IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 534

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON LOVE; PART CXXIII

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GoodWill IS Love in Action

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As we approach yet closer to Christmas 2012, we will begin today with the the next segment of the rather lengthy Nativity story from the Gospel of Luke. In the last post we ended with the Virgin Mary accepting her fate as told her by the Angel Gabriel; it continues sayin:

“And Mary arose in those days, and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Juda; And entered into the house of Zacharias, and saluted Elisabeth. And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost: And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy. And blessed is she that believed: for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord. And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord,  And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name. And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation. He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away. He hath holpen his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy; As he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever. And Mary abode with her about three months, and returned to her own house. Now Elisabeth’s fulltime came that she should be delivered; and she brought forth a son. And her neighbours and her cousins heard how the Lord had shewed great mercy upon her; and they rejoiced with her. And it came to pass, that on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child; and they called him Zacharias, after the name of his father. And his mother answered and said, Not so; but he shall be called John. And they said unto her, There is none of thy kindred that is called by this name. And they made signs to his father, how he would have him called. And he asked for a writing table, and wrote, saying, His name is John. And they marvelled all. And his mouth was opened immediately, and his tongue loosed, and he spake, and praised God. And fear came on all that dwelt round about them: and all these sayings were noised abroad throughout all the hill country of Judaea. And all they that heard them laid them up in their hearts, saying , What manner of child shall this be! And the hand of the Lord was with him. And his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Ghost, and prophesied, saying, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people, And hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David; As he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began: That we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us; To perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant; The oath which he sware to our father Abraham, That he would grant unto us, that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve him without fear, In holiness and righteousness before him, all the days of our life. And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways; To give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins, Through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us, To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his shewing unto Israel” (Luke 1:39-80).

Of note here in today’s Nativity segment is that it is the fullest story of the birth of the Baptist in all of the Gospels and it gives us much information about this True Son of God who is born into a solidly spiritual family and who is so nurtured until he is ready to take up his own work on behalf of the Master. In the Gospel of John we get a fuller look and the inner Life of this Great Apostle while in this Gospel of Luke we see his birth and naming as well as some of his teachings to the Jews in the days before the ministry of Christ. In ALL of this one should get the understanding of the importance of the role played by John the Baptist as that he Truly was “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight” (Matthew 3:3, Mark 1:3, Luke 3:4). As we have said in previous essays and repeated yesterday, there IS nothing left to chance by the Plan of God as in this world of ‘free will’ there is not any guarantee that things will work out according to the Plan. John is insurance that the Master will be able to accomplish His mission and we should look at this in this way: If the Plan of God ‘could’ make things in this world work always according to the Will of God, we would not have seen the calamitous situations that have plagued mankind over the many centuries before and after the Advent of the Christ. Perhaps ‘could’ is too strong a but and perhaps we can better appreciate this as that the Plan of God ‘would not’ which, in the end, causes the same result. It is not for us to KNOW the reality of these things in our present state and while the Plan for the Christ was loosely scripted by the prophets of old, it required men like John the Baptist and Peter and John, ALL the apostles and others, to work it out as each had a role to play not only in His Life, but in His death as well. And we should not discount here John’s father Zacharias, nor his mother Elisabeth, both of discipleship character, who can be equated with the idea from our discussion on Genesis of those Sons of God whose role it was to bring into the world the “mighty men which were of old, men of renown” (Genesis 6:4). Surely we can consider that John the Baptist IS one of these “mighty men which were of old, men of renown” from our perspective looking back.

Not much is said about the Baptist in scripture save a brief look at his infancy and a few well chosen words to cover his Life but we should KNOW and understand that he did much more than what we can see in these few brief words. We should see him as being out in the desert daily preaching as the precursor of the Master who begins His own teaching with the very same words as did John thereby establishing an everlasting link in the teaching and the approach of both. We cannot tell how long John the Baptist does this, months or even years, but we do KNOW that John is “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight” saying before the Christ is come into his time “Repent ye : for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 3:2). And we KNOW that this is also the way that the Master begins His own teachings saying “Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). From the text we KNOW that the Baptist KNOWS his role and we see the completeness of his understanding in his saying: “Ye yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before him. He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled. He must increase , but I must decrease” (John 3:28-30). Our greater point here is that in his Life as in his birth there was divine purpose and there was divine purpose as well in the lives and the doings of his parents as they ALL played their parts in this Divine Drama that brings to us the Christ.

We read above that the Virgin Mother, Mary, is a cousin to the the mother of the Baptist and we should see in this much of a similar nature insofar as the closeness and the proximity of these very spiritual people and while we are told that it the Angel Gabriel visits and informs both Zacharias and Mary of what is about to happen, we should KNOW that these disciples Truly KNOW from within both their purpose and their destiny. They may not have KNOWN in the flesh how these things would work out but they did KNOW that they were playing a part in the Greatest of Divine Dramas and this they KNOW because of their discipleship as they were in themselves expressions of Divine Life, of Souls in form. For us ALL there can come a time of awakening to the Greater Glory of Soul Life, of Life in the Kingdom, and, according to the story, this time is for them hastened by the appearance of Gabriel. We should note and understand that it is only because they were ALL living with their focus upon the things of God that they are in position to receive this Greater Glory:

• Of Zacharias and Elisabeth we read that: “they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless” and this should bring to mind the teachings of the Master in their way of Life in righteousness and doing the Will of God saying:
  • “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33) and we should see here that “all these things” is that Greater Glory that they DO receive.
  • “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 here we should see clearly that both Zacharias and Elisabeth conform.
• Of Mary, the Virgin Mother of Jesus we read: “And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women” (Luke 1:28). In these few words we should get the same understanding of righteousness and doing the Will of God for it is only in doing these things that one can find the Greater Glory of being “highly favoured“. In this idea we must understand that thing that we premised in earlier posts, that although “God is no respecter of persons” (Acts 10:34), that this is a reality expressed only to and for the men of the Earth and not for the disciple who has overcome the world and, by the very nature of these words we read, we should understand that this is True; that the Soul who makes this appearance as Mary is one who has accomplished the heights of communion and Soul expression and can say with the Master that “I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
• And, to add to our understanding we consider John the Baptist himself of whom we read first that his mother was “was filled with the Holy Ghost” and that she tells us that he, as an infant “leaped in my womb for joy“. We should, according to our understanding, gain some deeper meaning of the relationship between the Soul and the form and we should try to see that it is the Soul that IS to be born as John the Baptist that leaps and who KNOWS of the presence in form of his Master. We speak often about the Master, how “in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colissians 2:9) and that this is from His birth. Let us look here at the Baptist and imagine how in his spiritual nature he had achieved such a status as to be destined, as the Angel Gabriel tells us, for such Greater Glory; we read: “For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb” (Luke 1:15).

We should understand here and in all these points above that it is ONLY in the crucible of Life on this Earth that on can come to be accounted worthy of the Kingdom and the Greater Glory of discipleship and that ALL of whom we speak, Zacharias and Elisabeth, John the Baptist, Mary the Mother of Jesus, Joseph and the apostles of the Lord, did those things that the Master teaches us in their lives here in the Earth and His testimony to this is ever found in the words “God is no respecter of persons“.

Rather than move on to our remaining points from Genesis which are but interesting things to KNOW, let us continue on our path here regarding these things that Truly matter. Above we are speaking about the discipleship and the being accounted worthy of the Kingdom of the “men of renown” that come into incarnation in the time of the Advent of the Christ as His sure help. We are saying here that the more important thing in the Life of the man in form, is that it IS here in form that one must take hold of their own presence and in realization of who and what they Truly are focus upon the things of God and do so completely. The Master’s teaching to His disciples and aspirants is to this end, He tells us of the difficulty and He tells us of the severity from the perspective of the man in form and we should understand that this same difficulty and this same severity was faced by those who we refer to above, those who came as His ready help more than two thousand years ago. This was a different time and the roles of men were different but they had to overcome as we must overcome and this reality IS in the words of the Master on discipleship:

“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).

In the allied saying from Matthew’s Gospel we read:

“He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it” (Matthew 10:37-39).

The Apostle John tells us this of the Masters words on disciplehsip:

“Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed” (John 8:31).

“Herein is my Father glorified , that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples” (John 15:8).

We must try to understand that it is in these ideas on discipleship that we find the goal and the objective of Life in form, there is no other way to Truly achieve the Kingdom but by being ONE with the Lord which is to say that we are expressing the Life of the Soul, the Christ Within, through our lives in the Earth. These ARE NOT our words but the words of the Master above and, in regard to the Kingdom, these are His words below:

• “That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20).
• “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 said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3-4).
• “How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God! And the disciples were astonished at his words. But Jesus answereth again, and saith unto them, Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:23-25).
• “And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62).
• “Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. 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” (John 3:3-5).

ALL of these sayings above are intended to show us the way to the Kingdom and these are not separate from His teachings on discipleship but are the same albeit from a different perspective. Being accounted worthy of the Kingdom is found in discipleship and to see a disciple is to see one who IS accounted worthy; there are Truly NO differences. And we should remember that to be accounted worthy puts one in touch with these words of the Master as well:

“But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection” (Luke 20:35-36).

We will continue with our thoughts in the next post and try to get back again to our points from Genesis below.

• Last we have the trees; “the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil“.

• “This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; 2 Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created . 3 And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth: 4 And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters: 5 And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died” (Genesis 5:1-5) .

Aspect of God	Potency	Expressed as Fire	Aspect of Man	In Relation to the Christ
GOD, The Father	Will or Power	Electric Fire	Spirit or Life	Life
Son, The Christ	Love and Wisdom	Solar Fire	Soul or Christ Within	Truth
Holy Spirit	Light or Activity	Fire by Friction	Life Within the Form	Way

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 repeat here again a saying that is from the Bhagavad Gita and which goes well with our topic over the last several days. Today we see the God Within us as the Christ Within and this is good in the Christian world and this is True based upon our understanding of the Christ as the manifestation of God. We should see that it matters not what we call this Inner Man as it is the same in ALL, it is the Soul.

Thou carriest within thee a sublime Friend whom thou knowest not. For God dwells in the inner part of every man, but few know how to find Him. The man who sacrifices his desires and his works to the Beings from whom the principles of everything stem, and by whom the Universe was formed, through this sacrifice attains perfection. For one who finds his happiness and joy within himself, and also his wisdom within himself is one with God. And, mark well, the soul which has found God is freed from rebirth and death, from old age and pain, and drinks the water of Immortality.—Bhagavad-Gita

It is difficult to tell just what verses of the Bhagavad Gita the above is from; whether it is a paraphrase or a combination. It is from the book “The Great Initiates” by Édouard Schuré which was originally published in French in 1889 and perhaps it is in the translation of the verses that they become hard to recognize. However, the sheer beauty of the presentation caught my attention and so I share it with you. The Path to the Kingdom is the same no matter what religion one professes.

• ⁸ Bible commentaries on BibleStudyTools.com