one looks at the context of Paul’s words, he can see the same ideas as we discussed. The context here is a bit unclear in its presentation and such is the problem with translations; which can make this unclear in its intent which likely is that a man who believes he is wise in this world is Truly deceiving himself and that he should realize this foolishness, this worldly focus, that he could be Truly Wise. In the second selection from Paul we should note the bolded words as affirmative statements by the apostle. Additionally we take note of the idea behind “them which are called” which is construed by doctrine to say that those who enter into the priesthood or an affiliated position in the church are called. This may be so, there is some mechanism that moves a man to take up this lifestyle, but this is not the realty of the words of Paul. Paul is speaking to disciples and to aspirants to discipleship, those that are full committed to the precepts of the words that the Master gives about being one and in this we find the keeping of His words and the reality of forsaking and, while it is True that there be some in the church who comply with these requirements, there are many who do not but who keep the words of their doctrines only and who forsake according to human terms only. Our point here is of Paul’s itemized list of who IS NOT called in the True sense of the word; “not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble” and here we should see that those who find themselves in this list are those who are focused upon the things of the world. True Wisdom comes to those who are focused upon the Truth, the Soul, the Christ Within.
Our last point here is in the words of James and we do use these words often to help us to understand what is a thought or an idea or Wisdom from above. The simple Truth is that they will meet with the ideals that the apostle lists here and nowhere in these words do we find any inkling of self. This is the simple reality of Wisdom from the Soul, the Christ Within and we have discussed James’ thoughts in much detail in In the Words of Jesus parts 323-332 where we take nearly every word individually. This is one of the more important parts of the New Testament for those who Truly want to properly discern what it is that they are hearing from God.
We will continue with our thoughts in the next post.
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.
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit (John 3:3-8)
Today’s Quote of the Day is in regard to the new birth which Nicodemus did not understand and which many today do not understand either. The words of the Master tell us of a total commitment to the Lord as the way to the Kingdom and these verses say that as well. This total commitment is being born again. The differences in language aside, we should try to see the relationship between these ideas of being born again which is the essence of discipleship for it is only in discipleship that one can Truly see the Kingdom. These are much misused ideas because they are seen from the perspective of the man in form and no from the perspective of the Soul living through form.
- 1 Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1828 and 1913
- 5 The Dhammapada Translated by Thomas Byrom
