IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 579

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON LOVE; PART CLXVIII

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GoodWill IS Love in Action

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“There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. 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. 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. Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness. If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.  And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:  That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:1-15).

Two essays back we began a look at the Fifteen Points of Emmet Fox that are intended by the author to be a way of telling if one is ‘in Truth’. We have noted that this is his doctrine as a part of the overall New Thought doctrines and movement and much of the precepts of these Fifteen Points are oriented directly to these doctrines as are the pronouncements of most any denomination, sect or religious movement. We have chosen to look at these Fifteen Points because we see the tenets of the New Thought philosophy to be the closest of the man made religions to the things that we as aspirants understand as Truth and we have noted that although the teachings are rife with doctrine, there is much of value in these particular words that can help the average man onto the Path. I might add here a personal note which is that it is Mr. Fox’s writings that brought me back to the realization of the reality of Life after an extended period in which I lost sight of my spiritual reality by being overly focused on my own Life in the world, my own carnal Life replete with all the desires and wants for comfort and pleasure. I fell victim again to the illusion and the glamour of Life in form. In the last essay, rather than continuing our discussion of these Fifteen Points, we chose to look as the phenomenon of religion from the perspective of their actions in the Earth and we ended with another repetition of the words of the Master which tells us that we must ever be careful to KNOW what it is that we are believing, to measure it against the Master’s words and the words His apostles and to not fall prey to the words and actions of those who are more concerned about themselves than they are about those that they teach. We again should see that anything that is oriented toward the self, the man in form, is not of God and is not a product of the spiritual Life, the fruit of which IS those several ideals and virtues given to us by the Apostle Paul and which we repeat often. We noted also that this idea of the orientation of one’s Life and motives toward the self in form is a reality in ALL walks of Life and for us it includes ourselves as well as those that we listen to so as to believe what they are saying is the Truth.

We have stated clearly our position that our understanding of the words and actions of others must measured against the reality of Wisdom from above that the Apostle James tells us of a well as the ideals and virtues of the fruit of the Spirit that we received from Paul. We remind ourselves here again also of the words of the Apostle John who tells us that each man who is striving toward the realization of God can recognize the anointing that he has as the Christ Within which can tell a men of ALL things so long as the man is not focused upon the things of the world. Each of these three has been included in at least one of the last several posts and we repeat them here again for clarity and because in reading and rereading these things each of us will develop an understanding of them that is meat for his use and based in and upon the Light of his own Soul.

• James tells us that: “Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? let him shew out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom. 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 3:13-17). We have covered these words many times as the single best source of understanding that what we believe we are hearing from our own Souls or from God is Truly from that source and if it meets these several criteria we can KNOW that it is. More recently we have focused upon the negative parts of this, what the Wisdom from above IS NOT and in our analysis we have concluded that it IS NOT to do with the self in form in any way whatsoever; not earthly or sensual nor devilish. From our analysis of these words from James in the light of Vincent’s interpretation of the words used, we have verified our understanding of this reality. Vincent’s comments can be found in In the Words of Jesus part 576, just a few posts back and tell us that our common understanding of jealousy and strife is not the True point of James’ words. ⁴
  
• Paul tells us that “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts” (Galatians 5:21:24). Elsewhere Paul tells us that  “the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth” (Ephesians 5:9). In these words and others from the apostle we should be able to see what it is that flows through the Life of one who is standing in the Light of his own Soul, one who is expressing, at least somewhat, the Love and the Power of the Christ Within. That man IS, or at least recognizes that he should be, ALL of these ideals and virtues; it is in this expression that we are accounted worthy of the Kingdom and of discipleship. We should see in these words the relevance of the Master’s caution regarding who one believes a teacher in these spiritual matters; when we hear from the Master that it is “by their fruits ye shall know them” (Matthew 7:20) we should realize that this fruit as outlined by Paul is what He is speaking about. Against these ideas from Paul then we can measure not only the quality of the people that we may listen to and believe but also the quality of what is said and it resonates through our own spiritual self; in this we should see that whatsoever one may hear or see is understood and interpreted by some faculty of the man in form, either it is his carnal mind and emotions that measure things for the self or it is the Soul and divine part of the man that reflects this hearing as Wisdom from above.
• John tells us that “But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him” (1 John 2:27). There is much to understand in this saying that is beyond what is considered as True by the common understanding of John’s words and which is beyond our own previous treatment of these words as well. We have often used these words to exemplify the apostles understanding that the Soul, the Christ Within is that anointing that we have received and that it is from this source, from within or from above, that the Truth flows in the Light of the Soul. Now this IS our understanding of this and that has not changed, but we can add here today a bit of word studies of our own which tend to hide this reality from plain view. We should first understand that John is writing to disciples and perhaps those who are striving toward discipleship and this is consistent with most all of the writings of the New Testament, none is written to an audience that does not understand although they do have that same quality as the gospels which is to be readable for the most part by any who want to sincerely investigate. This being said we must add here that there is much written that is beyond the ken of the average reader and some that is beyond the comprehension of the advanced reader as well; some of these writings can only be understood in the Light of the Soul as the Wisdom from above. Our saying here is in our opinion one of these that is not understood by many and that is even beyond the understanding of the advanced reader who is considered advanced by means of his knowledge of the scriptures by way of the doctrines that he has learned. Let us here look at the key word in this saying, anointing. The Greek word chrisma is translated as anointing and the source of this Greek word is chrio which is translated as to anoint. Taking this a step further we see that another Greek word, christos, also comes from this same word chrio and christos translation is anointed and is often rendered, as the English version of the Greek word, as Christ, in many places that it is used. A classic understanding of this is found a few verses before our verse above that says: “Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:22). Here in a single statement we have the reality that Jesus IS the Anointed which is rendered the Christ while at the end of the verse we have the reality that the Anointed IS the Son. Now this dual use of this word does not change its meaning but rather personalizes the anointed to Jesus by using the rendition of the Greek word christos as Christ. It is also interesting to note that the Hebrew word translated as Messiah and used in the New Testament as Messias, a Greek rendition of a Hebrew word, also means anointed. In this all we should see that there is a great relationship in these words and forms of words so that the idea of the anointing and the Christ Within can be understood more clearly in the saying that we are discussing. Another word in our verse above that needs clarification is the word received which is from the Greek word lamano; Strong’s tells us that this word also means to take ³ and the lexicon takes this a bit further and from their lengthy definitions of the Greek word we take: to take to one’s self, lay hold upon, take possession of, i.e. to appropriate to one’s self; catch at, reach after, strive to obtain ². Looking then at this from the perspective of the man in form we can see the reality of these words being that the Christ Within that we as men, as disciples and perhaps sincere aspirants, have received or taken from the reality of the True man into our Life in the world as our expression in form, dwells within the form and has supplanted the individual personality Life. When our expression is that of the Soul, the Christ Within, the realization of the anointing, the Christ Within, IS present and we act accordingly and in this state we “need not that any man teach” us as this presence, this activity of the Christ Within in form, is that same Holy Spirit of which the Master tells us “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” (John 14:26). The apostle ends this verse in a statement of fact saying that this same Christ Within, this “same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie“, and, he adds criteria that as the Christ Within, the anointing, has taught us, that we will “abide in him. This offers to us an idea of a sort of continuum that says that as long as the Christ Within is being expressed, as long as it is the anointing that teaches us, that we “shall abide in him“. This is not unlike the Master’s words that are confirmed here by the apostle who tells us above that the Christ Within abides in man and that when the man expresses this Truth and this reality that the man can be seen as abiding in the Christ Within as well; this is of course ALL a matter of realization. The Master’s words on this are “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me” and if we look at this parabolic saying in the same way, as the man in form and the Christ Within, it says the same thing as the apostles comment above to which the apostle adds the understanding that in this state of abiding, we can come to KNOW all things; and this the Master tells us also but in a different place and in a different way.

We did not get back to the Fifteen points as we had planned but have continued to build our rationale for hearing, listening and believing based upon the words of the Master and His apostles. 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:

Emmet Fox, a New Thought Christian teacher, gives us his Fifteen Points teaching one of which we used to exemplify the Master’s intent in His teaching to us about the Golden Rule. All of these points are however forward looking from the perspective of the man who desires to advance spiritually and they are based upon the reality of the Master’s teachings on Love.

I Am Really In Truth: ‡

1. If – I always look for the best in each person, situation and thing.
2. If – I resolutely turn my back on the past, good or bad and live only in the present & future
3. If – I forgive everybody without exception, no matter what he may have done; and if I then forgive MYSELF whole-heartedly.

4. If – I regard my job as sacred and do my day’s work to the best of my ability (whether I like it or not).

5. If – I take every means to demonstrate a healthy body and harmonious surroundings for myself.

6. If – I endeavor to make my life of as much service to others as possible, without interfering or fussing.

7. If – I take every opportunity wisely to spread the knowledge of Truth to others.
8. If – I rigidly refrain from personal criticism, and neither speak nor listen to gossip.
9. If – I devote at least a quarter of an hour a day to prayer and meditation.
10. If – I read at least seven verses of the Bible everyday.
11. If – I specifically claim spiritual understanding of myself every day.
12. If – I train myself to give the first thought on waking to God.
13. If – I speak the Word for the whole world every day, say at noon.

14. If – I PRACTICE, the Golden Rule of Jesus instead of merely admiring it. He said, “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” The important point about the Golden Rule is that I am to practice it whether the other fellow does so or not.

15. If – above all, I understand that whatever I see is but a picture which can be changed for the better by Scientific Prayer.

Repeating our text on this and Mr. Fox from a previous essay: Now we should understand that the above ideas are the doctrine that Mr. Fox taught and that like any doctrine it is based in what the man believes which is for most of us a revealer of the illusions that we are under. Much of these Fifteen Points are rather directly for the teachings of the Master. On the whole these are most all good and virtuous ideas but of the most importance insofar as the Master’s teachings are concerned are those points that give us some understanding of how a man should act in regard to others and the most profound is the simple wording of number fourteen. This teaching is given out for the use of the general Christian audience as Mr. Fox addresses people much like every other preacher or pastor albeit with his own doctrine and with a bit more emphasis on the Love that the Master taught. We should add here that many of the other Christian denominations do not agree with the teachings of the New Thought Movement nor Mr. Fox with some even referring to this teaching as cultish. We bring this out here not because we agree with their teachings but to show that there is some movement towards the teaching of Love by some newer parts of the church and the tell-all of this movement is in point fifteen which is outside of the teachings of the Master except one interpret His words in this way. This is doctrine and this is illusion from the perspective that these precepts are not in alignment with the words of the Master insofar as His ideas on discipleship and the hard line that is drawn for the actuality of being accounted worthy of His Kingdom. From our perspective these points are good and are most all worthwhile and they will lead people who can subscribe to them closer to the Master. This idea is true of most all denominations as they do attract people who can think and believe along certain lines and, as we have said before, it is better to believe in the doctrine of a denomination and to follow it as best one can than it is to flounder through Life with little or no direction at all.

Let the peace of God rule in your hearts!

• ² New Testament Greek Lexicon on BibleStudyTools.com
• ³ Strongest Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible – 2001
• ⁴ Word Studies in the New Testament; Marvin R Vincent D.D. 2nd edition, 1888
• ‡  From The Fifteen Points by Emmet Fox; © 1932 HarperCollins Publishers Inc