IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 607

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON LOVE; PART CXCVI

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GoodWill IS Love in Action

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“Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him. Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. Do not err, my beloved brethren” (James 1:12-16).

I am travelling on business the next few days and our posting of essays may become a bit erratic. I will however do my best to keep up with this daily work. We start today where we left off in the last post, on the last part of the words of the Apostle Paul to the Romans from that segment that we see as revealing the very nature of Life to those who can see past doctrines and preconceptions and into the reality of his words. Before we go on here I would like to make clear a saying that we often use in our essays and which I realized may not be coming across properly, and this from a conversation that I had about it yesterday. We often say that the doctrinal perspective on Life is that a man is what he is in form and we at times say it as though they may think that they are this body. While some may believe this, our intent is to say that the belief of many is that this body and the Life in this body, which is seen as the personality that is deemed to be the consciousness, is what they believe to the the true self and this this self continues to the Kingdom after the death of the physical form. The Truth of this from our perspective is that the personality consciousness does continue into the afterlife but that this afterlife IS NOT the Kingdom of God, it IS merely the afterlife in which a man will spend some time which is dependent upon his spiritual advancement if we can say it this way. We have spoken of this several times especially regarding the continued plight for those who are overly focused upon the world and the things of the world which they ‘hold’ on to after their physical death and which creates for them their sense of the afterlife. For those whose Life is not so intently focused upon the world, there is less of a plight, less of a repeating of the form Life’s tendencies of emotional and mental desires and lusts which longings can no longer be satisfied. This is a long and hard subject to discuss as there is no teaching save our understanding which we have developed from scripture and from basic KNOWLEDGE gained from other sources which should be seen to include one’s own Soul. This idea goes to our understanding of Paul’s words in our current verses from Romans as well and we will use this as our segue  Paul’s words are:

“The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.  And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” (Romans 8:16-23).

Here, in relation to the ideas of the afterlife above, we should see the reality of the Kingdom for those who ARE disciples and who ARE accounted worthy of the Kingdom by the content of their current Life in form; this reality IS that “glory which shall be revealed in us” and we should try to understand that this glory IS made manifest in one’s Life in form and carries over into death allowing the disciple to bypass the afterlife as others will KNOW it. This IS as Paul says; the disciple IS “delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God“. We should understand that this corruption is, like sin and evil, a reference to the Life of a man in the world and where and what he IS focused on. It is when the focus changes from the things of the world to the things of God and when the man can accomplish those things through Life in form that the Master tells us are the criteria for one’s being accounted worthy of the Kingdom and the criteria that the Master tells us of that allows one to be counted as a disciple, that he is also delivered as we see in the apostle’s words. For the disciple, we have a hint of the reality of this passing from Life here on the Earth to Life in the UNKNOWN in Paul’s words regarding the passing of the Master. “Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. (Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.)” (Ephesians 4:8-10). While this is a confusing and much misunderstood saying we should try to take from it simply that when the Master died that he followed the path of ALL men and “descended first into the lower parts of the earth” in which we should understand that the directional observation is for the convenience and the understanding of men in form. His ascension then is the same, directionless and at the same time beyond all human concepts of heaven; He has ascended into the Kingdom of God. We should likely understand that this all happens in that less than three day period between His death and His resurrection which we have discussed in detail in previous posts and will do so again as we approach Easter. Based upon our understanding that “as he is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17), we should be able to see the same results for those of us who can achieve discipleship and the Kingdom while in this Life on Earth.

This IS our goal and our objective and this IS, as Paul tells us, that great conversion from the vanity, the illusion and the glamour, to which we are subjected both individually and en masse, to our being “delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God“. And, the method of this deliverance IS discipleship. And the method of discipleship is to keep His words as in doing this ALL other things ARE accomplished. When we took on this discussion of these words from Paul again we did so as we were discussing desire, lust, what we believe and focus as well as the idea of redemption that we inserted into our essay a few days back. These first ideas are the basics from our perspective and are connected to our understanding of the apostle’s word vanity as illusion and glamour. It is from this illusion and glamour that we believe what we believe as men and based upon the belief that this Life in form is the Life of the man, desire and lust for the things of the form Life become a man’s sense of reality in Life. In the last few posts we have discussed this in some detail and with many words but the short version is as we say here. From this Life in form as it is shared by most every man, we must move on to our goal and our objective and this is accomplished by our focus or rather our change in focus from the things that are important to the man in form, his beliefs, thoughts and actions based upon the desires and the lusts as driven by the illusion and the glamour, to his focus upon the things of God.

The idea of redemption is another doctrinal concept that is misunderstood based on the readings of Paul compounded by the preconceived ideas of atonement. The very meaning of the word is understood according to doctrine and there is little room for reality in some of these defining terms. Strong’s tells us that this Greek word, apolutrosis, means redemption, ransom, release ³ and these ideas are quite simple and have little to do with atonement. Vincent tells us that this Greek word should be seen as Redemption (apolutrwsewv). From ajpolutrow to redeem by paying the lutron price. Mostly in Paul. See Luke xxi. 28; Heb. ix. 15; xi. 35. The distinction must be carefully maintained between this word and lutron ransom. The Vulgate, by translating both redemptio, confounds the work of Christ with its result. Christ’s death is nowhere styled lutrwsiv redemption. His death is the lutron ransom, figuratively, not literally, in the sense of a compensation; the medium of the redemption, answering to the fact that Christ gave Himself for us ⁴. Vincent does not see the idea of ransom in this word and in the context that we have it used by Paul, “waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body“, the idea of ransom does not belong. The lexicon tells us that we should understand apolutrosis  to be: a releasing effected by payment of ransom; redemption, deliverance; liberation procured by the payment of a ransom ². Can we see the confusion here between Vincent and the usage above and the idea of ransom as generally seen and which feeds the established doctrinal belief of atonement, that we are saved or redeemed by the blood of Christ.

That the Master was born of the Virgin Mother, lived His Life as the Son of God in whom “dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9), sacrificed His worldly existence on the Cross and was Resurrected in what we see as a peculiar way so as not to be recognized by many who were very close to Him is biblical fact and historical fact for much of humanity. That He did this ALL to redeem humanity or that segment of humanity that by chance hears of Him and calls themselves Christian is the doctrinal pronouncement of the church that calls itself by His name and it is only by the creative interpretations of the sometimes unclear sayings of the Master and His apostles these have become so real for so many. The Master came to show us the way and while He was the First to be able to pass over the struggle of birth into the world of illusion and glamour where one’s True nature is lost; He was the First to  to come to Earth as a fully functional Son of God able to express the “fulness of the Godhead“, the First to willingly give up His Life in form and endure the pain and suffering of it and to even plan for it, and, He Is the First to be resurrected from the dead and to willingly take up again a physical form although the nature of His resurrected form is unclear and made so by the words of scripture. Again, we will discuss these idea in more detail as we approach Easter.

In the general way of the teachings of the Master, in parable and proverb, which is followed without remark in much of the works of the apostles who ofttimes write in rather ambiguous terms we should see the Truth that the Master tells us saying that this IS intentional. When He says to His disciples “Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables” (Mark 4:11), we should not see Him speaking to ALL who call themselves Christian as many of these persons are to be counted among those who are being given the parable. And we should be clear here; it is not that He speaks differently to His disciples, the words spoken in public are the same, the difference is that after some time with the Master the disciples ARE able to discern the Truth in His words. So it is today and so it has been since His Advent; men hear and men interpret according to the Light that is within them but the ultimate Truths are only seen by the disciple. To this we should add that as we interpret the words of the Master and His apostles, we do so with the Light of an aspirant and we may not be seeing the fullness of their Truths. Additionally, as we interpret these words, our thoughts will also fall on ears that cannot fully understand what we are saying when the hearer IS NOT so equipped to understand by virtue of his own degree of aspiration. In the saying here we should also see that there is a separate teaching and one that we are aware of by reading of the Master’s need to retell the Parable of the Sower to the understanding of the disciples and this is perhaps indicative of the unique ability of the aspirant and the disciple to see and to glimpse realities that have been heretofore hidden from him. Can we see in this the retelling by the Christ Within to the everyday waking consciousness and can we also understand Mark”s sentiment that “But without a parable spake he not unto them: and when they were alone , he expounded all things to his disciples” (Mark 4:24) can work in the same way for us whose only reality of Christ IS the Christ Within.

While we touched upon the idea of redemption, we did not complete our thoughts and we will pick up with this in the next post and again try to get to our sayings below and the one at the head of our essay.

• “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 will continue with our thoughts in the next post.

Aspect of God	Potency	Aspect of Man	In Relation to the Great Invocation	In relation to the Christ
GOD, The Father	Will or Power	Spirit or Life	Center where the Will of God IS KNOWN	Life
Son, The Christ	Love and Wisdom	Soul or Christ Within	Heart of God	Truth
Holy Spirit	Light or Activity	Life Within	Mind of God	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:

Leaving again the Great Invocation, we encourage ALL to read and reread it and our comments as in these words can be found the keys to our spiritual reality.

From the point of Light within the Mind of God
Let light stream forth into the minds of men.
Let Light descend on Earth.

From the point of Love within the Heart of God
Let love stream forth into the hearts of men.
May Christ return to Earth.

From the centre where the Will of God is known
Let purpose guide the little wills of men–
The purpose which the Masters know and serve.

From the centre which we call the race of men
Let the Plan of Love and Light work out
And may it seal the door where evil dwells.

Let Light and Love and Power restore the Plan on Earth.

This prayer is a part of our Prayers and Meditations section and there is much information about it there and in our discussion of it in the Quote of the Day section of In the Words of Jesus parts 128-132

The above Invocation or Prayer does not belong to any person or group but to all Humanity. The beauty and the strength of this Invocation lies in its simplicity, and in its expression of certain central truths which all men, innately and normally, accept—the truth of the existence of a basic Intelligence to Whom we vaguely give the name of God; the truth that behind all outer seeming, the motivating power of the universe is Love; the truth that a great Individuality came to earth, called by Christians, the Christ, and embodied that love so that we could understand; the truth that both love and intelligence are effects of what is called the Will of God; and finally the self-evident truth that only through humanity itself can the Divine Plan work out.

Like the Lord’s Prayer, this invocation is a World Prayer which is as all that a prayer is intended to be. It is a prayer for the uplifting of the Human Family out of the mire of materialism and selfishness. The Lord’s Prayer asks nothing for the individual praying it but asks that its benefits be for US and for WE which is why it was given by the Christ as a prayer and as a model over 2000 years ago. This invocation is also attributed to the Christ who, as He promised, has never left us; He, through channels that we do not readily understand, has Himself instructed His disciples to distribute this prayer and to encourage its use as a world prayer and as an aid in preparing the world for His return.

The first three stanzas of this prayer should be understood as reflecting the effective potencies of the Trinity which is God and which, when brought down to an individual level, the Trinity which is Man. His Will, His Love and His Light we should seen as the Potent Powers of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Let the peace of God rule in your hearts!

• ⁴ Word Studies in the New Testament; Marvin R Vincent D.D. 2nd edition, 1888
• ² New Testament Greek Lexicon on BibleStudyTools.com
• ³ Strongest Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible – 2001