Love is the Fulfilling of the Law
ON LOVE; PART LIV
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GoodWill IS Love in Action
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We finally did get to our sayings regarding the uses in the gospels of the words that are translated as evil and we will continue from where we left off in the last post after some introductory remarks. We should recall our premise which is that these words should not be limited by our interpretation to the Truly malicious, the bad and the vile people and/or actions but should rather be seen as one’s living Life focused on the things of the world and not on the things of God. This premise serves two purposes; first it takes away the deception of many who may think that because they are not vile, nor malicious, nor Truly bad, that they are counted among the Good and are thereby worthy of the Kingdom. This idea of being accounted worthy of the Kingdom has its own set of rules and the chief among them is that one keep the words of the Master and do the Will of the Father which are of course the same thing. The Master tells us that just because one may believe that he is worthy does NOT make this so; He tells us that “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21) and the clarity here should be accepted without doubt. Second, our premise gives us ALL a proper view of what must be done in a Life to be accounted worthy of the Kingdom and to Truly understand the special meaning of being accounted worthy, of being a disciple, plus a greater understanding of the requirements and the responsibilities of achieving this status of which the Master tells us of the difficulty saying: “Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in , and shall not be able” (Luke 13:24).
When we can rightly understand the message of the Master regarding our focus upon the things of God; the message that we must choose God over mammon, and when we can rightly understand that no ritual nor acclamation takes the place of this True repentance, we can then set our selves on a course to His Kingdom and overcome the deception that comes in the illusion and the glamour, the vanity of Life, in this world. The True key is in the words of the Master and not in the doctrines of the churches which tend to mollify His words and, in a phrase, the key is found also in this from the Apostle James saying: “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves” (James 1:22); there is NO shortcut to this reality.
Getting back to our verses on the interpretation of the words translated as evil:
- “For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders” (Mark 7:21). Here in these words from the Master we should be able to see a reality about evil and its source. The Master speaks of the heart here as he does in many sayings and it is our developed understanding that the heart IS the consciousness of man and that this consciousness can focus upon the things of the world, or on the things of God. Here again we have God and mammon and we have in Jesus words the idea that we can choose what there is in our hearts. When we read that “A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things” (Matthew 12:35) we should be able to see the choices from the perspective of our understanding of the Good man who, as we developed in the last post, must be a disciple and we there gave the reasoning for this. If the Good man is the disciple then we say that the evil man IS everyone else and in this we can understand that the this evil man, has a consciousness that is set to focus upon the world and the things of the world and not only on the malicious, the vile and the bad. This sense of worldly things in the heart, the consciousness of the man IS the evil and in our subject saying we see this painted as “from within, out of the heart of men” as the source which is as we have established, the consciousness. Focus upon the things of God changes this consciousness as this is the functioning awareness that IS the man in form. Depending then on what are the evil thoughts, is what role they may play in the Life of the man; they can be as those things listed or they can be just the normal human self centered attitude. Each of these is evil in the context of the gospels and the differences are but by degree.
- “Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake” (Luke 6:22). Here we have a warning of persecution by the Master by those who shall hate and that they will “cast out your name as evil“. Church doctrine has taken this idea of persecution overboard in that they feel that most anything that is against their own self righteous view of religion is persecution. This is not however what the Master refers to in this statement nor in any of the others regarding this persecution. In Matthew’s Gospel this is framed a bit differently with the Master saying that: “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake” (Matthew 5:10-11). Here we see clearly a persecution “for righteousness’ sake” and not for one’s self righteous attitude of being better, by religion, than another; True righteousness is in accord with the words of the Master and self righteousness is not a part of His teaching. Here we have the word revile which is a much better word than the hate we find in Luke’s Gospel and use of this word hate may be a matter of writing style and our own misunderstanding of the words that Luke uses as it is also Luke who tells us “If any man come to me, and hate not his father” (Luke 14:26) as regards discipleship and we KNOW that our common ideas of hate are not what the apostle means. Our target here however is the word translated as evil and should we not take this to mean that this one that is persecuted is cast as a common man, a man of the world and NOT as a man of God; can we see that many Jews and the Jewish rulers and religious leaders were set in their understanding of God and of their relationship to Him? Here then comes Jesus telling them that they are wrong in their view and that He, being from God, as seen in His teachings, His miracles and His example, and showing them a ‘better’ way and in this He is reviled by many. The reaction of the Jews is to “cast out your name as evil“, as common and not of God and to “say all manner of evil against you falsely” which is the same effect. The caution to us today is the same; if one is outwardly righteous in his ways, actions and words, he will strike the ire of those who may feel displaced by such ways, actions and words simply because the persecutor is intimidated and made to feel less; he will strike out with words that will “cast out your name as evil” which we say again is common, worldly, and not of God. This is the proper position of the idea of evil in this context as none other of the defining terms will work.
- “A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh” (Luke 6:45). Here we have a saying of generalities and one in which gross evil does not play a part. Let us look here at what John Gill in his Exposition of the Bible 8 says of this verse: The “evil man”, is a man as he was born; who is wholly flesh, carnal, and in a state of nature; destitute of the Spirit, and having no principle of grace in him: “the evil treasure”, is the corruption of his nature, the desperate wickedness of his heart; and those swarms of lusts, and all manner of sin that dwell there; from whence are continually proceeding evil and corrupt communications, which not only defile himself, but others; and among the rest, not only vain words and unprofitable talk, but blasphemies against God, Christ, and the blessed Spirit; all which men will be accountable for another day 8. Can we see here the direction of doctrine, how it casts the evil as the grossly evil and casts themselves as the Good while Knowing that the Master is clear on this idea of Good saying: “Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God” (Matthew 19:17). Gill paints as Good a regenerated man, one that is renewed by the Spirit of God, a believer in Christ, a sincere lover of him, and one that follows him, wheresoever he goes, and who has the grace of God implanted in him 8 and this would be True if the meaning of believer in and lover of Him Truly make the man one that follows him as we should understand these terms; that is that one is keeping His words which is the gospel’s sign of Loving Him and is our understanding of the requirement for discipleship and the Kingdom. Then, if a man does follow in Truth these ideas by Gill, we can likely call him Good but when it is followed only doctrinally, we can not. We should note here that Gill has the ingredients of Truth from the perspective of evil as well in saying The “evil man”, is a man as he was born; who is wholly flesh, carnal, and in a state of nature but this is where the right view ends and doctrine begins and he fails to consider the many millions of well meaning men that are cast into his idea of evil because they are not in accord with the doctrinal view of Good. Could we but read this as “A man focused on God, out of the righteous treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is righteous and a man focused on the things of the world, out of the worldly treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is of the world: it is of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh” there would be a greater understanding of our objective in Life and our goal.
- “And in that same hour he cured many of their infirmities and plagues, and of evil spirits; and unto many that were blind he gave sight” (Luke 7:21). Here we have a term of bewilderment as no one really KNOWS what this idea of “evil spirits” really means; we should note here that it is lumped in with a group of physical maladies and it is our premise that this too is a problem in the body of man as are the rest. There is no separation in the words of Jesus between the body and the personality, they seem treated as one while we today would count them separate but at the same time intertwined. Doctrine has always painted this idea of “evil spirits” as demons or demonic presences and even the disembodied spirits of ‘evil’ men but there is no True reference to what these are in the gospels. This term “evil spirits” is used only by Luke, who we KNOW as a physician, in his gospel and in the Book of Acts and we should try to see here that the idea of “evil spirits” is used in a medical sense. We KNOW from Vincent that many of the words used by Luke were different that those used by the other gospel writers and this is based upon Luke’s own background as a physician who was learned in this vocabulary. Can we see here then that this idea of “evil spirits” is as much a medical term as any of the other words used in this verse and can we see that up until the recent past these abnormalities of the personality did not have names and that “evil spirits” from the perspective of Mary Magdalene’s seven devils, could have been much like our modern understanding of schizophrenia and multiple personality disorders. In the other gospels this idea is portrayed as devils and demons and with this we will not deal now except to say that in our view these are kindred ideas to Luke’s “evil spirits“. These are not explained or defined in the gospels either and, while there is much mystery regarding these ideas, the interpretations are likely steeped in the superstitions of the times in the minds and even the writings of the apostles. In that day, what else would one say of one who has a severe case of schizophrenia or was suffering from multiple personality disorder.
We have made it through several of these sayings that use the words translated as evil and we have yet to find one that is only interpretable in the way the the word evil is presented in our defining texts and, as we go along, our case for our understanding of evil as focus upon the ways of the world and the things of the world, becomes more and more clear. We will continue with our thoughts in the next post,.
- “And when the people were gathered thick together , he began to say , This is an evil generation: they seek a sign; and there shall no sign be given it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet” (Luke 11:29).
- “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved” (John 3:19-20).
- “And shall come forth ; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation” (John 5:29).
- “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil” (John 17:15).
- “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen” (Matthew 6:13).
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Aspect of God |
Potency |
Aspect of Man |
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Father |
Will or Power |
Spirit or Life |
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Son, The Christ |
Love and Wisdom |
Soul or Christ Within |
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Holy Spirit |
Light or Activity |
Life Within |
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.:
So that we do not forget that the reality of this ALL is still LOVE which is our Truth regardless of whatever other realizations may come to us in Life, we present here again the Apostle Paul’s words followed by our own understanding of this reality:
….but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law (Romans 13:8-10).
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)
We should remember always to link to this Greatest Commandment that other saying of the Master that gives to us the practical understanding of how to love one’s self plus the practical instruction on how it is that we CAN Love our neighbour; He tells us:
Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them
(Matthew 7:12)
Unlike so much of the Master’s sayings that come to us in the form of parables and for which we can only surmise that we have the spiritual presence to understand, these sayings are very straightforward and they are the key to many of the promises of spiritual life; they are the very key to the Kingdom of God. To these sayings we add our adopted definition of the Greek word agape (agapao) which is translated into the English words Love and Charity and 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’
- 4 Word Studies in the New Testament; Marvin R Vincent D.D. 2nd edition, 1888
- 8 Bible commentaries on BibleStudyTools.com
