Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON LOVE; PART CXXIV

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GoodWill IS Love in Action

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We don’t often get involved in the current events of the day but we will do so briefly here today on the matter of the reaction and the counter-reactions in the politics of gun control that have erupted from the unfortunate tragedy in Newtown, CT just over a week ago.  While we take no sides publicly, a glance at our essays will likely tell what side we would be on. The immediate reaction from the one side is that the assault style gun should be banned and many agree on both sides of this issue that these type of guns are not necessary or desired if the purpose of legal guns is for self protection and hunting. The other side is taken up by the gun ‘lobby’ as it is called as this is comprised of organizations whose livelihood is attached to the money contributions from the manufacturers of these weapons and from the membership who buy them. That these weapons are legal or not is not our issue here, our issue is the attitude of those who react and counter-react and do so without taking the opportunity to evaluate the situation; they see only their own perspective. Undoubtedly there are many issues that are tied to this tragedy that will be addressed in the coming days but our point here today is this; in this presumably Christian country where the pro-gun side is more notably attached to the American Christian movements and the anti-gun side is more notably attached to the so-called liberal American movements of peace and personal freedom, what part do the precepts of Christianity as taught by the Christ play? Where would be the Master’s thoughts in this matter?

Continuing with our look at the Nativity of the Master as presented in Luke’s Gospel, we come to the final of the three parts that we have broken this into. Our text goes thus:

“And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed , every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was , that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes , and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field , keeping watch over their flock by night.  And, lo , the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.  And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes , lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. And it came to pass , as the angels were gone away from them into heaven , the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass , which the Lord hath made known unto us. And they came with haste , and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these things , and pondered them in her heart.  And the shepherds returned , glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen , as it was told unto them. And when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child , his name was called JESUS, which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the womb. And when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished , they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord; (As it is written in the law of the Lord , Every male that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord;) And to offer a sacrifice according to that which is said in the law of the Lord, A pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons. And, behold , there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy Ghost was upon him. And it was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. And he came by the Spirit into the temple: and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him after the custom of the law,  Then took he him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel. And Joseph and his mother marvelled at those things which were spoken of him. And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary his mother, Behold , this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against; (Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also,) that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. And there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Aser: she was of a great age , and had lived with an husband seven years from her virginity; And she was a widow of about fourscore and four years, which departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day. And she coming in that instant gave thanks likewise unto the Lord, and spake of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem. And when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth” (Luke 2:1-39)

We should note here that there are some stark differences in the versions of the Nativity of the Master between the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew. It is likely that these differences are a matter of perspective only as neither apostle was there and their writing is based upon what they KNEW, what they were told; for the one apostle certain things seemed important and for the other different things. Doctrine has sort of muddily combined these two and this is readily seen in the inclusion of the shepherd boy and the Wise Men in the same Nativity scenes. There is no way to time phase these happenings except that in the story according to Luke we can say with certainty that eight days after, the child is circumcised and that is before this that the scene with the shepherds plays out. The days of purification are forty days we are told and this would give us the timeline for the first forty days; that Jesus is born, is circumcised and is brought to Jerusalem. There is no sign of Herod nor of the Wise Men in this timeline and no journey yet into Egypt but rather an open ended saying by Luke that “when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth“. We do not KNOW what is meant by “when they had performed all things” but for the sake of clarity we can assume that this does include the story of the Wise Men and Herod and the trip to Egypt which Matthew tells us ends in the journey to Nazareth. We should note here that we are not told that the Wise Men go to Bethlehem, we are only told that the Child is born there; we are told also that the Wise Men come into a house and not a manger nor a cave. We need not go into the geography of this as it really does not matter as our only objective is to reconcile these two versions of the Nativity and we should say here that any pronouncements of the actual happenings or times involved in this story is based purely on assumptions and guesswork as we are not given enough information, save the eight and forty days, to properly discern these things.

The greater importance for us is in the interaction of the Christ Child and his parents with Simeon and Anna in the Temple at Jerusalem. We should note here that their very presence in scripture has some significant meaning and this aside from their affirmations of the divinity of the Child Jesus. We can see here again the ways of the Plan of God as it never leaves itself without firm assurance of its success as regards the success of the mission of the Christ in this unpredictable world of vanity, of illusion and of glamour. As we have previously said, there is the working out of freewill in the world and that this is beyond the scope of the Plan and this either because the Plan can not interfere of that it will not interfere and, again, the result of these is the same.  We have noted the calamitous history of the world, the wars, the famines and the plagues, that CAN NOT  be attributed to the Plan of our ALL Loving God, our God with Whom “there is no respect of persons” (Colossians 3:25). The Master teaches us these things in this exchange with the people; “There were present at that season some that told him of the Galilaeans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these Galilaeans were sinners above all the Galilaeans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:1-5). This saying tells us of the freewill nature of the things of the Earth and confirms for us our disclaimer that says that to free oneself of these calamities one must overcome the world, be a disciple and accounted worthy of the Kingdom which the Master here says to us in the single word repent. Freewill is here and, while it is a limited freewill from a personal perspective as we must conform somewhat the the established conventions, we are subject to it on a planetary scale, to these established conventions, to the winds of nature and to the doings of men of power in the world and but for the efforts of Sons of God in the Earth yet today, we could easily blow ourselves up in nuclear conflict.

And this is our point, that it is Sons of God that intercede, Sons of God that continually push men in the right directions and Sons of God who by their own actions give hope and encouragement to others who might feel overwhelmed by the scope of the task of the redemption of the world. Can we see that this is perhaps the story of Mary and Joseph, alone with a new child in a strange place and KNOWING but a small bit of the scope of the work that they must do. Easy it could be to lose heart, to focus on the easier things of the world and it is in the prevention of this attitude besetting them that they hear the prophetic and the assuring words of Simeon and Anna; they are no longer left to themselves to wonder of the Truth of what they had believed. Would they wonder? would they drift? we do not KNOW but here in their interaction with Simeon and Anna, in the interaction with the shepherds and the Wise Men, we find ready help for their most difficult task. And we can take this idea back to our discussion of Genesis as well as “sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown” (Genesis 6:4) as in this we can see the same reality of accomplished Souls, Souls that have overcome the world of things, being ever ready to help and to ensure the success of the Plan of God.

For all practical purposes Christ IS the Plan of God for these times that we are in; not the historic or the religious Christ but that True Christ  who is the manifestation of the Love of God or rather the manifestation of the Love that IS God. And for us this should lend extra meaning to this time of year and to Christmas Day; as the Angel and “a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying   Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men” brought the news of the birth of the Christ Child, the birth of the Love of God in the Earth as a teaching and a virtue, as the expression of the Christ Within in the Life of every man and, we should understand in their words that the “Glory to God in the highest” IS in fact that Love. The Master speaks about  “Glory to God” in simple words and in regard to good works and fruit and what could be more representative of good works than to heed the Greatest of Commandments as the Love of God and the Love of One’s neighbor and we should by now understand that the Love of God is seen only in a man’s Love of His neighbor. Let us look at some verses that speak to these ideas as we close this essay.

• The Master tells us that we must: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16) and in this we should understand that the Light is the Light of the Christ Within, the Soul and the good works are in keeping His words, the primary of which is Love.
• He tells us also that we glorify God by the fruit that we bear saying: “Herein is my Father glorified , that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples” (John 15:8) and we KNOW from the teachings of the Apostle Paul what this fruit is. Paul tells us “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance” (Galatians 5:22-23) and we should see here that the primary fruit is again Love; we should understand also that ALL of these other virtues stem from Love.

As a Christmas reminder of the importance of Love we repeat here our points on Love as we have used them frequently in our essays:

Of all that the Master told us, He considered this as the Greatest of Commandments. So much of what we are to understand as aspirants or as believers is found in the precept that we must

KEEP HIS WORDS:

“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 12:30-31).

We ask ourselves WHAT THEN IS LOVE?

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.

We add to this THE EVER IMPORTANT AND HIGH IDEAL TAUGHT TO US BY THE CHRIST which can serve to both give us an understanding of what it means to Love oneself and how it is that we can Love our neighbor:

“Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them”

(Matthew 7:12).

MERRY CHRISTMAS

We did not get to our Genesis theme of the Trees and will try again to do this in the next post.

• 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:

Taking a Christmas theme for our Quote of the Day we present the full lyrics to the song we KNOW as Hark, the Herald Angels Sing. With not too much doctrinal bent this song does give us the reality of the coming of the Christ. We should note that the original words as written by Charles Wesley in the eighteenth century were as “Hark, how all the welkin rings, glory to the king of kings“. We are told that “welkin” means “vault of heaven” in which we can understand the King James Translation of “heavenly host“; this idea of heavenly host is alternately rendered in other translations as “heavenly forces”, “great band of spirits from heaven” and the “heavenly army” (a very contradictory term) to name a few. For us, the idea of “welkin” serves the reality of the True idea from scripture best.