Love is the Fulfilling of the Law
ON LOVE; PART CCLVI
ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•Α
GoodWill IS Love in Action
ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•Α
“Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love. This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart” (Ephesians 4:13-18)
We had some discussion in the last post about the Book of Revelation and the penchant of some parts of the church for making this the center of attention and at times making rather definitive statements of what will happen based upon the vision of John and the many out of context words and phrases of the Master and the other apostles; words and phrases that are not clear but obscure and some with meanings that are far beyond the translated doctrinal statements. There ARE simple facts to be considered in this relation:
- First we are here in this Earth for a purpose and that purpose is to serve in the implementation of the Plan of God. We have chosen to tie this to the words of the Apostle Paul that we discovered or rather that were revealed to us in the Light of the Soul or so we do believe. Nonetheless, the apostle did use these words that tell us that “For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope” (Romans 8:20). Now we see the idea of creature as the man in form in the world or, in clearer tone from our perspective, the Soul in the world in human form which can be seen in these other statements both before and after saying “For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God” (Romans 8:19) which is our reality as Souls in form who are waiting for the revelation of our Truth to be seen and heard over the illusion and the glamour by the form Life’s mind and emotional vehicles. This Greek word apokalupsis which IS here translated as manifestation is also translated as revelation the majority of the time and we should understand that the whole of our spiritual progress as men in form is dependent upon the successive revelations of Truth, of that Wisdom from above, which comes from our ardent focus on the True Life and on God. We should understand as well the force of the idea given from the apostle’s words “earnest expectation“, that this IS ever the reality of the Soul who waits and prompts the consciousness in the world to Repentance. We then see following our main saying this reality that “the creature itself also shall be delivered” and we should KNOW that this IS NOT the body as the body dies but it IS the Soul that is delivered from the wiles of Life in the world.
- Second, there is a Plan for our existence that is beyond our ken but which we can glimpse and gain some inkling of its reality. The first part of this is from our realization of the words that we just used in the previous point which in the full saying are “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” (Romans 8:19-21). Before we begin here we should note that it is unreasonable to think that the words of the apostles will give us the mysteries of Life in such a clear way as to not need right discernment to understand the Truth for as we KNOW and discussed in some detail over the last several posts, it is the intent of ALL writers to cloud these things and keep them from the view of the man that is yet fully focused upon his Life in the world and that as a man begins to focus upon God and the Life of the Soul, the Inner man, that revelation of these mysteries begins. Having said this we should be able to realize this in our own lives as we continually see deeper into the mysteries as our focus upon the things of God evolves and for this writer this is true and can be seen in the evolution of our understanding through this blog where we try ONLY to take the archaic words and phrases and render them in our current understanding which IS a worldwide recognition of Soul and mind; a recognition that is for many yet unrealized. Better said perhaps would be that we are relating the words of the Master to the words of other more esoteric views of Life to show the basic sameness of these teachings as well as to clarify both for the seeker and it is only the seeker who will read and understand what it is we are saying except perhaps for those parts of our discussion that restate those things that the Master clearly says; at least it IS our hope that these will be better understood and accepted as the start of one’s journey toward the Path. Back not to our point which is that as a part of the Great and Awesome Plan of God mankind, both individually and corporately, “shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” and in this IS our reality, our objective in this Life and our overall goal as Souls. The Apostle Peter give us this same understanding, that we “shall be delivered” as he tells us “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” and we should remember here the reality of Repentance as that change, or better that decision to change, one’s focus from the things of the world to the things of God. This IS our choice within the limited ‘free will’ that we enjoy, if we can use that word here, and in this we should try to see the apostle’t context in his saying here as he continues with “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night” (2 Peter 3:9-10) and in this we should see the limitation of our opportunity to change in this Life time.
- We begin at the first point with the reality that as Souls we are subjected to Life in this world, a life in which we ARE “made subject to vanity” which is for us that illusion and glamour that beset the man in the world; this IS a fact as we ARE here. In our second point we look to that Great and Awesome Plan of God of which we can and do KNOW very little of from our perspective as Souls in the world and it is our understanding that as we progress we will KNOW more through constant revelations of the Truth and the Wisdom from above. We should note here that the word rendered as hope in the King James translation of our words from Paul is in reality the idea of expectation as we see in the lexicon 2 and our understanding that God, being God, would NOT be subjected to hope as that fleeting feeling of wishing. And so we have the expectation of our deliverance from this world, “from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” and in this we should see the reality of the Kingdom and of discipleship and that Our God expects or KNOWS that this Will eventuate. It is in this context that we should try to understand the role of reincarnation or rebirth because without this understanding neither this saying nor the one from Peter above can make any True sense for we KNOW that many, many millions of men pass through this Life in this world without ever realizing these Truths. This then brings us to the purpose of this ALL which we state above in a rather vanilla and ordinary way; that this IS to serve in the implementation of the Plan of God. And this IS a Truth that IS realized by those whose focus IS upon the things of God and we should note that this implementation covers ALL things that can be done toward the realization of the Plan and the Purpose of God. Now our only other understanding here is that this IS a creation that IS based in Love and we KNOW this because we KNOW that God IS Love; from this the natural progression would be to take what we KNOW of this Love and to apply this to God as the sum total of ALL created beings. This understanding we should be able to see from Paul’s words to the Stoics and the Epicureans in Greece as he tells them that there IS the ONE God and that “in him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28); We can also sense this in the words that we highlighted two posts back from the Apostle John who speaks about the ONENESS of the Father, the Son and the disciple which, in the end, we are ALL expected to be. Now we must try to understand that the bible references to the ‘end times’ are without a time frame and at the same time without explanation and from our perspective we should see that eternal is eternal and that this existence will ever be going on in some form and in this we can see that while we may lose opportunity, we will not be totally lost. Seeing then that this IS ALL about Love and that we can somewhat understand the ideas of part and parcel of God and His Transcendence and His Immanence, then from the words of Paul and of John, we should see the fulfillment of this Love in the words that the Master gives to us in the Golden Rule and the Great Commandment and we should see as well the nature of the disciple who serves in Love. The Master tells the powers of the world that “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve” (Matthew 4:10) quoting the Old Testament and this is His answer to the temptations of the world which we should read as touching Him also. Our point here is of course the idea of service and we should see in the Master’s words saying that “Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24, Luke 16:13) this idea of service and we can take this to say that no matter what we do in Life, that we ARE serving one or the other; God in Love and mammon in selfishness of some degree. Jesus also tells us about service from the perspective of the disciple in the world saying “…he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve” and we should try to see here that the reference IS NOT only to other disciples but to ALL and Jesus confirms that in that next verse saying “…I am among you as he that serveth” (Luke 22:26-27). If these ideas do not serve to illustrate our point on service, we can surely see it in this from John’s Gospel; “If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my Father honour” (John 12:26). So we serve the Plan of God and this service IS and MUST BE in Love and hence, part of our service is to Love one another, to Love in expressions of GoodWill our neighbor, our brother and the stranger that qualifies as both but this IS not the purpose of this ALL, the reason for our being in this world. It is a part however of our struggle to get out of this world as men in form or, in better words, to be able to say as did the Master, “I have overcome the world” (John 16:33) and perhaps we can see in this overcoming the reality of Paul’s words as he continues in his dissertation to the Romans saying: “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 8:22-23). Here we see in the adoption that ONENESS and Unity with God and the God Within as this comes to the disciple who IS delivered from the corruption, who has overcome the corruption that IS and IS IN the world, so that this adoption and this deliverance “into the glorious liberty of the children of God“, which are synonymous terms, bring us, to wit, to a glimpse of the purpose of it ALL. And this the apostle calls the “the redemption of our body” which IS a difficult thing to understand as this IS the mystery of our Life here and to which we have previously attributed the reality of the Transfiguration. While we see this idea of Redemption as setting upon the man who IS Truly Transformed, the man that IS no longer having thoughts, attitudes or actions that are for the self or the self in the world, we should try to see that it IS here that the fullness of the Light and the Love and the Power of the Soul is flooding the body and the personality of the man in form; this IS his new reality and it is now ALL that he KNOWS and can see as this state of being encompasses ALL lower rungs of the spiritual ladder that the man has climbed. Every cell and every atom becomes excited by the intensity of this Light and it is in this state that the man in the world becomes the KNOWER of ALL things and it IS in this state that the man can, but will not, move the mountain. And it is in this state of being able to control the very forces of nature that the man can be Transfigured as was the Master before the three apostles on the mountain and in His varying appearances and his disappearances after His resurrection.
These are for us the simple facts and, of course there IS NO simplicity nor certainty in them. They are however how we see the reality of Life from our point of view and ALL is progressive toward that great goal of our deliverance as a part of the Divine Plan of God. And we should see in these many words that there is little or no profit in our understanding the Book of Revelation nor any other ‘end times’ interpretations of the gospels or epistles as these things are understood today. Focus upon any of these is but a diversion from the Truth and the reality of Life and can lead the well intentioned man to a wasted opportunity as he remains in the world and in the thoughts of the world that are based in the illusion and the glamour, the vanity as Paul tells us, of Life in form. And this is also a part of Paul’s focus in the sayings above where we should read “That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ” in the context of our words above and understand that the ‘end time’ doctrines ARE a part of what the apostle refers to saying that we should not be “carried about with every wind of doctrine“. Ponder on this.
We will continue with out 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.
Staying on the theme of Love we repeat again the sayings of the Apostle Paul that put this Love into perspective.
But earnestly desire the best gifts. And yet I show you a more excellent way. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 12:31, 13:1-13 (New King James Version)Regardless of our daily theme, the underlying theme of our posts and of this entire blog is Love. In these words from Paul we should be able to see the overriding importance of Love in the Life of each of us. This is a common theme throughout the gospels and the other writings of the apostles and a theme that is not nearly understood. In our theme today regarding Paul’s writings to the Romans and in the previous discussions on them we seek to impart the better understanding of the reality of Life, the Life of the True man as the Christ Within, the Soul, as it is from this perspective that we can gain that revelation of Truth and, as Paul says above, be free from the condemnation and the vanity of Life in form, free from the illusion and the glamour. We repeat here what we said about these verses in a prior post:
Today’s Quote of the Day from the Apostle Paul is his testimony to the power of Love. After speaking at length about the gifts of the Spirit that one should desire in order to be of service to the Lord, he says plainly that Love is a more excellent way. Love in the context of these verses is not the sentimental or affectionate kind that we ordinarily think of but rather 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. This defining of Love is covered in some depth in a previous post; In the Words of Jesus part 47.
Let the peace of God rule in your hearts!
- 2 New Testament Greek Lexicon on BibleStudyTools.com
- 4 Word Studies in the New Testament; Marvin R Vincent D.D. 2nd edition, 1888
